Welcome to the blog for my new book, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. I have five goals for the blog, and I would like to tell you about them.
1. Discuss, clarify, argue, defend and develop various ideas that I present in my book. To me, the whole reason why you would write a book about something is to hear what people think of your ideas. It just seems weird to me when people don’t want critiques of their work. It’s like having a conversation where you just want the other person to nod and smile. Not very satisfying.
2. Discuss the way hip-hop is represented, both in academic scholarship and in popular media. I have a lot of issues.
3. Post video that illustrates some of the specific moves I discuss in the book. I mean, it’s a book about dancing. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a youtube video is worth a thousand pictures.
4. Post video of some of the people that I discuss in the book, and of NYC b-boys and b-girls in general.
5. Post video that illustrates some of the general concepts I discuss in the book…about b-boying specifically, but also about how the b-boy/b-girl perspective can give us a deeper understanding of hip-hop itself.
So, for example, if your vision of hip-hop primarily concerns nightclubs, shooting people or shooting people in nightclubs, it may take some effort to readjust your perspective so that it includes things like Breaks Kru's visit to the Standing Rock Sioux. But trust me, it’s worth it. This video -featuring WaAak One, one of the people I interviewed for the book - should get you started:
Sunday, January 18, 2009
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