Breakin' the Bay

Breakin' the Bay - it's on...
Today's a really exciting day for me because I'm meeting with our four new curators for this year's Breakin' the Bay festival.  It's great that we have four knowledgeable, passionate and enthusiastic people on board to help cover off the four main strands of hip hop - dance, graffiti (we count it as hip hop), djing and mcing.  Keep an eye out for more information on the people we've got involved...

In preperation for this, I've been spending quite a lot of time reading Jeff Chang's Can't Stop Won't Stop. It's part research for the festival, part intrigue/interest; when I worked for a recording studio, the guy who taught me all I know kind of got hip hop and introduced me to people like Q-tip and a Tribe Called Quest. At the time I lived in a very quiet, very white-middle-class Somerset town - about as polar-opposite to hip hop as possible. I couldn't relate to the extreme violence depicted by people like Tupac and Biggie Smalls or N.W.A., Ice Cube and Public Enemy before them.


Reading Jeff's book has put Hip Hop into context for me - I now understand a bit more about where it came from in the beginning and the cultural, social and political forces acting on its protagonists. Perhaps most importantly, I understand Hip Hop, and particularly Rap, as a means for telling a story and for that I'm grateful.

I'd thoroughly recommend the book even if you have no interest in Hip Hop but want to understand how youth culture has grown and is (often mis) represented across the myriad platforms we have access to.  I'd also recommend watching two films - Style Wars and Wild Style (not for the kids - the language is a little coarse!) - here's a little clip from Wild Style with Hip Hop legends FAB 5 FREDDY, LEE, Ramellzee, Grandmaster Flash and the Rock Steady Crew:




If you ask nicely, I might even give you a loan of Jeff's book!

Rob