Breakdancing and Hip-Hop

One performance may have overshadowed the rest at this year's summer Olympics. In the meantime, here's a list of titles that discuss the art form's origins and importance.

Posted on August 15, 2024 in Hot Topic

book covers

Black performance theory, ed. by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez. Duke, 2014. 279p bibl index afp ISBN 9780822356073, $89.95; ISBN 9780822356165 pbk, $24.95.
Reviewed in CHOICE February 2015

With this compelling volume, DeFrantz (Duke) and Gonzalez (Univ. of Michigan) provide less a settled corpus of methodologies applied to a canon of academically sanctioned performance genres than an articulation and elaboration of black corporealities, vocalities, and “sensibilities” across a heterogeneous field of performative enunciations–“high” and pop culture, geographically dispersed and diasporic.  Black performance theory, as an emergent discipline, an epistemology under construction and revision, performs its quest for validation in this volume in a sometimes rigorous, sometimes undisciplined, subjective, even ecstatic manner.  The pleasure of the essays is exactly their openness to riffing, poetic license, call-and-response, even when there is the occasional hermeneutical overreach (does one need to read Little Richard through Heidegger?).  At their best, the 14 contributions–from academics and practitioners of black performance–make surprising and illuminating connections: the concept of “spidering” in the formation of black identity; the collusion between theater and lynching; the trope of flying in African and African American culture; the dramaturgy of the black female voice; the way global hip-hop is commodified as a “habitus.”  This promises to become a key work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. —R. Remshardt, University of Florida

The Cambridge companion to hip-hop, ed. by Justin A. Williams. Cambridge, 2015. 349p bibl index afp ISBN 9781107037465, $89.99; ISBN 9781107643864 pbk, $29.99; ISBN 9781316236147 ebook, $24.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE September 2015

Volumes published in the “Cambridge Companions” series provide readers with consistently superb one-volume, scholarly treatments of given topics.  In the book under review, Williams (music, Univ. of Bristol, UK) capably applies this standard to the emerging field of hip-hop scholarship.  Organized into three sections (“Elements,” “Methods and Concepts,” and “Case Studies”), the 25 essays explore historical, social, political, geographic, religious, and other dimensions of hip-hop culture and modes of expression.  The range of subjects covered and the depth of critical attention applied to these topics is impressive, and examinations of how various aspects of hip-hop—such as lyrics, dance, fashion, and political action—intersect with other media and cultural phenomena suggest further inquiry.  Contents are well organized, with earlier essays laying the historical and critical foundations on which the case studies appearing later in the book are built.  In addition to its breadth, this companion is also excellent for the evident enthusiasm its contributors bring to their efforts.  Industry professionals join scholars to expose the interstices between hip-hop and issues such as Christian and Islamic influences, gender and sexuality, and linguistic subversion in rap from other countries. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —J. G. Matthews, Washington State University

Fine, Elizabeth C. Soulstepping: African American step shows. Illinois, 2003. 193p ISBN 0252024753, $24.95.Reviewed in CHOICE September 2003

In Soulstepping, Fine (interdisciplinary studies, communication studies, humanities, Virginia Tech) presents yet another genre of the synthesis of African American culture: coordinated group movements, theater and ritual, break dancing, ring shouting, jazz, playing the dozens and signifying, costuming, hip hop, and juba–i.e., soulstepping. Soulstepping appears to have originated within black college fraternities about 1923, but it has most recently become exceptionally popular, not only among blacks on campus but also among Latino/a and Asian groups. To provide a definition and history of the subject, the author–who was introduced to stepping in 1984–discusses Greek-letter societies and campuses and their role in stepping. Her field is folklore, and she takes her subject seriously. The book is well illustrated. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic collections supporting study of African American culture. —D.-R. de Lerma, Lawrence University

Glass, Barbara S. African American dance: an illustrated history. McFarland, 2007 (c2006). 311p ISBN 0786428163, $55.00; ISBN 9780786428168, $55.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE October 2007

Glass (Ohio State Univ.) offers a historical overview (1500s-1980s) of dance practice with emphasis on social and political contexts. Abundant well-chosen images underscore the variety of documentation available to researchers. An introductory chapter compares African- and European-derived dance practices, exploring “how they were different and how their differences allow us to trace the impact they had on each other.” The author offers solid descriptions of early dances–e.g., the Ring Shout and Buzzard Lope–and functional analyses of distinctive dance developments in various festivals and locations: Pinkster Festivals (New York), John Conoe (North Carolina), Negro Election Day (Massachusetts), General Training Day (New England), and Congo Square (New Orleans). Illustrations, postcards, and photographs offer pictorial history of percussive forms leading to tap dance, minstrel, and traveling shows. Chapters on black Broadway and variety stage dance provide compelling accounts of celebrity dancers (Ethel Waters, Bill Robinson) and black producers (the Whitman sisters, Theater Owners Booking Association). In a concluding chapter, “Grassroots,” Glass explores dance lessons at home, dance marathons and the lindy hop, rent parties, television dance for teens, the twist, disco, break dancing, and stepping. Missing is discussion of African American presence in ballet, modern dance, or contemporary dance theater. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all levels. —T. F. DeFrantz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Guzman-Sanchez, Thomas. Underground dance masters: final history of a forgotten era. Praeger, 2012. 169p ISBN 9780313386923, $48.00; ISBN 9780313386930 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE March 2013

This quirky book does not quite live up to its subtitle as the “final history” of underground dance masters, but it does provide an intriguing window into the work and world of Guzman-Sanchez, an urban street dancer, and the performances he was part of, starting in the mid-1960s and continuing through the 1970s and beyond. Claiming to redefine hip-hop dance (and its immediate predecessors and successors), the book falls short of that lofty goal, but entertainingly re-creates an era with anecdotes about the birth of such urban street dance styles as the funk boogaloo, locking, popping, roboting, and b-boying, many of which influenced pop-culture icons such as Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and Rihanna. This is less a scholarly work than a worm’s-eye memoir of a moment in time. Readers will have to wait for a more detailed, comprehensive history aimed at setting hip-hop within a larger context of dance and street performance than Guzman-Sanchez attempts here. However, because of the author’s central participation in the era examined, this brief volume serves as a primary document from a true believer and respected practitioner. Some charming, informal photos are included, along with lists of key performances. Summing Up: Optional. Researchers, professionals, and general readers interested in contemporary popular culture and urban dance. —J. Fisher, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Lawrence, Tim. Life and death on the New York dance floor, 1980–1983. Duke, 2016. 578p bibl index ISBN 9780822361862, $99.95; ISBN 9780822362029 pbk, $27.95; ISBN 9780822373926 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE September 2017

Also author of Hold on to Your Dreams (CH, May’10, 47-4929), Lawrence (cultural studies, Univ. of East London, UK) devotes this massive book to music and new modes of being in New York’s party scene during the early 1980s. Lawrence stresses the importance of musical and artistic pluralism, hybridization, synergy, collaboration, and risk taking while following the activities of creators of new party spaces, galleries, and record labels; sound engineers seeking “sonic integration”; performers and DJs; graffiti artists; and break and hip-hop dancers. Together, these individuals established new networks that “supported one another’s creative, social, and financial needs” (chapter 27) while ushering in one of New York’s most “creatively vibrant and socially dynamic” periods (preface). The city’s size, ethnic diversity, and cultural characteristics were foundational, but public enthusiasm for disco and punk was waning, and the New York and national markets were ready for new forms of musical expression, e.g., rap. A handful of the scene’s musicians and artists (e.g., Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring) achieved national and international success. AIDS, gentrification, and tightening city regulations closed off the era. Lawrence draws extensively from contemporaneous news articles and print materials produced by clubs and galleries. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. —S. C. Pelkey, Florida State University

Monteyne, Kimberly. Hip hop on film: performance culture, urban space, and genre transformation in the 1980s. University Press of Mississippi, 2013. 277p bibl index ISBN 9781617039225, $60.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE July 2014

The title of this book is slightly misleading. Monteyne (Univ. of British Columbia, Canada) specifically analyzes the first wave of American hip-hop musicals (1983-85), but she goes far beyond that. She discusses the artistic and gender positioning of break dance, places the genre of hip-hop films within the history of African American cinematic representation, and describes the economic and racial structuring of youth cinema in the 1980s. In short, the volume is far richer than its title suggests. The body of films Monteyne deals with has been ignored by film historians and theorists. The author argues that these films “renewed historical anxieties that inscribed the burden of social progress onto the bodies of performers of color,” and she contends that producers and studios had difficulties determining how to market such films. Monteyne makes intriguing observations on Flashdance and the role of break dancing within the remasculization of classical dance in the 1980s. Monteyne’s argument that there is a clear division between “authentic” and commercially contrived hip-hop musicals will stir some controversy, but she has opened up a field that needs this level of discussion. This is a rich contribution to film scholarship and various subfields of cultural studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. —G. R. Butters Jr., Aurora University

Osumare, Halifu. The Africanist aesthetic in global hip hop: power moves. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 219p ISBN 1403976309, $65.00.
Reviewed in CHOICE September 2007

Using freewheeling cultural anthropology that extends Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance (CH, Apr’97, 34-4398), Osumare (Univ. of California, Davis) provides compelling evidence of a global diaspora of hip-hop. Layered yet conversational text assumes more than passing familiarity with cultural theorists–Bourdieu, Marcuse, Butler, Bakhtin–whom Osumare discusses alongside rap artists KRS-One, Lauryn Hill, Public Enemy, and P. Diddy. Borrowing from Raymond Williams, the author discusses “structures of feeling” in hip-hop dance aesthetic as “danced text” and constructs an argument that “connective marginalities” link hip-hop culture “across a wide span of geographic landscapes: culture, class, historical oppression, and youth rebellion.” A chapter of ethnographic snapshots compiled from secondary sources of hip-hop in Russia, England, France, and Japan offers examples of assigned meanings in local contexts. Osumare also argues that “engagement of the self within hip-hop skills” becomes “intertextuality in action,” or the constructed intercultural body. Through extended fieldwork in Hawai’i, Osumare explores cultural translation among high school students in the rural village of Pahoa. A final chapter title, “It’s All about the Benjamins: Postmodernism and Hip-Hop’s Appropriation,” suggests that technological shifts increase the possibilities of a “hip-hop globe” on both commercial and underground levels. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers; all levels. —T. F. DeFrantz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Oxford handbook of hip hop dance studies, ed. by Mary Fogarty and Imani Kai Johnson. Oxford, 2022. 592p bibl index ISBN 9780190247867, $150.00; ISBN 9780190247898 ebook, contact publisher for price.
Reviewed in CHOICE October 2023

The multidisciplinary field of hip-hop studies emerged in the early 2000s with the publication of several foundational works detailing hip-hop culture, for example That’s the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, ed. by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (2004), and Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (2005). Yet hip-hop dance remains largely absent from the available literature. To address this absence, Fogarty and Johnson compiled the first collection of academic writings on the developing field of hip-hop dance studies. Contributions are from practitioners and scholars and are organized into thematic sections devoted to legacies and traditions, methodologies, identities, spaces, and health. Combinations of participant observation, ethnography, and oral history are used throughout the book to explore the history of various hip-hop dance styles (e.g., breaking), approaches and techniques in the art form, and gendered stereotypes and racialized perceptions in this space. Serving as an introduction to hip-hop dance studies, this handbook provides fresh voices and perspectives on dance and its role in hip-hop culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and practitioners. —E. Milenkiewicz, California State University, San Bernardino

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