"This is history!"

Steve Gorgos/University Photography

Grandmaster Caz, Grandwizzard Theodore and Tony Tone discuss their beginnings in a panel on hip-hop history Oct. 31 in Bailey Hall.

So said historian and author Jeff Chang in Bailey Hall Oct. 31, introducing a gathering of pioneering hip-hop artists -- including Afrika Bambaataa, Tony Tone and Roxanne Shanté -- at a conference celebrating the Cornell Library collection "Born in the Bronx: The Legacy and Evolution of Hip-Hop."

"Hip-hop gave millions like me a voice," Chang said. "Hip-hop unites people above the Babylonian confusion of languages. It's also a space of massive imaginings, where people can dream big."

The collection, in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, archives hip-hop's history and its emergence in the Bronx in the 1970s and early 1980s, its contributions to culture and community and its influence on the history of music, art, performance and activism in America. The collection features thousands of sound recordings, textile art, books and magazines, a photographic archive and more than 500 original flyers. "Born in the Bronx" author and collector Johan Kugelberg donated the archive materials to Cornell; his 2007 book features the work of Bronx photographer Joe Conzo Jr.

"Hip-hop archives itself, in some respects," said Sean Eversley-Bradwell, Ph.D. '08, an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College. "There's something about this art form that is beautiful, that's about agency and activism, within the context of struggle. I see hip-hop as a form of active resistance that speaks back to power."

The conference's opening artists' panel, moderated by Chang and Kugelberg, included Conzo, Bambaataa, Tone and Shanté; Pebblee Poo, the first female MC; Grandmaster Caz of the Cold Crush Brothers; Grandwizzard Theodore, who Chang said "invented what we know as the wicca-wicca scratch"; Popmaster Fabel and Latino DJ Disco Wiz (Luis Cedeño). They acknowledged the influence of Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash while describing how they first made their mark.

"A lot of DJs played a record for 15 minutes like Chic's 'Good Times,' and I was changing records every two minutes," Bambaataa said.

Caz said he learned the importance of "incorporating your own imagination and personality in your writing and rhyming. I don't have gold or platinum records, but my rhymes are remembered from the early '70s to today."

Female MCs became tough early contenders on the male-dominated scene. "I was a B-girl; I didn't want to be an MC, that was a boy thing," Pebblee said. "I was a challenger."

Using her talent for improvising rhymes, Shanté was only 14 when her 1984 hit single "Roxanne's Revenge" sparked a series of answer records. "I didn't come into the industry to be a great female rapper, I came into the industry because I was a great rapper," she said.

Shanté retired from hip-hop in 1995 and went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology at Cornell.

The artists described how hip-hop arose out of competitive DJ shows and "battles" at the Police Athletic League, in public parks and Bronx high schools. "Hip-hop became for me my first structure; before that I was just a wild kid running around the Bronx," Cedeño said.

Fabel said the park events were often like block parties. "You had grandmothers out there, people flipping burgers on the grill; it was a total communal thing," he said.

Bradwell also discussed demographics, showing maps of 20th-century racial population shifts in the New York City area; and acknowledged the impact of the genre's four art forms -- DJing, MCing (rapping), B-boy or breaking (dance); and tagging (graffiti).

"Hip-hop is global. Folks are tagging the wall between Palestine and Israel. The best B-boys are in Japan. … Above all, it's about 'peace, love, unity and having fun,'" he said, quoting Bambaataa's seminal "Planet Rock."

Chang, the author of "Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation," stressed the genre's scholarly importance.

"The archive will give future generations a permanent window into what you, the pioneers, have given us," he said. "What Afrika and the others were doing is building a body of knowledge. With this archive of 'artifacts from the wrong side of the tracks,' perhaps we get a new face of hip-hop scholarship -- from the ground up. Hip-hop belongs in the academy, for the scholars who are able to capture hip-hop's far-reaching art and aesthetics."

The artists also put on a block party Oct. 31 in Bailey Hall before the conference resumed Nov. 1 in Statler Hall for lectures on archiving and teaching hip-hop and the future of the genre. Cornell Cinema also presented "Scratch," "Planet B-Boy" and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn introducing "Wild Style" and "Bongo Barbershop."