What Afrika Bambaataa did | Opinion

It was the English poet John Donne who said, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” My remix is humankind, but I digress. Fact is I’m a Black man in America sick and tired of being sick and tired of writing about dead Black males in America. 

But, alas, here I am, dazed and confused by the sad and tragic fall of Afrika Bambaataa, a preeminent pioneer of hip-hop. It’s arguably the most successful and sustained cultural movement this country, and this planet, has ever produced. Its mass popularity outlasted jazz and rock’n’roll. Indeed, hip-hop is now almost 53 years old, and for at least half of that has been a defining source of what’s dope and cool in music, sports, fashion, technology, dance, social media, and brands of every persuasion. 

Along with fellow founders like Cindy Campbell and her brother Kool Herc, and Grandmaster Flash and MC Sha-Rock, Bam, as some nicknamed him, was there at the beginning up in The Bronx, birthplace of hip-hop culture. He was of the era of poor people, of working-class folks, that Dr. King warned us not to abandon in his last days. Yes, those very poor people—African Americans, West Indians, Puerto Ricans—midwifed hip-hop with four core elements: deejaying, dancing, emceeing/rapping, and graffiti writing.  

Bam had started at the bottom, a child of Caribbean immigrants conceived and incubated in New York City. He endured life in a street gang and Bronx River Projects. It can be argued that this thing called hip-hop saved his life, as it did legions of us, me included. Bambaataa would not only become a legendary deejay, but also experiment with and create foundational music, while sampling, as it came to be called, everything from European electronic grooves to sounds from his television. With his energy and leadership of the Universal Zulu Nation, Afrika Bambaataa helped to cast an organizational social consciousness around the explosion of this urban youth phenomenon that now includes about four generations of hip-hop heads: late-stage baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, and Gen Z. Collectively, we are truly nations equaling billions throughout the globe touched by hip-hop in some way. 

But as my wife always says, two things can be true at the same time. There is no hip-hop as we know it without ambassadors like Afrika Bambaataa, born Lance Taylor. He is now dead, from prostate cancer, a mere week before what would have been his 69^th birthday. But what should be massive tributes instead are brutally blunt and necessary reflections about the final 10 years of his journey. 

Because Afrika Bambaataa has ducked and dodged a barrage of allegations of sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and more, from grown men who say they were his victims as boys in the 1980s and 1990s. I recall the shockwaves when the allegations first surfaced in 2016. Not him, not Bam who has been referenced in a litany of rap records through decades, whose monicker signifies the genesis of hip-hop. He denied and denied, declared,“I never abused nobody.” Yet just last year he lost a lawsuit from a John Doe alleged victim, because Bambaataa did not even bother to show up in court. 

All of this makes me think of the countless private conversations I’ve had with those inside and outside the Zulu Nation, inside hip-hop entities, and the explosive confessional interviews that still sit there on YouTube. Some are men who say they are survivors. Some are men who say yeah, sure, we knew, others knew, it was hip-hop’s best kept secret, but no one ever said anything. Much like how lots of people knew about Jeffrey Epstein and said nothing, and still say nothing. 

Or, as we say: broken people break things, damaged people damage many things.

I have no clue about Afrika Bambaataa’s childhood or teen years, what horrific traumas he himself may have experienced and carried into his adulthood. But I have engaged with many survivors of sexual violence, across all gender identities, and have two male survivors in my new documentary film about manhood, When We Free The World. What I have gathered during these years of doing this work around manhood, around violence, is that those who participate in destructive behavior were often the victims of destructive behavior themselves. And that is absolutely so for those of us who identify as male, given how many of our definitions of manhood are laced with violence, force and domination. 

Because there really are few spaces for us to talk openly, honestly, about who we are or what hurts us that we lug around like a family tradition. I do not know if Afrika Bambaataa was gay, and it is frankly neither my nor our business. Straight, gay, gender fluid, non-gender-conforming, it does not matter if someone is a serial sexual predator; and we should not and cannot be homophobic or transphobic and hateful while simultaneously condemning sexual violence.  

But the other vicious reality is that a long line of people in the circle and community of Afrika Bambaataa knew something, and no one ever said anything, tried to stop it, help him, help the alleged victims. The vicious reality is there is a long line of people, mostly males, in sports, in entertainment, lurking in our neighborhoods, who have been accused of very ugly things: rape, domestic violence, sex with underaged people, marrying underaged people, grooming, kidnapping, even murder, and heads are casually turned toward indifference. Too often, the victims get blamed again and again.  

That is the sadness and tragedy for me around Afrika Bambaataa’s story. When will this ever end? When can a man or boy, any man or boy, simply be able to say I hurt, I am damaged, and seek help rather than hurt or damage others? When can we, no matter our station in life, cease to destroy our lives, and dwell in denial about it until, well, we die? 

Kevin Powell is a Grammy-nominated poet, humanitarian, filmmaker, public speaker, frequent contributor to Newsweek, and author of 17 books, including his newest poetry collection, A Poem for Evangeline, And Other Songs (Get Fresh Books Publishing). Kevin lives in New York City. You can find him on social media platforms by typing “poet Kevin Powell.” 

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.