Re: [ARSCLIST] the origin of scratchin'

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lewis" <davlew@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I beg to differ...this is just my opinion, but I think it has some validity.
> 
> I "invented" scratching just as much as the NY DJs did, and probably earlier
> than them. So did countless others - scratching is not an invention so much
> as it is a discovery, like discovering electricity, or America. Any kid with
> an "N" speed on their turntable who decided to land there and spin the
> record around by hand for fun made this same discovery - no doubt many of
> you discovered the same thing at some point. Even before I had a turntable
> with an N speed I had a toy hippo that came equipped with a pin in the wheel
> the size of a phono spindle; I would pull the tone arm away from the phono
> and spin the record around on my hippo. In my case, I don't have any
> recordings of myself doing that kind of work before 1980, but I was doing it
> in the 70s and started fooling around with turntables from the time I was 7
> - that was in the sixties. I certainly didn't hear any "scratching"
> elsewhere until the early 1980s, outside of what's mentioned below:
> 
> In John Cage's "Cartridge Music" (1962) Cage and David Tudor inserted twigs
> and other non-needles into phonograph carts and used them to play slinkys
> and things like that. Not the same thing, but related - it certainly sounds
> similar.
> 
Nope...don't think so...! The whole point of "scratchin'" was that one
could use the random and often percussive sounds created by manually
turning a phonorecord forwards and/or backwards as a sort of "rhythm
section" to back up spoken-word content (aka "rap," "hip-hop," usw.)
This is only a 20th/21st century addition to a half-vast number of
percussion instruments created from originally-non-musical items,
often "on the spot"...!

See under "jug bands," usw.

Steven C. Barr