Born in the Bronx: Afrika Bambaataa, Buddy Esquire, Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style, and Joe Conzo - A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip-Hop

Born in the Bronx: Afrika Bambaataa, Buddy Esquire, Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style, and Joe Conzo - A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip-Hop

Thursday, Jun 26, 2014 - Friday, Jul 25, 2014

Location:
Gavin Brown's Enterprise
 620 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10014

Exhibited by Boo-Hooray at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, the materials in this exhibition highlight the personal narratives and archives of hip hop’s grand architect Afrika Bambaataa, the late master of hip hop design Buddy Esquire, Wild Style director Charlie Ahearn, and Joe Conzo, the photographer who the New York Times said “took hip hop’s baby pictures.”

Highlights on display:

  • A wall display of sure-shots from the Afrika Bambaataa record collection. These records had the name of the artist covered up for Bambaataa to maintain DJ exclusivity of rare breakbeats in the early days of hip hop.
  • Original Afrika Bambaataa manuscripts and notebooks, including the original lyric for “Planet Rock.”
  • A selection of original breakbeat records from Afrika Bambaataa’s collection, showcasing the building blocks of DJ culture.
  • A grid of original cells from the animated sequences of Charlie Ahearn’s film Wild Style.
  • A large collection of original hip hop flyer art by Buddy Esquire from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
  • Vintage prints and exhibit prints of Joe Conzo’s iconic photographs of the early days of hip hop.
  • Handpainted hip hop clothing by Buddy Esquire dating from the 1970s to 1990s.

BOO-HOORAY exhibits both at home in New York City as well as internationally. We also stage collaborative exhibitions with the Hayward Gallery and Rough Trade in London, Tsutaya Daikanyama, Hysteric Glamour, and United Arrows in Tokyo, Galleri Operatingplace in Stockholm, Colette in Paris, PopMontreal in Montreal, Mishka Los Angeles, Printed Matter at both MOCA/LA and PS1/NYC, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, the New York Public Library, the Grolier Club, and Milk Gallery in New York.

Boo-Hooray exhibitions have included shows featuring Larry Clark, The Velvet Underground, Ray Johnson, Afrika Bambaataa, Jonas Mekas, Ed Sanders, Linder Sterling and Jon Savage, Spencer Sweeney, Houston Rap, private press vinyl, Wallace Berman, anarcho-punk group Crass, Jason Polan, Jack Smith, cult-filmmaker Ed Wood, and Situationist Times editor Jacqueline de Jong.

The exhibitions are drawn from cultural archives that Boo-Hooray excavates, organizes, and places in institutions such as Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University’s Division of Rare Manuscript Collections, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.