Anthropology professor Frank Rochester is challenging the well-known notion that hip hop began not in South Bronx housing projects' outdoor parties, but in Texas as an extension of cowboy culture. Rochester contends that it was during a popular run of a rodeo performance at Madison Square Garden in 1970, attended by many inner-city children on school field trips, that the foundations for break-dancing and rhyming were sown in the Big Apple. Rochester believes that is is only due to New York's domination as an urban capital that it gets credit for beginning the hip hop movement. He also likens this to New York being known as the fashion capital of the world, even though many of the popular styles of the day actually originate from overseas such as Japan, then pollinate to West Coast cities which never get their proper credit for influencing trends.
