The Soundtrack To Our Age of Decay
Both hip-hop and punk bloomed out of the social collapse created by the economic crisis of the 1970s. But where is the music of our twenty-first-century disaster?
Grandmaster Flash, a pioneer of hip-hop, performed in punk clubs. (Wikimedia Commons)
“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”
Howard Cosell never actually uttered those words. His conversation with fellow sportscaster Keith Jackson during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series was later spun and re-spun into the iconic phrase by other journalists and writers.
Whether intentional or not, these words captured something chilling about the normalization of disaster. As cameras switched back and forth between the game and a blazing apartment building just a few blocks away, devastation could be transformed into interlude, even made a bit blasé.
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