Interview carried out 12^th December 1996 by Dave THE RU F

“Knowledge of Godfather -

a conversation with Afrika Bambaataa”.

Verbals – Dave The Ruf

Visuals - The Ruf, Mrs Ruf

Every person who claims they “live hip hop” needs to read this feature. Many heads these days probably think of Bambaataa as an electro pioneer but 15 years after “Planet Rock” changed everything, The Godfather is still challenging preconceptions about music and trying to get the apathetic to open their eyes to the misinformation that surrounds us on this planet………….

Sometimes when things happen you just know that they were meant to be. The bizarre chain of events that led to this, the first full length interview with Bambaataa (for as long as I can remember) all started with a call from one of his crew members Buddha Boy who wanted me to bring down some promo’s of the ruf label’s shit for Bam the following night at the Hacienda. With Mark one playing before him it couldn’t have worked out better, so the next night off I went, dope wax and camera in hands hoping to meet the great man.

Bam dropped an explosive mix of musical influences that night with electro-fried techno, rare original breaks and chunky hip hop sounds, the highlight for myself and Loz, being the build up to.. and the subsequent unleashing of Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the terrordome”. After the set and talking to his main men Depo and Buddha Boy they asked if I could sort out a lift for them the next day, down to Sandbach services where their tour van had broken down.

The mad rush that followed the next day from my south Manchester HQ came courtesy Mark One’s total lack of the concept of time. With Loz already at the hotel pointing out that we had 5 minutes to get to the hotel. A 20 minute journey was done in ten, Mrs Ruf & I thrown out of the car only to literally bump into Bam who was on a mission to find some Bombay Mix!!!! We’d made it.

The conversational piece that follows is complete and I hope it influences everybody within our hip hop nation to open their minds to re-evaluate what their understanding of hip hop is and their role within it.

When did you first start DJ’ing in New York & what else was going on at the time ?

I started dj’ing in the year of 1970. You had a lot of special jocks on the radio stations like Gary Byrd was on WWRL, you had Howard Jackson on WLFV and you didn’t even have officially the two turntables and all that yet. When we started dj’ing at first it was like you brought your house system down and another person brought their house system down and you’d give a party in the community centre… and you’d have a flashlight so when you put on one record and you’d flash across the room to the other person when that record was about to end.. He would drop his record and then flash back to me and so on and that was the first birth of dj’ing.

Then later on as these other dj’s started coming out with the call routines like Kool DJ Dee, P. DJ Jones, my boy Flowers, they were more like the disco dj’s, playing a lot of the dance records of the time. Then I first got my turntables in the early part of the 70’s right after Kool DJ Herc, the father of hip hop blessed us and came to our shores.

So did he actually influence you to get the two turntables ?

Yeah but who really influenced me first was Kool DJ Dee and also one of my black spades guys at that time. It was Kool DJ Herc who had the music that I had in my house, so when I heard his music I thought that’s more of my funk thing, because I was raised with the funk. So it was herc who came out with his sound that made me come with my sound right after him. then Grandmaster Flash and everyone else came from us and just gave birth to hip hop.

When you first started out and you were playing what at the time were considered to be strange selections… mad different kinds of music, did you ever get funny reactions or were they hyped up for it ? Were some of them like “what’s going on here???!!”

Yeah, Yeah some of them might say “What the hell is that playing baat?”. It’s like I had this record by a group called Please, that did singles like “simple song” and “ego trippin’” and they were from the Philippines, I just kept playing it and some people were just like standing there at first… I just kept playing and playing it.. it started hittin’ ‘em and more people started jumping on the floor.. and I kept playing it and playing it. You see a dj knows the right time to spring something new on somebody and if it doesn’t get no reaction he can play a certain record to get their butts moving again. But I was one of the persons who had so much of the music that went onto influence hip hop and my crowd was just like “progressive” y’now they were just as crazy as myself, so whatever I played a lot of other dj’s would be scared to touch other forms of music, but when they saw the Zulu Nation dropping this they became OK on this. So if they got into a heavy metal record you had on and saw the crowd react well to it then these other dj’s would start playing it at their parties.

Yeah it made me laugh when Buddha boy said last night that he didn’t know if you’d brought your ac/dc record with you.

Well I had it but I didn’t drop it, last night I dropped all the other madness.

Can you tell us about the actual making of planet rock, y’know what was it like working with Arthur baker and how the track came together ?

Well the track first came together with myself and tom Silverman, from Tommy Boy records, cos we were out on white plains trying to come up with this concept and I was telling him that I didn’t know of no black electronic groups throughout earth other than Sunra.… I met this guy called John Robie  who was just coming out trying to push a record that he made called “Greencarba” and we got along fine so I asked him if he could play the synthesiser’s as tough as Kraftwerk or the Yellow Magic Orchestra, he said “Yeh I’ll tear that shit up” so I said okay. I knew Arthur Baker from when we had worked together before on “jazzy sensation” so I introduced him to John Robie and said this guy’s gonna tear up the synthesiser ! So myself, Arthur Baker, my group The Soulsonic Force did the whole concept of planet rock, John went in and tore them synthesiser’s up, with Arthur Baker’s production & grooves In tune with the beats, all of us with our lyrics and the funk we added to it.. this became the birth of the electro funk… which became the history of the planet rock sound .. which is now the miami bass sound, which became freestyle, house, techno all that, y’know the heavy bottom.. the funk attitude. This is the history.

How did the collaborations with James Brown (“Unity”)and John Lydon (Timezone’s “world destruction”) come about ?

Well the Godfather of Soul, I met him when I was a child he did a big concert in the Yankee’s stadium and he came again when we were in the gang days era to the bronx river houses cos we had a sister there by the name of Lola who was one of his dancers. He came to visit her at the house so we met again. He knew that I’d always admired him and he did the record because of what I stood for and because of what I was talking about. It wasn’t like he needed the money! So when we presented the idea of calling it “unity - of all people” to try and get this earth movement together that was when he came on the record.

Another time I was in Paris and I was just sitting in the hotel room watching CNN, which played a big role to me… and a movie that was called “The Man who Saw Tomorrow” about the prediction’s of Nostrodamus, with Orson Welles in it.. so when I saw that, this thing just hit me to write something based on what Nostrodamus was talking about so that became the idea for “world destruction”. Then I was talking to Bill Laswell saying I need somebody who’s really crazy man and he thought of John Lydon, I knew he was perfect because I’d seen this movie that he’d made, I knew about all the Sex Pistol and Public Image stuff so we got together and we did a smashing crazy version and a version where he cussed the Queen something terrible, which was never released.

Yeah, ha. I’d like to hear that.

They were never gonna release that one y’know, the one that came out became a hit and took us around the world for two years. I used to do it at my shows and used to go check him out and he does it at his shows sometimes… keep the words going.

What influenced your live stage show, with the mad costumes and everything, was it just mainly the p funk era and George Clinton.

What influenced me first was the great gods of black rock n’roll, Sly and the Family Stone and then erm uncle George Clinton, with him bringing the funk that Sly and James Brown gave to the world, he took it and it became an empire. So when I looked out and saw most of the records that came after myself, Flash & Herc they were dressing more like the Temptations and I said No we’ve gotta go and grab the wild styles - be the radical ones, so we decided to go Funkadelic style - dealing with looking like Sly only in space…and  bringing the Universal Zulu Nation’s vision of a cosmic world. It just came together man and we grabbed that punk rock scene as well as the hip hop scene and put it all together and it just clicked off.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?

It’s hard to say there’s so many, gigs in England, France, Germany all over the world. I mean we were the type of group that would tour every place, sometimes I would come on tour as a dj, as Bambaataa’s Soulsonic Force, as Shango or Timezone, we’d play small clubs - big club’s - stadiums then back to small clubs and that’s what got me respect and known from country to country.

So basically, you never turned anything down and just went for it.

Y’know if I didn’t go in and tour all these towns and cities whether small or big, I don’t think it would have happened like it did. We broke a lot of doors down and made it open for a lot of the other groups to dig and come in. Although there were a lot of groups who wouldn’t play whole countries, unless they were big places.

When and why did you set up the Zulu Nation and what were the ideas behind it?

Well the Zulu Nation concept hit me first when I saw the film “Zulu” in the 60’s, it was an inspirational film to me at the time, what with a lot of movies being degrading to black people,  everywhere was showing like Tarzan movies, so to see this coming out with Michael Caine and with the Zulu’s fighting for what was theirs and to stand against the British was a big strong shock to me and to see them at the end chanting to the British for fighting them like warriors.. it was just doing me so I said when I get older I’m gonna have me some type of Zulu Nation. When it started out it was in the black and Latino communities then as we progressed on it eventually became universal. With the progress of global hip hop we spread all over the world and now we have a lot of people of different religions , nationalities, races.. and we respect each other, we won’t kill each other if you say “I believe in Allah, Jehovah, Jah”

It’s just unity.

That’s right, we recognise we’re all the same, one person, we understand. We have what we call infinity lessons, like if someone says where’s heaven and they look up, and if someone says where’s hell they look down y’know the earth is rotating 24 hours so what was your heaven at one time becomes your hell, and what’s your hell becomes your heaven. So basically in the universal nation we want thinkers. We’re trying to tell the world that you’ve got to think before they take that because now they’re going for the mind of the people - they want control of the people’s minds, that’s why they put certain things on tv or certain music, you’ve got to understand that everything is planned by design.

Pre-programmed

that’s right, even in England one of the guys was telling me England is led by fashion, that a lot of you don’t take strong to the culture. Where there is a lot of truth because I’ve seen when Malcolm McClaren was moving one time he said “Punk, everyone’s going punk”, when he jumped to the “Buffalo girls” thing everyone jumped to the Buffalo girls! When it was hip hop they were all going to hip hop, and then they’re trying to get away from hip hop so now they want to do house.. from techno to the jungle. Instead of just saying let’s play it all and enjoy the culture of all this music.

So what are your actual main musical inspirations?

Well I give most praise to Allah for the Godfather of Soul, the King of Soul James Brown, and the great group itself Sly and the Family Stone for being the first group that brought black, white and all colours together, because it was sly who had the first inter-racial band that was telling people to make a stand, saying you can make it if you try. He dealt with racism on “Don’t call me Nigga ,Whitey”, he told people he’d ”take them higher” y’know and he said let’s all get down because we’re “everyday people” and all that stuff just stuck with me.. what he said and what James Brown was putting out and then it was uncle George Clinton and it followed with Funkadelic, as well as the Motown era, The Beatles, especially John Lennon who was very radical when he broke away. Also kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Gary Numan.

Yeh, Gary Numan.. we’ve been backspinning “films” for one of our live tracks!

That whole “Cars” album was excellent. “Metal, metal” just excellent.

What new music inspires you?

Punjabi & Bhangra cos I like the way they’ve taken the mixes of hip hop, house, techno and funk and put it to their own movies or soundtracks and it sounds funky. And I’ve heard planet rock in Indian, as well as “down with O.P.P.”!!, We got a lot of dj’s in the mix in their communities, you know a lot of Indian Zulu’s from different places.

Also I’m into African jazz funk, Wall of Sound and The Prodigy it’s all funky stuff.

Have you seen The Propellerheads live ?

Oh yeah cos I did the Wall of Sound party in London and it was kickin’.

So which current hip hop crews do you admire:?

In America or here?

Well anywhere.. worldwide!

There’s so many groups, I still love my Latifah, mc Lyte, also Digital Underground, Ice Cube. I love all the groups that are coming out of France, they’re putting out some excellent hip hop music. Over here Hijack, I liked Brotherhood’s stuff, I’m crazy about Blade’s album that he had in 93/94.

I was thinking about Blade the other day man cos he’s got a new single out.

Yeh ? That whole LP of was like some Public Enemy or something. I feel like a lot of the UK radio dj’s are not playing UK hip hop. That’s why it’s very important that the hip hop community in the UK needs to organise together and get a united hip hop front and to deal with the problems of these dj’s not playing their music and hold them accountable. Even if you have to start demonstrating, send letters, get into it, take it to the streets.

Yeh.. we’ve actually just made a tune about Tim Westwood and released it, saying “come on.. just give us all a chance, put us up there, we can do it”, know what I mean?

Well with Tim Westwood, he don’t even play Old School stuff no more.

I think he’s just trying to keep up with the trends too much, like you were saying before.

Well he is…. he’s becoming a butt kisser….. to America.. I don’t care if you write this… whatever. He’s trying to stay with the trends of anything that’s happening. And we know Tim from way, way back so he can’t front on the Zulu Nation, cos he was all on Zulu Nation’s shit back in the days and trying to be down with everything… and there was a time where he left hip hop and started just going to the ragga dances, so if you’re gonna be true, be true to it all and play it all. Stop trying to be on New York and anything that’s happening in California and not care about what’s happening here.. he should remember…. that what goes up must come down!

It’s kinda sad cos there’s a lot of kids at the moment who haven’t heard a lot of hip hop through its age, so they’ve only got Biggie Smalls and Wu Tang, so when there’s a guy on the radio and he’s like talking in this fake American accent and not really being himself, it’s confusing ‘em. They think it’s cool !!?

Well you need to be real y’know, you can’t be on the radio talking about “keeping it real” when you know that’s not his accent and that’s not where he comes from cos we got…… we got the book on him. So he best be cool and I dare him to say something back.

Ha…fair enough. Moving on, which crew in the history of rap do you see as making the most important contribution to the art form.

Oh there’s too many.

Yeah I know but could you single out anyone?

I’d just say the one that gave a whole lot of funky noise that was out of this world has to be Public Enemy!

Do you still get a buzz off your DJ’ing?

Oh most definitely, I love DJ’ing, I love to make the crowd get wild, get crazy, calm them down, get mellow, get smooth, get crazy, get the funk, get the hip hop, get the rock, Y’know that’s why I love playing different music. Even when I do the Techno/Rave clubs or big function’s I just draw on everything and throw it at them, hip hop, funk, go go, heavy metal and they just go crazy. ‘Cos people think, or they get programmed thinking that everybody at a rave, all they want is techno-techno-techno-techno, or at a house club they want house-house-house, or at a hip hop jam - hip hop-hiphop… but there’s a lot of different music these people be listening to as well. Some people think you shouldn’t play this at these functions cos everyone wants to be categorised into one type of music, and that would be just playing by design too.

I noticed that when you actually came off after playing you were like checking the crowd out for quite awhile, you seemed to be quite focused on the party. I think that’s something a lot of DJ’s have lost now, they get on and do their little pre planned set and then they’re outta there without really giving anything to the crowd and feeding back off it.

Well they’re more in love with themselves instead of being in love with the music and culture and giving it to the people. They told me they wanted simply straight up old hip hop and funk, so I said I’m gonna play what I’m gonna play and thats why I dropped like those Techno Hop records version of Apache and then the original Apache, just try it on the audience and they reacted to it, and the electro funk sound with the techno groove on it that sounded like planet rock and they reacted lovely to it.

Have you heard the Return of the DJ album, on the US BOMB label,

do you think all that’s helping the skills come back again?

Well I don’t see people playing or pushing it on a lot of the radio stations or clubs but I’m loving it and I’m playing it.

Yeh, I think it’s maybe showing up the lack of skills of a lot of the radio DJ’s, so they think “nah I can’t play that cos the scratching on that is badder than me”.. I don’t know…

You’ve got people who are jealous, too much envy and stuff.

So who is the baddest on American radio?

Well in New York they play a lot of Funkmaster Flex, still got Red Alert, still got all the Hot 97 and now you’ve got a lot of the tape DJ’s like Doo Wop, Ron G, there’s loads of them, they’re killing it too.Then you’ve got to look down to Miami see whose killing that too, Santana. There’s people everywhere kicking’ their own sorts of music.

I read somewhere that you thought that UK dj’s were more experimental than their US counterparts.

Well definitely cos the UK is all about music, the people over here support music. I’m not saying that America don’t support music too but they put everything into categories, country and western.. well you go here y’know…..ragga goes here… hip hop goes there. DJ’s over here you have them jumping into different kinds of grooves & stuff. You have some dj’s who want to keep strictly jungle or strictly house but you have all these others experimenting and trying different things, like I was saying with Wall of Sound… that’s just doing me.

So how does the man Afrika Bambaataa chill out, what do you do when you just want to relax ?

I do a whole lot of things, I’ll go and chill with my peeps or some sisters houses or go to movies and I’m especially into books like crazy. One thing that people have got away from is to read and think, sometimes you’ve got to cut that tv off or stop worrying about what drug you’re gonna get next and pick up some books cos we’re living in the real world, real things and strange things that are happening.

I mean we’re getting to the next millennium and they’re still giving us these half truth’s, lies.. y’know Christopher Columbus discovered America, and not telling you about the aliens that are already on the planet, there not so much unidentified as unexplainable.. which ones are here?…. The grey’s…. the astral command… the reptilians, what about the subterranean cities, there’s supposed to be 25 million people within the earth. What about this new planet that they’ve found, they’ve been lying to us saying there’s 9 planets all this time, when there is actually 12 planets out there, possibly a 13^th one. So people have got to wake up to what’s going on with Big Brother, there’s camera’s now all over everywhere in England, if you take a shit you’ve got a camera up your ass!!

Brighton springs to mind.. it’s getting really bad over here, they’re treating people like they’re products or something, if you ain’t paying tax you’re a second rate citizen and the people actually take all this shit!

It’s the New World Order, people better recognise or they’re gonna become slaves or something and that’s where it’s at. If you’re not on the scene, you’ll be woken up and you’ll become a bar code, they’ll have your number ready for you.

What future plans do you have?

I should be working on an album in Italy for a dance label, and trying to get a new deal to push some more hip hop out and probably make a new record for Profile by Timezone. We have a Soulsonic Force album out on a pop production label called Lost Generation with that electro funk style with John Robie. We’ve just done a CD Rom with Arthur Baker, Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Melle Mel that’s out in Germany too.

(OUTRO)

Moving on to March and myself, Mark One and Loz have just battled each other on the decks down at a wanky little Café Bar and are now watching the big man on the wheels once again, this time at Jockey Slut magazine’s birthday party. In this “chill out” section of the club he drops a more personal set including Sly, Ice Cube and even The Prodigy. A big geezer is standing next to me as I funk my arse off and I smile as he says “fuckin’ hell, just  think.. I’m standing a few feet from The Godfather of hip hop!” 

It only shames me that there are so few hip hop people at these jams.

I’ve heard a lot of bullshit from heads who’ve seen Bam play out, complaining that all he drops is Techno, so it would seem that few rap fans at least have an open mind these days, putting all music into sections, subdivisions and boxes.

It occured to me that night that people have lost the original point of the artform - “hip hop is all music and all music is hip hop”… a very cool slogan to live by, as is Afrika Bambaataa’s own refrain “peace, unity, love and having fun”.

It’s time to get back to basics.

For more info on the Zulu Nation please write to :

UNIVERSAL ZULU NATION

PO BOX 510

BRONX

NEW YORK 10475

USA.

BAMBAATAA’S HITLISTS :

BOOKS THAT ARE A MUST TO READ :

1.     “The holy tablets” by Dr Malachi Z York.

2.     “Behold a pale horse” by William Cooper.

3.     “Man made UFO’s 1944 to 1994 (50 years of suppression)” by Renato Vesco & David Hatcher Childress.

4.     “Leviathan 666” book 1 and book 2 by Dr Malachi Z York.

5.     “The Urantia book” by The Urantia Foundation.

THE FOLLOWING INFO IS NOT OUT OF DATE AND SOME OF THE PHOTOS GONE BUT FUCK IT

RECORDS THAT YOU SHOULD GET :

1.     “One, two and uh-oh” by Rare Essence

2.     Anything on the Wall Of Sound label

3.     George Clinton’s “Hit’s Remix” L.P.

4.     “When boy meets girl” Total 12”

5.     “warlocks & witches, computer chips, microchips & you” Timezone L.P.

Hacienda Shots 11.12.96 by The Ruf

The Ruf in Giggle mode, with Loz and Bambaataa

Mark one (with scary expression) The Ruf, Pressy (from tribal lordz), Glenn, Bam and Loz.

Mark One gets a signiture for his wall of fame.

Hotel Britannia Shots 12.12.96 by The Ruf & Mrs Ruf

Mrs Ruf, Raul (Zulu nation), Bam and a very happy Loz in Piccadilly Gardens.

The Ruf, Mark One, Loz, Bam & Raul

Bam and Raul

Mrs Ruf with Bam shopping for live CD’s in Affleck’s Palace!

Bam signs away for the sons of some daft women who’d just come out of a business seminar asking him if he was famous?!

The Ruf & Loz say peace as Raul, Mark One and Bam look on.

Bam is definitely a big guy!

Bam & raul

Sankey’s Soap Shots 15/3/97 by Simon King

6 very similar shots, however I do like the one of him with the oval window to the dancefloor in front of him - it looks like he’s in a UFO or some shit !!!