On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc and his sister Cindy threw a back-to-school jam at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. This party, held in the rec room of the apartment building, is widely considered the birthplace of hip-hop. Herc had ingeniously rewired his father's equipment into a sound system that allowed each turntable to have its own channel. Through it, he tried to get the people dancing but was having trouble keeping the momentum going—until he focused on isolating and repeating the most danceable parts (or the "breaks") of the funk and soul records he was playing, a technique that became the foundation for not just the genre of hip-hop as we understand it today, but the craft of DJing in general. It was this technical innovation that has long marked this occasion as the birth of hiphop, and cemented Kool Herc as its father. But the culture in all its aspects is built on original ingenuity that stretches back to time immemorial—from the powerful soundsystems of the Jamaican scene that Herc knew from his youth, to the West African oral tradition of the griot. That the 1973 back to school jam at Sedgwick is the first documented hiphop party is indisputable, representing a standout benchmark when musical influences were melding, and experimentation and systems were king. It represents a point in a continuum of brilliance that extends back to the continent, a mastery of expressive technologies—audio, linguistic, artistic—that has since touched every corner of our world and evolved into one of the most significant cultural forces today. Hiphop has given marginalized peoples a microphone, changed how music is made, spawned new forms, and become a multi-billion dollar industry. 2023 marks 50 years since Kool Herc's party. We'll be celebrating the anniversary all year long, focusing on a different year in its half-centennial each week. Expect personal reflections, iconic tracks and albums, and conversations around the genesis of the culture, everywhere you find KEXP.