The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America

Hip-Hop Dance Formations and the Jazz Continuum

Contributors: E. Moncell Durden Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America Chapter Title: "Hip-Hop Dance Formations and the Jazz Continuum" Pub. Date: 2015 Access Date: August 22, 2015 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc. City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781452258218 Online ISBN: 9781483346373 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346373.n152 Print pages: 458-462 ©2015 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. SK Reviewers ©2015 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346373.n152 The jazz continuum resides in the African American hip-hop experience base; it is the collective consciousness of a community’s members reaching out to one another. Its ideological practices are deeply rooted in the sociocultural fabric of African concepts of communication found in songs, linguistic retentions, and reinventions in dance and musical structures of American ragtime, jazz, blues, rock and roll, funk, and soul, which all culminated in hip-hop culture. The Elements of Hip-Hop

Born in the concrete jungle of New York City’s Bronx neighborhoods and shaped by sociocultural and sociopolitical circumstances, the youthful energy of hip-hop emerged out of economic struggles and environmental turmoil to give voice to restless and tumultuous inner-city youth.

Hip-hop embodies four basic elements: emceeing (rapping), deejaying, writing, and dance. Emcees are the storytellers, the voice of the community, and the modern- day griots. Deejays contain the sounds and memories of the community; they are the recorders of time and space. Graffiti art, also known as writing, is the vivid and visual language of the culture, a kind of abstract calligraphy. Last, there is dance, or as the dance historian Sally Banes called it, “physical graffiti,” which comprises the nonverbal movements and gestures of the people.

Combining these four components manifests the aesthetic of hip-hop and roots its cultural characteristics in African and diasporic identity. Cultural characteristics of hip- hop include individuality, creativity, improvisation, originality, spirituality, stylization, coordination/cooperation, vocalization, and polyrhythms. What’s in a Name?

Hip-hop got its name much in the same way that the Lindy Hop received its name. In the 1920s, when “Shorty” George Snowden was approached by a reporter about the name of the dance he was doing, Shorty referred to a local news headline about aviator

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Charles Lindbergh that read “Lindy Hops Across Atlantic Ocean,” and called the dance the Lindy Hop. In the 1970s, there was no name for the hip-hop culture; people referred to it as “Going off,” “Boyoing,” “Rockin,” or “B-boying”—names that mostly described the dance moves.

In the early 1980s, the “godfather” of hip-hop, Afrika Bambaataa, inadvertently coined the term hip-hop when asked by a reporter to describe the new expressions of inner-city youth. Bambaataa referred to the lyrics of the 1979 hit song “Rapper’s Delight” by rap trio Sugar Hill Gang, saying, “it’s that, hip-hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip-hop, you don’t stop the rock.” The reporter wrote “hip-hop,” and thus the name of the culture was born.

The relationship between hip-hop and the jazz continuum exists in the meaning of the words as they are phrased in the song “Rapper’s Delight.” During the Harlem Renaissance, the word hep, [p. 458 ↓ ] which is a stylized way to say “hip,” referred to a person who was “in the know.” Some scholars believe the word hip has roots in the language of Wolof-speaking people in the West African areas of Senegal and the Gambia, among whom “hip” means to open one’s eyes or to be aware. Hop in American societies relates to dance, as in the phrase “Going to a sock hop,” which meant to dance in your socks, or “Hop around the clock,” which meant to dance all night or past midnight. Disc Jockeys, Scat-Rhyming, and the Hip- Hop Emcee (MC)

The early hip-hop MC was influenced by radio disc jockeys like New York’s most popular Black disc jockey, Frankie Crocker, who used to introduce songs on the air through rhyme with comments like, “I’ll put a dip in your hip, more cut in your strut, and more glide in your stride.” This was a format used among many disc jockeys on the radio; others included the legendary Hal Jackson, Ralph Waldo “Petey” Green, and Douglas “Jocko” Henderson, to name a few. Jocko was a popular disc jockey in the 1950s whose catch-phrase was, “Eee tiddly ock, Oh this is the Jock, And I’m back on the scene with the record machine, saying, Ooh pop-a-doo, a how do you do.” These

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DJs used the same scat-rhyme style later adapted by early hip-hop MCs; their sound and vocal tone on the radio, what many called the “Radio Voice,” is what hip-hop MCs imitated. Scatting

Scatting is a style of jazz singing that uses nonsense syllables; it is a type of vocal improvisation, mimicking the rhythmic tone and flow of instruments. Popular artists that sang in this style include Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong. Legend has it that Armstrong, during a recording session for his 1926 song “Heebie Jeebies,” dropped his sheet of lyrics and began to scat-sing instead of using lyrics. Louis had been scatting since his days in New Orleans, which is where the style has been credited as being invented by Joe Sims in the late 1800s. The lyrical style patterns used by the Sugar Hill Gang blend scat with rhyme; for example, “Skiddlee bebop a we rock a scoobie doo, guess what America we love you.” So when Bambaataa consciously referenced the phrase in “Rapper’s Delight,” he subconsciously chose from the jazz continuum. From Authentic Jazz Dance to Hip-Hop

The impact of the dance called the Charleston was a global phenomenon, spurring multiple variations such as the Drop Charleston, Scissor-kick Charleston, and Precision Charleston. The Charleston is named after the South Carolina city, and is suggested to have originated with the Asante, or Ashanti, people of West Africa. Popularized in the 1920s, the Charleston became the foundation for many dances to come, generating a myriad of dance crazes throughout the 20th century. The basic Charleston later became the Mashed Potato, the Slop, the Camel Walk, and the Stroll—the latter of which might have been an influence on the famous Soul Train lines of the 1970s and 1980s.

In the early 1940s, a preteen James Brown witnessed a popular dance that involved walking across the floor on one leg. That dance was called the Apple Jack, and when he became a famous singer and dancer, Brown performed it and other authentic jazz dances he grew up watching— dances like the Camel Walk and the Shuffle

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Charleston. In fact, the combination of these three particular dances became the basis for his eponymous dance, the “James Brown.” In 1987, rap duo Super Lover Cee and Casanova Rud created the song “Do the James Brown” as an homage, and this dance became a staple step in the hip-hop dance community.

Tap dancer Charles “Cholly” Atkins of the tap team Coles and Atkins also played a major role in the continuum of jazz dance into hip-hop. In the 1950s and 1960s, Atkins began choreographing doo-wop groups, teaching soft-shoe steps and dances from the 1930s and 1940s. He eventually ended up at the Motown Record Corporation, training and choreographing artists like the Temptations, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

[p. 459 ↓ ] Dances from the 1960s had a profound effect on the dance scene of the following 2 decades. One of the biggest influences connecting dances throughout the 20th century was pop singing sensation Michael Jackson. Jackson absorbed skills from artists like James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Bob Fosse, Fred Astaire, the Soul Train gang, the Lockers, the Electric Boogaloos, and hip-hop dancers, in his turn influencing global generations of dancers with steps ranging from the Shout to Popping. Dancers that copy the “King of Pop” are therefore imitating, in some cases, steps that are up to 70 years old.

Jackson’s biggest influence was his use of the Backslide, which many have come to know as the Moonwalk. The Moonwalk is actually a forward-moving step, a type of sustained, floating, animated movement that simulates walking on the moon. Jackson first saw Soul Train dancer Jeffery Daniels perform the Backslide on Soul Train in 1978, and Daniels, along with his friend Jerome Candidate, taught Jackson how to do the Backslide. In the 1940s, this move was originally called the Get Off, and sometimes called the Buzz. Credited as the creation of tap dancer Bill Bailey, this step was used by tappers when they would exit the stage, hence “get off.” Break Boys and Break Girls

Hip-hop dance consists of two forms: b-boying, which is the correct term for breaking or break dancing; and popular dances, such as the Running Man or the Cabbage

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Patch of the 1980s and 1990s, or early 21st century dances like Harlem’s “Get-lite” or California’s “Dougie.” As an umbrella term, hip-hop also includes other forms, like Popping/Boogaloo, Waacking, Locking, and House, just to name a few, though only the two aforementioned forms can be accurately labeled as hip-hop dance. Though these other forms are associated with hip-hop, they are in fact separate, each with its own vocabulary, techniques, pioneers, and innovators.

The term b-boy was coined by Clive “Kool Herc” Campbell, acknowledged by many as the founding father of hip-hop. In the 1970s, the term break had multiple meanings, as suggested by the 1980 Kurtis Blow single “The Breaks.” For example, a person being remonstrated might respond, “Why you breakin’ on me?” In terms of competitive dance, one might say, “I just broke on you.” The term was also used to describe those dancers who would “go-off” (dance almost out of control) to the “break” of a record. The “break” or “breakdown” is usually an instrumental, percussive section or interlude in the middle of a song, although sometimes the break occurred toward the end or even at the beginning of a record. In jazz dance, the “break” or “breakaway” occurred when two dancers broke away to improvise a step before coming back together.

B-boying is subdivided into three basic components: “top rocking,” which includes “drops” (a stylized way of getting to the floor); “up-rocking,” which has influences from gang culture and youth culture; and “down rocking” or “floor rocking” (movement on the ground consisting of spins, swipes, splits, freezes, footwork, and more). Top-Rock or Rockin’

Top rocking, vertical dance, and the original dance of b-boying involve intricate footwork deeply rooted in salsa, Cuban mambo and rumba, Brazilian samba, the Hustle, authentic jazz dance, and other African diasporic concepts of rhythm, time, and space. Other influences in top rocking have come from James Brown’s “Good Foot,” which is based on the Charleston and the Apple Jack. Though slightly modified, the Drop Charleston, mixed with the “James Brown” or the Charleston Basic, is referred to by b- boys as the Charlie Rock, which is a foundational step among b-boys and b-girls.

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Top to Bottom (Floor Rocking)

Dancers eventually went from standing up to hitting the floor, and new approaches developed over time. Influences have been attributed to James Brown, Jackie Wilson, martial arts films, other b-boys, and gymnastics. B-boy ground movements share a lineage with and bear striking resemblance [p. 460 ↓ ] to Brazilian capoeira, a fighting technique created by slaves, masked as a dance. Capoeira was not widely seen by b-boys until sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but b-boy movements have indirect influences from Afro-Caribbean and Latin American cultural heritage, along with early authentic jazz dance. African and Latino cultural dances have a rich history of ground movements throughout the Caribbean and in North and South America. Young b-boys were inspired by older dancers in their communities, and innovated on movements they saw live as well as in movies or on television. Mr. Wiggles, a Bronx dancer with RSC (Rocksteady Crew) and the EB’s (Electric Boogaloos), said the idea for spinning on their heads came from a Flash act they saw on a 1970s variety show. Overexposure

In the early 1980s, breaking—or break dancing, as it was introduced to the world— became a household name and global phenomenon after appearing in the 1983 film Flashdance. The movie featured a short scene with members of the Rocksteady Crew breaking in the streets, which influenced kids worldwide to imitate the dance. Other Hollywood movies followed shortly thereafter, and soon breaking had gone mainstream; you could find it everywhere, even in movies that had nothing to do with dancing. For example, in the 1985 movie Cocoon, a story about elderly men and women who discover the fountain of youth, one scene shows a character break dancing in a club. Just a year earlier, 100 “breakers” appeared in the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Just like authentic jazz dance, the appropriation of b-boying—a movement created by marginalized, disenfranchised youth—proved to be highly lucrative with big business. As the 1980s continued, corporations were cashing in, selling how-to videos and books;

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some companies even sold cardboard with graffiti designs on which kids could dance. The overexposure of break dancing aided its integration into mainstream pop culture; however, by 1987, for most inner-city youth, breaking was over. The Happy Feet

In 1985, the New York “street” dance scene shifted from Locking, Electric Boogie, and b-boying to more upright social dances done with a partner, but these still maintained a b-boyish quality in terms of energy, attitude, individual style, and occasional battle mentality. These new dances had names like the Wop, the Alf, and the Al B Shake, later renamed the Harlem Shake, and were created because of hip-hop music. In 1985, one particular song, “The Show,” a rap song by Doug E. Fresh and the GFC (Get Fresh Crew), sparked this new craze; whenever it came on, everyone did the Happy Feet. Other rap records continued the tradition of call-and-response music like the 1930s Duck Trot, the 1962 Peppermint Twist, or the 1970s Funky Penguin. Some rap records “diagrammed” or instructed you how to do the dance. For example, the 1988 song “Do the Kid ’n Play Kick-Step” by rap duo Kid ’n Play, originally called “The Funky Charleston,” was done as a face-to-face partnering step: “Just move your feet, in a way most unique, turn and face each other, no need to crawl son, start kicking just like the Charleston.” Similarly, rapper B-Fats had a dance song called “Woppit”: “Move your head, up and down, and roll your wrist, around and around, then kick your feet, to the funky beat.” Hip-hop social dances employed the basic principles of movement seen in authentic jazz dance: bent knees, torso positioned forward, grounded energy that explodes from the hips, bounces, and isolated polyrhythmic and polycentric movements. All of these are part of African traditional movement.

The lineage and influences of these artists and dances are still seen throughout the African diaspora. Today’s young dancers may have no idea that they are continuing the legacy of dances that reach back to Africa. To wit, hip-hop didn’t just begin in the 1970s: It is an intangible cultural [p. 461 ↓ ] heritage that shows how Africans as a people think and communicate via music, movement, and language. Through hip-hop, Africans pay homage to their ancestors by recognizing their past in the expressions of the present.

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See alsoAfrican Dance; Dance Culture; Griots, Rappers and Deejays; Hip-Hop and Other Spoken Messages in the Music of the African Diaspora; Hip-Hop as Re- Africanization; Neo-Traditional African Dance

E. MoncellDurden http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483346373.n152 Further Readings

Banes, S. (1994). Writing dancing in the age of postmodernism . Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, Wesleyan University.

Hazzard-Gordon, K, (1990). Jookin’: The rise of social dance formation in African- American culture . Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Leland, J. (2004). Hip: The history . New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

Gottschild, B. D. (1996). Digging the Africanist presence in American performance dance and other contexts . Westport, CT: Praeger.

Malone, J. (1996). Steppin’ on the blues: The visible rhythms of African American dance . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Manning, F., & Millman, C. R. (2007). Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop . Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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