This week’s profile highlights one of the pioneers of Hip-Hop music, Joseph Saddler, a.k.a. Grandmaster Flash. Flash was born in Bridgeton, Barbados and grew up in the Bronx, located in New York City. Flash’s penchant for DJ-ing began with influences in his home.
His father, a big fan of Caribbean, Jazz and other forms of Black American music, had an elaborate record collection. Flash’s mother encouraged him to educate himself in electronics.
Flash himself was fascinated with electrical items, from hair dryers to washing machines. He also was interested in things that spun around, such as the dryer machine and bicycle wheels. If it had screws, he’d take any machine apart to further learn the mechanics of it.
Flash made use of the world around him when searching for equipment. He’d go into junkyards and look for amplifiers, turntables, receivers, etc. Flash even found his speakers in the back of abandoned cars.
Flash’s innovations perfected the inventions of his predecessors, DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, specifically his quick-mix theory. While analyzing the work of other DJs, Flash noticed that their transitions from track to track were either too slow or too bumpy and erratic because the DJs were too concerned over the tone-arm, which resulted in a sloppy transition.
Flash knew that there had to be another way, so he did what most wouldn’t dare to do, he touched the vinyl record. Flash said, “The taboo thing is that you’re not supposed to touch the middle of the vinyl!” It may have been taboo, but with touching the vinyl, Flash had complete control over the record.
He invested in turntables that could handle him moving his hands on the vinyl and did another taboo, he marked the record with a crayon. Flash specifically marked the drum breaks of each record, that were most popular with the party-goers. This innovation is brilliantly displayed in The Get Down, a Netflix series that Grandmaster Flash helped produce.
The Get Down is not the only evidence of Flash’s immense impact in Hip-Hop culture. Many of his beats are still sampled today and Flash has influenced a plethora of DJs from Grand Wizard Theodore, Grand Mixer DXT to Jazzy Jeff and DJ Premier.
The filmmaker Nelson George couldn’t have said it any better, Flash’s innovations made it so that, “I could play the technology.”