According to Afrika Bambaataa[1] and b-boy Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón[2] the purest hip-hop dance style, breaking (commonly called "breakdancing"), began in the early 1970s as elaborations on how James Brown danced to his song "Get on the Good Foot".[3] People mimicked these moves in their living rooms, in hallways, and at parties. It is at these parties that breaking flourished and came into its own with the help of a young Clive Campbell. Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, was a Jamaican American DJ who frequently spun records at neighborhood teenage parties in the Bronx. Can't Stop Won't Stop, a novel about the history of hip-hop culture, describes DJ Kool Herc's eureka moment in this way:
In response to this revelation, Herc developed the Merry-Go-Round technique to extend the breaks—the percussion interludes or instrumental solos within a longer work of music.[4][5] When he played a recorded break on one turntable, he repeated the break on the second turntable as soon as the first was finished. He then looped these records one after the other in order to extend the break as long as he wanted. It was during these times that the dancers later known as break-boys or b-boys would perform what is known as breaking.
- "I was smoking cigarettes and I was waiting for the records to finish. And I noticed people was waiting for certain parts of the record." It was an insight as profound as Ruddy Redwood's dub discovery. The moment when the dancers really got wild was in a song's short instrumental break, when the band would drop out and the rhythm section would get elemental. Forget melody, chorus, songs—it was all about the groove, building it, keeping it going. Like a string theorist, Herc zeroed in on the fundamental vibrating loop at the heart of the record, the break... " And once they heard that, that was it, wasn't no turning back. They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks."[4]
Breaking started out strictly as toprock,[6] footwork oriented dance moves performed while standing up. Toprock usually serves as the opening to a breaker's performance before transitioning into other dance moves performed on the floor. A separate dance style that influenced toprock is uprock (also called Brooklyn uprock or rocking). The uprock dance style has its roots in gangs.[2][7] Uprock comes from Brooklyn, New York.[7] Although it looks similar to toprock, uprock is danced with a partner[8] and it is more aggressive involving fancy footwork, shuffles, hitting motions, and movements that mimic fighting.[6][9] When there was an issue over turf the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock. Whoever won this preliminary battle decided where the real fight would be.[2][9][1] Because uprock's purpose was to moderate gang violence, it never crossed over into mainstream breaking as seen today except for some very specific moves adopted by breakers who use it as a variation for their toprock.[7] Aside from James Brown and uprock, toprock was also influenced by "...tap dance, Lindy hop, salsa, Afro-Cuban, and various African and Native American dances."[10][11] From toprock, breaking progressed to being more floor oriented involving freezes, downrock,[note 1] head spins, and windmills.[13][note 2] These additions came about due to influences from 1970s martial arts films,[15] influences from gymnastics, and the formation of crews[16]—groups of street dancers who get together and create dance routines. One b-boy move taken from gymnastics is called the flare which was made famous by gymnast Kurt Thomas and is called the "Thomas flair" in gymnastics.[17]
Rock Steady Crew (RSC) was founded in 1977 in the Bronx by b-boys Jamie "Jimmy D" White and Santiago "Jo Jo" Torres.[18][19] Along with Dynamic Rockers and Afrika Bambaataa's Mighty Zulu Kings they are one of the oldest continually active breaking crews.[note 3] For others to get into the crew they had to battle one of the Rock Steady b-boys[18]—that was their audition so to speak. The crew flourished once it came under the leadership of b-boy Crazy Legs. Crazy Legs opened a Manhattan chapter of the crew and later made his friends and fellow b-boys Wayne "Frosty Freeze" Frost and Kenneth "Ken Swift" Gabbert co-vice presidents.[18][note 4] RSC did not create breaking. However, they did a lot to spread breaking's popularity beyond New York. They appeared in Wild Style and Beat Street—'80s films about hip-hop culture—as well as the movie Flashdance. They also performed at the Ritz, at the Kennedy Center, and on the Jerry Lewis Telethon.[18] In 1983, they recorded a song titled "(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew" which was commercially released.[18] RSC is now worldwide with member units in Japan, the UK, and Italy.[18]
"We didn't know what the f-ck no capoeira was, man. We were in the
ghetto! There were no dance schools, nothing. If there was a dance it
was tap and jazz and ballet. I only saw one dance in my life in the
ghetto during that time, and it was on Van Nest Avenue in the Bronx and
it was a ballet school. Our immediate influence in b-boying was James
Brown, point blank."
Richard "Crazy Legs" Colón;
Rock Steady Crew[2]
Rock Steady Crew[2]
B-boy Crazy Legs states "We didn't know what the f-ck no capoeira was, man. We were in the ghetto!"[2] Hip-hop historian Jorge "Popmaster Fabel" Pabon states "Unlike the popularity of the martial arts films, capoeira was not seen in the Bronx jams until the 1990s. Top rockin' seems to have developed gradually and unintentionally, leaving space for growth and new additions, until it evolved into a codified form."[11] B-boy crew Spartanic Rockers adds "Despite of many rumours and opinions Breaking didn't originate from Capoeira but during the last few years many moves, steps and freezes of this Brazilian (fight-) dance have inspired more and more B-Girls and B-Boys who integrated them into their dance."[24] B-boy Ken Swift states "In '78 I started [breaking] and I didn't see it [capoeira] til '92 ... I was around, too -- I was in Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, I went around and I didn't see it. What we saw was Kung Fu-we saw Kung Fu from the 42nd Street theaters. So those were our inspirations... when we did the Kung Fu sh-t we switched it up and we put this B-boy flavor into it..."[25]
