3Aasim, Afrika Bambaataa (1960– )
Often called the “Godfather of Hip-Hop,” Afrika
Bambaataa Aasim, familiarly known as Bam, was
born in the Bronx, New York on April 10, 1960.
Many say his given name at birth was Kevin Dono-
van, but in an interview Bam states, “This Kevin
Donovan, they be wanting to swear that person is
me. That’s a Godfather of mine who used to be
in the gangs with me. But they don’t know what’s
what. So, they are caught up in their belief system”
(Banjoko). During his early teens Bam became in-
terested in music and became a D.J. He also be-
came a founding member of the Savage Seven, a
street gang based in the Bronxdale Projects. Bam’s
gang grew quickly and eventually became known
as the Black Spades.
Becoming fascinated with the warrior tradi-
tion of the Zulus, which he learned about from his
wide studies on African history, Michael Caine’s
film Zulu, and a trip to Africa, Bam took the name
Bambaataa Aasim, which means “affectionate
leader” in English. Bam’s leadership qualities and
potential were evident even in his childhood, but
the question was what direction would his lead-
ership take. The direction of gang leader was not
positive, but it was apparent that leadership was al-
ways in him; perhaps because of his Jamaican an-
cestry his legacies were tied to MARCUS GARVEY, the
leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Asso-
ciation (UNIA), which some historians consider
the largest black mass movement in 20th-century
America before Martin L. King, Jr.’s Southern
Christian Leadership Conference.
Around 1973, when Black Spades began to fade,
Bam started his own performing group, called
Zulu Nation. Although Bam established a differ-
ent direction for this organization from that of
the Black Spades, he designed objectives that were
fundamentally quite similar. For example, know-
ing that the gang life he had lived as a member of
Black Spades was essentially an outlet for young
people in the ghetto, Bam wanted his new orga-
nization to serve a similar objective; significantly,
however, instead of crime, he emphasized creativ-
ity. Well grounded in African history, Afrocentric
thought, spirituality, health-consciousness, and
the culture surrounding disk jockeying, which re-
mained dear to him, Bam identified five elements
of black culture he would later call hip-hop as the
centerpiece of the Zulu Nation. These elements
included the following: emceeing (rapping), disk
jockeying, writing (aerosol art/graffiti), dancing
(including several forms, breaking, up-rocking,
popping, and locking), and knowledge, particu-
larly knowledge of self, which held the other four
elements together.
Knowledge of self was to be the primary func-
tion of hip-hop; emceeing was to be used to com-
municate—to get a message across. Disk jockeying
was an equally important venue of communica-
tion as Bam and others used it to play speeches by
MALCOLM X, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., and other