So there I am with my solid crew, two teenage sons and me in Kangol berets,
dripping in bling, on loan from our hosts Grandmaster Caz and Reggie Reg,
the grandaddies of hip-hop, manoeuvring our way through Harlem and the Bronx
in a tour bus rapping to “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder
how I keep from going under”.
What a great way to start a family holiday in New York. Caz (short for
Casanova) is an A* teacher; no slacking permitted as he fires out questions,
checks whether his pupils have been listening, points out places of interest
— where such and such a gangsta rapper was shot dead (“We always pause here
to pay a little love . . . a little respect”) — and lists the four
cornerstones of hip-hop culture: the DJ, the MC, breakdancing and graffiti.
And then there’s the clothes.
“What’s the difference between fashion and style?” Headmaster Caz asks. To my
astonishment, son No 2 puts up his hand: “Style isn’t what you wear, it’s
how you wear it.” “Excellent answer,” Caz replies.
Our first stop is the playground of an empty school in Harlem, walls ablaze
with cartoon figures and slogans, which has been dubbed the Graffiti Wall of
Fame. Caz, who does most of the talking, finds it amazing that what was once
considered an “outlaw” activity has been transformed into Art — depending on
who’s doing it and where it’s displayed.
We learn how hip-hop started on August 11, 1973, when Kool Herc (whose father
was a DJ in Jamaica and taught his son that James Brown was god) decided
that his Party Must Go On.
After several nights of booming music that could be heard three blocks away,
“it started getting out of hand”, Caz says, and the party moved from a tiny
living room to nearby Cedar Park, which is where things became creative.
He leads us to what looks like a lamppost and says: “We needed electricity so
you open this up and inside is a ‘thingummyjig’. You go to a hardware store
and get a ‘thingummybob’ and you plug the thingummybob into the thingummyjig
and you’re away. So the authoriteee of New York Citeee unwittingleee
kickstarted hip-hop.”
Soon hip-hop parties were taking place all over the boroughs, from its
birthplace in the Bronx to Brooklyn and Harlem — the boom box became known
as “the Harlem briefcase” — while the Manhattanites remained in thrall to
square old disco.
The first hip-hop single to enter the Top 40 was the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s
Delight in 1979, and the original words were written by none other than
our tour leader who performs the number for us on the bus, urging us to sing
along to his “signature” line: “I’m the C-A-S-A, the N-O-V-A, the rest is
F-L-Y”. Grandmaster Caz fought successfully to get a writer’s credit but has
never received a cent in royalties; all the more reason to book a ride on
his illuminating, and massively fun, tour.
After we are deposited, now sadly bling and beret-less, the boys (boyz?) and I
walk down the streets of Harlem, all the way to our serviced appartment near
Times Square. This is something of a nostalgia-fest since the last time I
spent any time in Harlem was back in 1981 when the boys’ father, Bruce, and
I were in New York as part of an extended honeymoon.
He ended up working on 125th street, the main vein of Harlem, selling fruit
and vegetables from a stall with Gillie who — a quarter of a century later —
is the photographer for this trip.
Harlem, then, was considered something of a no-go area for many native New
Yorkers. Bruce would always take the subway to work from our studio sublet
in Greenwich Village, since most yellow cab drivers simply refused the fare.
Our Harlem circle of friends and acquaintances tended to be in a less
respectable line of work than our downtown gang, and their recreational
habits were more self-destructive. Manchu, the fruit-and-vege boss, was an
engaging figure who lived on a diet of Thunderbird wine and various
heavy-duty drugs which, sadly, did for him in the end.
The Apollo Theatre, Cotton Club and Lenox Lounge, whose heyday was in the
1930s, are still in operation and thrive under the new tourism, as does
Sylvia’s famous soul food restaurant.
The Body Shop, The Gap and other international brands have long since moved
in, along with Bill Clinton’s headquarters, and the magnificent brownstone
terraced houses that were once derelict and used as shooting galleries for
junkies (Manchu once offered me a look around, but I declined) are restored
and selling for millions.
On Sunday we returned to Harlem on a gospel tour. On our way to church we
stopped to admire a number of striking historical buildings which, rather
shamefully, I wasn’t even aware of as a twentysomething. Sylvan Terrace is a
double row of wooden two-storey houses, very quaint with their ivy-green
shutters, built in 1882 across a cobblestoned street.
This was the carriage drive for a substantial Georgian mansion, Mount Morris,
built in 1765 for Colonel Roger Morris, a Royalist, and his Dutch wife.
George Washington used it as his headquarters during the Battle of Harlem
Heights in 1776. In 1810 the wealthy French-Caribbean wine merchant Stephen
Jumel and his wife, Eliza Bowen, restored it.
Jumel died in mysterious circumstances, according to our guide, and his widow
— who had become the richest person in New York — went on to marry Aaron
Burr, Vice-President to Thomas Jefferson, in the front parlour.
The church service, itself, was a bit of a letdown and too long for our
unGodbothering tastes. I loved the way the congregation dressed up and the
warm, sprawling family atmosphere. But the gospel singing was distinctly
tame (its members, we were told, are recovering addicts) and not a patch on
the choir I saw at a gospel brunch in Jimmy’s, a celebrity hangout in Harlem
in the late Nineties. The singers were ultra-lively and rejoiced in such
bonkers lyrics as “My Lord is a washing machine”.
The rest of our week was packed with all the enjoyable New York clichés: the
free entertainment of opera-singing, rollerblading show-offs in Central
Park; carb-filled breakfasts in the Empire Diner; oysters in Grand Central
station; the Rockettes in Radio City Hall; jazz in the West Village; Polish
food in the East Village; ice- skating at the Rockefeller Centre.
After a break in Philadelphia we returned for a last night at the Mandarin
hotel in a suite of Madame Jumel-like luxury. The boys were thrilled with
their eyrie views of Central Park. The staff, with the minimum of fuss,
converted the sofas into beds while we were dining downstairs and both sons
pronounced the hamburgers “excellent” and the female diners “fit”.
Earlier, I had a half-a-day in the company of a personal shopper, Deanna, who
picked me up in a white stretch limo. We were, alas, a mismatch; she being a
willowy Sex and the City girl, while I am more Rosemary and Thyme
(not Felicity Kendal, the other one).
Deanna was frank: my look “definitely needed updating”. Thus I found myself,
in slight panic mode, buying absurdly feminine shoes, a white coat and Prada
boots, most of which have remained in the wardrobe. I should have listened
more carefully to the hip-hop headmaster or, indeed, my son: “It’s not what
you wear, it’s the way that you wear it.”
Bang that, shoppers, to the boogie, boogie beat.
Getting there
The Mandarin Oriental (001 212 805 8800, www.mandarinoriental.com/newyork),
80 Columbus Circle at 60th Street, has double rooms from £515 a night
including breakfast.
Hush Hip Hop Tours (001 212 209 3370, www.hushhiphoptours.com)
of Harlem are $50pp.
Fashion Junkie (www.fashionjunkie.com)
offers four-hour guided walking tours from $100pp, and private shopping from
$275pp including transport.
Further information NYC & Company (020-7367 0934, www.nycgo.com).
Virgin Atlantic (0844 8747747, www.virgin-atlantic.com)
flies from Heathrow to New York from £315 return.
