BREAKDANCING BREAKDOWN - UK
from The Bomb Hip-Hop Magazine Issue #46 (April/May 1996)
A considered opinion by Fluent-C, Suspense, Toze, and Zia
B-Boy crews received top billing at Hip-Hop jams and
block parties, but that was long ago and far-away. The
time was the very late 60's and early 70's. The place
was New York. Between then and now a lot has
happened to Hip-Hop, B-Boys and Breaking. All have
wanned and waxed in popularity during the past quarter
century, especially breaking. But now Breaking is back
and it�s time to remind ourselves of its roots in the
United States and its chequered history in Britain.
The Seventies
Whether it began on the left or right side of America
remains open to debate. Here in the U.K. we prefer to
think both Los Angeles and New York contributed to its
development. In New York, it was Kool DJ Herc, the
very first Hip-Hop DJ, who coined the phrase B-Boy in
1969. The Jamaican-born performer had developed a
technique of mixing records so that the dancing sounds
never stopped. His particular skill, later copies by
legions of others, was to meld the percussion breaks
from two identical records, playing the break over and
over, switching from one deck to the other. Kool Herc
called these 'Cutting Breaks'.
When he performed to Breaks at crowded venues, such
as the Hervalo in the Bronx, he would shout loudly
'B-Boys go down!' and this was the cue for dancers to
cut and jump their gymnastics. Even today nobody is
quite clear what Kool Herc meant by his phrase. Some
suggest B-Boys stands for 'Boogie Boy' while others
insist it means 'Break Boy'. The later has become the
favored choice. But who were the original B-Boys and
where had they learned their skillz? Again the answer is
fairly straight-forward. They had simply adapted what
they had been doing on the ghetto streets.
The pioneers were members of New York and L.A.
street gangs who had taught themselves martial arts - in
particular a Brazilian style - to defend themselves from
attacks by rivals. Because of this many dance moves
appeared aggressive and extremely violent during the
early years. For instance, 'Uprock', performed
correctly, can look very much like a scene snatched
from a old Kung-Fu movie. 'Uprock' was probably the
first form of Breaking. From it springs many other moves
to continue the dance on the floor as a single rhythmic
activity. It was so convincing that many over-zealous
night club managers and their bouncers interpreted the
dance as a real fight in the making. The fact is that
sometimes is was.
While many youngsters learned quickly that it was easier
as B-Boys to receive approbation from their peers and
often earn large amounts of money as well from their
performances, others still preferred to risk their lives and
limbs on the streets in the needless pursuit of becoming
gangstas. As a consequence some dancers remained
committed gang members, determined to settle old
scores and so sometimes battles did erupt on the
dance-floors. Understandably the media reported these
incidents and very soon Hip-Hop came to mean
violence, crime and general trouble-making in the
public's eye, although these negative qualities were found
in other entertainment areas as well.
Over on the West Coast, meanwhile, many L.A. gangs
were dancing in the streets too, but each was trying to
out-do the others by showing off more complex and
dynamic performances, still influences by Kung-Fu.
What 'Uprock' was to New Yorkers, 'Locking' had
become to the Electro-Boogie-loving La-La youth. It
had been started by Lockatron Jon and Shabba-Doo.
Shabba was also responsible for introducing New
Yorkers to 'Popping', which many claim to be the first,
real hip-hop dance. They even go as far as to say they
were performing it in 1969.
In New York local dancers added waves and smoother
movements to the 'Popping', and that's the style which
exists today. Soon it was very popular in discos and part
of the 70's mainstream. At that time it was known as
'The Robot' and a early exponent was Charlie Robot
who used to appear on American TV's 'Soul Train'
program. He took his style and added the pops and lock
we recognize today. 'Locking', too, became part of the
broad disco culture and many dancers adopted
Breaking moves to expand their dance-floor routines.
We need to look no further than the movie musicals of
the 70's to underline the point. Remember John
Travolta's Saturday Night Fever, 'Roller Boogie'
and even the anodyne Xanadu which starred the
sweeter than sweet Olivia Newton John, an Australian
export impossible to associate with Hip-Hop?
The Eighties
Everywhere new moves were being added to the form
and to popularize them Broadway choreographers were
sanding the raw edges and trying to format moves into a
style which would not be out of place in 'Come
Dancing'. Mainstream pop artists were blatantly stealing
the B-Boy moves, claiming props for originality, and
offering themselves to the suburban middle-classes as
the ultimate in street cred. Sanitized and safe, of course.
The ultimate 'lift' was probably used by Michael
Jackson in the 80's when he did the 'Moonwalk',
thrilling pre-teens and their parents, but the underground
knew that the man owed a debt to veteran funksta
James Brown. Brown had hatched the 'Goodfoot'
dance-style which led to 'Floating' which led, yes, to the
'Moonwalk'.
'Popping', too, has been lost to its originator and
become part of the credit list of Jeffrey Daniels, once
with the hit-making group Shalamar, while countless
others assume Tik & Tok invented 'Robotics'. Yet
both moves had been performed brilliantly by street kids
a decade earlier. Yet, without commerce kicking its
resources into Breaking, would it have crossed the
Atlantic and could it have survived? We'll never know
the answer, but many underground crews earned a
healthy crust from show-business during the early 80's.
Record execs had found many of their artists incapable
of mastering the B-Boys moves and decided instead to
hire proper dance crews to front pop records, made by
session singers and musicians to tease the public into
believing it was receiving the Coke of Hip-Hop, the real
thing. Rocksteady Crew, Breakmachine, Uprock
and the Motor City Crew were some who sold their
names and services for fronting these releases.
Britain's first real sample of B-Boys and Breaking came
around 1982. It was handed out by the last person
anybody would have expected, Malcolm Maclaren,
who fathered Punk and gave birth to the Sex Pistols. It
arrived as the full four� DJing, MCing, B-Boying, and
Graf-Writing. A former art student and today a shrewd
money-maker, Maclaren had released The Buffalo
Girls. The disc's video featured Breaking by none other
than The Rocksteady Crew, comprising Crazy Legs
and Frosty Freeze, a New York duo who worked out
in Central Park throwing new shapes and often battling
the likes of the Incredible Breakers and Magnificent
Force.
A bit later, The Rocksteady Crew appeared in
'Flashdance', the smash-hit movie of '83. They also
visited Britain and so impressed a bunch of kids in
Manchester that those kids decided to become part of
the Hip-Hop Culture and call themselves Kaliphz, All
this, coupled with the label Street Sounds bringing out
electro-compilations, nourished the underground and
B-Boys began to pop their heads above the
sewer-covers to test the climate.
All seemed good. Crews like The Furious Five had
made a hit with 'The Message' and Break Machine was
reaching out to the public at large via 'Top of the Pops'.
Jeff Daniels, dressed as his alter-ego Colonel Pop,
exposed Breaking through the same show and his
'Popping' astonished the home audience. At clubs, his
movements became the ones to copy if a man wanted to
impress his partner. It wasn�t easy, but in south London,
there were enough devotees to fill a club whose
members were only Hip-Hop dancers. The club called
itself The Breakers Yard. 'Rap' and 'Breaking' became
familiar terms, if not always used correctly - even by
so-called Hip-Hop experts at record companies (note:
So nothing changes?).
Young school kids - Black and White - throughout the
country were taking Breaking to their hearts. Any
chance to escape classes and perfect moves was taken.
Truancy was the order of the day. For those who
couldn�t escape, school playgrounds were used to
practice. On the way home or downtown, it was usual
to see at least five other crews in action. Sometimes
you�d end up battling one of them in a shopping center,
only to be chucked out for causing a disturbance if you
were caught by security staff. Later you�d chill with your
new-found friends, chat topics of mutual interest and
transcend the bull-shit barriers.
It all seemed so positive here in those days of the
mid-80's. If you were young, everybody appeared to be
involved in the Culture, either as a Breaker, a Writer,
Rapper, Beatboxer or DJ. Perhaps you were a mixture
of all. Hip-Hop brought out the best in us. We saw no
reason why we could fail at anything if we had the
commitment. We would be able to move our interest
forward, improve them, overtake what the mainstream
offered. We'd delve deep into Hip-Hop's history and
give respect to its creators. British crews were receiving
long overdue exposure on television. There was Broken
Glass on 'Get Fresh' and The B-Boys on 'Saturday
Superstore'. 'Blue Peter' featured The London
All-Stars and, in 'Rock Around the Clock', Rock City
were caught in the spotlight, breaking on chairs at the
word-of-mouth jam held in the Town & Country Club.
Breaking was dictating the clothes people wore, with
name-brands thriving on the craze. It began appearing
on TV, not just in music shows, but in soaps as well.
There it was in the 'Eastenders' and in 'Grange Hill',
not to overlook the commercials for Carling Black
Label. Movie-makers were in on the act, churning out
their stuff, from 'Wild Style' through 'Beat Street' to
'Breakdance'. There were Electro Rock jams at
London's Hippodrome, Free-style '85 in Covent
Garden and UK Fresh '86 in the Wembley Arena.
And yet... Even the Royals were getting into the act,
although they may have misunderstood the term
'Breaking' as subsequent divorces suggest. The Buck
House Band had commanded The Rocksteady Crew
to entertain them at their annual hop, The Royal Variety
Show held in the company of their friends, the
enormously rich and famous.
Newspapers and magazines suddenly made Hip-Hop
respectable and so did the advertising between the
features. Everybody that thought themselves sociological
commentators scratched and scribbed their thoughts,
leading to many futile intellectual debates where experts
circled themselves until they disappeared up their
bum-holes. The whole thing had become blunted. There
was no sharp cutting edge left to the form. There was no
quicker way to kill an exciting street movement than to
have the Establishment join. Using hindsight it's easy to
see now that the whole thing became too big, too
quickly, and, as a consequence, too loose. It became a
source for making easy money and no golden goose can
survive if it's force-fed to lay too many eggs, too fast. In
less than five years the bubble had burst. Its mass appeal
was lost. Once more it went underground, kept alive
only by a hardcore minority. Before anything could
happen again, Hip-Hop and the British B-Boys would
have to get real.
The Nineties
A new generation took up the torch, Puma States and
Kappa track-suits. They studied the culture and
discovered groups like Brooklyn�s Stetsasonic, Eric
B. & Rakim, a duo from Queens who promoted a
unity between Rap, Rock and Jazz. 'I hold the
microphone like a grudge,' Rakim rapped, 'Eric B. hold
the record so the needle don�t budge.' They were out to
put the Funk back in Hip-Hop.
And then there was Public Enemy. For the Brits, here
was a breathtaking crew, who showed no mercy, took
no prisoners. No wonder they were dubbed The Black
Sex Pistols. Material by these groups was the kind of
stuff that stirred the hearts of young rebels, but more
was needed if the 90's were to see a return of the
B-Boys in strength with their Breaking in the United
Kingdom. Ironically it wasn't an explosion of Rap and
Hip-Hop that was to do it.
It was sparked by the likes of Britain's Take That,
Euro-Poppers, Dr. Alban and Germany's Snap who
shot up the UK charts with 'The Power', a clear case of
hijacking Chill Rob G�s version. Snap�s video though,
along with those of the others, captured a lot of
Breaking and so raised its appeal once again.
This 'new look' included new moves. 'The Wop' and
'2-Hype' free-styles became part of the scene,
popularized by the happy-go-luckly Kid-n-Play in their
'Getting Funky' video and the 'House Party' series of
movies. True Hip-Hop headz, however, were still
turning their backs on Breaking or, worse, abusing the
dancers. At some jams they even poured beer on the
floor to stop Breaking, claiming crews were taking up
their space and looking ridiculous in their tracksuits. The
breakers persevered.
Now, in the decaying 90's, B-Boys are back. There's
massive interest in the dance form within the context of
British Hip-Hop culture. The revival here is led by crews
such as Born To Rock, U.K. Rocksteady, Second
To None and others who have been featured regularly
at Hip-Hop jams up and down the country. These days
it's quite common to see B-Boys advertised on flyers
promoting Rap and DJ acts.
Slowly the media has picked up these stories, asked the
right questions and reminded readers, listeners and
viewers how the scene used to be. Some of the original
Breakers have been remembered and encouraged to
re-emerge from the underground to resume their busting
moves on Rap artists' videos.
Battles have resumed. The annual 'Battle of the Year',
for example, is an international event held in Germany
that is growing from strength to strength. Recent contests
have had crews from several parts of Europe showing
off their skills. Last years battle was videod and there
are two versions on sale. In the 1996 Battle of the Year
to be held September 6&7, Born to Rock expect to find
a place in the finals, supported by DJ First Rate who
works with them at the jams. He rocks the house with
his cutting and Blemmer leads the 'Popping' routines.
After the wilderness years, Breaking is back, again
growing in respect as an integral part of the Hip-Hop
scene. Rap is no longer the only representative of the
culture upon which the whole is judged. In south
London, for instance, the Ghetto Grammar Workshop
has introduced Breaking and Writing to its study
courses, alongside the existing Rap and DJing classes.
What's strange is that while the majority of the best jams
are held in London, the elite Breakers come from
outside the capital. For example, at a battle recently
staged at the Subterrania, both crews were from out of
town. Born To Rock was one, the other, Second To
None from Bournemouth. But it's B-Boys like them who
are taking the dance to new levels and becoming more
and more in demand to perform at shows and Hip-Hop
jams. Once again they're the focus of attention, making
Hip-Hop more exciting and complete. How long will the
latest trend last? Nobody knows, but we�re gonna enjoy
it while it does.
This article originally appeared in Downlow Magazine
issue #11. Re-printed in The Bomb Hip-Hop
Magazine by permission from Downlow Magazine.