One of the things I wanted to do with this blog is to respond to people's thoughts about the book. My first chance has arrived with the thoughtful comment posted under my previous post. Here is my response:
Winslow,
First of all, thanks for engaging with my book on such a deep level. I don’t think we really disagree significantly on the reality of the situation, or even the association of b-boying/b-girling with the African Diaspora, so much as the exact nature of that association. So let me clarify my thinking on that issue a bit:
If “hitting the floor and doing groundwork” are the defining features of b-boying, then there’s nothing to debate: it started in the South Bronx in the seventies, period. While people may have done similar things in other times and places, there’s no evidence that the people who started b-boying were drawing on any of those traditions when they first conceptualize b-boying…and, in fact, most of them vigorously deny it. So that’s not what I’m saying.
Also, it is clear that many specific moves - such as "The Russian" to which you refer, along with many moves from Kung Fu movies (though thankfully I've never seen anyone try "The Monkey Steals The Peaches")* - were drawn from other traditions. But I would argue that they were chosen because they fit into a pre-existing conceptual framework.
I say that for the following reasons:
1. The people that invented the dance, pretty much without exception, were of African heritage, either via the U.S. or the Caribbean. Now you could argue that those traditions (African American, English and Spanish-speaking Afro-Caribbean) also have many influences that do not come from Africa, and I would agree with you. Nevertheless, I don’t think that that that kind of cultural exclusivity is required in order to consider those traditions part of the African Diaspora. In other words, to say that a practice is part of an Afro-diasporic culture is not the same as saying that specific thing came from Africa. At least not to me.
2. In my view, dance is like language, in that it is composed of vocabulary (i.e. words) and grammar (i.e. rules for putting those words together). In this case, the vocabulary would be the specific moves, and the grammar would be the aesthetic, flow, attitude, cultural context, value system, and actual rules of the dance. With that in mind, I would argue that, even if none of the specific moves could be traced to Africa, the “grammar” of the dance – its rules and expectations - still reflects an Afro-diasporic cultural orientation. I go into this extensively in the book, as you acknowledge, particularly in the chapters on battling and the rock dance.
3. Finally I want to pick apart this sentence of yours a little bit: “You could make the argument that it was created by peoples of the African Diaspora, but not necessarily by 'African' culture (as an uninterrupted physical expression that makes every black creation the immediate purview of the continent).” I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re making, but I have a feeling that that is because we have different definitions of the word “culture”. I don’t see culture as an object or even an actor, but rather as an activity that is done by a specific group of people in a specific time and place. If one takes that approach (which is essentially post-structuralism), then saying that something was created by people with a common cultural heritage is basically the same thing as saying it was created "by the culture".
As you know, people like Melville Herskovits saw culture more as series of discrete practices which were passed along, essentially intact, through generations (or, as you put it, an "uninterrupted physical expression"). If that were the case, then it would allow you to trace the cultural origins of any traditional practice back to a specific place in the distant past. What you seem to be saying is that this cannot be done with b-boying’s relationship to Africa...and I agree. I think the difference is that I don’t think that could really be done with anything, so it doesn’t bother me so much. The African Diaspora is a cultural/historical construction as much as anything else, and I have no problem with that. I mean, just because bagels & lox can't be traced to ancient Judea, doesn't mean that they're not part of of Jewish culture now.
Peace,
Joe
*This is the name of his blog...I didn't just pull that reference out of nowhere...
