General Motors, Ford and Tesla have all warned of an electric vehicle slowdown because they say demand might drop.

Auto makers mainly say higher borrowing costs are the issue but some car dealerships say EVs are sitting longer than regular cars. They say consumers are concerned about the range of EVs and lack of infrastructure.

In a Cox Automotive survey, 53 percent of consumers said EVs will eventually replace internal combustion engines, but less than a third of dealers agreed. Several dealerships interviewed by CNBC said EVs were taking longer to sell and there was a supply and demand imbalance with the vehicles.

Ford said two weeks ago it would increase production on its hybrid F-150 pickup trucks because of waning demand for its all electric model.

EV advocates insist the demand is still there, but consumers are only temporarily shying away because of high interest rates that make EVs — typically more expensive than your average car — more difficult to purchase.

Q: Has enthusiasm for electric cars waned?

Phil Blair, Manpower

YES: But a momentary blip. As someone who has only bought all-electric cars for my last five purchases, they are the future of car transportation. Yes, it has hit a lull. Interest rates, concern over ample charging infrastructure and availability of lower price models are valid concerns. New houses coming with charging capabilities are a telling sign.

Gary London, London Moeder Advisors

NO: Technology breakthroughs often take decades to achieve market acceptance. Electric, and perhaps hydrogen, and other vehicle technologies are in their infancy. The issues of range anxiety, cost and even their actual contribution to reducing the overall carbon footprint, will all be solved over time. Personal perspective: I am now driving my second electric vehicle. They drive better, are simpler to manufacture and incorporate superior technology. And they are more fun to drive.

Alan Gin, University of San Diego

YES: One factor is higher interest rates, which makes buying the more expensive electric vehicles more difficult. Another is that gas prices have come down after a recent surge. But a big reason might be that early adopters of the technology may have already gone all in on EVs. Getting the next tier of customers might require a game changer such as Toyota’s solid-state battery technology, which could raise the range to 700 to 900 miles and reduce charging times to less than 10 minutes.

Bob Rauch, R.A. Rauch & Associates

YES: Enthusiasm for electric vehicles has waned, though EVs are still growing in number. GM is delaying the opening of a large electric-pickup-truck factory in Michigan and Ford is considering canceling a shift of factory production on its electric F-150 Lightning pickup. Tesla’s vehicle deliveries are still growing, but at a slowing rate, despite steep price cuts. There are concerns about charging vehicles on long drives, prices, and government subsidy requirements.

James Hamilton, UC San Diego

YES: Or at least the rate of growth of sales has slowed. The first wave of buyers of EVs were higher-income households with strong concerns about the environment. Adoption may be slower for other demographic groups. Higher interest rates historically depress all vehicle sales and disproportionately discourage sales of more expensive cars like EVs. The ultimate transition is inevitable but may come a little slower than some people thought 12 months ago.

Austin Neudecker, Weave Growth

NO: As with all new technologies, at first, enthusiastic technophiles and idealists purchased EVs. Today, the economics are positive for many consumers, especially those who own single-family homes. Higher interest rates, a recent buying binge, and unfamiliarity are causing a temporary weakening in demand. Fear of the unknown — range/charging/tech — and car replacement timing have deterred others thus far. In time, additional exposure, improved range, increased competition, gas price uncertainty, and environmental awareness will drive widespread adoption.

Chris Van Gorder, Scripps Health

NO: I think the desire for EVs remains but as noted, high interest rates, the lack of needed infrastructure and the vehicles’ limited range will slow sales. When range capabilities, infrastructure and charging speeds increase and costs and interest rates decrease, sales will improve. Electric hybrids will continue to bridge the gap as drivers start testing EVs.

Norm Miller, University of San Diego

NO: EVs remain relatively more expensive cars, for now, albeit cheaper to own. When budgets are subject to higher interest rates, consumers shift to lower-priced substitutes. A gas Subaru Crosstrek starts at $24,995, a Subaru Solterra EV starts at $44,995. That is a huge difference for the average consumer. With higher interest rates we have seen higher-priced choices, EVs included, become less attractive. EVs are here to stay and eventually, with less expensive batteries, will become more affordable over time. It’s all I’ve driven since 2012.

Jamie Moraga, Franklin Revere

NO: Consumers are still interested in electric vehicles, and it will only grow over time as battery technology and long-distance supercharging networks improve. If cost has been a factor, car makers like Tesla have been cutting prices on some of their models recently and interest rate hikes are finally leveling out. With gas prices continuing to increase, an EV is still a good option for long-term fuel savings, lower maintenance costs, and EV tax incentives.

David Ely, San Diego State University

YES: Now that early adopters have purchased EVs, it is natural for enthusiasm to wane. Range anxiety and high interest rates are leading many shoppers to delay the switch to EVs. Sales of EVs are still rising, just at a slower pace. EV sales growth would be lower if not for significant price reductions by manufacturers. This suggests that demand is falling short of expectations and needs to be brought back into alignment with supply.

Ray Major, SANDAG

YES: Early EV adopters and tech enthusiasts are already driving EVs regardless of price. Concerns about range, accessible charging stations, charging time, cost and the lifespan of a vehicle, are some of the reasons why not everyone has jumped in. Nationally, customers in colder climates are experiencing significantly less battery life than those here in Southern California. Enthusiasm for EVs has slowed and full adoption will take decades, not years.

Caroline Freund, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy

NO: Despite waning enthusiasm for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, EVs are still hot commodities with heaps of new models becoming available. Adoption of new technologies tends to follow an S curve — slow at first, then speeds up, and eventually levels off. EV sales are no exception. Sales were pretty flat in the years through 2020, picked up in 2021, and will likely remain strong for some time before flattening.

Haney Hong, San Diego County Taxpayers Assoc.

NO: While it may be more expensive to finance a car purchase, gas prices have skyrocketed. Also, the federal and state tax incentives are hefty. I know anecdotally that plenty of people are still in the market for EVs, as there are a lot of reasons for someone to purchase one. Now if there’s any waning, it’s probably a smaller reduction than in the demand for gas-powered vehicles.

Kelly Cunningham, San Diego Institute for Economic Research

YES: Electric vehicles continue to have promising technological developments, but there are limits for potential uses that may not encompass all transportation needs. Costs and risks should not be imposed on less well-off citizens to the benefit of wealthy investors and buyers. Electric cars will continue to be a substantial endeavor for those capable and willing to take on inherent risks. Governments should not be imposing mandates or subsidizing developments that may prove counterproductive or ineffective.

Lynn Reaser, economist

YES: Several factors are slowing sales beyond early adopters. First, the limited range is of great concern. Second, the time to recharge takes a multiple of the few minutes to fuel an internal combustion-powered vehicle. Third, the limited number of charging stations is hampering sales. Fourth, the higher prices even with various subsidies are a problem. Fifth, battery inflammatory risk is cause for concern. Finally, the poorer performance in cold climates is a limiting factor.

When Vista resident Michelle Harvey packed an overnight bag so her son could undergo testing at Rady Children’s Hospital in June 2020, she expected to return home the following day. Instead, Mason Harvey was hospitalized for two months as he was diagnosed and subsequently treated for Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease marked by chronic inflammation in the digestive system.

Prior to his hospital stay, a blood test showed that Mason had low levels of hemoglobin — the protein found in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body. He weighed about 45 pounds, much lower than the 60 to 120 pounds that is typical for an 11-year-old boy.

Mason was diagnosed nine days into his hospital stay, but before he could be sent home, doctors wanted to ensure he was in stable condition. For four weeks of his stay, he was on “gut rest,” meaning he was unable to eat solid foods.

“It was pretty hard because I like snacks and stuff, especially when going through hard times,” said Mason, who is now 14. “I was getting shots and things, but I couldn’t eat anything; I couldn’t even drink water.”

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease that the National Institutes of Health estimates impacts half a million people throughout the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 1.3 percent of American adults — about 3 million people — are diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, meaning they have either a form of Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

“It’s really an isolating disease, and it’s a silent disease because you can’t tell if someone has Crohn’s or colitis just by looking at them,” she said.

While both conditions are chronic, Crohn’s disease most commonly affects the small intestine and the beginning of the colon, according to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Ulcerative colitis, however, only affects the rectum and the innermost lining of the colon, also known as the large intestine.

Because there isn’t a single diagnostic test for inflammatory bowel disease, many patients spend years either undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or untreated. A 2014 study published in the United European Gastroenterology journal found that about 10 percent of inflammatory bowel disease patients are misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, and about 3 percent spend at least five or more years before receiving the correct diagnosis.

There are several forms of inflammatory bowel diseases that can impact different parts of the digestive system in various ways, but some common symptoms include diarrhea, nausea, rectal bleeding, weight loss and mild to intense abdominal pain or cramps after eating.

Although inflammatory bowel diseases share some symptoms with irritable bowel syndrome, such as abdominal pain and nausea, there are some major differences. Unlike colitis or Crohn’s disease, IBS doesn’t cause inflammation, rarely causes hospitalization or surgery, and it does not increase the risk for colon cancer.

Inflammatory bowel diseases can cause someone to drastically alter their lifestyle, especially when they’re experiencing a flare-up of symptoms.

“Many patients know where every bathroom is anywhere they travel, any route they go on, because of that urgency,” said Cindie Barbera, the chapter’s deputy executive director.

Treating inflammatory bowel disease

Although there is not yet a cure for inflammatory bowel disease, it is possible to be in a state of remission by adhering to a treatment plan to reduce inflammation. That plan can involve various medications, avoiding trigger foods, eating foods that contain healthy fats and insoluble fiber.

In some cases, treatment for inflammatory bowel disease can require surgery, as was the case for former San Diego Chargers kicker Rolf Benirschke.

In 1979, as a 23-year-old during his second season playing professional football, Benirschke thought he had caught the flu from some of his teammates when his first symptoms of Crohn’s disease started. But when his symptoms persisted long after his teammates got better, his father — who was a physician — connected him with a gastroenterology specialist at UC San Diego.

When he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Benirschke said he “continued to play and manage my illness as best I could, but there were not a lot of medical options” at the time.

Although he was taking two medications to stave off symptoms, he started to lose weight — about 20 pounds — and experienced a bad stomachache with bloody diarrhea throughout the season. After playing games on Sunday, he would be brought to the hospital to be fed intravenously throughout most of the week, then released on Saturdays to play with the team.

“If you look statistically at the 10 years that I played, it was really one of the better seasons of my career, but there could have been a footnote that said, ‘Young kicker is dying,’ ” Benirschke said.

During the off-season, he changed his diet and tried every possible treatment, including acupuncture and biofeedback, an alternative medicine approach that aims to teach people to have a greater awareness and control of their bodily functions.

But while flying home from New England a few games into his third season, Benirschke fainted on the plane. After landing, he was taken to the hospital, where he experienced a series of surgeries to remove his large intestine and install two ostomy bags.

Benirschke thought his career was over, but one of the Chargers coaches trained him during his recuperation. He rejoined the Chargers the following year, won the NFL Man of the Year award in 1983 and played until retiring from the league in 1987.

Although living with the disease has impacted him in many ways, Benirschke said it has also given his life meaning. For decades, he has been an advocate for bringing greater awareness of inflammatory bowel diseases, and has given other patients guidance, including Mason.

“I get the perspective now, looking back, and that illness changed my life,” he said. “Everything about me changed — who I am, what was important to me — it gave me a purpose, and ultimately, God turned it into just the richest life I could possibly have imagined.”

How caregivers can support loved ones with IBD

Caregiving for a loved one with colitis or Crohn’s disease demands not just patience and understanding, but also a deep well of empathy and knowledge to navigate the challenges of the care recipient’s complex condition.

The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation offers support to patients and caregivers by providing educational resources, hosting support group meetings and raising funds for research into treatment options. The organization also offers Camp Oasis, a weeklong summer camp for children with medically stable Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.

Michelle and Jason Harvey said connecting with the organization was vital to understanding the disease when their son was first diagnosed.

“In the very beginning it was tough, but I think reaching out and looking for support and talking about it helped,” Michelle said.

Some patient and caregiver teams — like Mason and his parents — find it helpful to keep a meal journal to track whether any foods trigger a flare-up of symptoms.

Today, Mason’s parents check his weight daily so they can be aware of any sudden drops. To ensure he is getting enough vitamins and nutrients, they make him a supplemental drink three times daily by mixing lactose-free milk with Carnation Instant Breakfast. Twice a month he receives biologics, medicines that help the immune system target inflammation-causing proteins.

Throughout Mason’s two-month hospitalization, Michelle and Jason rotated between staying in his room and sleeping in their car in the parking lot because pandemic protocols meant only one parent could be there at a time. Because he was unable to eat for a full month during that time, Mason starting drawing all the foods he looked forward to snacking on.

Those drawings eventually became the inspiration for “Not Your Average Slice of Pizza,” a children’s book that Mason and Michelle co-wrote about Crohn’s disease that they hope will help other children.

“You’re not alone with this disease, there’s a lot of other people out there and it’s different for everyone,” Mason said. “Someday you’re going to get into remission and everything’s gonna be fine.”

For more information about the nonprofit, call (619) 497-1300, email sandiego@crohnscolitisfoundation.org or visit crohnscolitisfoundation.org/chapters/sandiego.

What’s the difference between a great cover song and a banal cover song that brings little or nothing to the table?

One is like tasting a delicious, unexpectedly creative version of your favorite dish — a new take on a tried-and-true treat that thrills with its skill, vision and ingenuity. The other is like being force-fed a bowl of pudding made out of lard and skim milk.

Sometimes, the most memorable cover songs remain reverent to the original version, at least in terms of their musical arrangements. What elevates them is a transcendent performance that brings new depth, drama or nuance to the work at hand.

For some young artists, a great cover song can ignite their careers and become their signature number — be it Sinead O’Connor’s version of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” or Joan Jett’s version of The Arrows’ “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

In other instances, an imaginatively done cover song can simultaneously provide an unexpected hit for an established act — and shine a welcome new light on the artist who originally did it.

Pearl Jam’s 1999 version of Wayne Cochran’s previously little-heard “Last Kiss,” released in 1961, is a prime example. So is Amy Winehouse’s 2007 remake of The Zutons’ 2006 song “Valerie.” A more recent one came just this year with country-music star Luke Combs’ chart-topping version of Tracy Chapman’s plaintive 1998 gem, “Fast Car.”

Tracy Chapman, meet Luke Combs

Chapman’s understated original remains my favorite. But Combs’ earnest rendition underscores the broader resonance of Chapman’s lyrics while retaining the spare guitar figure she used to frame her song. With little fuss and minimal musical alterations, Combs turns “Fast Car’s” protagonist from a young woman — whose bleak circumstances leave her with few choices — into almost anyone hoping beyond hope to move, somehow, beyond a dead-end existence.

For me, the most memorable covers are by gifted artists who find and bring to life facets in a song that eluded — or never even occurred to — the original performer or songwriter. In the process, the cover version becomes the definitive version.

A few of my favorite examples include Cassandra Wilson’s splendid, slow-as-molasses 1993 reading of Van Morrison’s 1971 classic, “Tupelo Honey,” Lake Street Dive’s New Orleans-infused 2013 version of The Jackson 5’s propulsive 1969 hit “I Want You Back,” and Alison Krauss’ luminous 1999 rendition of the 1988 Keith Whitley hit “When You Say Nothing at All.” I could easily cite dozens more.

A number of artists have recorded multiple cover albums. They range from Linda Ronstadt and Rod Stewart’s respective mining of chestnuts from the Great American Songbook to indie-rock favorite Cat Power. She has thus far released three albums — 2000’s “The Covers Record,” 2008’s “Jukebox” and last year’s “Covers” — devoted to songs by other artists.

Of course, all of Ronstadt’s albums have in effect been cover albums. Like some of the other great singers of the 20th century — from Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston — the now-retired Ronstadt was a vocal artist, not a songwriter.

Their gift was their ability to put a distinctive stamp on whatever they sang — and to do it so effectively they made the words and music of other artists indelibly their own.

That was a trademark of the incomparable Ray Charles. After composing and singing such classics as “What’d I Say,” “Hallelujah I Love Her So” and “I Believe to My Soul,” he stopped writing songs by the late 1960s. But no matter.

His towering performances of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind,” Percy Mayfield’s “Hit the Road, Jack,” Bobby Sharp’s “Unchain My Heart,” Katharine Lee Bates and Silas G. Pratt’s “America, The Beautiful,” Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and many more have long been synonymous with Charles’ name.

‘What can I add to it?’

“The song (by another artist) already speaks for itself,” Charles told me in a 1985 San Diego Union interview. “If I’m going to do it, I think, ‘What can I add to it to make it mine?’ If I can’t do something (different) with it, what’s the point?”

One need only listen to the seemingly countless cover versions of The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” the Bing Crosby staple “White Christmas,” the Elvis Presley hit “Love Me Tender” or Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” to appreciate how many cover versions not only add nothing to the originals but fall far short of them.

That’s why some performers have opted to take songs by other artists in a completely unlikely direction, so much so that even devoted fans — or the original artists themselves — may not initially recognize what they are hearing.

Witness Tori Amos’ ruminative 2001 piano-ballad twist on Slayer’s 1986 thrash-metal anthem, “Raining Blood.” Or consider the Stanley Clarke Band’s biting 1985 hip-hop transformation of Bruce Springsteen’s often-misinterpreted 1984 anthem “Born in the U.S.A.”

Then there’s Miles Davis’ heady, vocal-free version of the 1969 Crosby, Stills & Nash ballad “Guinnevere,” which the jazz trumpet giant stretches to nearly five times its original 4-minute-plus length. (Jazz has long thrived on extending and reinventing existing songs; I could easily devote another article to my favorite jazz cover versions.)

And don’t forget Devo’s wonderfully herky-jerky 1977 take on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” — which in 1965 gave the Rolling Stones their first No. 1 single in the U.S.

The Stones, incidentally, started off as a cover band playing American blues, rock and R&B chestnuts. So did The Beatles, The Animals, The Yardbirds and an array of other British Invasion-era English groups from the 1960s.

Six of the 14 songs on The Beatles’ 1963 debut album were cover versions. So were all but two songs on the Stones’ 1964 debut album.

Both bands quickly transitioned to writing nearly all their own music. By doing so they helped set the template that serious rock artists needed to create original works, not copy the work of others. It was only after David Bowie and Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry released all-covers albums, both in 1973, that a new cachet for such projects began to grow.

Today, tribute bands are thriving — at least commercially speaking — around the world by exclusively performing cover versions of songs by a single group or solo artist. In a music world now dominated by TikTok, YouTube and other social media sites, a gazillion or more videos of cover songs performed by people with greatly varying abilities is just a click away. (Justin Bieber, Halle Bailey and Lemon Grove native Conan Gray and San Diego-bred singer-turned-Oscar-nominated actress Andra Day are among those who got their starts doing cover versions online.)

Maybe one day, some of the myriad cover songs posted on social media will be considered classics. Maybe.

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite cover songs but with a key caveat: I could easily pick another completely different batch tomorrow. I have skipped entire decades, simply because it would take at least another Sunday cover story to include most of them. That’s where you come in.

The Byrds, “Mr. Tambourine Man” (1965)

Can a cover version birth an entire musical movement in just two minutes and 18 seconds? Absolutely!

Released less than a month after the Bob Dylan original, The Byrds took Dylan’s acoustic reverie, “Hey Mr. Tambourine,” added a jingle-jangly 12-string electric guitar, drums, electric bass, keyboards, a buoyant beat (punctuated by a tambourine) and luminous vocals by Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark. Quicker than you can say: “Play a song for me,” folk-rock was born and ignited.

So did the career of The Byrds, whose version gave Dylan his first No. 1 hit as a songwriter and topped the charts in the U.S. and the U.K. More significantly, the success of The Byrds — whose co-founder, Chris Hillman, is a former San Diegan — inspired Dylan to go electric and form a band of his own. The rest is history.

Aretha Franklin, “Respect” (1967)

In one of the greatest musical transformations in modern times, Aretha Franklin turned Otis Redding’s brassy 1965 song upside down and inside out.

The beat and melody are largely the same on both recordings. But where Redding’s original was, in essence, a macho man beseeching his woman to live up to the song’s title, Franklin made “Respect” something else altogether. She added lyrics — including her immortal “Sock it to me!” exhortation and the “Ree, ree. ree, ree” refrain that riffs off her name — and turned it into an anthem for strong women who demanded and commanded equality.

Nearly 60 years later, Franklin’s “Respect” remains her signature song. But it’s only one of the classics first recorded by other artists that she indelibly made her own, as her sublime versions of everything from “I Say a Little Prayer” and “The Weight” to “Amazing Grace” and “Nessun Dorma” readily attest.

Jimi Hendrix Experience, “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

Call it musical alchemy or outright magic, but Jimi Hendrix so masterfully reinvented Bob Dylan’s 1967 song, “All Along the Watchtower,” that Dylan himself quickly realized he had been surpassed.

“Ever since (Hendrix) died (in 1970) I’ve been doing it (his way),” Dylan wrote of Hendrix’s version. “Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.” Dylan elaborated on this in 2015 when he was honored as the Grammy Awards’ MusiCares Person of the Year, marveling at how Hendrix “took some small songs of mine, that nobody paid any attention to, and brought them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere, turned them all into classics.”

Hendrix kept Dylan’s biblically derived lyrics and the basic chord progression. But he kicked up the tempo, beefed up the instrumentation, added a glorious six-string opening phrase, sang with more authority than Dylan and transformed the music into a veritable six-string concerto.

The brilliantly crafted electric guitar choruses Hendrix plays after the verses — each with a different feel and tone — enhance the song rather than detract from it. And his mid-song solo is an exhilarating demonstration of his peerless artistry and boundless imagination. It’s less a solo than a magnificent display of music-making as exciting as it is flawlessly executed.

Frankie Miller, “Jealous Guy” (1977)

John Lennon recorded his largely acoustic song, “Jealous Guy,” in 1971 as an ode to the regret he felt over a failed relationship — and his nostalgic yearning for what might have been. The Bryan Ferry-led Roxy Music had a hit in 1981 with its more overtly melancholic — and orchestrated — remake, which was nowhere as compelling as Donny Hathaway’s soulful 1972 version.

But it is Scottish vocal great Frankie Miller who truly reinvented the song in 1977. In his hands, “Jealous Guy” becomes a brassy 1960s soul-music burner, filled with emotional longing, tension and release. Miller’s version poses an intriguing question: What would the mighty Otis Redding — who died in a 1967 plane crash at the age of 26 — have sounded like reinventing “Jealous Guy” when he was at the peak of his musical powers?

In a word (well, a hyphenated one): Spine-tingling.

“I Got You (I Feel Good),” Run C&W (1993)

The iconic James Brown accomplished many feats in his remarkable career as the Godfather of Soul, a founder of funk and one of the most sampled artists in the history of hip-hop.

What he did not do, to the best of my knowledge, is record an all-acoustic bluegrass album of soul and R&B classics that is both a heartfelt homage and a winking send-up. So, take a bow Run C&W, whose “Into The Twangy-First Century” album improbably features note-perfect bluegrass versions of Brown’s “Please, Please, Please,” Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” Rufus Thomas’ “Walkin’ the Dog” and more.

A highlight is what may well be the most uptempo version of Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” ever recorded. Better yet, it’s done as a mash-up with the Allen Toussaint-penned Lee Dorsey favorite “Working in a Coal Mine.”

The members of Run C&W clearly were singing and playing with their tongues firmly in their cheeks. But the quality of their musicianship turned what could have been a one-joke album into something hip and memorable. The group’s lineup included former San Diego bluegrass mainstay Bernie Leadon, who went on to co-found the Eagles.

Our Native Daughters, “Slave Driver” (2020)

Bob Marley and The Wailers included “Slave Driver” on the band’s landmark 1973 album, “Catch a Fire,” but it has long been overshadowed by such oft-covered Marley classics as “Redemption Song” and “No Woman, No Cry.”

“Slave Driver” is a stinging musical examination of the racial inequities that persist more than a century after the Civil War ended. It has rarely been recorded by other artists, apart from such notable exceptions as Taj Mahal, Cyril Neville and original Wailers member Bunny Wailer.

The most moving and original version I have heard so far is by Our Native Daughters, the talent-rich quartet formed by 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winner Rhiannon Giddens. The group teams her with Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and Amythyst Kiah. All four share and swap vocals on this stirring banjo-fueled adaptation, which seamlessly blurs the lines between reggae and gospel music.

Together, they make “Slave Driver” a song about both lamentation and resilience, oppression and unity. What results is a haunting work that exudes grace and grit in equal measure.

No, Elvis can’t cover my song!

Having a music legend cover one or more of your works can transform the life of a struggling songwriter, as former Valley Center resident JJ Cale happily learned after Eric Clapton had hits in the 1970s with his versions of Cale’s “After Midnight” and “Cocaine.”

But there are some memorable instances of a music legend being rebuffed in their quest to record a song by another artist. And few instances are more memorable than when Dolly Parton declined to let Elvis Presley record his version of Parton’s song “I Will Always Love You.”

Her decision was predicated on business, not aesthetic preferences. Letting Presley cover her 1973 country-music hit would have required Parton to sign her music publishing rights to “I Will Always Love You” completely over to Presley and Col. Tom Parker, Presley’s notorious manager. Parker made the same demand, usually successfully, for everything Presley recorded.

But the prescient Parton, realizing the value of her song, declined. It was a wise decision. In 1992, Whitney Houston recorded “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack of her hit film, “The Bodyguard.” It became the biggest hit of her career. Or as Parton told a CMT interviewer in 2006: “When Whitney (Houston’s version) came out, I made enough money to buy Graceland!”

Parton remains one of the most prolific songwriters in country music or any other genre. However, her next album, “Rockstar,” features 30 selections, only two of which are by her. The rest are her covers of classics by The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Blondie, The Police and others that team her with founding members of those bands.

Hallelujah! Obscurity to ubiquity

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” did not sound remotely epic when it appeared on 1984’s “Various Positions,” an album his American record company deemed so inferior it refused to release it. Cohen’s gruff vocals, more spoken than sung, made the song sound better suited to a barroom floor than a cathedral.

Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale recorded a more appealing, piano-based version in 1991 that was featured in the smash 2001 movie “Shrek.” Cale’s version inspired Jeff Buckley’s 1994 version, which pared down the 80 (!) verses Cohen originally wrote to a far more manageable four.

Buckley, who died in 1997 at the age of 30, gave “Hallelujah” an impassioned vocal grandeur. His majestic version became a posthumous hit in 2007. It also provided the template for countless inferior versions by contestants on “American Idol” — and seemingly every other TV vocal competition show in the Western world. And it begot the title of the 2021 film documentary, “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.”

Most surreal cover song, ever?

British actor Sebastian Cabot is best remembered by American baby-boomers for his role as Mr. French in the CBS TV sitcom “Family Affair,” which aired from 1966 to 1971.

Few, thankfully, recall his 1967 release, “Sebastian Cabot, Actor/Bob Dylan, Poet,” which featured him doing pompous, quasi-Shakespearean recitations of the lyrics to 11 Dylan classics. Better yet — and just as questionable — are the orchestrations, by Irvin Spice, an arranger who appears to have had little, if any, familiarity with Dylan’s music.

While the entire album is exquisitely awful, it is Cabot’s preposterously over-the-top reading of “It Ain’t Me Babe” that stands out. It is such a howler that San Diego International Film Festival founder Gregory Kahn and San Diego Reader music critic John D’Agostino both choked on their food when I played it for them at a Thanksgiving gathering in the 1980s. And it is such a howler that it ended up being featured on the 1992 Rhino Records compilation album, “Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing Off.”

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©2023 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

It was during the research for his dissertation and first book that Rudy Guevarra Jr. noticed something — he was hearing more and more people speaking Spanish while traveling in the Hawaiian Islands. His research came out of his own experience growing up both Mexican and Filipino in San Diego, leading him to and from Hawaii to trace a history of migration and mixing of cultures between Latinos and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

“Though increasing with new migrations, the Latinx population is not new to the Hawaiian Islands. On the contrary, Latinxs have been voyaging to the Hawaiian archipelago for 190 years, yet their presence has been rendered invisible by the tourist industry and within the larger local population,” he says in an excerpt from the first chapter of his most recent book, “Aloha Compadre: Latinxs in Hawaii,” which he will discuss in a special presentation at 6 p.m. Friday at Miramar College, as part of National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Guevarra Jr. grew up in various parts of San Diego — including National City, Spring Valley, Chula Vista, and Paradise Hills — and is currently a professor of Asian Pacific American studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. A historian and storyteller, he looks at relational ethnic studies focused on Chicano/Latino, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and other groups to learn about how these populations function in relationship to each other. He took some time to talk about “Aloha Compadre,” what his research revealed about the history of Latinx migration to the Hawaiian Islands, and the creation and evolution of a Pacific Latinidad. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )

Q:On Friday, you’ll be at Miramar College to discuss “Aloha Compadre.” In 2011, in your work as a professor at Arizona State University, you led a project called “Aloha Compadre: Transpacific Latino/a Migrations to the Hawaiian Islands.” What first prompted you to explore this topic of the Latinx community in Hawaii?

A:This project came out of the research I was doing when I was writing my dissertation, which became my first book, “Becoming Mexipino.” Part of that work took me back and forth to Hawaii and spending summers out there to do research, to look at the migration and the labor connections between Filipinos and Mexicans in Hawaii and California. While I was there doing this research, I noticed that I kept hearing more and more Spanish spoken around me, in everyday interactions and wherever I was going on the island. Then, I started seeing more Latinx folks of various ethnic communities. I mention this in the book that, oftentimes, when we see each other, we would give each other the nod, recognizing each other. Then, I would spark up just a casual conversation with them and just hear about their stories and why they were there, what was going on. I spoke with migrant farmworkers, students — a diverse group of people that I encountered. For me, I had not seen anything done on this topic, so even while I was still writing my dissertation, I already knew what the next book was going to be, so I just started gathering sources over the years that I kept going back and forth, basically living partially in Hawaii, for the last 23 years or so. A lot of my work has been Hawaii-centered, but its connection with California, too. It’s sort of this extension of this larger story of talking about the interactions between the Latinx communities and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and the relationships, the complexity of those relationships, and how these communities are connected through these wide-ranging locations from each other. That was always fascinating, and I think this book, “Aloha Compadre,” is the extension of this larger work on Oceania and the Pacific Rim.

Q:”Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego,” is your 2012 book inspired by your own experience growing up in San Diego as both Mexican and Filipino, and tracing the history that informs this identity and the Mexican and Filipino communities in San Diego and elsewhere. Is that fair to say?

A:Yeah, and I would probably add in the Mexipino community, too. There’s this experience within the larger experience. For me, being that I’m of that identity, that self-identified term of Mexipino, I grew up with a family history and the family stories. In the communities I grew up with, all the other Mexican and Filipino communities that live in overlapping areas, it’s sort of like I always saw we were never really separated. We often lived in overlapping communities, so I was within my family within the communities; I was exposed to both cultures. I also had another layer to that identity, which was being mixed and a product of these two, and self-identifying as a particular term — Mexipino — because it tells that here’s what this blending is and what this experience looks like. My experience is not the sum total of what the Mexipino experience is, but it’s just one of many experiences. In my family, there are now five generations of Mexicans and Filipinos intermarrying and that was one thing, too; realizing, when I did that book, how long the history went back. My family was not the only family that had that many generations; there were many people that I interviewed in San Diego that went back as many generations, if not further. It was this constant of always intermarrying and always being a part of these communities, so I always found it fascinating because to be in the Filipino community, it was never all Filipino. Neither was the Chicano community all Chicano because we were always mixed in these multiracial spaces. For me, that was also telling of the larger experience because it wasn’t just Mexicans and Filipinos, or Chicanos where I grew up, it was also Chamorro, Native Hawaiian, locals from Hawaii, Samoan, Tongan, Southeast Asians, Black. It was a very mixed community, very diverse. I grew up in those spaces, seeing the interactions of all of these different groups coming together in these spaces, so that really made an impression on me early on and influences why I do what I do and the stories that I choose to tell.

Q:How did what you learned in that process, inform your approach to “Aloha Compadre”?

A:I think it was this idea that our identities as ethnic or racialized ethnic groups, I’ve experienced that we’ve never been isolated from each other. We’ve always lived in the same communities, in some fashion, so there was always intermixing in some ways — whether it was through who you chose to date and marry, or who your friend group was, the food you ate — it was always this mixture. That mixture would, oftentimes, result in mixed race folks of these various combinations, so I saw that in San Diego. Then, when I was in Hawaii and looked at learning about the Latinx populations there and seeing the long-standing mixing that was also occurring there with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other groups, it really just validated that these experiences are not unique to one area. It’s unique to the spaces that inhabit all these different groups that can come together. I’m not saying it’s always perfect because it’s not. There are also tensions and conflict at times; but for me, I saw it as these were very multiracial spaces where people came together, learned to get along on various levels, and they often ended up intermarrying and having mixed-race children. There’s that component to it, and then there is seeing that, within the Latinx population, their migration was extending. They weren’t just within the western hemisphere, they weren’t just in the borderlands on the West Coast. They extended all the way out into the Pacific Ocean, or Oceania. The work that I did in Hawaii showed that the Latinx communities have migrated far beyond the borderlands of the western hemisphere and now you’re looking at borderlands over the ocean, or these seafaring regions, that you have to think about the waters and other borderland space that Latinos are migrating to. It’s even farther than Hawaii because my work has also taken me to Aotearoa (New Zealand), and even Australia where you have Latinx communities out there. Their migrations, or the diaspora, are way farther than what I had ever thought of before and it really compels me to think about how do we define borderlands with that in mind?

Q:Can you help us understand some of the historical factors that have contributed to the Latinx population in Hawaii?

A:My first introduction to this, outside of my experiences with talking to people, was my hānai uncle out in Hawaii [hānai is a traditionally Native Hawaiian form of adoption]. One of the first times I was out there, he took me on a drive and he was telling me about the history of these particular regions, places. Then, he brings up this term, “Hawaiian paniolo,” and I was really intrigued by that. He was saying that the Hawaiian paniolo is basically the cowboy, cattle culture of Hawaii that was influenced by Mexican vaqueros who came to the Hawaiian Islands. That really blew my mind because I’m thinking, ‘Wow, contrary to what other people think, the Latinx populations or migrants that are coming to Hawaii is not a new phenomenon.’ So, my work revealed that the Latinx population had been coming out to Hawaii for over 190 years. It started with Indigenous peoples from California and Mexicans of indigenous descent from California. So, these vaqueros were the first ones that were invited by the King Kamehameha III to come out and deal with the cattle problem on the Hawaiian Islands and that invitation led to sharing their culture with Native Hawaiians, tutoring them how to be vaqueros. It creates this whole culture of Hawaiian paniolo culture that still exists today in Hawaii. It’s very prominent throughout the Hawaiian Islands and it has its genealogical ties to the first Indigenous and Mexican vaqueros that came out to Hawaii at the time.

These are the ties between California and Hawaii, and the sort of migration that I thought was fascinating. Then, you have Puerto Ricans coming for sugarcane, you have Mexican and Central Americans coming to work the pineapple plantations on Maui, predominantly. Then, you have Mexicans and Central Americans working in Kona coffee and macadamia nuts on Hawaii Island, so there’ve been successive waves of these migrants coming, but at the same time, you have the ones who have been there for generations continuing to intermix with the local and Native Hawaiian populations so that they’re being a part of this larger, local mixture that’s going on in Hawaii.

Q:In an excerpt from the first chapter of the book, you mention this being a full-length study of Latinx folks in Hawaii, including navigating borders, along with acceptance and marginalization. Can you talk about what the people you interviewed shared with you about building their communities in this diaspora, in what’s referred to as a “Pacific Latinidad”? What does this mean and what does this community look like in a Pacific Island context?

A:For a lot of the folks that I interviewed, regardless of when they came, or even if they were there for generations and they talk about their family history, when they came it was often to work, to seek better opportunities, to provide for their families, much of which other migrants do when they come to new countries and areas. For many of them, coming from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean or from the coastal regions of Latin America, or from California or Mexico, a lot of them found the climate to be very similar to home. They had relatively good interactions and they were really welcomed by the native Hawaiians and locals that were there from previous generations.

For many of these folks that came, they wanted to acculturate and be part of the larger Native Hawaiian culture, but also the larger local culture that had developed on the island. They wanted to be a part of their new home and their adopted home. That’s what you’re getting, is seeing a lot of the mixing occurring. Even for ethnic Latinx groups, they maintain their sense of their specific ethnic identity, but they also adopted the larger Native Hawaiian local culture so that, for their children growing up and being raised, they became even more of what I call localized Latinos. They’ve adopted the culture so that they’re able to speak both Spanish and Hawaiian-pidgin English, and the mixtures of the food, and just the things they share with each other. It’s been a lot of those interactions and that is what has informed what I’m calling that Pacific Latinidad is that you’re having generations and layers of Latinx folks coming in and being a part of Hawaii in larger society. In mixing and being part of what is developing for them within their own communities, it’s situated and it’s influenced by being in a Pacific Island context, so it’s very different from being on the continental U.S. because there’s also the influence of Native Hawaiian culture and cultural values that they’ve adopted that are very similar to Latino values. It’s really easy to have that sort of acculturation into Hawaii in many ways.

There were tensions at first because, of course, there are moments when they would come and if you’re not understanding who these new migrants are, it’s going to be tension until you get to know them. Then, those tensions are replaced by welcoming and aloha. What I noticed and what people have told me that I’ve interviewed, is that the growing racism — particularly starting in the 1990s, but more intensely in the early 2000s — was a lot of White transplants from the continental United States would come and bring their racism and their xenophobia and their fear of immigrants with them to Hawaii. They would basically influence locals with these racist ideologies, so then you have this sort of backlash, in some ways. There was one instance where a Honolulu city councilman referred to Mexicans as [racial slur] in a council meeting. These things are bleeding over, so this White racism and White xenophobia has spilled over to Hawaii and that created tensions and conflict in various moments. It wasn’t always welcoming, but the takeaway I got was that, for many of them, there was aloha, there was acceptance, there was welcoming, and particularly from the kingdom period on. There’s also this understanding of having to be mindful of — for locals in Hawaii (predominantly Asian American, but also other Latinos, and those who were born and raised in Hawaii) and particularly for Native Hawaiians—this idea of settler colonialism and all these immigrant groups coming in and displacing them, and them having to leave because they can’t afford to live in Hawaii anymore. I sort of encouraged, when I’ve had conversations, being mindful of what Native Hawaiians have to say about it because this is their land. Yes, they welcomed, particularly the Mexican vaqueros, at first. They were very welcoming during the kingdom period and they’ve always been welcoming and having aloha, but also be mindful that they’re going through their struggles for sovereignty and recognition and to be able to live on their own homelands. You have to, in many ways, be allied to these causes and support their struggles in these social movements, rather than just be another immigrant group to come and take land, or to raise the value of the land so that folks have to move.

There’s that layer, but overall, many folks that I’ve talked to have been very involved in working together with Native Hawaiians and locals and bringing this understanding and support, and doing what they can to show that they want to be a part of the larger Hawaii society. Yeah, there’s tension, conflict, and there’s certain elements of racism that come over from the continental U.S., but I think it’s complex because there’s also the welcoming and aloha and acceptance. Folks wanted to be a part of Hawaii, they wanted to belong. They, more often than not, felt aloha and acceptance, so that was sort of why I titled the book in the way that I did.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.

©2023 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech recently that the central bank would stamp out rapid inflation “until the job is done” despite a dropping inflation rate.

While inflation has been lowering, he said officials want to see more progress to convince them that they are truly bringing price increases under control.

“We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective,” he said.

Critics have argued raising interest rates tamper economic growth and the Fed’s strategy so far isn’t working.

Q: Is the Federal Reserve correct in considering additional rate hikes?

Jamie Moraga, Franklin Revere

YES: Additional rate hikes could be warranted if they reduce higher prices for goods and services and get inflation back to the 2 percent goal. The Fed should be careful how much they raise rates to avoid over-tightening and worsening our economic situation. They should also ensure high-interest rates aren’t prolonged, which can affect mortgages, credit cards, and loans (including personal, student, auto, and business), resulting in long-term economic impacts.

David Ely, San Diego State University

YES: While inflation has declined over the past year, common measures of headline and core inflation are still above the Fed’s target of 2 percent. Labor markets are still relatively strong and the likelihood of a recession has diminished, factors that could maintain upward pressure on prices. It is best that the Fed not take another rate hike off the table. This stance signals the Fed’s strong commitment to bringing inflation back to its target.

Ray Major, SANDAG

YES: Increasing rates is one of the few tools the Federal Reserve can use to control inflation. Maintaining a target of 2 percent or lower is crucial for people to build and maintain wealth. The Federal Reserve should take action and do what it can to reach that goal. Additionally, curtailing some of the $5 trillion annual spending would help the nation reach the target even faster and without requiring additional increases in interest rates.

Caroline Freund, University of California-San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy

YES: A key principle of good monetary policy is to have a tightening bias when the economy is running hot. Although there are some signs of cooling, the economy remains pretty hot, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and a consumer spending spree that continues to surprise on the upside. The Fed wants to avoid moving too far, too fast, pushing the U.S. into recession. But taking hikes off the table now would be unnecessarily restrictive. Watching the incoming data, acting if warranted, and retraining credibility is the right approach.

Kelly Cunningham, San Diego Institute for Economic Research

YES: The Fed should continue raising interest rates because inflation is still here, the U.S. credit rating was recently downgraded (only the second time in history), and status as the global reserve currency remains seriously threatened. Henry Hazlitt once said, “Inflation, always and everywhere, is primarily caused by an increase in the supply of money and credit.” The resulting inflationary boom results in readily apparent in bad investments. Necessary corrections and adjustments must occur for healthy economic activity to fully return.

Phil Blair, Manpower

YES: Unfortunately. Price stability is needed to sustain strong labor market conditions forward. The Fed is trying to walk a line between doing too much and too little. Doing too little could allow high inflation to become entrenched and ultimately require a strong monetary policy to fight persistent inflation at a painful cost to employment.

Gary London, London Moeder Advisors

NO: I think it is time to pause interest rate increases. Hiring is down, economic growth is down and inflation, while not down to the targeted (and perhaps unnecessary) 2 percent, is dramatically down. The economy has cooled to more desired levels, muting for the moment concerns about inflation. We are not in recession. Gas and grocery prices seem to be the most inflated, however, and that remains the focus of consumer dissatisfaction.

Alan Gin, University of San Diego

NO: One of the biggest contributors to inflation is the category “Rent of Shelter,” which is up 7.8 percent year-over-year. Given its weight in the Consumer Price Index, that category is responsible for 2.7 percent of the current level of inflation. Remove that and the inflation rate is within the Fed’s target. Some economists argue that higher interest rates contribute to rental inflation by forcing potential buyers to rent instead of buying housing. Landlords may also raise rents to cover higher financing costs.

Bob Rauch, R.A. Rauch & Associates

NO: The Fed should hold rates at current levels as inflation has retreated from a 40-year high last summer. Raising rates further will put us in danger of a recession as past increases will continue to weaken the economy. It will become more expensive and harder for companies and individuals to borrow. The most prudent thing to do is wait and see what impact all the record increases to date have had.

James Hamilton, University of California-San Diego

YES: But I hope they don’t have to follow through. Changes in monetary policy take some time to affect the economy. Inflation has been coming down as a result of the steps the Fed started taking last year. If inflation continues to fall, no further rate hikes will be needed. But if we do not continue to make additional progress with inflation, later this year the Fed will need to consider another hike.

Austin Neudecker, Weave Growth

NO: The impact of their past rate increases has not yet been fully realized. I think signaling that the Fed is willing to do more rate increases is prudent in terms of controlling sentiment. However, I hope that they only execute on the threat if the economy shows sustained or increasing inflation. I would rather have a few percent of additional inflation for a couple of months than create a recession, job losses.

Chris Van Gorder, Scripps Health

YES: There are parallels between today’s environment and the late 1970s when we had to decide whether to keep fighting inflation with higher rates or to relent. Back then, the Fed dropped short-term rates based in part on promising initial data. Within a year, inflation went up, approaching nearly 15 percent annually; the Fed had to raise rates even higher. Powell’s focus on ensuring there isn’t a “second wind” in inflation is unfortunately backed by historical precedence.

Norm Miller, University of San Diego

NO: The Federal Reserve is too anchored to an arbitrary 2 percent target as if it were some magical fulcrum of a balancing act. Inflation is coming down and Powell admitted that real estate has a lagged impact on the CPI that will certainly bring the measurement down, closer to the target, in the months ahead. While the economy is doing well this year, based on statistics to date, job openings are rapidly declining and we should be fearful of over-tightening.

©2023 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

What parts of contemporary culture have been most impacted by hip-hop, which this month celebrates its 50th anniversary and in 2017 surpassed rock as the most popular and widely consumed music in the United States?

Here’s a better question: What parts of contemporary culture haven’t been impacted by hip-hop? Its reach extends not just to music — from rap-metal and bro-country to the Broadway-and-beyond smash “Hamilton” — but also to visual art, dance, fashion, TV, movies, technology, literature, politics, education, Madison Avenue marketing campaigns and American and global culture at large.

“I’ve performed in 116 countries around the world since the 1980s — and it’s because hip-hop took me there,” said rapper and 2013 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Chuck D, the leader of the pioneering group Public Enemy.

“Hip-hop has become the most dominant form of Black music — and, pretty much, all music — in the world,” said Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award-winning singer-songwriter John Legend, whose early collaborators included then-budding hip-hop phenoms Lauryn Hill and Kanye West.

Former Oingo Boingo rock singer Danny Elfman, whose film scores have earned him four Oscar nominations, offered a century-leaping analogy.

“The profound influence of hip-hop is equivalent to the profound influence that jazz had in the 1930s and ‘40s with people like Duke Ellington,” Elfman said. “Both are incredibly innovative art forms that have influenced many people and will continue to do so for many years to come.”

Bronx basement to Harvard

That influence also stretches from elementary schools to the halls of education.

In 2012, the University of Arizona became the first four-year college to offer a minor in hip-hop. That was a decade after Harvard University opened its Hip-hop Archive & Research Institute. The number of annual symposiums focused on the music and its culture has grown exponentially in this century.

“If we want to look at American excellence, we have to look at hip-hop culture as part of the output of American excellence,” said award-winning spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The Kennedy Center’s artistic director of cultural strategy and vice president of social impact in Washington, D.C., Joseph was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences last year.

“Hip-hop was born in August 1973 in New York, and I was born in November 1975 in New York, so I don’t know life without hip-hop,” Joseph continued. “Hip-hop was a lens for me on romance and love, and also on global political struggle and other difficult issues.

“Through the music and the propagators of the music, I learned about the apartheid struggles in South Africa and diasporic strategies. Hip-hop has been truly powerful for me and many others, not just culturally but academically.”

The Kennedy Center is just one of the nation’s cultural centers to embrace hip-hop in a big way. Like Harvard, the center seems a world apart from the music’s humble beginnings.

This month’s 50th anniversary of hip-hop is being pegged to a now-fabled party held in a Bronx basement rec room on Aug. 11, 1973. That was when Clive Campbell — a then-teenage Jamaican immigrant, soon to be known as DJ Kool Herc — played two copies of the same vinyl record.

He did so on side-by-side turntables, moving back and forth, from one record to the other. By mixing and fading between them, and focusing on snappy drum fills, he created the percussive, dance-friendly instrumental interludes — known as “breaks” — between the verses of the songs he was spinning.

Herc’s shouted words of encouragement to his dancing listeners, who he referred to as break-boys and break-girls (or b-boys and b-girls, for short) added to the excitement of the moment. It also helped lay the foundation for what soon became known as rap and hip-hop.

Breaking, which originated in New York in the 1970s, is the oldest style of hip-hop dancing. The term B-boy stems from the instrumental breaks on records, such as James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” which hip-hop DJs would repeat to create dynamic tension on the dance floor.

Jamaican roots

Herc’s Jamaican heritage played a key role in introducing the template for hip-hop in this country. Credit for this goes to such reggae-bred Jamaican-music traditions as mobile sound systems, microphone battles between DJs and speaking — known as “toasting” in Jamaica and emceeing in the U.S. — over the records being played.

Likewise, remixing — the art of sonically restructuring an existing recording of a song by modifying it subtly and overtly — dates to the mid-1970s in Jamaica. It was then that such Kingston-based music pioneers as King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry created the bass-heavy dub reggae style by re-configuring recorded songs in the studio. They paved the way for such American mavericks as Steve “Silk” Hurley, Frankie “Knuckles” Taylor and Arthur Baker.

The absence of live instruments in the early days of hip-hop reflected a sobering socioeconomic reality. Budgets for arts programs — including music education — were largely eliminated at many public schools throughout New York City and in the early 1970s. Concurrently, the state of New York enacted some of the harshest mandatory sentences in the nation for first-time drug offenders.

That made turntables and microphones viable — and invaluable — alternatives for artistic expression, especially for young people in the inner-city with little or no access to guitars, keyboards, drums, horns and other instruments that had previously been available to them through school band programs.

Some have since sarcastically referred to former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as the “godfather of hip-hop” because of the draconian school budget cuts and drug laws he helped engineer.

Hip-hop, in many ways, was a reaction to those grim social and political realities. It provided a much-needed means of expression for disenfranchised youth who seized the opportunity to articulate their lives through music.

The records first played by Herc at that 1973 basement party — initially classics by James Brown, The Incredible Bongo Band and the Canadian rock group Babe Ruth — served as another template for hip-hop, which salutes a dizzying array of genres by sampling and recombining them in new ways.

Herc will perform Friday at New York’s Yankee Stadium as part of a massive Hip-Hop 50 Live concert. The 32-act bill mixes such old-school favorites as Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, Roxanne Shante and The Sugarhill Gang with Snoop Dogg, Common, Wiz Khalifa and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie.

No major 50th anniversary of hip-hop concerts are scheduled in San Diego, although rappers 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes will perform Aug. 31 at North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in Chula Vista. On Sept. 30, the Kroc Center in Rolando will host “We Are Hip-Hop — 1973-Forever,” which features students and staff members from The Origin Hip-Hop Academy and Hip-Hop Dreamz Performing Arts.

Rapping itself originated hundreds of years ago with the West African tradition of the griot, the oral historians who wrote and performed songs to document in music the past and present of their people. That tradition, which continues to this day, was extended in the late 1960s and early 1970s by such pioneering rap artists as The Last Poets in New York and The Watts Prophets in Los Angeles.

“We’re all products of that continuum, whether we recognize it or not,” acclaimed rapper and actor Mos Def told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2002. (Unless otherwise specified, all the other quotes in this article are from Union-Tribune interviews conducted over the past few months.)

“Do I want to use that tradition as a guide, and to improve on it in a useful way that doesn’t molest the tradition?” Def asked. “Sure … Scholars, critics and academics understand the connection between (griots), the blues and jazz and hip-hop; young people — ghetto people, poor people — should know it, too. It shouldn’t be information that’s classified for the high academic or cultural strata. If something’s good, why keep it a secret?”

Silver anniversary

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop got off to an early start at last year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The lineup included Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Eminem and Compton native Kendrick Lamar, who in 2018 became the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for music.

Lamar’s 2017 album — the all-uppercase “DAMN.” — earned a Pulitzer Prize, the first hip-hop album win the prestigious honor.

The Pulitzer voting committee hailed “DAMN.” as “a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life.”

Lamar’s victory came on the heels of playwright and actor Lin Manuel-Miranda’s 2015 hip-hop musical “Hamilton.” The Pulitzer judges hailed it as “a landmark American musical about the gifted and self-destructive founding father whose story becomes both contemporary and irresistible.”

The silver anniversary of hip-hop officially got under way this February at the Grammy Awards. There, drummer and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson — the leader of The Roots, the house band on TV’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” — curated a 50th anniversary hip-hop tribute.

Clocking in at 14 minutes, it featured nearly three-dozen performers, including Grandmaster Flash, Salt-N-Pepa, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Lil Baby and La Jolla resident Swizz Beatz, who is the husband of singer Alicia Keys.

The Grammy salute was a prelude to many other anniversary events across the country and around the world. These range from the Brooklyn Library’s current Jay-Z exhibit to The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s second annual Hip-Hop Block Party, which takes place Friday in Washington, D.C.

“Hip-hop is a culture and a lifestyle, and it is always timely,” said Public Enemy’s Chuck D, whose real name is Carlton Douglas Ridenhour.

Now 63, Chuck D this year launched a “culture app” for people 35 and older called Bring the Noise. It is named after the galvanizing opening song on Public Enemy’s second album, 1988’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.”

The group’s next album, “Fear of a Black Planet,” concluded with the even more galvanizing “Fight the Power,” which served as the opening song for the Spike Lee’s Oscar-nominated 1989 film “Do the Right Thing.”

“Hip-hop was a revolutionary music when it first came out, which is something it has in common with reggae,” said singer-songwriter Ziggy Marley, the oldest son of the late Bob Marley. “Artists like Public Enemy, KRS-One and Kendrick Lamar have powerful messages.”

Indeed, Lamar’s 2015 song “Alright” served as a pivotal social protest anthem at numerous Black Lives Matter marches. “Alright” was denounced, on the air, by Fox TV’s Geraldo Rivera, who slammed the song’s revolutionary zeal and sometimes grim lyrics but completely overlooked its ultimately uplifting message of hope.

Global impact

Speaking of television, Public Enemy’s Chuck D did not describe rapping and hip-hop in 1989 as “CNN for Black people,” although he is often credited for doing so. What he did say is: “Rap is Black America’s TV station. It gives a whole perspective of what exists and what Black life is all about.”

His observation came one year after the the debut of “Yo! MTV Raps.” The show, which aired for two hours each weekday from 1988 to 1993, quickly became the most-watched program on MTV.

It introduced hip-hop to millions of White male suburban American teenagers, who soon constituted the largest segment of the hip-hop-buying public for records, clothing, posters and more.

The success of “Yo! MTV Raps” prompted MTV to air the shows in dozens of countries around the world. This in turn enabled hip-hop and contemporary Black American culture to make an indelible impact.

“When you go to other countries, they pay more attention to the roots and history of hip-hop than they do in the U.S. Kids in Europe know things about hip-hop in the 1980s that I had forgotten about,” said Cypress Hill rapper and Cuban native Sen Dog. His group celebrated its 30 anniversary with a July 25 concert with the San Diego Symphony, which last year shared the stage here at concerts with hip-hop stars Common and Nas.

That impact crosses borders and genres.

“My vocal style is very much influenced by hip-hop, Alex Turner, the lead singer of the English rock band Arctic Monkeys, told the Union-Tribune in 2006. “When I was at school, I liked Cypress Hill, Roots Manuva and stuff like that.”

Then there’s fellow Brit Jamie Cullum, who became a star performing jazz-informed pop.

“I got into jazz by listening to (hip-hop group) A Tribe Called Quest,” Cullum told the Union-Tribune in 2006. “I heard a Miles (Davis) sample on a Tribe song and sought out the original record by Miles. Then, I got his ‘In a Silent Way’ album and Herbie Hancock’s ‘Headhunters,’ and heard how similar they were to Massive Attack, Roni Size and other (electronica) music I was listening to.”

Like rock music before it, hip-hop was largely created by Black American artists as a vital means of expression that can reflect — and transcend — its time and place.

Like rock, hip-hop celebrates excess and larger-than-life imagery, the larger the better, as well as more intimate and personal aspects of everyday life. It can be inspirational and aspirational, serious and lighthearted, revolutionary or reductive.

“Growing up in the hip-hop generation, I was always influenced by hip-hop as a powerful tool, because it influences a lot of young people,” said Nigerian-born musician Seun Kuti, the son of Afro-pop legend Fela Kuti.

“But then it became a multinational corporate brand, and hip-hop became a corporate vending machine and lost the ideals of preaching black empowerment. I used to love Public Enemy and their song, ‘Fight the Power.’ I don’t see them fighting the power now.”

Indeed, hip-hop can also be banal and trite, much like rock music. But like rock, hip-hop has provided a key platform for disenfranchised young people who otherwise had little or no voice — and little or no options to be seen and heard.

Like rock, hip-hop has fueled considerable controversy for being profane and sexist, dangerous and threatening, and for inciting rebellious and sometimes even violent behavior. Like rock, what resulted offended or outraged many parents and authority figures, which — as with other music styles before it — accounted for part of hip-hop’s allure to young listeners.

“Of course, hip-hop is a bigger microscope than other musical styles because, I believe, the Black male lifestyle is under a bigger microscope.” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the leader of the band The Roots, told the Union-Tribune in 2002.

“So the more negative aspects of it will get focused on more often than not. But I’m a person who investigates the whole terrain of a culture, be it Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, or rock, where you have cool stuff and politically incorrect stuff.”

Like rock, hip-hop was created by young Black musicians and then embraced and appropriated by young White performers, most notably the Beastie Boys and Eminem, who enjoyed greater commercial success than many of the Black artists who inspired them.

In 1981, the Debbie Harry-fronted rock band Blondie’s “Rapture” became the first hip-hop-oriented song to top the U.S. pop singles charts.

“We were really pleased,” Blondie guitarist Chris Stein told the Union-Tribune in 2006. “but ‘Rapture’ was sort of an homage (to hip-hop), more than an attempt to do it.”

The commercial success of “Rapture” came 42 years ago. That was eight years after DJ Kool Herc first demonstrated that two turntables and a microphone were all that was needed to start, and sustain, a party that birthed a transformational movement.

Ultimately, like rock — which marked its own 50th anniversary in 2004 — hip-hop has endured and been so embraced by the mainstream that it has become part of the very establishment it once threatened.

“Hip-hop has become foundational,” said John Legend. “That’s something to really celebrate.”

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first-prize winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”

As hip-hop celebrates its first half-century, it’s an opportune time to have performers in the field reflect on the genre, its evolution and its strengths and weaknesses.

The following quotes are from interviews with San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga.

Kanye West (2005)

“I talk about very serious issues (in my songs), and hide them behind similes and metaphors. My mother always taught me about the kings and queens of Africa, and about the sacrifices and the accomplishments of the people in the civil rights movement. My dad told me about many songs in the African-American community, and what they addressed and meant. He broke down how it was for me, when I was 12. When it was time for me to rap, a lot of that came out.”

De La Soul’s David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, who died early this year (1989)

“We figured the more puzzling or humorous our music sounds, the more people will want to get into it. You don’t have to have a hard tone; the music can be soft and smooth. And it’s important for us to say a lot, and have people listen and not just dance.”

Wyclef Jean (2000)

“Hip-hop is creativity. I’m a showman; I’m like Cab Calloway When I was in high school, I watched all these old films Cab was in. He had a big impact on audiences, and he was someone I looked up to. And I was fortunate to know him, just through his music, because he was way, way before my time.”

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s Melle Mel (2007)

“Most hip-hop now is just image-driven. They have to re-teach people what true hip-hop is, so that they can have a realistic vision of what the music is about. Because now it’s not about the music. It’s about the cars and girls and everything the music isn’t about.”

Guru, a former substitute teacher and caseworker for foster children (1995)

“I’ve always been a message-oriented rapper. Because of my experience in those occupations, there’s no way I can pick up a microphone and not say something I felt was relevant. Rap can be used as a tool, and I feel compelled to do that. But I don’t like it when rappers can’t articulate what their lyrics are about.”

Coolio (1996)

“There are a lot of governments around the world that are oppressive. The people they’re oppressing — whether they’re Black, brown or green — are poor. And I’m down with the have-nots. One day the have-nots may rise up. I may be a ‘have’ by then. But I’ll still be down with the have-nots.”

Mos Def (2002)

“There’s nothing wrong with using music as a diversion, as long as it’s a useful one. At the end of the day, people want to feel good and be reminded that life should be enjoyed. But it is a serious endeavor, because the things you say (in song) can affect people’s lives and perceptions. So you should be mindful of it.”

Queen Latifah (2004)

“I can sing forever. I don’t know if I can rap forever and stay as sharp as the sharpest girl in the game, or if the more positive messages I deliver (in rap) will be (well) received.”

Nick Cannon (2016)

“I grew up in the hip-hop community, and I was one of the very few to take it as far as I did. I looked up to quite a few people at the time. From Southeast One to Mickey Slick, there are people to this day in that (San Diego) community I still have fellowship with. We came up in this together, and they passed the torch to me.”

Public Enemy’s Minister of Information James Norman Jr. (1990)

“We’re into this for a specific purpose, and it’s not to be so-called ‘entertainers.’ We’re into it to deliver a message and raise the level of consciousness of, first, Black Americans, and, then, all those (others) who listen to us. So, our dedication is solely to making this a better place for everybody.”

Us3’s Mel Simpson (1994)

“We wanted to apply hip-hop principles to jazz and jazz principles to hip-hop. We wanted to do the world’s first polyrhythmic hip-hop track and subvert the norm.”

Common (2003)

“There are some things I really don’t like about hip-hop. I don’t like the regurgitation of music — everybody using the same formula, the same producers. The lack of creativity, the fear of not being free and taking chances, that’s what I don’t like … I also don’t like the limitations in the subject matter in a lot of hip-hop. But I’m starting to see improvement.”

The Roots band leader Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (2002)

“The Roots have survived because we go to other places. We know the value of going to Asia, South America and places you wouldn’t think hip-hop wasn’t popular, like Prague and Moscow. Man, they have more respect for the history of hip-hop than we do. I’m talking 14-year-old kids in Moscow who know who (rap pioneer) Afrika Bambaataa is and asked us about him. You ask a young Black kid here today who Afrika Bambaataa is, and they think it’s a country.”

Rakaa Taylor of Dilated Peoples (2006)

“Rap music, especially with the way a lot of rappers present themselves, reinforces stereotypes on one level. But it erases stereotypes on the other hand. The best thing about hip-hop is that it’s a common denominator that has brought the world together. The worst thing about hip-hop is the parasitic elements that feed off it, without giving back to it.”

Lupe Fiasco (2008)

“A band can become a crutch. If you look back through the history of hip-hop, in the beginning it was just you and a microphone, and the challenge was: ‘How do you rock the crowd when you don’t have any music?’ So, it’s like training and actually learning how to entertain a crowd with the most minimal amount of tools. … If you don’t know how to entertain with just you and a DJ, first, a band won’t help you.”

Breakdance champion Omar Delgado Macias who performs as RoxRite (2013)

“We go to Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, South Africa, you name it, all these different places where you wouldn’t expect people to break. We teach, judge contests and do demonstrations and media appearances, where we talk and teach about hip-hop and breaking. It’s a way to educate and give back to communities around the world.”

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first-prize winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”