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US campaigners rally to save 'birthplace of hip hop'
2007-07-24
Affordable housing campaigners in New York are lobbying for a housing block considered the birthplace of hip hop to be granted landmark status, in a bid to save the building from gentrification. DJ Kool Herc, real name Clive Campbell, started mixing funk and soul at packed nights in the community room of 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in New York's Bronx neighborhood in 1973. The rest, as they say, is hip hop history. But now, according to New York congressman Jose Serrano, the rent-controlled building is in danger of being converted into market-rate housing, a move that would likely price many long-term residents out of their homes. "We need to redouble our efforts to ensure that ... 1520 Sedgwick will always be a place of affordability where our next generation of young artists, MCs, DJs and dancers can be nurtured," he said in a statement on Monday. "The cultural history and affordable housing of the Bronx must be preserved." Many low-income families have been forced out of the Bronx in recent years as rents have increased sharply, partly because of rules allowing landlords to opt out of a rent-control scheme. New York authorities have approved an initial evaluation on the building's landmark status -- potentially putting it on a par with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building -- but are not expected to reach a final decision for several months. Although some dispute the birthplace of hip hop, Campbell, now 52, is adamant that Sedgwick Avenue is the music's true spiritual home. "This is it. The culture started here and went around the world. But this is where it came from. Not anyplace else," he told the New York Times in May. "It wasn't a black thing, it was a we thing," he added. "We played everything. Gary Glitter? We rocked that. We schooled people about music." "All of it came from here," he said. "From this building. It should be respected."
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