The GHHS Journal is the first academic peer-review journal on HipHop Studies, explorin all elements through contributions such as articles, artist-centered outputs or book reviews; with a experienced editorial board with scholars such as Adam Hautp, Griffith Rollefson, Murray Formen or Sina Nitzsche, it is published by Intellect.
You can download my article for free here
Abstract:
This article discusses the findings from my initial foray into the
Havana breaking scene in February 2020. Inspired by ethnomusicologist
and hip hop scholar Joseph Schloss’s (2009) ethnographic study of the
New York breaking scene, I deploy three central aspects from his work:
community as social entanglement, music as a creator of belonging, and
movement as the connecting elements between dancers. I explore how these
aspects are visible in Havana and suggest that there are various
aspects, for example, heterogeneity, internet access and possibilities
to travel,
connect and exchange within a global dance community, that define the
local breaking scene in Havana, which add to the three pillars Schloss
develops from breaking itself. In addition, I question breaking’s
‘normed narratives’ ‐ for example, the assumption that b-boys
and b-girls always draw inspiration from the United States, breaking’s
country of origin ‐ to interrogate US and Eurocentric/western-nation
perspectives. I also explore how I was able to dive in and conduct
qualitative research with relative ease in a short period of time as a
white European b-girl, hip hop, and dance scholar as well as a foreigner
to Cuba’s breaking scene. I reflect on the importance of travelling as a
means of knowledge acquisition, the idea of belonging to a ‘Global Hip
Hop Nation’, an ‘imagined community’ and ‘connective
marginalities’ as concepts to help untangle the forms of belonging
within the global breaking community as they play out in Cuba. This
research is based on a practice-of-theory approach that places the body
at the centre of investigation enhanced with the idea of meaningful
movement.
Data is collected through participant field observation, qualitative
interviews as well as my embodied and cultural knowledge as a b-girl,
which informs my role as ‘hybrid expert’ in, and between, Havana’s
breaking scene.
Frost, F. (2022): Breaking the limits? Exploring the breaking scene in Havana, Cuba and belonging in a global (imagined) breaking community. Global Hip Hop Studies, Volume 2, Number 1, 1 June 2021, pp. 15-36
Since nearly three years, I live in Morocco. This year, I could realize one of my long envisioned projects: Creating a dance performance with local dance talents. Together with Yassine Alaoui Ismaili aka Yoriyas, we started our research on the performance HIT 7AYT in January 2022. In July, we had a two-week artistic residence in the frame of TRIPHAZE 2022 at the Uzine in Casablanca with a work-in-progress showing.
In September 2022 we continued our work with a one-week artistic residence at Centre Culturel Bruegel in Bruxelles in the frame of the Détours Festival. Within the work-in-progress showing, that was also a choreographic competition, we received
Music: Antonio de Luca