27/02/2026
We apologise for the technical Zoom issues encountered in our last seminar. The problem was licence related and has been rectified.
Our next department seminar is on Tues, 3 March at 4pm:
'Rapping Zulus in the Global North: Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation and the Origins of Hip-Hop'
Benedict Carton (George Mason University) and Robert Vinson (University of Virginia)
As domestic civil rights activism receded in the early 1970s, America’s racial justice movements pivoted to protesting “Jim Crow” in South Africa, supported by critical media coverage of the cozy relationship between Cold War allies, Pretoria and Washington. “Birds of a feather flock together,” local newspapers quipped in Harlem, New York, and the South Side of Chicago. The Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, and Afrocentric revolutionaries more broadly also took the lead in rallying their constituencies, including radical artists, to the burgeoning anti-apartheid crusade. Out of this ferment, Hip-Hop was born. In the summer of 1973, deejay Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) hosted a raucous gathering at 1373 Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx, a borough just north of Manhattan. His bash, thrown in the wake of headline-making Durban strikes “[b]y Zulu . . . warriors,” is cited as Hip-Hop’s catalyst event. Kool Herc and fellow partiers, Joseph Saddler, AKA Grandmaster Flash, and Lance Taylor, the future Afrika Bambaataa, founded this visceral musical genre. Kool Herc became its break-beat maestro, Grandmaster Flash, Hip-Hop’s drum-beat innovator, and Afrika Bambaataa, the “Electro Funk” envoy to the world. This chapter traces the historical influences that shaped Afrika Bambaataa’s global Universal Zulu Nation and its philosophy of five elements—turntable sound mixing, rapping, breakdancing, graffiti, and self-knowledge. Bambaataa claimed to be a New York Zulu. On stage, he wore Bronx gang insignia and glam-rock outfits styled on the royal garments of his revered rulers of Shaka’s “empire.” He long admired Zulu military prowess, as illustrated by two popular portraits of African resistance to white supremacy. The first depiction, perennially published in African American periodicals, introduced “Bambaata 1865-1906 Chief . . . of Zululand . . . [who] led his people in a valiant fight against the British.” The second portrayal splashed on movie screens as ZULU. This 1964 epic cameoed Mangosuthu Buthelezi playing his maternal grandfather, King Cetshwayo. Taylor saw ZULU and never looked back. While there is wider agreement that Afrika Bambaataa is a pivotal figure in the origin story of Hip-Hop, there is little examination as to why a kid from the South Bronx named Lance Taylor rose to be “the King” of the Universal Zulu Nation, a cultural phenomenon in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Pacific Islands. Based on recently accessible archival sources and informed by the post-1994 (re)turn to transnational historiographies, this chapter links the genesis of Hip-Hop to Bambaataa’s deeper engagement with diasporic liberation struggles, which focused on South Africa’s past and present. These struggles were connected to his Afrocentric ideas and gang life. In early adolescence, Taylor learned from his beloved movies and comics that “Zulu warriors” defended their national sovereignty against European invaders. At 12 years old, he embraced the Black Spades, a group of “street warriors” protecting their neighborhood from territorial adversaries and police raids. Despite their combative behavior, the Black Spades and gang rivals found common ground in their mutual appreciation for African performers like the exiled Miriam Makeba, hailed in Harlem as “Zulu Belle,” even though she emphasized her “Xhosa heritage.” Her radiant African-language singing and public opposition to apartheid stirred New York radicals, toughs, and Lance Taylor, too. Such eclectic influences raise important questions: How did Taylor’s immersion in “Zulu” lore and the Black Spades change his destiny? To what extent did transnational stories of anti-colonial legends from South Africa inspire his Hip-Hop philosophy and later anti-apartheid political involvement? All but forgotten are his contributions—the year Life magazine placed Bambaataa among the “Most Important Americans of the 20th Century”—to a 1990 concert at London’s Wembley Stadium in support of the African National Congress after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Bambaataa cut his version of “Ndodemnyama (Free South Africa)” for this grand affair, familiarizing Mandela, his wife “Winnie . . . and their comrades” with a “King of Hip-Hop” and the Universal Zulu Nation. “Ndodemnyama (Free South Africa)” was Bambaataa’s ode to the climb-into-you ballad, “Beware, Verwoerd! ([Pasopa] Nantsi’ndodemnyama),” and riff on his favorite 1965 album, “An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba."
March 3, 2026, 4pm, Harare/Pretoria
Venue: History Common Room, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park Campus, A2
or: https://zoom.us/j/92756684217
Meeting ID: 927 5668 4217
