Grandmaster Flash

On 16 October 2026 Grandmaster Flash will be at SPOT/De Oosterpoort in Groningen. Joseph Saddler, born in Bridgetown and raised in the Bronx, early on combined family records with his knowledge of electronics and thus found his own way of DJing. In the block parties of the late 1970s he refined switching between breakbeats, seamless mixing and the rhythmic manipulation of vinyl, at the crossroads of funk, electro and early rap.

With Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five he helped shape the onstage vocabulary of DJ and MC, first in the clubs and then on record with Superrappin’ (1979). The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (1981) put collage and mixing at the center; The Message (1982) pushed rap toward a more direct social narrative. After the split he continued under his own name, with albums such as They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, The Source, Ba-Dop-Boom-Bang, On the Strength and later The Bridge (Concept of a Culture).

Live he returns to the core: first-hand stories, cuts and scratches, a journey through the early architecture of hip-hop where classics and his own material meet. In Groningen he will demonstrate how DJing, mixing and MCing together built a culture, then and now.