REBROADCAST Beyond the Beats: a short history of Portland hip-hop

It starts back in the 70s, back in the Bronx.

This is Jay Jackson, a local DJ and video producer who made a documentary about Portland's hip-hop scene for OPB and KMHD Jazz Radio.

Hip-hop was born out of block parties in the Bronx in New York.

And from there, it started a cultural movement.

with a lot of also accreditation to Los Angeles.

So I think both of those paired together, but primarily in the Bronx and I think trickling its way out into influences around Oregon.

The elements that helped create hip hop in New York City and L.A. were present in historic black neighborhoods in Portland, too, at roughly the same time.

The area already carried the legacy of being a nationally renowned jazz hotspot from the 40s to the 60s.

In fact, we did a whole episode about it on the podcast last year.

Check it out if you didn't catch it.

Hip-hop pioneers who grew up in Northeast Portland remembered riding the early hip-hop wave as it began to swell.

Hip-hop started here when hip-hop started.

So as soon as we saw it, it was hip-hop here.

As soon as we heard it, there was hip-hop here.

Marlon Versatile Irving is a longtime Portland rapper and founding member of the hip-hop group Lifesavers.

The first time I started seeing the MC culture and the DJ culture sort of converge or really kind of come to the forefront, I want to say it was probably around 1982, 83.

And we immediately had rappers and DJs that were as good as anything we were hearing on tapes or whatever.

They were just superstars.

He says in order to see hip-hop in Portland, MCs, DJs, and b-boys, he had to go to the park jams.

There would be park jams at Peninsula Park, occasionally at Irving Park.

They would happen under the park's gazebo.

So we had all these funk bands that would play at the park jams in the summer months, in the spring months.

The dancers wound up dancing there.

You could see the poppers or whatever.

And so hip-hop sort of evolved into that.