Joseph G. Schloss

Larry Starr

Christopher Waterman

Music, Culture, and Business

Rock

From deep within the New York hip-hop scene, author and b-boy Joe Schloss takes participant/observer fieldwork to its extreme. The first serious study of b-boying, the pre-eminent form of hip-hop dance commonly known as "breakdancing," Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York holds to its name, presenting a truly foundational study of the core concepts in the history, practice, and pedagogy of the dance form. The book delivers a powerful new paradigm for the study of hip-hop culture and of popular culture more broadly, and promises to become a seminal text in hip-hop scholarship and dance theory.

B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York

Foundation

Felicia M. Miyakawa

A history of the development of hip-hop music and dance. This ebook is a static version of an article from Grove Music Online, a continuously updated online resource, offering comprehensive coverage of the world’s music written by leading scholars. For more information, visit www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

Hip Hop and Hip-Hop Dance: Grove Music Essentials

B-boying is a form of Afro-diasporic competitive dance that developed in the Bronx, NY in the early 1970s. Widely - though incorrectly - known as "breakdancing," it is often dismissed as a form of urban acrobatics set to music. In reality, however, b-boying is a deeply traditional and profoundly expressive art form that has been passed down from teacher to student for almost four decades. Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York offers the first serious study of b-boying as both unique dance form and a manifestation of the most fundamental principles of hip-hop culture. Drawing on anthropological and historical research, interviews and personal experience as a student of the dance, Joseph Schloss presents a nuanced picture of b-boying and its social context. From the dance's distinctive musical repertoire and traditional educational approaches to its complex stylistic principles and secret battle strategies, Foundation illuminates a previously unexamined thread in the complex tapestry that is contemporary hip-hop.

Based on ten years of research among hip-hop producers, Making Beats was the first work of scholarship to explore the goals, methods, and values of a surprisingly insular community. Focusing on a variety of subjects—from hip-hop artists’ pedagogical methods to the Afrodiasporic roots of the sampling process to the social significance of “digging” for rare records—Joseph G. Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities. This second edition of the book includes a new foreword by Jeff Chang and a new afterword by the author.

Joseph G. Schloss

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