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DJ will light up the room

Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler)
Grandmaster Flash (Joseph Saddler)

As fresh today as it was in 1983, White Lines (Don’t Do It) made Grandmaster Flash an instant hip hop icon.

Yet it was playing New York parties in the 1970s and inventing new DJ techniques which has formed his legacy.

With his act the Furious Five, he pioneered the art of mixing, cutting and DJing and is credited with the invention of the first crossfader, allowing him to switch from one turntable to another while at the decks in nightclubs.

He sourced the parts for his invention from a junkyard in the Bronx and it eventually catapulted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, the first hip hop artist to be honoured there.

The first artist to put scratching on a record, Grandmaster Flash – real name Joseph Saddler – was also the inventor of punch phrasing and backspin techniques used by DJs around the world.

From an age when DJs touched the edges of a record and put the tone arm down to play the music, he was the first DJ to physically lay his hands on the vinyl and manipulate it in a backward and forward manner to make his own beat and his own music.

The era-defining icon will find himself at Rochester’s Casino Rooms on Friday, November 9. Tickets £12. Visitwww.teaconcerts.co.uk

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