Hip hop music is a musical genre typically consisting of a rhythmic vocal style called rap which is accompanied with backing beats. Hip hop music is part of hip hop culture, which began in the Bronx, in New York City in the 1970s, primarily among African Americans, with some Jamaican immigrant influence. The term rap music is often used synonymously with hip hop music however,"hip hop more properly denotes the practices of an entire subculture".
Rapping, also referred to as MCing or emceeing, is a vocal style in which the performer speaks rhythmically and in rhyme, generally to a beat. Beats are traditionally generated from portions of other songs by a DJ, or sampled from portions of other songs by a producer, though synthesizers, drum machines, and live bands are also used, especially in newer music. Rappers may perform poetry which they have written ahead of time, or improvise rhymes on the spot with or without a beat. Though rap is usually an integral component of hip hop music, DJs sometimes perform and record alone, and many instrumental acts are also defined as hip hop.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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Michael Jackson-thriller
STEP UP
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HIPHOP DANCE IS FANSTASTIC
History
Birth of breaking
The purest hip-hop dance style, breaking, began in the early 1970s as elaborations on how James Brown danced on TV. People mimicked these moves in their living rooms, in hallways, and at parties. It is at these parties that breaking flourished and came into its own with the help of a young Clive Campbell. Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, was a Jamaican American DJ who frequently spun records at neighborhood teenage parties in the Bronx. In Jeff Chang's novel on the history of hip-hop, Can't Stop Won't Stop, he describes DJ Kool Herc's eureka moment:
"I was smoking cigarettes and I was waiting for the records to finish. And I noticed people was waiting for certain parts of the record." It was an insight as profound as Ruddy Redwood's dub discovery. The moment when the dancers really got wild was in a song's short instrumental break, when the band would drop out and the rhythm section would get elemental. Forget melody, chorus, songs—it was all about the groove, building it, keeping it going. Like a string theorist, Herc zeroed in on the fundamental vibrating loop at the heart of the record, the break... "And once they heard that, that was it, wasn't no turning back. They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks."
In response to this revelation, Herc developed the Merry-Go-Round technique in order to extend the breaks. When he played a recorded break on one turntable, he repeated the break on the second turntable as soon as the first was finished. He then looped these records one after the other in order to extend the break as long as he wanted. It was during these times that the dancers later known as break-boys or b-boys would perform what is known as breaking. While Black Americans are responsible for creating breaking it was the Latinos that kept the momentum of breaking alive when it was considered "played out" in the late '70s.
Breaking, the original hip-hop dance style, at MTV Street Festival, Thailand.
Breaking started out strictly as toprock, dance moves done while standing up, and uprock also called Brooklyn uprock or rocking. The uprock style of breaking has its roots in gangs. Uprock is an aggressive form of toprock involving fancy footwork, shuffles, hitting motions, and movements that mimic fighting. When there was an issue over turf the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock. Whoever won this preliminary battle decided where the real fight would be.his is where the battle mentality in hip-hop dance comes from.
Because the uprock style of breaking was most commonly performed within gangs it never crossed over into mainstream breaking as seen today. From toprock and uprock, breaking progressed to being more floor oriented involving head spins, windmills, and swipes. These new dance moves came about with the formation of crews—a group of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. Crews are comparable to dance companies in the ballet/contemporary world but without the formalities. Relationships among members within a crew are familial because crews are formed by a group of friends rather than business partners. Due to the casual nature of a crew, members are not apart of a union, and there are not a series of auditions to go through to get in. Unless the crew is well established there usually isn't a studio to practice in either. Rehearsal happens in homes and on the street.
Birth of breaking
The purest hip-hop dance style, breaking, began in the early 1970s as elaborations on how James Brown danced on TV. People mimicked these moves in their living rooms, in hallways, and at parties. It is at these parties that breaking flourished and came into its own with the help of a young Clive Campbell. Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, was a Jamaican American DJ who frequently spun records at neighborhood teenage parties in the Bronx. In Jeff Chang's novel on the history of hip-hop, Can't Stop Won't Stop, he describes DJ Kool Herc's eureka moment:
"I was smoking cigarettes and I was waiting for the records to finish. And I noticed people was waiting for certain parts of the record." It was an insight as profound as Ruddy Redwood's dub discovery. The moment when the dancers really got wild was in a song's short instrumental break, when the band would drop out and the rhythm section would get elemental. Forget melody, chorus, songs—it was all about the groove, building it, keeping it going. Like a string theorist, Herc zeroed in on the fundamental vibrating loop at the heart of the record, the break... "And once they heard that, that was it, wasn't no turning back. They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks."
In response to this revelation, Herc developed the Merry-Go-Round technique in order to extend the breaks. When he played a recorded break on one turntable, he repeated the break on the second turntable as soon as the first was finished. He then looped these records one after the other in order to extend the break as long as he wanted. It was during these times that the dancers later known as break-boys or b-boys would perform what is known as breaking. While Black Americans are responsible for creating breaking it was the Latinos that kept the momentum of breaking alive when it was considered "played out" in the late '70s.
Breaking, the original hip-hop dance style, at MTV Street Festival, Thailand.
Breaking started out strictly as toprock, dance moves done while standing up, and uprock also called Brooklyn uprock or rocking. The uprock style of breaking has its roots in gangs. Uprock is an aggressive form of toprock involving fancy footwork, shuffles, hitting motions, and movements that mimic fighting. When there was an issue over turf the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock. Whoever won this preliminary battle decided where the real fight would be.his is where the battle mentality in hip-hop dance comes from.
Because the uprock style of breaking was most commonly performed within gangs it never crossed over into mainstream breaking as seen today. From toprock and uprock, breaking progressed to being more floor oriented involving head spins, windmills, and swipes. These new dance moves came about with the formation of crews—a group of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. Crews are comparable to dance companies in the ballet/contemporary world but without the formalities. Relationships among members within a crew are familial because crews are formed by a group of friends rather than business partners. Due to the casual nature of a crew, members are not apart of a union, and there are not a series of auditions to go through to get in. Unless the crew is well established there usually isn't a studio to practice in either. Rehearsal happens in homes and on the street.
