When people trace hip hop’s origin story, they usually go straight to the Bronx: those fabled block parties, the breakbeats and scratch, and the revolutionary flair of Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Afrika Bambaataa. But what if the roots run deeper, beyond the ’70s, past the turntables and microphones, to the swing-era swagger of 1930s jazz ballrooms? And what if one strand of that DNA runs straight through Rochester?
Step into the Swillburg neighborhood, and you might just hear it — the echoes of hip hop’s pulse thrumming from the past.
Long before MCs grabbed the mic, there was Cab Calloway. Born in Rochester in 1907 and raised in Baltimore, Cab was a showman supreme. At Harlem’s Cotton Club, he lit up the stage with electric energy. His voice leapt and dodged between bebop horns, fast-talking, flamboyant, overflowing with linguistic flair. Beneath the pompadour and pinstripes was something unmistakably hip hop: rhythmic storytelling, coded language, a crowd-hyping style that still reverberates through the culture today…