Hip Hop Culture

I’ve talked about how where hip hop came from, how it relates to African American history, and why I think it will be hear in the future but what about right now. Yes, in the examples page I show recent videos of break dancing crew. But breakdancing competitions are still a sub-culture compared to other forms of art in todays society. A well recognized form of art viewed and listen by millions of people in America is pop music. The artists can usually dance and some of their moves relate to breakdancing.

http://youtu.be/CsC3l90iFqQ?t=45s

You can see that the artist will be singing and then for a part of it will dance and be in sync with their back up dancer. Popping, locking, and freezing are all types of moves that relate back to breakdancing. This shows that even the really popular forms of art in America now still utilizes styles of hip hop culture and breakdancing.

Compared to most dancing, hip hop has not been around that long. Now it has grown and come a long way since its beginning but it’s not going away anytime soon. Hip hop can evolve and change as culture and society changes. Dancer are constantly pushing the limits of hip hop and are coming up with dance moves that would not have even been fathomable  when hip hop started. Their is less people dancing on streets performing moves, their are still clubs where people will dance in the circle and try to out perform another person. But where a lot of recognition comes from now is world breakdancing competitions. If you or your group does really well you get recognition and become known by the whole hip hop dancing culture.

A way that hip hop dance has adapted to a changing culture, is dancing to the ever popular growing EDM (Electronic Dance Music) culture. EDM has a many sub categories of what type of music it is but people that have been able to dance to certain types have been highly praised. Take for example this video:

His move and other like it have a lot of characteristics that relate back to the canons. For example acting cool, he doesn’t have big expressions on his face it keeps the attention on his dancing. It may not look a lot like hip hop dance but it has certain moves that are based from hip hop, an example being popping and locking.Ultimately this video is to be an example of how if music and/or popular culture changes so can hip hop. Hip hop has many different styles and it can change and work it’s way into a lot of types of dances.

Even though hip hop is consider a modern form of dance it still ties back and has roots in African American history. If you look at break dancing today you can see a lot of the canons from the beginning of class still apply. The mask of the cool is being able to dance and have really good moves but now show big facial expressions. The get down low moment is a bigger and longer moment now then it was at the start of African American dance. Getting low is where a lot of the longer and more advanced moves happen in breakdancing, especially being able to spin while on your hands. Even passed the point of the canons breakdancing is a way for African Americans to express themselves.

Around the late 1970 cultural things were changing in America, for hundreds of year blacks were seen as this sub-human race. Not only that woman are starting to have more power. Their were hard economic times during this period so their was a decline in black families, male did not have all the authority they use to have in the black household, and their was effects of desegregation. Hip hop was a way to promote the individual and a group and how the have both survived and play a crucial role in history.

This blog will be about Hip Hop dance.