1 20 2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:01:55 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SEN 1 Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20230118.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SEN-1 (IBM), Part 2 OH-BAADP.20230118 2:01:55 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory SEN-1 (IBM) Crespo, Pastor Jr. MP4 sen-1-part2-oral-history-bgadp-2023-01-18.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/d5lPgnlVIIY YouTube video English 0 Introduction Pastor Crespo (PC): Today is Wednesday January 18, 2023 and we are at the Bronx County Historical Society Research Center at 3313 Bainbridge Avenue, The Bronx. I am Pastor Crespo, Jr. the research librarian and archivist, and I am joined for Part 2 of an Oral History for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project with SEN-1 IBM also known as George Morillo a legend within the graffiti community and an original member of the Incredible Bombing Masters IBM. His art has transitioned from NYC subway tunnels and yards to sharing fine art gallery space alongside renowned international artists such as Pablo Picasso. Interviewer Pastor Crespo, Jr. introduces himself and the narrator, SEN-1. Artists--Anecdotes;Artists--United States;Artists--United States--Biography;Contemporary artists;Graffiti 0 91 Afro-Caribbean heritage SEN: The Afro-Caribbean thing is because if you know your culture and you know your history of the Caribbean, you know that the slave trade of America was the slave triangle, which the slaves that were brought in from Africa were transferred into the Caribbean prior to coming to the Americas, so you had the slave triangle and then back to Africa so the ship routes. So the Caribbean is highly influences by our original Arawak people, which people like to say Taino and different tribes, Ciboney and all these other tribes, but when it comes down to the bloodline, our bloodline runs through South America, Central America and so on, and Africa of course, and being that melanated people originate from where? Africa. So also in my blood trait I have the sickle cell anemia trait. Sen discusses his family and ethnic background, how the history of the Caribbean from its indigenous peoples and importance to the Atlantic slave trade has had an enormous impact on his personal consciousness. Arawak Arts, Dominican;Dominican Americans;Dominican Republic;Dominican Republic--Biography;Dominican Republic--History--1961-;Dominican Republic. Policía Nacional (1936- );Haiti;Haiti--Boundaries--Dominican Republic 0 251 Upper West Side/Harlem PC: So what neighborhood did you grow up in? SEN: I grew up in what's like the borderline of what the beginning of what Harlem is. Even though a lot of people consider 110th Street to be Harlem, but my area like 96th Street and Broadway was the Mecca for Afro-Latin Jazz growing up. So pretty much I was born on 95th/94th Street and Amsterdam, I was living in a tenement there, and I would move up to 93rd Street and Columbus. But that area was always under what they would call "Urban Development." So we went through the burnt-down stuff like the Bronx did obviously that was a way of clearing out areas and taking also---people also don't understand that when New York was burning down in the 70s it was part of a bigger plan of taking away property from people of color. Sen describes his neighborhood and its changing landscape over his lifetime. He speaks about how the Upper West Side above 90th Street was more connected to Harlem and the Bronx ("Uptown") than is commonly understood. He speaks about how urban renewal changed his life significantly while living in the neighborhood, as well as why he believes it took place. Its location makes it a unique neighborhood, being equally close to the Bronx as to Midtown. New York (N.Y.). Office of Development. Urban Renewal Unit;Urban renewal--United States Cosmopolitanism;Gentrification;Harlem (New York, N.Y.);Upper West Side (New York, N.Y.) 0 462 La West Side Familia PC: Can you talk about your association with La West Side Familia, how did that begin and your various roles and involvement with them? SEN: Absolutely, that's a major part of my life from youth to now, to this day. So La West Side Familia just to give a quick breakdown is an outlaw gang. It was an era in New York when every community had an outlaw gang. So up here you had everything from the Savage Skulls to the Ching-a-Lings and on and on. The entire city was carved out in sections. The reason this happened is originally, as people of color migrated in a lot of these communities they were not received properly. It was really hostile. Whether it was an Italian community, a Jewish community, whatever it was. They didn't want us there. Sen discusses his relationship with La West Side Familia, an outlaw gang he is a member of. Founded as an offshoot of the Brooklyn La Familia organization, it was part of an era of New York City where there were outlaw gangs in nearly every community. He credits part of its endurance to the fact it was a "mafia-type" organization where members were vetted over a very long period of time before being "made" as members. Its activities, however, extended far beyond the criminal, and included a radical political milieu including the legacy of the Young Lords. Young Lords Party Crime;Crime and race;Gang members;La West Side Familia (Street gang);Outlaw Gang 0 1726 Cyril Innis, Black Panther Party, Politicization PC: Now, an individual you know well. How did you meet Cyril Innis, and what was your involvement with the Black Panthers over the years? SEN: Oh, man Cyril Innis that's Bullwhip man. I got goosebumps. I have many teachers. I've been blessed in my life and cursed in a lot of ways because I've been put into situations, even with La Familia and different things and even with the Graffiti thing, and going further back. I've come across many souls that are amazing, and that's probably why I'm still here. Even when I was a kid and not having a father figure like I said and being on the streets young. I've met people that have been killers. You could consider them from the 70s hit men. You could probably consider them serial killers that are no longer with us. But they were the ones that would see me as a kid in the street and educated me. That taught me things that told me things. That knowledge is something that I carry with me forever and it's probably the reason why I'm alive through everything. Not probably, it's definitely the reason why I'm alive. Also knowledgeable about the stuff that's around me. So getting into that Cyril Innis is an original Black Panther member and Black Liberation Army member from the New York chapters. So he was in the front lines with Afeni Shakur and that whole generation... Sen speaks about his introduction to Cyril Innis, an original Black Panther, as well as their joint role in founding the Black Panther Collective, which SEN was a member of for nearly a decade. SEN also speaks broadly about the relevance of the 1960s and 1970s revolutionary movements to his own politics and the culture at large. Innis, Cyril;Shakur, Afeni;Shakur, Mutulu;Young Lords Party Black Panther Party;Zulu Nation 0 2412 Return to Art SEN: The universe is funny this way. I had hit a low in my life in which everything was falling apart. My mother had passed away, I was losing the job I was at, my marriage was falling apart. Basically everything was coming back to me, the dirt, the karma you could say, was coming back at once. I was at a really low spot. And what happens is my brother gets married for the third time and his wife is a top designer for Diane von Furstenburg whatever her name is and who built that whole campaign for her. And because her name was so hot as a designer, her name is Heather Harlan, she ended up getting this deal with Rachel Roy who was a big designer of color. I hate using black and all this stuff. Back then considered to be the biggest black designer, woman designer, at the time. I like to say melanated. But she was Damon Dash's ex-wife. She was also the one who was also like Michele Obama, Oprah, all them was wearing her dresses, outfits, they were really expensive high end. She got a deal it was bloomingdal---or Macy's deal she ended up getting a deal to make a low, what they would consider a lower end type of fashion which was more for the population that could be in their reach. And she got a complete deal from shoes all the way to bags, everything. It was a complete deal with everything in it. So Heather got hired and the brand was called Rachel Rachel Roy line. She got hired as the top designer because as you guys know these people's names are brands and not necessarily the designers they have people that actually design the stuff for them and they just get credit for. So Heather has this idea, this is back in about 2009, has this idea about graff. Graffiti wasn't hot the way it is right now. Especially not in fashion at all Sen talks about his reentry into the art world through a commission by his brother's wife to paint graffiti for a fashion line sold at Macy's which began anew his art career. Fashion and art;Macy's (Firm);Macy's, Inc. Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Harlan, Heather;Roy, Rachel 0 3104 Developing an Artistic Voice SEN: They were like, the subways of that era to give people an idea. Because I don't think people understand what we was dealing with. Like people nowadays look to a street, let's say graffiti piece, whether it's on a freight train or whatever. Even the ones that come from out of town and they do the New York City trains, these are all clean trains. These are all like, clean canvases. We didn't have that. I'm from the last generation with trains. We had a couple decades of trains being bombed out by the time we got it. Not only were they bombed out they were old they were falling apart, they were rusty. And they were being acid washed by Koch. Every week they were being acid washed so the trains were actually being eaten away by acid and then you had pieces under pieces underneath for decades and tags and all kinds of stuff. You had to actually, like, if it could be visible you couldn't go over it really. That would cause a conflict that was the rules of the street. And there was also a priority. Tags were at the bottom, throw-ups were basically, people didn't really do throw-ups. That was to us, especially out of IBM we skipped that part. That was considered a waste of paint and a waste of space, doing those bubble letters on trains. We went straight to burners and that's why IBM was so famous: characters and burners. Sen describes his development as an artist, and how developing his art into a number of series, including graffiti abstracts and his flag series allowed him to become a career artist. He also describes at length how his experience as a graffiti writer, especially the unspoken rules and conditions of painting trains affected his artistic style. Abstraction Art and style;Graffiti;Sen-1 (Graffiti artist) 0 4454 Galerie d'Orsay Boston SEN: I was out there on a trip, I was with the girl I was dating at the time. She was on a business trip. We was out to dinner with a coworker... I saw them strategizing. These two women strategizing some meetings the next day that had to do with million dollar deals. I'm sitting here at the table and I'm like damn, I'm feeling the pressure! And the hustling comes out of me like damn I'm sitting at this table with these women and they're talking about how they got three meetings lined up tomorrow... I'm sitting here like I gotta up my game! I gotta up my game! The story of how SEN cold-visited Galerie D'Orsay in Boston while visiting the city and was able to develop a relationship with them to the point that they are now the sole distributors of SEN-1 work. Boston (Mass.) Commercial art;Galerie d'Orsay 0 5060 Becoming President of a Mitchell-Lama SEN: I actually ride the ride of, at this age I go with the universe. If it's something bigger than me that I'm supposed to be doing, then at this stage of my life I just do it I show up for it. And it's also my mother's legacy this is what she did. So in a way I think she's also guiding a lot of this madness. In a good way! But I'm proud of it actually! I'm really proud. I've been told we've done more in this short amount of time there than almost anything in the past. And I credit that to my experience in the Panthers stuff. The organizational skills and everything came into play. How Sen-1 became the president of his Mitchell-Lama program rental building. He saw a number of misdeeds being committed by the management and by advocating for his fellow tenants found himself being nominated and ultimately elected. He has been proud of the quick change they have already been able to complete. Mitchell-Lama;New York (N.Y.). Community Planning Board No. 7 0 5317 Community/Charity Involvement PC: Could you just touch on your community work with charitable organizations? SEN: Absolutely that's been part of my beginnings, because that's been something, like My neighbor had Goddard Riverside which is a community center but I had a summer camp when we was kids. It also has legal housing, legal departments that deal with the community, so they have a lot of community outreach program stuff so I work with them and the beacon program. We created a program called arts on kick where we do the chucks [taylor]. Because of that curriculum I was able to open the center up for individual grants which now they use for individual artists. So they've backed me up a lot too even with the issues, and they're powerful! Sen outlines some of his recent work with charitable organizations in his community and beyond, volunteering his skills and time with the Goddard Riverside center to Tanzania. This has especially taken the form of art education to variously disadvantaged youths. SEN has been especially invigorated by his work in Africa, where he felt a "welcome home." Children's Village (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.);Children's Village (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.). Work Appreciation for Youth Program;Goddard-Riverside Community Center;Sierra Leone Art in education;Art therapy for youth;Arts and youth;Charitable giving;Charities;Charity;Poverty--Tanzania 0 5753 Thoughts on Hip-Hop and Street Art Going Global and Commercial SEN: I think when we talk about the graff I always see it as one big union with hip-hop. 'Cuz they all elements, well, what people know today, because it wasn't originally part of hip-hop. Hip hop obviously comes after these elements already pre-existing including b-boying b-girling. Like all these elements came together, right? But for what the world knows as the graff styles and even the breakdancing styles and dress styles that's all hip hop. Because the graff before hip-hop wasn't the same graff everyone fell in love with. The colors even the mentality. Sen gives his perspective on the significance of the globalization of graffiti, which he sees as a part of hip-hop as a global movement. Controversially among some of his peers, he's positive about the commercialization of hip-hop because of the opportunities and lessons it has given to youths often with so little. Break dancers;Break dancing Graffiti;Hip-hop;Hip-hop in art;Hip-hop--Influence;Street art 0 6442 Relationship With Brother SEN: My Brother, man, Ricky Mujica, we have different fathers, but we didn't know our fathers we was raised by our mother. So you will never ever hear us say half brother, ever. That doesn't even exist. He's seven years older than me. I'm happy he's still in my life always. My brother is my everything, man. He's been my father figure, he's been my big brother figure. He's been the one even when I went off the road a lot in my life, because I'm the black sheep, he's been the light of what I could me. And it was hard as a young kid because I was the one that couldn't learn things. Sen speaks about his brother, Ricky Mujica, whom he is very close with. Ricky's success was a guiding light for Sen even when Sen was struggling. Though, as kids, Sen found the comparison very hard because he could not keep up with his brother in school, athletics, or "coolness." Their mother would force Ricky to take Sen along to wherever Ricky was hanging out, which included the early days of New York Skateboarding with Zoo York. Sen also speaks about how their experiences differed, with Sen's generation being much more violent and pressured, whereas Ricky's generation were more mischievous at worst. Kessler, Andrew;Kessler, Andy;Zoo York Mujica, Ricardo Jose;Sibling attachment;Sibling rivalry 0 7167 The Bronx, Uptown PC: What does the Bronx mean to you? SEN: Ah man, the Bronx is everything because, like I said, for my neighborhood we only have a little bridge that separates us. I spent a lot of time in the Bronx as well. But the Bronx influenced our neighborhood tremendously especially when it came to culture. And because we had so much similarity from the burnt-down stuff. And again, like I said, Harlem, even when you listen to the Black Spades documentary they talk about their chapters with the South Bronx but also in Harlem. So it was never, we never had, when it comes to the other boroughs because Brooklyn and Queens and them were so far away, the Bronx and Manhattan was never, especially uptown, was never really divided like that. We would say "uptown." Uptown made---It was all in one. When you said uptown it meant north of 96th street up. Like, or the 90s up into the Bronx. Sen underscores the connectedness of his neighborhood on the upper west side to the Bronx, and how the creativity coming out of the Bronx influenced his life. Harlem River (N.Y.);Zulu Nation Boroughs;Bronx;Bronx River (N.Y.);Harlem (New York, N.Y.) 0 Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on January 18, 2023 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by "Hip Hop U.S.A. and an umbrella of grassroots organization's including Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!""initiative. In this second part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his family's Afro-Caribbean roots from the island of Quisqueya (the Dominican Republic) and/or Ay-Ti (Haiti) as it was known by the indigenous Taino people. He shares his association and experiences with the outlaw gang "La West Side Familia", his rise to a leadership role within La West Side Familia, and other street organizations such as Natives-Chapter 50 of Zulu Nation and the trials and tribulations of "street-life". SEN-1 discusses his quest for knowledge and his 6-year association with The Black Panther Collective, an off-shoot organization stemming from the original Black Panther Party. He speaks of his reintroduction to graffiti and his crossover to fine art, the challenges of street art acceptance into the fine art world, his commissions from the Macy's Department Store, and the art expo circuit where he sold his first piece of fine art. Finally, SEN-1 discusses his entry into the world of fine art where his artwork, presently, shares gallery space alongside internationally renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SEN 1, Part 2 Description An account of the resource Part 2 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this second part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his family's Afro-Caribbean roots from the island of Quisqueya (the Dominican Republic) and/or Ay-Ti (Haiti) as it was known by the indigenous Taino people. He shares his association and experiences with the outlaw gang "La West Side Familia", his rise to a leadership role within La West Side Familia, and other street organizations such as Natives-Chapter 50 of Zulu Nation and the trials and tribulations of "street-life". SEN-1 discusses his quest for knowledge and his 6-year association with The Black Panther Collective, an off-shoot organization stemming from the original Black Panther Party. He speaks of his reintroduction to graffiti and his crossover to fine art, the challenges of street art acceptance into the fine art world, his commissions from the Macy's Department Store, and the art expo circuit where he sold his first piece of fine art. Finally, SEN-1 discusses his entry into the world of fine art where his artwork, presently, shares gallery space alongside internationally renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso. The interviewer is Pastor Crespo, Jr., librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023.01.18 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20230118 graffiti IBM SEN 1 SEN-1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Description An account of the resource The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a collaboration between Kurt Boone, veteran documentarian of urban culture in New York City, and Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society. The project aims to document the early years of the graffiti arts movement in The Bronx through recording oral histories and collecting tags from surviving Bronx pioneers of the art form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Boone, Kurt BUTCH 2 Crespo, Pastor, Jr. Payne, Steven Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP4 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2:52:59 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Boone, Kurt Payne, Steven Location The location of the interview The Bronx, NY OHMS Object Embedded OHMS XML file https://oralhistory.bronxhistoricalsociety.org/viewer.php?cachefile=OH-BAADP.20220523.xml Interview Format Audio or Video Video OHMS Content Content of OHMS Index/Transcript for searching (Hidden) 5.4 Interview with SEN-1 (IBM), Part 1 OH-BAADP.20220523 2:52:59 OH-BAADP Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Bronx Oral History Center This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. bxoralhistory SEN-1 (IBM) Payne, Steven Boone, Kurt MP4 sen-1-ibm-oral-history-pt1-2022-05-24.mp4 Undefined 1 https://youtu.be/KzUajMcXhwg YouTube video English 0 Introduction Steven Payne (SP): Welcome to the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project. My name is Steven Payne librarian and archivist at the Bronx County Historical Society. Today is May 23, 2022. Kurt do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Kurt Boone (KB): Yeah I'm Kurt I've been writing about urban culture for 40 years. SP: Great thank you Kurt. And we're really happy to be here today with SEN-1, who is a legendary graffiti writer from a part of New York that unfortunately rarely gets the love as far as graffiti goes or other elements of hip hop culture. And SEN-1 is a member of the Incredible Bombing Masters, the IBM crew, among other groups leading up to that and we're just happy to be here with SEN-1. Interviewers Steven Payne and Kurt Boone introduce themselves and the narrator SEN-1, graffiti writer and artist. Harlem (New York, N.Y.) Graffiti;Sen-1 (Graffiti artist) 0 52 Family and Background SP: Why don't you start off by telling us a little about your family's history and background, and how they ended up in New York City whatever you know about that history. SEN: Well I'm raised with a single mother named Mercedes Morillo and we come out of the Island that's Haiti now known as Dominican Republic but at that time when she migrated here it had just went through the changes. If you look up the Morillo family line we actually are the original military under--it was a militia actually that ran, Morillo-Lopez, a militia that ran from Haiti to the other end of the Island, it was two militias. When the CIA the United States whatever put in Trujillo he recruited my grandfather's militia, which is where we get our military family. Sen's family background from the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, from a military family that began to flee the Trujillo-era violence on the Island. He details some of his home life, including some of the violence his mother would commit. Dominican Republic;Haiti;Harlem (New York, N.Y.) 0 433 Elementary Education SEN: I was one of those kids, my brother he was more of a genius... I was the opposite. I was getting thrown out of every school. I went to P.S. 75, I got thrown out of there, I went to P.S. 84 I got thrown out of there ... I was eventually sent to Holy Names which is a Catholic school on 96th St and I was thrown out of there. I basically made it through those schools maybe no more than a year or two before I would be thrown out. I was dyslexic, I had a lot of energy, I was always spaced out and in my own little world. I was really like a fun-going kid. Even with the teachers people were really angry back then, really aggressive. So if you were an innocent kid just want to have fun, you'd be beat up for that. Other kids would bully you or even the teachers. And back then the teachers could beat you and they would beat you. SEN's experiences in Elementary School. He cycled through a lot a different schools, being kicked out of several for behavioral issues. He speaks about the physical abuse he received from other students and from teachers, as well as how his temper became a defense mechanism that he did not learn to control until much later. 0 1109 Early Life, Gangs KB: What were those days like in New York as an elementary school [student]? Eventually you come into art and we'll get into that but you didn't go into little league baseball, you didn't play basketball, did you play handball? What was your outlet? No Boxing? SEN: Nah, when I was a kid, so my spine was like bent in, I had narrow shoulders, I was like totally not athletic like the kids were. But you had to keep up so little by little I developed. My brother was outta here. He was doing flips was doing skateboard like the zoo york stuff, building ramps, he was just out of here. Me, my mother had me like a momma's boy in a way, like kept me close, because again, I had issues, I was always in trouble... An overview of Sen's early life. We learn he was an unathletic child but taken around by his brother who was an early street skateboarder. He also goes into significant detail about the function of the gangs in his social circle. He also laments over the loss of community which he witnessed during his lifetime in his community in the Upper West Side. Zoo York Gang members;Skateboard industry;Skateboarding;Skateboarding parks 0 3580 Beginning Tagging and School SEN: Going into Joan of Arc, it was right next door to me, big building. But it was a school where---I'm in a prime neighborhood with a gang and everything---with thousands of kids and people now living. So I come up from Amsterdam up the block, now we talk about all these tall buildings, every single building is like a fucking neighborhood. It's huge, and we got multiple, and they're all new! They're all just going up in the mid-70s. So it's new, or most of these families are new, or they been in the neighborhood but they moved from tenements to these big buildings because they applied first. And then you got all these people from different areas. So now it's like this mixture already. Continued synopsis of Sen's early life, including the beginning of his tagging career, the incident where his photo was put up on a "wanted" poster as "George Graffiti". When he goes to Joan of Arc junior high school his crew really picks up. He also speaks on the impact of the 1977 blackout. We also hear about his brother's promising art career in oil paint, a founding member of zoo york, and roller skating which SEN remains incredibly proud of. 1977 New York City Blackout Graffiti;Hip-hop;Hip-hop dance;Junior high school facilities 0 5384 Beginning of SEN and Getting with IBM Crew SEN: Nicknames were already taken as tags from generations earlier. You were just inheriting nicknames. Sender comes from, we went through dictionaries and looked up words, you just looked up and went through comic books, you just went through everything looking for a word that would stand out. Because again it's not just that you're looking for a tag name, you're looking for---it's your alias! It has to fit you. It has to be cool, and there's a lot of of elements to it. So I go through a comic book, and you know how the comic books be bolding certain words, and I saw it said SENDER! Something something SENDER and I was like, and remember I'm only 12 years old something like that, 11 12 years old. And I go Sender... the sender! Like I felt like superman! The creation of IBM crew and the expansion of SEN's bombing career. We learn SEN comes from SENDER, coming from a bolded word in a comic book, which was shortened to SEN on the advice of DOZE. We also see the explosion of hip-hop culture with graffiti movies and breakdancing as a major phenomenon. IBM crew;Seen TC5 (Graffiti artist) Break dancing;Graffiti;Hip-hop 0 5539 Hip Hop, B-Boys, Wild Style, and Proliferation of Crews SEN: As I'm developing in there, that's happening. It's a movement now. So I watched it as it developed a lot earlier but the momentum wasn't there yet. Not my first year of junior high school I'm catching that wave with a crew of cats that have been groomed already by the people causing the wave. So I get blessed on that end. So boom I get down with POKE and them, he's down with that entire movement An explosion of hip-hop culture in the early 1980s including the park jams, break dancing crews, and Wild Style movie. We also learn how involved the gangs were in the early hip-hop scene, fiercely defending their territory, with only students, b-boys, and writers likely to get a "pass" into any given neighborhood. Doze (Graffiti artist);IBM (Graffiti crew);Poke (Graffiti artist) Hip-hop;Hip-hop dance;Hip-hop in art;Hip-hop in motion pictures;Hip-hop jewelry 0 6670 Style, Racking, Mops SEN: My first year of junior high school, I just got the SEN name, I'm piecing and you gotta think about it, now we feel like we're grown men now! We like IBM, we're gonna make our name, take this serious we re gonna go bomb. We didn't have a lot of cans, so again to your question: there was stores in West Side Bombay, on 98 St and Broadway, all writers went there they have ink, they had everything. There was a store called Goldens, try to rack up. ... Our era, mops which was markers was part of your status. So we used to make our own markers. So the markers wasn't an issue, the spray paint was the issue. SEN describes the techniques in play during his graffiti career. This includes the creation of mops and the subcultural importance of having a good mop (homemade ink or paint markers). We also learn about where writers would source their materials from, between stealing and salvaging. Shoplifting;Spray nozzles;Spray painting 0 7434 Crime and Culture SEN: Everybody that lived in New York knew that the last car of the train was off the hinges! If you go into the last car of the train you was asking for trouble. The last car of the train was designated for all the thugs, all the criminals, all the smokers, all the stick-up people. And that's where you went. Because you was down with that. If I was a stick-up kid I wanna be in the last car, I don't want to be with the others. But if you go in the last car they know what you about, you know what it's about, it's like prison. So if you go in the last car, you want that environment, because you're ready for that environment and they know it. But if you're a tourist or somebody or you're a civilian going for work, and you happen to get in the last car? Aw man, it's like a school of piranhas man, you asking for it! You're gonna get it! That's what happened with what-his-name Bernhard Goetz and them with the shooting. So that's the way the trains were that's the way the city was. Sen recalls the "silent rules" of New York City at the time, and how locals knew how to avoid crime, as well as the effect this had on the wider culture of the city, especially in the way young people made themselves into the tough characters they painted on the walls. He then moves to describe some of the concurrent developments in hip-hop subculture at the time, the proliferation of Nike Cortez and other shoes, rocking, etc. He argues that skateboarding and double-dutch should have also been included as hip hop "elements" due to their integration into the culture at the time. Double dutch (Rope skipping);Goetz, Bernhard Hugo, 1947-;Skateboarding Art & crime;Crime;Hip-hop;New York, N.Y. 0 7843 Intensifying Criminalization, Hip Hop as a Revolutionary Culture SEN: I wasn't like my brother, he had opportunities. By the time I was coming up, those same scholarships wasn't available anymore. The city was broke--completely broke. He was coming off the hippy movement, there was like, social workers, there was all kinds of stuff. Now, my era, nah that shit doesn't exists. So now you got these who have to figure things out by themselves. With all this knowledge though! See we're not like the kids today. Our knowledge is the Malcolm Xs, all those movements, Tupac's moms and them. We got this first hand neighbors to neighbors. The breakfast programs created by the Panthers, we were going to that every day! Sen speaks about the divestment in social programs and the increase in policing/criminalization of graffiti which occurred during the Koch mayoralty. This dramatically changed the writing scene by intensifying violence and moving train painting from yards, which were locked down by the mid-80s, to mid-tunnel layups. He also speaks about what legacy hip-hop owes to the revolutionary movements of the 1970s, as kids being recipients of programs by the Black Panthers, for instance. He sees hip-hop as a cultural revolution in that legacy. Black Panther Party;Shakur, Afeni;Shakur, Mutulu DIY;Hip-hop;Koch, Ed, 1924-2013;New Left 0 8483 First Train Pieces SEN: To be next to a train, that's why they called it the Iron Elephant, it was that. It was an elephant and you feel the power! And it would make noises. It was like, alive. It wasn't like you was piecing on a wall. The train was alive, because of the fact that it could move, it would breathe, it would make these sounds, steam would come out of it, you could see sparks still from the third rail sometimes, it would rev itself up. [Sen imitates revving sound] So it was like a living thing. So you're going down there and we looked up, and we did our first pieces me and POKE. We had to climb up, and they taught us that. You'd use the beams, and the doorway of the train has the little ledge, and they also had like a brim around the train. So we being so little our feets are only like this big. You're able to step on that and be comfortable. So you're leaning over you're doing it. And we did our first trains and that was it. Continuing from the last section, this tells the story of SEN's first time hitting a winter layup in a subway tunnel and painting a train. IBM (Graffiti group);Poke IBM (Graffiti artist) Graffiti 0 8886 Changing Street Landscape SEN: Basically everybody was a member of the Ball Busters. So every freakin' house, every kid who was in there was a member of the Ball Busters. So when they came for you, and I had beef with them, this was Familia's beef, when they came for you they came hundreds. Not twenty, thirty, they came hundreds. Hundreds would come for you. They'll come to your school and for blocks, you'll look down the street and it'll be three blocks of gang members surrounding the entire school like a riot just to get you. That's how they were. And then they ran all the drugs. At that time is when the drugs were just beginning, they began to run it all. They had the highway, the bridge, Fort Washington, they brought in this whole culture of racing cars, gambling, I mean they exploded the streets. They took whatever was in the streets to a whole different level, and they were violent as hell. Sen speaks on the changing gang landscape in New York at the time, and how his own affiliations briefly caused trouble in the tunnels as a large Dominican gang called the Ball Busters attempted to assert territorial control underground, though this was quashed after a large confrontation with other gangs including Zulu Nation/Black Spades. Afrika Bambaataa, 1960-;Ball Busters Gangs;Gangs--New York (State);Illicit and misused drugs;Violence;Violence in adolescence;Violence in art;Violence, cooperation, peace 0 9659 IBM to FC SEN: We was doing crazy shit. Just for fun we would, because we could jump into the tracks, certain stops, the train's flying, we would pull the emergency brakes and watch everybody in the train fall. We were riding the outside of the train, we were between the cars sitting up on it. It was crazy but that was just like, fun. Like I would do stuff like that without the crew even knowing. Like I'd be watching them then I would go and just do it. [mimes yanking emergency brake] "Oh what the fuck why you always doing that shit!" And then we'd have to run. And the train wasn't going nowhere so you just went between cars and jumped in the track and you ran to the next stop. And basically everybody'd be pissed. The conductor would be cursing at you, he would be like "fuck you!" And you'd be running to the next stop laughing, laughing, just laughing your guts out. It was funny. But people would fall that's when they started putting that stuff on it KB: Oh so you couldn't do it no more SEN: Yeah but that was a regular thing As the IBM crew begins to fade with SEN stepping back from graffiti and POKE becoming addicted and going to jail, they train the next generation, FC (First Class) crew which becomes a major graffiti crew. He also speaks about the function of graffiti crew names, noting the letters were more important than what they stood for, which was changeable. He also speaks about what it's like to be a kid beginning to write and "motion bomb" tagging through the system. FC (Graffiti crew);IBM (Graffiti crew) Graffiti;Graffiti artists;Graffiti crews 0 9949 Move into Gang Life SEN: Even in the crew, some of the older ones didn't like that. Because it was too much power, too much egos, and too much beef coming from these two tiers. And then they would all have to get involved because Familia wasn't a big big gang. It was just a loyal gang, you were chosen. You had to grow into it, it was like a mob, a family thing. It wasn't like somebody could just get down it was impossible. SEN wraps up this part of his oral history by speaking about how he got involved with the La Familia street gang and moved away from graffiti as he lost interest growing up. Falling out with POKE and getting into more serious street crime and violence leads him away from graffiti. He ended up on a list of gang members in school before he was a gang member officially. He also details how the different generations of members had different functions within the gang. La Familia (Street gang) Gangs;Urban violence;Violence--Etiology;Violence--Social aspects 0 Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this first part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his peak activity as a graffiti writer. He shares his family's history, his own experiences in various public and private elementary schools, the presence of street organizations like Sandman and La Familia in the neighborhood immediately south of W. 96th Street, local skateboarders like his brother who were founding members of Zoo York, attending Joan of Arc Junior High School and the explosion of the various aspects of hip hop culture at the school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, how he got his tag and the process of forming the IBM Crew, IBM's activity along the 1 line and the crew's tension with the Ballbusters (a Dominican drug crew along the 1 line), joining up with La Familia, and much more. CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons) video Content may be utilized only for non-commercial purposes so long as equal sharing privileges are preserved and the following attribution is included: "Courtesy of The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project, The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library." 0 https://viewer.mybcpl.org/viewer.php?cachefile=/render.php?cachefile= Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed SEN 1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with SEN 1, Part 1 Description An account of the resource Part 1 of an oral history recorded for the Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project on May 23, 2022 with SEN-1, who got his start as an original member of the IBM Crew (Incredible Bombing Masters) and has become a world-renowned artist commissioned by the likes of Michelle Obama, Fabolous, and Rita Ora. In this first part of his oral history SEN-1 speaks about growing up in Lower Harlem (now refashioned as the northern part of the Upper West Side) and his peak activity as a graffiti writer. He shares his family's history, his own experiences in various public and private elementary schools, the presence of street organizations like Sandman and La Familia in the neighborhood immediately south of W. 96th Street, local skateboarders like his brother who were founding members of Zoo York, attending Joan of Arc Junior High School and the explosion of the various aspects of hip hop culture at the school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, how he got his tag and the process of forming the IBM Crew, IBM's activity along the 1 line and the crew's tension with the Ballbusters (a Dominican drug crew along the 1 line), joining up with La Familia, and much more. The interviewers are Dr. Steven Payne, librarian and archivist at The Bronx County Historical Society, and Kurt Boone, prolific documentarian of urban culture for the past 40 years. The Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project is a project of The Bronx County Archives at The Bronx County Historical Society Research Library. This interview made possible through the contribution of Columbia University's Oral History Archives at Columbia (OHAC) and will be dual-listed in a collection there. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bronx Aerosol Arts Documentary Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022.05.23 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context OH-BAADP.20220523 graffiti IBM SEN 1