Cypher Studies--November Edit

Beijing Breaks--November Cypher from Jamel Mims on Vimeo.

I arrived at Yugongyishan club at around 7 pm, on a mid-November evening, just as the weather was starting to chill, putting everyone in danger of the Beijing cough (which I'm still coping with to this day). This was my second battle in Beijing, and was a little more oriented about who was whom, and had previously attended some practices with the 36 chambers crew, who formed the basis of this film, at their dance space on the south east side of town. I headed backstage to set up my recording equipment (see: digital SLR and squeaky tripod) and munch on some fried chicken and sushi platters, courtesy of the hosts, Melon and Tiki. The backstage room of Yugongyishan is splattered with bits of graffiti, and the namesakes of all that have passed through, from Goldie, to the fellas over at Peoples Republic of Skateboards, Twisted Machine and so on.

At around 9:30, the room began to fill up, and a circle gradually formed in the center of the dance floor. The event was hosted by an emcee, DS, Devil's Son, a 21 year old Beijing native producer-emcee with a penchant for dirty south and post-millenium gangsta rap. You know, big thumpin' bass, lots of swears, dolla dolla bills yall. Regardless of the seemingly stylistic anachronism of DS and breakdancing (that is, one new, one old), fans and dancers crept to the circle.

The Devil's Son himself

The breakers chose to represent themselves in a style of dress which, like many permutations of hip hop in Beijing draw from multiple time periods at once. Some preferred the Perhaps the most outstanding stylistic feature of these battles are the personalized crew t-shirts, with print lettering, which harken back to the days of Roc Steady and Dynamic Rockers. Brands on the whole are downplayed and instead participants opt for more diverse color schemes and personalized gear. Cyphers like these are also the few events in Beijing where i see Kangol bucket hats worn...next to fitted baseball caps, next to skateboard brand caps, skullys, fedoras and foam hats emphasize the anachronistic juxtaposition of hip hop styles among Beijing b-boys. Unlike concerts, where the audience is passive participatory, ery few people in jeans, because of their restrictions in movement. the pants of choice were definitely khakis, red, tan, grey, or black, and sneakers with colored laces.

It was time to warm up. DJs Tsingmu and Takunori were all about feel good music, and threw on a heavy set of soul-sampled breakbeats, sometimes pausing for more ambient instrumentals and scratching. It began as individual dancers confined to a particular point or path in space, arrow-like; one would throw themself into flares in the corner, and quickly get up, or from a low position go into a baby freeze or backspin ...at some point, someone simply redirects their movement from outward, away from the rest of the participants, to inward, towards them, and the group dynamic shifts from individual rehearsal to a group rehearsal.

And then the cypher really begins. The first was in the upper corner of the dance floor, about 8 meters from the stage and was drawn tightly enough to prevent light from entering. Cyphers evolve as participants enter, from sporadic moves and exits, to funkier uprock and longer sets with freezes to finish. a physical manifestation of toasting--there is pressure to have clean moves, and even competition to one-up the preceding person in the cypher, but without the direct and pointed attacks of the battle cypher. At one time there were two warm-up/freestyle cyphers going on at one time, whose participants were designated by ability, as far as I could tell. While their younger, sometimes less confident brothers rocked the circle closer to the stage.

Long Long strikes a wushu-esque freeze

After a short while, the competition began, with b-boys pairing up for a shot in the 2 on 2 battle. LongLong and Skull, a b-boy I hadn't yet met, paired up, and faced off against Kosmo and his partner, a kid from Hong Kong, who'd stopped through the practice room. LongLong, who had won last month's battle, was put out in the first round this time around, aced by the Hong Kong kid's clean footwork and Kosmo's experience. In fact, the duo made it all the way to the finals, where they faced Distort and Fute (prononced foo-tuh), also members of 36 chambers. "Eye of the Tiger" played in the background--there was no love lost, even between teammates in the battle cypher.


Kosmo & The Hong Kong Kid

Distort and Fute, the night's champions


The judges had respect for power moves, but aren't swayed entirely by them, as the audience is. It takes a combination of funky uprock, clean footwork, and well executed power moves to win these batttles. In the end, Distort and Fute took home the prize money for November's battle, and took the crew out to dinner.

The judges

It was at dinner that I learned that Skull was a Korean b-boy, and that LongLong was at least bilingual in Mandarin and Korean. Apparently, the two are part of the same family/crew, which I was later to learn, was international and had members in Europe as well. Small competitions are for your family, ("Floor Gangz"), and large ones, you go to with your team (36 Chambers).

LongLong and Skull, 36Chambers and Floor Gangz

Guess dinner's for err'body though.

Head in the Sand, some methodological concerns

Guess I've been a little selfish lately.

The past few weeks i've been spending afternoons in my apartment, recalling nights past of cyphers, battles, and jams--reading back notes i've texted to myself from b-boy practices out at 5+5 dance studio, evenings playing videogames with MC Webber, being invited to perform on CCTV-7 with Sbazzo and Jeremy of Yinstang (anybody can be anybody's favorite hype-man),
the Iron Mic Chinese MC championships, and weekly hip hop parties up near the Yonghegong metro station, et cetera et cetera...and keeping them all to myself in my little black moleskin. Soon enough, I fear, or perhaps anticipate, that these instances, once singular occurences in space-time, will morph into a jumbled web of entangled experience, and become nearly impossible to tease out one without having the others come tumbling out--like some ill-fated game of sociology Jenga.

36 chambers crew practice

The key then, I assume, is to think thematically. To indulge in the natural connection of these experiences, and embrace the web. The four pillars themselves are connected, are they not? There is a connection to be made between the ethos of battle emcees and breakers, there is a relationship between the hyper visibility of senior citizens fan dancing in parks and the invisibility of public hip hop dance, there is 关系 between old and new school appropriations of hip hop and their respective images of self-authenticity (breakers vs. poppers/"new stylers", graff vs. the art studio, golden agers vs. dirty south kids, dmc vs. club dj)...


My jaw hasn't dropped in a good while, and for what its worth, its a good thing. Or maybe its just dropping so much I can't remember what it feels like to be closed. Either way, I feel like I'm getting pretty deep. The crash course of late night researching and boozed up notes is now an ebb and flow which no longer suprises me. (Careful Mims, your huberis is showing.) But, as my undergrad research methods professor advised me, pay especially close attention to days that seem "normal", for those are the best note-taking days.

This the type of undertaking in which one can merely stop, in the purest sense, you're always on the clock. Like the fat lady says, the show must go on....least until i'm done singin, anyway. The
data just keeps piling on, I already feel as if I have more raw data than I know what to do with. Analyze what you can, and share even more.

Jiezi, DirtyNan, Haifeng, Grouch & Ijapa..enjoying a breakfast of Champions, 多肥角和牛奶

There are no breaks from this type of field research, no three week trips to one's "community" followed by a one week writing hiatus. No superimposed dialectic of 'us' and 'them.' The friend-subject line runs a lot more hazily...consider them all friends, and your an interference to your own study, consider them all subjects, and you're a lonely. Consider it "their" community and you've got no place there, consider it "our" community, and get lost trying to find your role as participant-observer-researcher-producer.

Nasty Ray's an emcee & Wordy's a DJ, but where do I fit in?

For all you curious fourth grade math scholars out there, the total breakdown of my time is probably something like this:

1/2: researching at jam sessions-practices/field studies at concerts-events/ home-stays
1/16: editing videos/editing pictures
1/16: writing notes
1/16: frying chicken/frying assorted other items in pantry

ancient chinese cuisine: jam fried potatoes---甲毛炸土豆片

1/16: working on my graphic novel/murals/general doodling
1/8: paralyzed on the couch, cursing myself for not writing enough
1/16: studying chinese
1/16: kicking myself for not studying enough chinese

For the most part, days are lost getting dizzied somewhere in between "field" research and living my life day-to-day as an African-American in a city which only sees in two colors: Chinese and foreign.

And all this to say, its back to basics for me. Or rather, it has been for a while--and not just in a research sense. Startin' from the ground up: doing my first tags, practicing my six step, cracking back open the rhyme book and chinese dictionary. I read somewhere earlier that right action is about the proper balance of inspiration and motivation; when one starts running on empty, temper it with the other.