Music screeching through the room, crowds going wild, and anticipation growing inside while holding a b-boy stance in the South Bronx. A young boy holds his ground as his peers dance to the music, but as the break segment of the song awakens, the young boy rushes to the middle of the dance floor. As few people know, this is established the start of a worldwide phenomenon and lifestyle. Hip hop is a misunderstood culture that has been driven out from its roots by media and the new generation. Society knows little behind the birth of hip hop, but as for the dance portion of hip hop, b-boying is the true art form. Clive "Kool Herc" Campbell, an African American DJ known to hip hop pioneers as the father of hip hop, gave the name "b-boy" to the young African American and Puertorican dancers who danced to the break of the song. The word "b-boy" itself refers to "break boy", "beat boy" and "Bronx boy". This represents who they were and were they came from. From what began in the bureaus of the Bronx, leaked and spread through the world since its massive exposure in the 1980's film Flashdance.This film featured the pioneers from Rock Steady Crew as b-boying's first début in the spot light. But behind the scenes, b boying offers more than meets the eye, so it does not make it a simple task. B-boying not only opens the doors for physical endurance, but allows a student of the dance form to experience a lifestyle full of passion, as well as the imagination and confidence to fight through a battle and life.
As far as physical endurance, dancing in general feeds on a workout. But as for "breaking", another name for b boying, gives off an aerobatic workout as well as a dance workout. See, breaking consist of a foundation based on top rock, f...
... middle of paper ...
...e involved in it.
A b boy battling on the dance floor is a human fighting for life. For some students of this culture b boying is what made them grow as persons. “B boying made me develop a competitive nature, and helped boost my confidence level. It opened my mind to ideas and creativeness which I wasn’t able to grasp before. I met and interacted with a lot more people… b boying is the center of my life PERIOD. I would be nothing without it” (Demerin, Donovan). In other words, if you are passionate about something, it will become the center of your life and thoughts eventually. Knowing all this, you can see how a student of this dance form—b boying—experiences a lifestyle involved with passion, imagination, creativity and confidence without having to only care about physical endurance but to fight through life the same way they can battle across the dance floor.
Hip Hop started in the South Bronx, New York City in the 1970’s. Hip Hop as a music and culture started when block parties became popular, particular among African-American youths who reside in Bronx. Deejays would play popular songs on turntables at that time and start to break or “scratching” in between playing songs to create their own beats. Hip Hop served as a voice for the inner city youths were from a low-income families. The culture would reflect their way of life. As the years of Hip Hop progressed, a new form of Hip Hop was introduced that was called “gangster rap”, which rapped about the hyper-masculinity and violence. The biggest controversy in the Hip Hop world took place between The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Both artists took lyrical jabs at each other until their untimely death.
The typical idea of a dancer is that they are tall, slender, full of energy, and lucky because they dance with all of the “stars”. Much of this is true, however, what many people do not think of are the many hardships that a dancer goes through in order to achieve their high status in the dance world. It takes much hard work and determination along with good direction to become a dancer. However, nothing good comes without a price. Dancers often times have many pressures put on them which can lead to physical and emotional damages. These damages occur through the pressures from the media, parents, teammates, and the stereotype that society has placed on dancers.
By universal definition, "sport" is listed as "an activity involving physical exertion and skill that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often undertaken competitively." Football, basketball, baseball, soccer and other primary activities have always been concretely defined as sports in society. However, one of the most physically demanding activities is constantly forgotten when it comes to the realm of sports- dance. Dance requires a tremendous amount of training and creates an aura of competition in which people compete to be the best, win, and take home the trophy- just like in traditionally accepted sports. These sports, however, do not possess an element of psychological health threats that some competitive dancers unfortunately must account for due to the emphasis placed on physical appearance.
Hip-hop started out in the Bronx in New York City with DJ Clive “Cool Herc” Campbell. A man of Jamaica, he essentially birthed the new genre of music by carrying over the Jamaican tradition of Toasting, which “is boastful poetry or over a melody provided by a deejay.” (ROOTS ‘n’ RAP, rice.edu) Its creation can be accredited to the record spinning DJ’s of the clubs of the 1970s. From this, the Master of Ceremonies (MC) was created. He would come up with creative rhymed phrases that could be delivered over a beat or acapella at dance clubs. They consisted of boasts, insults, “uptown throw downs”, and political commentary. From there, hip-hop only grew more and more popular. Being that it was created in a dominantly African American neighborhood, it became a tool for blacks to express their problems with society and be heard by the rest of the country. Though it was a microphone for African Americans to express themselves to the rest of the country, there were some other things that happened within the black community through hip-hop as well. One of these things was a diss track.
Break dancing actually originated a few years prior to DJ Afrika Bambataa. Break dancers (B-Boys and B-Girls), would dance during the breaks in the music while steady beats were played. Eventually rap and break dancing united and hip hop began.
In the words of rapper Busta Rhymes, “hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape” Hip-hop is a culture that emerged from the Bronx, New York, during the early 1970s. Hip-Hop was a result of African American and Latino youth redirecting their hardships brought by marginalization from society to creativity in the forms of MCing, DJing, aerosol art, and breakdancing. Hip-hop serves as a vehicle for empowerment while transcending borders, skin color, and age. However, the paper will focus on hip-hop from the Chican@-Latin@ population in the United States. In the face of oppression, the Chican@-Latin@ population utilized hip hop music as a means to voice the community’s various issues, desires, and in the process empower its people.
So for eight months I’ve been learning the skills of hip hop and breakdancing by going to at a hip hop club at every week where I learned the basic skills of breaking like how to top-rock and six-step. B-boying is a form of hip hop dancing which is popularly known as breaking. It consists of top or up rock, footwork, spinning moves (power moves), and freeze. B-boying came from Bronx, NY. The term "B-boy" or "B-boying" was created by Kool Herc who was a DJ spinning at block parties in Bronx back in the days. B-Boys means break boys and they were called so because they dance to the break part of music. Later, by repeating this break part done by DJ, "breakbeats" was born. Although people tend to pick up only power moves, real b-boys should master the all elements of b-boying. There are controversy between people who emphasize on style and power moves. One puts his emphasis on power moves and their combination and the other shows their style and individuality by footwork and freeze. Rock Steady Crew has been the one who emphasizes styles to show dancer's individual flavor. Even though power moves have a great impact and very energetic, it is hard to put individual flavor...
Black culture in our society has come to the point where it is allied with pop culture. The most popular music genres, slang terms, to dance forms it all comes from black culture. Hip hop emerged from black culture, becoming the soul of it that is seen in the media. Hip hop helped the black community by creating new ways of expressing themselves, from breakdance, graffiti, rap and other music, to slang. This culture was rooted in their tradition and created from something new. Hip hop created a new form of music that required the use of turn tables, ‘cuts’, loops, rhythm, rhyme, stories, and deep-rooted emotions, but also incorporated black oral forms of storytelling using communal authors.
Rap Music, a genre of R&B that includes rhythmic poetry put over a musical background. The background consists of beats combined with digitally isolated sound bites from other recordings. The first recording of rap was made in 1979 and the genre began to take notice in the U.S. in the mid-1980s. Though the name rap is often used back and forth with hip hop. The name hip-hop comes from one of the earliest phrases used in rap on the song “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang. “I said a hip hop, hippie to the hippie, the hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it to the bang bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie, to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.”. In addition to rap music, the hip-hop subculture also formed other methods of expression like break dancing, graffiti art, a unique slang vocabulary, and fashion sense.
Music has been around since the beginning of civilization. Music was used to tell myths, religious stories, and warrior tales. Since the beginning of civilization music has greatly progressed. Music still tells a story, we know just have many genres to satisfy the cultural and social tastes of our modern society. Hip Hop is a genre of music that has significantly grown the last couple of decades. It's increased popularity has brought it to the forefront of globalization. Technological advances has made it easy for Hip Hop to spread out globally. This occurrence of globalization is a key example that as our cultural borders are broken down by technology, our own cultural and social practices become fluid. Although there are many positive and negative comments about the globalization of Hip Hop, it is a reflection of the growing phenomenon occurring all over the world.
It is impossible to separate my voice from this topic, as I was born as an African
“Call and response” is also utilized, which is when the DJ and the dancers will communicate in order to maintain a certain hip hop flow, and to encourage audience enthusiasm. The moves, along with the music works together to emphasize the rapid rhythm breaks. The dancers perform moves that involve flips, upside down movement, and spinning, along with “drops” that were smooth transitions to “front swipes, back swipes, dips, and corkscrews”.” One dancer even performs a “chair freeze” which was originally one of the most popular break dancing moves, and is when the arms and upper body support the body while the legs and lower half of the body are free flowing (Forman & Neal, 2012, pg. 58). These moves require much momentum and balance, which according to popular b-boy Ken Swift, is an essential aspect to this hip hop movement (Forman & Neal, 2012, pg. 59). In both films, b-boying or breakdancing is a way to resolve some type of conflict or competition due to being able to “attack without mercy yet still see their opponents as distinct and valuable human beings” and avoid any unnecessary violence that already occurs in drastic rates within inner city neighborhoods (Chang, 2006, pg.
Hip hop dance was important to African American culture because it allowed them to create their own culture, their own music their own style. When watching Flex is Kings, there are many young men in a video demonstrating what hip hop dance culture has evolved to in the 21st century. They are a contemporary urban dance movement. One can see the emotion and the “seriousness” in their movements. Hip hop dance is these people’s lives’(“Flex Is Kings”). Flex is a type of street dance, sometimes is called “bone breaking” due to their moves looking like a person either has no bones or that they are literally breaking them to create the skin cringing dances they create(“Flexing”). Dancers such as Storyboard P have mastered the art of flexing. He mentions in one of his interviews that when dancing one is revealing who they are (“Storyboard P”). African American people lean on this particular art form to elaborate how, as a race we have been able to display our culture to mainstream America. Mainstream is basically a majority of people (Mainstream).
In addition to being used as an artistic demonstration, ballet can also be used as a sport. There is a saying among ballerinas, “Ballet. Like sport, only harder.” Why harder? you might think. It is undertaken mostly by girly girls. It is demanding because...
I know that while I dance my heart rate rises and I get exercise. Many of my dance teachers will tell us to keep the right form until we have muscle memory or until we don’t have to think about moving our muscles in a certain way. In one of my dance classes we had a day dedicated to our bodies, seeing what parts of the body are affected by dancing. I found that we use all of our bodies in dance, so it