BACK TO HOMEMid 1800's: The first phonographs are invented:
· Frenchman, Leon Scott de Martinville invents the "phonoautograph" (1855);
· Thomas Edison designs the "tinfoil phonograph" (1877); and
· Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter, improve on Edison's invention with the "Bell-Tainter graphophone" (1887).
1890's: Emergence of recorded music. To produce multiple recordings, musicians needed to perform their music repeatedly into several phonographs.
1900's - 1920's: The "Victrola" is produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company.
1937: Composer John Cage prognosticates the future of turntablism by stating:
"With a...phonograph it is now possible to control any one of these sounds and give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of imagination. Given...four phonographs we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat, and landslide." ("The Future of Music: Credo" by John Cage, 1937. http://www.ele-mental.org/ele_ment/said&did/future_of_music.html)
1940's: During WWII, troops are entertained by the first sorts of record jockeys with their portable music: vinyl records and amplified turntables. It was a lot cheaper and more efficient to send one of them than an entire band.
1950's - 60's: "Ska," a unique musical genre, develops in Jamaica, hallmarked by portable sound masters (disc jockeys) who compete with each other during dance parties.
1966: Influenced by the "Motown" sounds from the United States, Jamaican music introduces a new genre, "Rocksteady".
1969 - 1973: Jamaican native Clive Campbell, (a.k.a. "Kool Herc") develops what he calls "merry-go-round." Building on a concept already popular in his native Kingston, he took the "dub" (beat) of a record and, using two copies of the same record and an audio mixer, repeated it so that the relatively short beat could be lengthened, making it more practical to dancers. Hip hop is born.
1970's: Turntable pioneers such as Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, along with Kool Herc, popularize their unique style of DJing and turntablism is born.
1975: Grand Wizard Theodore discovers the "scratch" and a new innovation of turntablism is born:
"I just came home from messing around. I was about 13 or 14 years old, and my mother was banging on the door... So I stop the music and she opened the door and she was talking to me. At the same time she was talking to me I felt myself moving the record back and forth and forth and back while she was talking to me, because I wanted to keep that same groove I was on. I was talking to her and I was listening to the record...and I said to myself... Hey, this sounds really good. So I kept practicing it...and it became a scratch." (Grand Wizard Theodore, Battle Sounds documentary.)
1980's: Hip hop DJ popularity explodes:
· Grandmaster Flash's 1981 single "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel"
· Grandmaster D.S.T. scratches on Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" catches the attention of a wide audience and influences a generation of future turntablists.
1995: DJ Babu of the Beat Junkies first coins the term "Turntablism" to describe the art of using a turntable as an instrument of its own by manipulating sounds and music on records and creating new music.