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Going Off! the Untold Story of Breaking's Birth Serouj Aprahamian a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

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Going Off! the Untold Story of Breaking's Birth Serouj Aprahamian a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies GOING OFF! THE UNTOLD STORY OF BREAKING’S BIRTH SEROUJ APRAHAMIAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DANCE STUDIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO APRIL 2021 © Serouj Aprahamian, 2021 ii Abstract When breaking first emerged in The Bronx, New York, of the 1970s, it was a dance practiced almost exclusively by African American teenagers. Yet, most scholarly accounts of the dance have focused on Latino/a youth and media narratives from the 1980s onwards to contextualize the form. As a result, much like jazz, rock ‘n roll, or disco dancing before it, one can refer to dominant discourse on breaking today and find almost no mention of the African Americans who ushered it in. I address this invisibilization of breaking’s African American founders by analyzing the overlooked accounts and experiences of its earliest practitioners from the 1970s. Utilizing a wide array of non-traditional primary sources, untapped archival material, first-hand interviews, and movement analysis, I offer a revisionist account of the social dynamics and systemic factors that led to the creation of breaking as a distinctly working-class African American expression and its subsequent marginalization and misrepresentation in academia. Given the significant discrepancy between the testimony of pioneering breakers and what has been reproduced in academic writings, I also utilize such testimonies to disrupt prevailing assumptions within the field of hip-hop studies. As part of this process, I emphasize the largely overlooked role breaking played in shaping hip-hop’s musical development, as well as the impact youth socialization and alternative identity formation had on the culture’s emergence. Central to this research is my contention that the non-normative aesthetics and principles of early hip-hop practices were shaped by the underground, working-class dance spaces in which the movement arose, forming part of a broader tradition of cultivating expression within the African American jook continuum. iii Acknowledgments Much like the practice of breaking itself, this dissertation was not a solely individual endeavor but, rather, part of a broader community process of intellectual dialogue and support. First, I want to thank Dr. Mary Fogarty, without whose committed guidance and support this dissertation would not have been possible. Similarly, I want to thank Dr. Imani Kai Johnson who, together with Dr. Fogarty, gave me the inspiration to pursue a PhD and served as a mentor throughout. I also want to thank Dr. Katherine Bischoping and Dr. Bridget Cauthery for the valuable insight they provided as members of my committee, as well as Dr. Rosemarie Roberts and Dr. Rob Bowman for their thoughtful assessments as examiners. Dr. Jim Vernon has been another important mentor, whose engaging conversations have stimulated my thinking on hip- hop history and intellectual production. I am also indebted to Dr. Naomi Jackson for her meaningful encouragement and feedback throughout this dissertation. Similarly, I want to thank my longtime friend and scholar Dr. Matt Horton for reading early drafts of this study and providing critical commentary. A special thank you also to Michael Moir for opening my eyes to the wealth of untapped information in archives and, more importantly, how to access them. Similarly, I want to thank Arlene Yu at the New York Public Library, whose attentive support for my work was truly invigorating. In addition, I want to recognize the staff and administrators who helped me at the following archives: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Cornell Hip Hop Collection, Museum of Popular Culture, Fordham University Bronx African American History Project, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Getty Research Institute, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I would be remiss if I did not also acknowledge the years of work put in by grassroots archivists within the hip-hop community: IGTimes, Troy L. Smith, JayQuan, Davey D, Sureshot La Rock, TheBeeShine, MichaelWayneTV, Disco Daddy, Mr. Biggs, DJ Kay Slay, Pete Nice, Profo Won, Norin Rad, Pluto (TBB), Edson “House” Magana, Johnny Castro, Jason Zhou, Skee, Kid Terrific, Nemesis, and many more. Of course, I also want to give a big thank you to my family for their undying love and support. Special thank you goes out to my crew, Style Elements, as well, who encouraged me greatly during this PhD journey. I'm also grateful to Schools, Febreaks, and the entire Break iv Fresh family for always looking out for me when I was in New York; Junious “House” Brickhouse for the stimulating conversations and gracious encouragement he has always shown; David “Elsewhere” Bernal for his unmatched inspiration and friendship; Adil for being a passionate backer of my research; Vrej Haroutounian and Sio Maronian for their genuine words of wisdom; and Albino Zebrah crew and the breaking scene in Toronto for taking me in. I also want to thank my fellow graduate students and colleagues at York University, especially Vanessa Lakewood, Sean Robertson-Palmer, Michelle Johnson, Eve Robertson, Jonathan Osborn, Christine (cricri) Bellerose, Sebastian Oreamuno, Behnam Amini, Benjamin Haluk Bilgen, and Shavez Imam. In addition, I want to thank (in no particular order) the many scholars I have had the privilege to interact with and learn from throughout this journey: Dr. Patrick Alcedo, Dr. Sherril Dodds, Dr. Mark Katz, Dr. Christi Jay Wells, Dr. Juliet McMains, Dr. Joseph G. Schloss, Dr. Francesca D’Amico, Dr. Rachael Gunn, Dr. Shamell Bell, Dr. Jennifer Fisher, MiRi Park, Jason “J-Sun” Noer, Frieda Frost, Dr. Naomi Bragin, Jessica Rajko, and Melissa Britt. Finally, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to the pioneers of breaking and hip-hop culture, without whom neither this dissertation nor the way b-boys and b-girls dance around the world would be possible. I can only hope that I have done a semblance of justice to the movement you set in motion. v Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………..iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………….v Chapter One: “Nobody's Heard the Story from the Basement”: Uncovering Breaking’s Beginnings………………………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter Two: “Dance Like Flame”: Burning and Breaking in The Bronx ……………………..35 Chapter Three: “From the Floor Up”: Movement and Music in the Era of Herc ……………….69 Chapter Four: “The Smallest Guys in the Party”: Youth Socialization and B-Boy Identity Formation ………………………………………………………………………………………101 Chapter Five: “It Started with the Girls”: Uncovering the Role of B-Girls in Breaking History…………………………………………………………………………………………..137 Chapter Six: “Latinos Started Migrating Toward Hip-Hop”: Breaking’s Expansion in the Late 1970s……………………………………………………………………………………………167 Epilogue: Back to the Beginning……………………..…………………………………...........205 References…………………………………………………………………………………....…217 1 Chapter One “Nobody's Heard the Story from the Basement”: Uncovering Breaking’s Beginnings Breaking is one of the most widely practiced dance forms in the world today, with an estimated one million participants (Ball, 2020). In virtually every major city across the globe, one can find b-boys and b-girls1 performing together in a transnational network of shared tastes and aesthetic practices (Fogarty, 2006). With growing numbers of adherents in the developing world especially (Sjöberg, 2014), breaking and its associated forms of hip-hop2 dance, music, fashion, and art have become defining features of global mass culture (Osumare, 2007). Indeed, even established institutions such as the International Olympics Committee have recently sought to leverage breaking’s appeal by adding the dance to their 2024 Summer Olympic Games (Keh, 2019). Yet, despite its worldwide popularity and nearly five decades of existence, most scholarly accounts of breaking have neglected the African Americans who founded it. Although some early popular researchers acknowledged that breaking was created by “primarily young Black kids” in The Bronx3 of the 1970s (Holman, 1984, p. 53), most scholars today have concentrated on figures from the 1980s to contextualize the dance’s history. However, because breaking was already a prevalent multicultural practice by that decade, numerous misconceptions have developed from this chronologic leap, including the notion that hip-hop, as a whole, grew out of 1 The terms b-boy (“break-boy”) and b-girl (“break-girl”) refer to practitioners of breaking and were originally coined by the widely acknowledged “founding father” of hip-hop, DJ Kool Herc (Israel, 2002). 2 Hip-hop is a cultural movement that arose in The Bronx, New York, in the early 1970s. Its founding practices include DJing (music), breaking (dance), MCing (poetry), and, more tangentially, style writing (aerosol art). I employ the term “hip-hop” in accordance with this original cultural meaning, not simply as a euphemism for rap music, as is often the case in contemporary writings on the topic (see Dimitriadis, 1999). 3 I capitalize the “T” in “The Bronx,” in accordance with what borough historian Lloyd Ultan has argued is its proper spelling (Slattery, 2014). 2 the “cross-fertilization” of ethnic communities living in New York (Flores, 1993, p. 27; Gilroy, 1993, p. 103; Rivera, 2003, p. 43). Indeed, most scholars have
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