The incredibly complicated legacy of Afrika Bambaataa

I was truly unprepared for the news. Back in the 1980’s, I played Afrika Bambaataa and the SoulSonic Force’s records on my college radio station, WHCL, in heavy rotation. The songs were extremely popular in that insular upstate New York region; the songs burst through that burgeoning hip-hop culture from the Bronx with power and strength.

Afrika Bambaataa was the charismatic frontman for the SoulSonic Force, and mixed previously untapped resources in the hip-hop genre – German electronica music, futuristic science fiction themes – to totally rewrite the rules of rap music.

I even met Afrika Bambaataa in 1984; at the time, I represented WHCL at a college radio / new music convention in New York City, and he and James Brown (!!) were part of a Tommy Boy Records panel, as they were promoting a collaboration single, “Unity Part One.”

Where do you go after working with the Godfather of Soul, James Brown? You record a track with the lightning rod of punk, John Lydon. Which Afrika Bambaataa did.

Afrika Bambaataa passed away yesterday. He was 68 years old.

I mourn the man who created the evolution of hip hop.

However … the man was much more than a genre creator.

He was also a predator and sexual abuser. And I cannot forgive him for that.

In 2016, a Vice News report detailed shocking and horrifying allegations about how Afrika Bambaataa used his positions of authority to sexually molest young men who wanted a way out of the inner-city poverty chain. The article is here at this link, and I must warn you, the descriptions are extremely graphic.

Bambaataa’s organization, the Universal Zulu Nation, cut ties with him in 2016 over these allegations, many of which go back to the 1970’s.

This is an interview with Hassan Campbell, who spoke extensively in the Vice News article. The descriptions sand memories in this video clip are definitely NSFW.

And I’m thinking to myself … the dichotomy of public image versus private image. The same projections that such previously beloved entertainers like Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris projected, while their crimes against the innocent were revealed later in their life. The fresco of achievement stained by the private poisons.

Which is why, as I said before, I mourn the passing of Afrika Bambaataa as a cultural creator.

But I do not mourn the passing of a man who preyed on young, impressionable men.

That I cannot do.