By Jeremy Chou
Walking down the streets of Taipei you may encounter people with oversized T-shirts, floppy trousers, platinum pendants, and even dreadlocks. If you go clubbing, chances are that you will see people locking, popping, and breaking on the floor. Tune your radio to ICRT and you will find hip-hop music constantly being aired. Groups of teenagers practice hip-hop dance outside the National Theatre and Concert Hall, using the French doors as mirrors when there is no performance inside. The ambience of hip-hop, though not omnipresent, has permeated the island. Hip-Hop is a cultural movement that originates from African American and Latin American youth in New York. Rap music, DJ, graffiti, and hip-hop dance are regarded as the four essential elements of hip-hop. Some consider beatbox to be a fifth element. Rap music is a form of rhyming lyrics spoken rhythmically over instrumentals. A rapper, a.k.a. MC (Master of Ceremonies), improvises rhymes over the beat created by a DJ. Gradually, more and more rap music is recorded in a studio rather than improvised in a club. The Grammy Awards have officially recognized rap music as an independent genre since 1989, and currently it includes six categories. A DJ generally refers to the one who selects and plays music discs in a nightclub, at a party, or on the radio. But DJing, in the sense of hip-hop, focuses on the techniques of scratching, looping, mixing, cross-fading, beat-juggling, and pitch-tuning on the turntable. Graffiti is a form of street art which appears on the walls of garages, factories, abandoned buildings, construction sites, and even on the exterior of freight trains. Graffiti painters use spray bottles to create extraordinary and exaggerated images. It started out as an illegal practice and conveyed anti-social sentiments. Now it has become more brilliant than before. Today, graffiti art battles are even held in public. Hip-Hop dance, in its broadest sense, includes breaking, locking, popping, house, hip-hop jazz, and freestyle hip-hop; recently, bebop, reggae, and capoeira have jumped on the bandwagon as well. Dancers of those styles not only dance to hip-hop music but also to funk, breakbeat, R&B, and reggae. Dancers have battles on the street or in a club, and may sometimes perform on stage. Though hip-hop is not taught in art academies for the time being, some distinguished hip-hop dancers in private studios have been dubbed choreographers. Beatboxing is the art of creating beats and melody with the human mouth, which usually involves the imitation of instrumental sounds and the simulation of turntable effects. A skilled beatboxer can generate a percussion of beats and a stream of melody simultaneously, virtually serving as a human beat jukebox. Hip-Hop can also be deemed as a kind of mentality – a philosophy of life, which is characterized by defiance to mainstream values, gratification in spite of hardship, and creativity without limit. In Taiwan, local dancers could only learn the steps by watching videos. Today, dancers from the US and Japan are frequently invited to Taiwan to introduce the latest trend in street dance, while some Taiwanese dancers go abroad for training. Outstanding professional dance crews include Feliz FuFu, Popcorn, Attention, Original Rhythm, Dance Soul, TBC, and Lohan Force, many of which have studios in the Xinyi District. These studios are packed with teenagers on weekends and during vacations. Most are high school or college students; a few of them even form amateur dance crews with a view to participating in public performances and contests sponsored by corporations and the local government. Recently, the Taipei Municipal Government even listed eight sites that are “most suitable for practicing hip-hop dance.” In addition to the dance element, rap music and remixed pieces are produced in Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Hakka, though most of them remain underground. Those who do the MC part usually take part in DJing and beatboxing as well. Famous local hip-hop music producers include: 參劈, 大囍門, 大支, and MC Hotdog. Furthermore, a tiny group of graffiti artists have begun to search for walls to paint, at the risk of being chased by the police. Hip-Hop emerged as a counterculture, yet part of its power has been incorporated into commercialism and may lose its original spirit. For example, African American kids in New York often wear oversized T-shirts in order to cut down on the expenditure of buying bigger clothes as they grow up. The irony is that oversized T-shirts are now sold at high prices in shops. Some brands of sneakers have become expensive as a result of their association with hip-hop, and they are selling like hotcakes. Moreover, local entertainers sometimes make fun of hip-hop gestures and misuse hip-hop jargon, distorting its image. Many people seemingly have another big misunderstanding about hip-hop. They usually confuse hip-hop music with techno music since both of them are said to be suitable for dance and require a DJ. Nevertheless, the line between hip-hop and techno is actually quite clear. Techno music is digitally synthesized and contains heavy doses of electronic sounds. Techno lovers, a.k.a. ravers, can barely dance expressively, and they tend to take psychedelic drugs, such as MDMA, to gain pleasant sensations. By contrast, true hip-hoppers refuse to take hallucinogenic drugs and detest monotonous and emotionless techno music. If you are interested in learning hip-hop dance, the Street Dance Club, a.k.a. Popular Dance Club in NTU could be a good choice for beginners. It is hailed as the largest club in NTU since it recruits more than 200 members every autumn and holds grand presentations twice a year. Another club named Hip-Hop Culture Research Club is more concerned with music reviews, MC skills, and DJ techniques. Some of their members make real rap music with a turntable. You can gain access to both club boards at telnet://ptt.cc/. Here are some websites about hip-hop culture that you may find interesting: http://www.vibe.com/ (reports about rap artists and reviews of rap music) http://www.undergroundhiphop.com/ (for underground hip-hop samples) http://www.style2ouf.com/english/videos/index.php (for downloading dance battle clips) http://www.electriccafe.jp/movie.html (Japanese dance clips) http://www.merrymonarc.com/ (the best dance studio in Taiwan) http://doobiest.x.net.tw/ (information about local hip-hop events) a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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