On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electricity transmission line in New York City, causing the line’s automatic circuit breaker to kick in. The electricity from the affected line was diverted to another line. This was fairly normal and everything was fine—until a second bolt of lightening struck.
Electric lines started shutting themselves off. As more and more lines were shut off, the system started to shut itself down. Eventually, the largest power generator in the area, known as Big Allis, turned itself off.
And then all of New York City went dark.
On that evening, DJ Grandmaster Caz, a Bronx native, was spinning records in a park. Caz recalls the evening: “The record just started slowing down, you know what I mean? So, quite naturally, we thought, it was us. We thought we had drained too much power and we shorted out the electricity. So we’re frantic, we’re looking around, we’re checking buttons, were checking switches, we’re seeing what’s up.”
“It was chaos that night,” says Grandmaster Caz. “And it was exciting afterwards. But while it was going on, it was scary.”
But Caz also believes that the the 1977 blackout may have accelerated the burgeoning Hip Hop movement. His theory: the looting that occurred during the blackout enabled people who couldn’t afford turntables and mixers to become DJs.
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136- Lights Out
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