The History and Aesthetics of Bronx-Based B-Boying 1975-1985 and Luanda’S Dança Kuduro
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The History and Aesthetics of Bronx-based B-boying 1975-1985 and Luanda’s Dança Kuduro: An Analysis of Development and Dissemination Alexandra Harlig May 2010 Table of Contents Acknowledgements .3 Chapter 1: Introduction .5 Chapter 2: Historico-aesthetic Contextual Parallels .15 Chapter 3: Technology .28 Chapter 4: Historical Context Brief History of the South Bronx .36 Brief History of Angola and Luanda .39 Chapter 5: Big Music in Small Places Music to B-boy to .49 Setting the Scene for Kuduro: The Physical Realities of Luandas Music .51 Chapter 6: The Dance Develops B-boying 1975-1985 .62 Kuduro .79 Chapter 7: Encyclopedias Encyclopedia of B-boying Moves 1975-1985 .89 Encyclopedia of Kuduro Moves .104 Chapter 8: Conclusion .128 Works Cited . 136 Videos .143 2 Acknowledgements Put simply, writing this thesis was an incredible amount of work. But in the end, it has all been worth it. This project was an enormous undertaking, and would not have been possible without the support of my committee, professors, friends, and family. First and foremost I must thank my thesis advisor and chair of my committee Allen Fogelsanger for meeting with me weekly for a year, discussing directions I might go in and conclusions I might reach, as well as keeping my feathers fluffed about the import of my work. His corrections to my work were invaluable, as was his realistic approach to knowing how to pare my research down to a reasonable size. I am forever indebted to Jim Self for allowing me to take his course Hip Hop, Hollywood, and Home Movies as a first-semester freshman, where I was introduced to the academic study of Hip-hop dance, and first learned how to B-boy. His incredible breadth of knowledge and experiences is inspiring, and allowed him to challenge my sometimes naïve assertions about popular dance. My third committee member, Steve Pond, was my resident Afro-Carribean music and culture expert extraordinaire, and his input and coaching enabled me to tackle the musical components of B-boying and Kuduro, which I feel is extremely important. Through his course Researching Hip-Hop, co-taught by Bonna Boetcher and Katherine Reagan, I gained access to the Born in the Bronx Collection in the Rare and Manuscript Collection of Cornell University Library, where I gathered data from original prints of Joe Conzos photographs of life in the Bronx 1979-1981. Further thanks must go to the entire faculty of Cornells Dance Department, who trained me both physically and mentally for the challenges of research in Dance, and who have always 3 been amazingly supportive and kind to me and all of my endeavors. Special thanks to Jumay Chu for being my major advisor and making sure all my requirements were squared away, and always offering sound advice. To my professors in the Linguistics Department, I say thank you for the analytical, detail-oriented training in data-collection and analysis; it was invaluable to this project and will continue to shape my methodology in all further projects. To my major advisor Molly Diesing, thank you for your guidance and for your open-mindedness and support when I felt caught between two disciplines. And to my dear roommates, Virginia Cromwell and Bhavishya Surapaneni, who put up with me being stressed for an entire year, and were nice about it, to Emma Schain who sat with me in Libe Café, Stellas, my dining room table, and anywhere else for countless hours keeping me company and keeping me sane, to my darling Zach Shapiro, for always being there, to my Mom, Dad, and sister, who still called with love even though every time they did I was working on my thesis and couldnt really talk, thank you, thank you, thank you. 4 CHAPTER 1: Introduction [Hop-Hop is] the result of specific innovations and choices made by specific people in specific times and places. And even if we do not knowand may never knowall of their names and the exact nature of their contributions, we do know that they existed. (Schloss 2009: vii) The Question In this paper I will be investigating the development and dissemination of two forms of popular dance; B-boying, also known as breakdancing, which was developed and coalesced as a form in the South Bronx area of New York City in the mid 1970s to mid 1980s,1 and Kuduro, a newly developed form from the shanty-towns of Angolas capital city, Luanda. I was first introduced to Kuduro by watching the music video for the group Buraka Som Sistemas song Sound of Kuduro. The video features footage of many different Kuduro dancers performing in various locations in Luanda, including in alleyways, courtyards, and on streets (BURAKA01 2008). When I saw the dancing in the video, I was struck by how familiar many of the moves seemed. Many moments in the dance sequences of the video replicated advanced B-boying moves, which I am familiar with from practicing B-boying myself, as well as observing more advanced practitioners. At the same time, I was struck by how different many of the moves were; an emphasis on the legs moving in isolation from the upper body, the fast and exaggerated isolations of the hips and butt, and a lack of moves based on the floor. The question then became simply: are these forms connected and similar because one is derivative of the other, or because they share a common historico-aesthetic lineage? B-boying is at the root of all contemporary Hip-Hop dance, although there are many other influences. Kuduro 1 B-boying is absolutely an ongoing form and as such continues to develop, innovating and adding new moves. However, its structure, aesthetics, and fundamental basic moves developed in this time period. 5 follows B-boying chronologically, and there is evidence that its movement overlaps with B- boying movement. Considering these facts, is Kuduro an example of Global Hip-Hop, if there is in fact something called Global Hip-Hop? As Paul Gilroy phrases the problem, How are we to think critically about artistic products and aesthetic codes that, although they may be traced back to one distant location, have been somehow changed either by the passage of time or by their displacement, relocation, or dissemination through wider networks of communication and cultural exchange? (Gilroy 1991: 111). The answer lies in looking at the socio-historical and aesthetic contexts and realities of each form, including even at the micro-level of the individual moves. The Way Towards an Answer The amount of information available about these forms is unbalanced. Both Hip-Hop in a broader sense, and B-boying alone, are the topic of many books, articles, and documentaries. However, these tend to account for the socio-historical development, and the description of actual B-boy movement is still somewhat lacking. The most important exceptions to this statement are the first articles written about B-boying, by journalist Sally Banes, which are collected in Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism (1994); Halifu Osumares The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves (2007); which examines B-boying in several different global locations; and Foundations: B-boys, B-girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (2009), by Joseph Schloss, which is unique for its accounts of the practitioners own conception of the history, sociology, and aesthetics of their practice. These works were invaluable to my research, and I have borrowed from them heavily. 6 In contrast, Kuduro music and dance is still under-represented, especially in scholarly writing. Partly, this can be attributed to chronology; by most accounts Bronx-based B-boying is about thirty years old, and the two most descriptive and analytical accounts of B-boy movement were only published within the last three years. At the very earliest, Kuduro dance can be said to have coalesced ten years ago, and possibly as late as five years ago. So scholars and writers, particularly western Anglophones, have simply had less time to notice, document, and discuss the form. Most of the writing that does mention Kuduro is journalistic, including coverage by music and pop-culture blogs, but the discussion is often surface-level, biographical, or focused on the musical form of the same name. The other medium that mentions Kuduro is guide books on Angola, which are meant for tourists, and often include brief descriptions of cultural phenomena. The one scholarly mention of Kuduro I found was in Marissa Moormans Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times (2008). As the title suggests, however, the focus of the book was mostly musical, and covered a large span of time. So, while an excellent work and extremely important for my contextualization of Kuduro in Angolan history, musical and otherwise, it did not give very much coverage to Kuduro. As exemplified by the work of Sally Banes and photographer Martha Cooper in the early 1980s, journalists have long been the first frontier for coverage of what are widely regarded as dance fads. This continues to be true, as can be seen from the recent New York Times article on Jerking, a popular dance form in Los Angeles, already in its second or third year of popularity when it reached the national press (Trebay 2009). The lack of scholarly research and publication focused on the development, dissemination, and practice of popular dance forms of any given 7 location or time period may be due to their sometimes transience, as well as their roots in teen, often urban cultures. Some dance scholars may not feel that the study of popular dance is relevant to the work they are doing, and others may simply not be interested.