VenRod studies the boombox and its place in early hip-hop

4 November 2026 · 10:30 · VenRod

Zurich – 4 November 2026, 10:30. Ole Ole Bar, the quiet hour before lunch, a coffee, two library books on music history and my notebook open on a page titled questions for later.

Why I opened the books

Since DeeNice brought the silver boombox home from the flea market, it has been standing in every photo we take. It sat on the counter all through the party. I realised I knew how to press its buttons, but not where it came from. Study first, ask later. So here are my notes.

A radio you can carry

The portable radio-cassette player became popular in the 1970s and early 1980s, mostly built by manufacturers in Japan. It combined a radio, a cassette deck and loudspeakers in one box with a handle. The big models ran on a row of heavy batteries, so the music could go anywhere: to the park, the stoop, the subway platform. People carried them on the shoulder. Names like "boombox" and "ghetto blaster" came from the street, not from the catalogues.

The street as a stage

Hip-hop grew up in New York, especially the Bronx, in the 1970s, at block parties where DJs played records through big sound systems. The boombox was the small, portable cousin of those systems. Breakdancers used it to dance on a piece of cardboard in the street or a park. The music came with the dancers instead of the other way round.

The mixtape

The cassette was the other half of the story. You could record songs from the radio, copy a friend's tape or put together your own mix. Tapes went from hand to hand, from city to city. Many boomboxes had two cassette decks, made exactly for copying. A mixtape was a letter made of songs.

Why our Jukebox looks like this

That is why the CatJuxe is not a modern speaker. It is a silver 80s boombox with a pink KC sticker on the right speaker, a pink mixtape cassette that spins and VU needles that dance. Each of us made a playlist, the way people once made tapes for each other. Mine starts on the street, with "Beat Bop".

Questions for later

Who carried the heaviest one? How many batteries did a summer need? I wrote both down.

Study first, ask later. And bring spare batteries.

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