Hip Hop

This month, Terry Monaghan writes about the origins of hip hop, taking us right back to the style’s roots in the Bronx, New York City

Back in the late 1970s popular dancing seemed a stark choice between the slick, smooth styles of mainstream disco, or the raucous excitement of “pogo-ing” punks and heavy metal “head bangers”. But then a bewildering tsunami of new dances that combined both style and energy began sweeping around the world. Named hip hop by the media, back in “Planet Rock”, as the South Bronx section of New York City was known, it was originally called “b-boying”. Picking up further strength later from South Los Angeles, it seemed unstoppable.

It was more than just dancing though. DJs and MCs “scratching” and “rapping” on portable sound systems provided the music, pieces of linoleum or cardboard transformed streets into performance spaces, while adjoining walls decorated with graffiti, and dancers wearing durable “street” clothes that could take the rigours of this type of dancing set the style for this unprecedented bout of worldwide enthusiasm. Although the dancing is still often called “hip hop” by newcomers, “b-boying” is the preferred term on the US East Coast, while “street dancing” is more common on the West. However, the latter includes all the hip hop styles of dance such as Locking, Popping, Boogaloo etc along with the non hip hop genre of House and the new style, Krumping.

B-boying emerged during the 1970s when drugs, street crime, poverty and unemployment severely aggravated life in the Bronx and Harlem. With New York City on the edge of bankruptcy, many Harlemites had been forced to move to the Bronx because their homes were destroyed in the name of “slum clearance.” “Turf wars” resulted, when youths from different housing “projects” clashed as they tried to establish a new pattern of community identities. In contrast to the fantasy escapism of disco and rock this new generation of Bronxites confronted their reality by resorting to old Harlem traditions of substituting real battles, for music and dance ones. Street corner dance challenges grew out of DJs creatively extending the rhythmic “breaks” of disco recordings. According to original participants, when the DJs joined different “breaks” together and added extra rhythms by “scratching,” they gave the new dancers the name of “b-boys” i.e. “break boys”.

South Bronx and Harlem were the ideal locations for these developments as different communities intersected there. Inclusivity was at the heart of b-boying. Scavenging the past for steps and movements that other dance crazes had missed or ignored, b-boys also took from other cultural traditions and improvised where necessary. Although presented primarily as “performance”, because not everyone could dance at the same time, the early scene’s provision of innumerable “performance spaces” made it overwhelmingly social in character. The former Bronx DJ Africa Bambaataa’s group Zulu Nation asserted the worldwide scope of this inclusiveness, in contrast to the preceding exclusivity of “black nationalism”.

“Cool Herc”, the original street DJ, brought the Jamaican practice of setting up sound systems on street corners to the Bronx. Slightly later a reworking of the Jamaican tradition of “toasting”, now known as “dub-poetry”, became Bronx style “rapping”. Old Harlem authentic jazz dances were a major source of inspiration. The Old Father Time step that dated back to Minstrel days resurfaced to become “Up-Rocking,” which was then extended by the zig-zag movements of the “breakdown.” B-boys breathed new life into the old jazz versions of Russian dance brought to the US more than 100 years previously by Jewish émigrés fleeing Tsarist persecution. Ever younger waves of Bronx b-boys transformed and extended these largely Cossack steps with seemingly impossible rhythmic torso twisting and leaping, and back and shoulder spinning, into the style that most people recognise as hip hop. Somehow Afro-Brazilian movements were also incorporated, including head spinning and capoeira poses. Latin dance crews such as Salsoul emerged and extended the back spinning while helping to weave the many different innovations into one cohesive dance style.

As some original dancers faded into the background, new enthusiasts emerged, most notably Rock Steady Crew, who ensured the genre continued to develop. Joined by New York City Breakers, and The Magnificent Force, promoters began featuring major “battles” between these leading crews. Unleashing a national frenzy of interest through their brief appearance in the Hollywood film Flashdance, Rock Steady Crew set the LA scene ablaze. The latter took the enthusiasm to new heights with the inclusion of b-boying in the closing ceremony of the 1984 LA Olympics. Even the media began describing the dancing as “breakdancing” instead of hip hop.

Since the mid 1970s the LA scene had been evolving its own new dance styles out of the former disco funk scene. Focusing on “body dancing” it reinterpreted jazz age rhythmic torso movements such as the Shimmy, the Itch and the Shake with James Brown’s funk style rhythms. A whole new dimension of hip hop movement took shape. Don Campbell and Toni Basil in LA respectively played major roles in creating and promoting Locking. The Electric Boogaloos from Fresno reworked the old Snake Hips and Mess Around jazz dances similarly into their distinctive style.

Hip hop was ready to invade the world, and the UK became one of its first conquests. Malcolm McLaren led the attack in 1982 with an initially bewildering mixture of scratching, rapping, breaking and square dancing in his “Buffalo Girls” music-video. Before long, thousands of enthusiasts were converging on “breakdancing” events such as the South Bank GLC show in 1984 and the Hippodrome Electro-Rock concert of 1985.

Even as b-boying spread globally, in its original heartland decline set in. Graffiti was increasingly attacked as “vandalism”, and with major promoters taking over and pop stars cashing in on it, the dance lost its “community” spirit as the Bronx community began losing artistic control. Michael Jackson’s misnaming of the “Backslide” as the “Moonwalk” in his classic “Billy Jean” video didn’t stop him accumulating a stupendous fortune from a succession of major pop hits that owed a lot to hip hop. Rap, that originally spoke of positive community values of social self-help and black history and improving the ghetto, became increasingly obsessed with “gangsters and bling”. Stars like MC Hammer who retained dance components in their performances, settled for slick unvarying renditions of the old Charleston steps.

Offshoots of Locking and Popping known as Voguing and Wacking, met up with the new Chicago “house music” in the mid-1980s. Together they reinvigorated the former disco, now “club” scene. Interest in hip hop dance faded as style became elevated over acrobatic energy, and the “breaking crews” literally broke up. A new New York Vogue star, Willi Ninja, insisted however that Locking was this dance’s roots. In 1990 he inspired Madonna to record “Vogue” which dramatically reinvigorated her pop career. Possibly because of her inclusion of vogue dancers in live performances the surviving b-boys began to stir. In 1991 Rock Steady Crew and others moved back into action.

Connecting up with surviving pockets of “breaking” enthusiasts round the world, they resumed teaching and performing. Turning their backs on the sex and violence themes of rap, they included women breakers in greater proportions than the first time round. The excitement returned, but this time they kept hold of the dance. Even when the LA dancer Crumbs morphed b-boy moves into Gene Kelly’s original Singing in the Rain dance in the widely watched advert for Volkswagen, control was retained. Towards the end of the 1990s the media and Hollywood were fortunately distracted by the new interest in swing. An advert for clothing firm Gap, incorporating lindy hop, and film The Mask starring Jim Carrey, had set off a new short-lived wave of youthful lindy hopping across the USA.

In LA Krumping was more battle orientated than the ensemble presentations of Locking and Electric Boogaloo and helped keep the focus on street creativity. Although rap had grown even bigger, b-boys started reappearing in rap music videos. Wise heads from both the East and West Coasts surveyed the different forms of hip hop and agreed on their respective authorships which largely prevented disputes from disrupting the renewed and expanding worldwide demand for performance and teaching.

The revival of UK interest has grown steadily with an expanding number of sell-out major events now on the calendar. Hip hop companies, dancing many different styles from various countries appear in Breakin’ Convention each Spring at Sadler’s Wells hosted by Jonzi D. Working hard at promoting “Hip Hop Dance Theatre” Jonzi has a revamped version of his production Tag …. Me vs. The City touring the UK from March – May 2007. Robert Hylton’s fusion of contemporary dance and hip hop into “Urban Classicism” is worth seeing. Benji Reid has been involved in various productions including Life Of a B-Boy. The determination of the UK scene to “keep it real” by refusing to subordinate their control of the dance to so-called TV “dance experts”, can be gauged by the failure of the BBC to include any b-boying in its “Strictly Dance Fever” competitions.

B-boying has come a long way in the last 30 years. Banxy, world famous graffiti artist and b-boy since 1982, played the lead role in the first Tag and is now developing a new show Busk, notes the size of the challenge facing newcomers. Originally, he argues there were few accessible role models, and quality dancing videos were hard to come by, so you watched carefully. Newcomers are now spoilt for choice with the website YouTube (www.youtube.com) and the variety of competitions and stage productions on offer. Everyone has an opinion, so it’s difficult to devise your own style, which ultimately a successful b-boy or b-girl needs to do. Maybe the solution lies within the problem? Somewhere amongst all those possibilities lies the answer, and those dancers determined enough will find it!

UK Events 2007:

May 2-4 – Tag… Me vs. the City, Peacock Theatre, London – Jonzi-D’s “hip hop dance theatre” with an excellent cast of breakers, an impressive stage set and superb graphical backdrops

May 5-7 – Breakin’ Convention ‘07: Sadler’s Wells, London – three nights of the best dancers from around the world. Expect a huge variety of styles and presentations, stunning performances and entrance tickets selling out early!

Oct 2007 – UK-B-Boy Championships at Brixton Academy, London. Keep an eye on www.funkstylerz.co.uk where dates will be announced

Watch out for two other major competitions – the UK Hip Hop Championships that usually take place in August, and the semi-secret Red Bull B-Boy Championships that is announced by word of mouth only. If you discover the details of this event, you know you have established good connections!