Block parties in New York City have a rich history, remembered and celebrated by New Yorkers as far back as they can remember. The age-old Black tradition of meeting outdoors for fun, fellowship, food and music is rooted in the history of the Great Migration.
The Hip-Hop Block Party on Saturday, August 12, 2023, honors 50 years of hip-hop’s artistry, innovation and global transcendence. This weekend, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) pays homage to the famous rec room jam session with its own star-studded “Hip-Hop Block Party," featuring some of the genre's most influential D.Js, artists and cultural influencers.
The event will take place on the National Mall at the intersection of Madison Drive N.W. and 14th Street and features multi-generational performances by some of hip-hop’s most influential DJs, artists and cultural influencers. Attendees will also be able to participate in interactive activities, such as graffiti art, breakdancing and more.
There will also be hip-hop-focused tours of NMAAHC’s renowned galleries, revealing the genre’s connection to centuries-old improvisation and social-consciousness traditions. NMAAHC hosted its inaugural Hip-Hop Block Party in 2022 to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap. More than 8,000 people attended in person and thousands more watched online.
“This was a beautiful time and I hope that people understand with hip-hop, really its main purpose was to bring folks together. “I think that this summer I've seen more block parties than I've ever seen…I mean, there's a ton.
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“A true distilled spontaneity is just arriving in a park with speakers and pushing play on your music and seeing what happens. However, the original message and community sense of what he describes as the “purest form of gathering socially with music” remains. “I mean, things are changing, but the spirit of the block party is still the same. The rest is "history"
Some say block party history began as early as 20th century when neighborhoods began hosting outdoor gatherings to celebrate various occasions like holidays, birthdays, or community milestones. Others say its original birth was at the end of WWII, when people in the neighborhoods of New York would gather to welcome back the soldiers.
Because most New Yorkers don’t have a backyard, the celebration took place in the streets, which developed into what we know today as the NYC block party. As Black soldiers returned from World War I, they also settled in Northern urban environments.
“This is the era in which jazz is becoming a national and international music. This is the era in which a lot of Black firsts are being made, new Black newspapers are being established,” Ruffins says.
Block parties gained popularity in the 1960s during the civil rights movement as a way for communities, particularly African American and Latino neighborhoods, to come together, socialize, and build solidarity. In the early 20th century, block and neighborhood parties, usually informal and free to attend, may have been hosted by the local church. Sometimes goods and treats were sold to raise funds for community initiatives.
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Another version of its notoriety was along side the birth of hiphop in the mid 70's. By the following summer, Herc, the burgeoning DJ from Jamaica, who owned the loudest sound system in the neighborhood, had garnered fame and a local and loyal following.
On the night of August 11, 1973, Cindy Campbell became the First Lady and Mother of Hip-Hop. Campbell and her brother, Clive, an aspiring disc jockey going by the name DJ Kool Herc, threw a "Back-to-School Jam" that lasted into the early morning. The party’s purpose was to help Campbell raise funds for the purchase of a “fresh” back-to-school wardrobe.
“After the block party, we couldn’t come back to the rec room,” Herc explained to Jeff Chang, author of the award-winning 2005 book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation.
Can't Stop Won't Stop chronicles the events, the ideas, the music, and the art that marked the hip-hop generation's rise from the ashes of the 60's into the new millennium. In the 1960s, New York City’s northern-most borough was recovering from the devastating effects of city planner Robert Moses’ Urban Renewal project, which had condemned and then destroyed a vast swath of neighborhoods to make way for the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. The communities calling the area home experienced almost complete obliteration in 1955 as apartment buildings, homes and businesses were demolished.
“Post 1968 and all the advances of the civil rights movement,” says Reece, “but there was still a lot of urban poverty and disenfranchisement in the communities.” The South Bronx had been home to a lot of communities and people of color, Latinx, Caribbean, African Americans, she points out.
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Chang richly details the turf warfare and gang violence that eventually culminated in the death of the 25-year-old peace counselor, Cornell “Black Benjie” Benjamin. Under the leadership of Benjy, the neighborhood gang was transforming into a community organization that spoke out against the area’s poor healthcare system, and hosted local clothing and food drives.
Benjy had a passion for community service, but since his real love was music, he also served as the leader of the Ghetto Brothers’ Latin-rock band. “Gangs were dissolving. The new kids coming up were obsessed with flash, style, sabor,” he wrote.
From doing research at the city libraries, NYC Historical Society, and other sources, I discovered that block parties had never been photographed as a subject, nor did they have any written history. I was ecstatic about the opportunity to bring this quintessentially New York phenomenon to life with my photos. I learned that the block party started after World War II as a celebration for the soldiers who were coming home.
It was the summer of 2005, and I remember hearing loud music and even louder kids on the block outside of my Brooklyn apartment. I grabbed my camera and went to check it out. I was shocked to find a huge party with no particular theme. In the streets of New York, it seemed that parties were always centered around a holiday or a community event, yet here was this party that was just about New Yorkers enjoying their block.
People explained that these parties happened in every borough, in every neighborhood-every summer, for as long as they could remember. No summer was complete without a block party. They are one of New York’s most cherished, and yet unnoticed, summer rituals.
Over time, block parties became a cultural staple, often featuring music, dancing, food, and games, and they continue to be celebrated across the city today, fostering a sense of unity and belonging among residents. There are certainly truth to each of all of these origin stories, but all these knots have yet to be tied down in history.
“Of course, today there are still block parties,” says Ruffins, pointing to the small gatherings that connect neighbors from one city block or another. “But you also have these larger festivals going on and, this hip-hop party that NMAAHC is throwing is very consciously referring to the kind of block parties of the 90s, and 80s because early hip-hop music is a lot based on neighborhood,” she says.
“DJs and groups, it's almost analogous to the rock band in the garage. in places like, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, D.C. and Cleveland. His years of music experience in the party planning and promoting field have included a recent event at The Universal Hip Hop Museum in New York set to fully open in 2024.
Keyes recalls that growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she didn’t experience block parties in her town. Instead, she discovered them in 1986 when she started completing field research on the origins of Black Atlantic music and the verbal traditions of rap music.
“Some of the mobile DJs, the disc jockeys, would set up their sound systems somewhere where you could hear it blasting bringing the people together. And as the DJs would tell me,” she says: “‘This ain't the club,’ because a lot of the gang violence took place in the club, ‘but we take it on the outdoors.
The African American Heritage Festival has always been a venue of celebration, education and collaboration with the African American students as well as the general student population. The African American Heritage Festival, formerly known as the “Block Party,” began in May of late 1970’s as a day for students to come together and celebrate the conclusion of the academic school year.
For several years, the west campus area near the Drake Union accommodated the celebration. By the 1980’s, a great percentage of students attending the events were primarily African American. Because of a heightened cultural consciousness and collective identification as a community, the “block party” evolved into a celebration of African American heritage.
Students later dismissed the name “block party” and adopted “African American Heritage Festival” to adequately represent the purpose of this communal event. The African American Heritage Festival has since evolved into a weeklong celebration!
Twenty-one years ago, a movement to further progress the purpose of the festival was introduced by adopting Swahili words, which is the most widely spoken language in Africa. Heshima, the Swahili word for respect, along with the slogan: “It Takes an Entire Village” was adopted as an integral focal point of the Heritage Festival.
