Artistic Knowledge and Performance Identity Formation in

Toronto’s Hip-Hop Communities of Practice

by

Maria Myrtle D. Millares

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty of Music University of Toronto

© Copyright by Maria Myrtle D. Millares, 2020

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Artistic Knowledge and Performance Identity Formation in

Toronto’s Hip-Hop Communities of Practice

Maria Myrtle D. Millares

Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty of Music University of Toronto

2020

Abstract

This research project illustrates, through the voices of Toronto hip-hop artists, how the complex,

mutually influential interactions between individuals and their communities shape and create

knowledge, while encouraging the articulation of difference through unique performance identities.

Their learning spaces are not institutional classrooms, but rather public spaces such as community

centres, church basements, and concrete city squares, where the line between teacher and student is

crossed and blurred.

I employ narrative methodology as a means of obtaining the rich accounts necessary to illuminate

these community-based learning processes. Hip-hop’s history is passed on orally and aurally as

artists cultivate their craft. Artists’ personal stories are essential to the way hip-hop’s history,

together with its teaching philosophies, are internalized and passed on in community spaces.

Narratives elicited through interviews, conducted as dialogue, have the potential to more

respectfully trace these individual-communal relationships. As such, the body of my data consists of

the narratives of three Toronto hip-hop artists – B-boy Jazzy Jester, DJ Ariel, and MC LolaBunz –

presented and interpreted according to the themes or moments that they have voiced as significant to

the development of their skills and of their performance identities.

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The narratives presented here show the dialogic relationship between musical creativity and identity-

building, resulting in embodied, performed expressions of an engagement with the tensions of lived

experience. Each artist reveals their personal engagement with layers of normative discourses that

are constantly at play, accepted, rejected, and creatively manipulated to fashion one’s own

performance identity expressed as style.

Keywords: hip-hop; Toronto hip-hop; Canadian hip-hop; urban music; popular music; informal

learning; narrative methodology; musical culture; performativity; Signifyin(g), performance identity,

artist identity; music education

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Acknowledgments

When I asked my dad, Osmundo, for a piano at the age of 5, there is no way I could have imagined

what music would allow me to learn about my place in the world, nor the connections music would

allow me make. My mom, Jenny, was always listening to my progress, no matter what she was busy

with. Both of them nurtured my musical development and saw to it that I had my own piano once

again soon after we moved to Canada from the Philippines. They attended every performance and

every competition, not knowing, perhaps, that they were supporting a core aspect of who I would

come to be.

While the piano repertoire I learned was of the Western classical tradition, my Uncle George,

Auntie Gina, and Auntie Judy, who lived with us, had pop on the radio the whole day. It’s no

wonder then, that my brothers, Kent and Vince, picked up the guitar and drums, respectively,

leaning more toward more popular genres. I’ll never forget the one time we all played Guns N’

Roses’s “November Rain” in our living room – our only ensemble performance. These musics and

the occasional Philippine folk tune continue to feed my curiosity for different sounds and the

communities that make them. All this to say that this project would likely never have happened

without my family.

The scholarly world presented me with opportunities to ask about sounds and communities and I’d

like to thank the teachers that helped me on this journey at the University of Toronto. First, to

Boyanna Toyich, who passed away last year, for encouraging me to audition for Piano Pedagogy

and Performance, which eventually resulted in combination graduate studies in Music Education

and Piano Pedagogy. The piano has always been a way for me to “voice” the thoughts I usually

keep quiet, and so I treasure Dr. Midori Koga’s guidance toward a more embodied sound at the

instrument so that I could be at ease with myself.

When music-making eventually gave way to research for this Doctoral project, Dr. Lee Bartel’s

pointed reminders about keeping to the trajectory of my inquiry helped me keep my data within the

bounds of my questions. Who knows what unmanageable paths I might have tread through pages

and pages of interviews. Dr. Jeff Packman provided incisive feedback that clarified my concepts and

critiqued what I might have otherwise taken for granted. During the last stretch of this Doctoral

journey, I am additionally grateful to Dr. Nasim Niknafs, and Dr. Mary Fogarty Woehrel, who

provided the fresh perspectives and commentary crucial to the final sculpting of the work presented

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here. At every turn through all these years, my supervisor, Dr. Lori-Anne Dolloff held me to the care

and rigour required to sensitively navigate narrative inquiry. Most importantly, she generously

listened to my own stories, from the light-hearted to the immensely difficult, in order to see me

through to the completion of this milestone.

As Dr. Thomas King wrote in The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, “The truth about stories is

that that’s all we are” (2003, p. 2). My heartfelt gratitude goes out to those who generously gave of

their selves to this project – Abdominal, Skyboxx, LolaBunz, Benzo, Jazzy Jester, JuLo, Dopey,

Andy B Bad, and Ariel – your insights and knowledge are invaluable. I hear your voices in my head

when I read your words and I hope what I have re-presented here are true to the sincere reflections

you have shared with me.

A big shout out to the Streetdance Academy crew: Miss Maehem, Rowdy B, Chuie, Doogie, King

Josh. Remember when I did 37 rounds while almost two months pregnant? I knew that if I could do

that without dying, I could finish this thesis! Breaking is where my interest in hip-hop started, so I’d

also like to acknowledge the Toronto b-girls and b-boys who first showed me, though they were not

aware, the various facets of this Toronto community. It was a sound foundation from which I will

continue to explore the creativity and complexity of Hip-Hop Culture.

And finally, to Matt and Freya, you have both shown me life in very different ways. Matt

(“Doogie”), your excitement about breaking began this whole project, and your appreciation for that

patch of moss reminds me of the infinitely small beauty of the earth. But what I am most thankful

for is your enduring strength and your unwavering commitment to the very do-able ways of making

the world better. To our fierce Sparrow, this work is an expression of hope that you will grow

through a world increasingly willing to break boundaries and to enact ideas toward the realization of

a complex and deep kindness.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... iv

Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vi

Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1

1 I wanna be a b-girl ................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Research problem ............................................................................................................. 2

1.1.1 What is hip-hop? ................................................................................................... 2

1.1.2 Hip-hop and education .......................................................................................... 4

1.2 Exploring performance identity ......................................................................................... 5

1.3 Research questions ............................................................................................................ 5

1.4 Methodology and methods ................................................................................................ 6

1.5 Interview data analysis ...................................................................................................... 6

1.6 Potential impact on music education.................................................................................. 7

1.7 Key terms ......................................................................................................................... 8

1.8 Chapter overview .............................................................................................................. 9

Chapter 2 Literature Review ....................................................................................................... 11

2 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 11

2.1 Hip-hop: Art and politics ................................................................................................. 11

2.2 A culture called hip-hop .................................................................................................. 12

2.3 Hip-hop for social change ................................................................................................ 14

2.3.1 Hip-hop feminism ............................................................................................... 15

2.4 Hip-hop identity ............................................................................................................. 17

2.5 Identity, performativity, and Signification ........................................................................ 19

2.5.1 Performativity ..................................................................................................... 20

2.5.2 Signifyin(g) ......................................................................................................... 21

2.6 Performing hip-hop identity............................................................................................. 22

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2.6.1 Emcees represent ................................................................................................. 23

2.6.2 B-boys and b-girls represent ................................................................................. 28

2.6.3 DJs represent ...................................................................................................... 31

2.6.4 Performance identity ........................................................................................... 33

2.7 Hip-hop and education .................................................................................................... 34

2.7.1 Hip-hop in music education ................................................................................. 36

Chapter 3 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 39

3 Identity as narrative ............................................................................................................... 39

3.1 A structure of stories ....................................................................................................... 39

3.1.1 Tell me a story .................................................................................................... 40

3.1.2 Ethnographic techniques ..................................................................................... 41

3.2 Method .......................................................................................................................... 41

3.2.1 Recruitment ........................................................................................................ 41

3.2.2 Interviews ........................................................................................................... 42

3.3 Analysis and interpretation .............................................................................................. 43

3.3.1 Re-storying and thematic analysis ........................................................................ 43

3.3.2 Dialogic/Performance analysis ............................................................................ 44

Chapter 4 Hip-hop in the T-Dot .................................................................................................. 45

4 From Tdot Odot to The 6 ....................................................................................................... 45

4.1 Golden Era ..................................................................................................................... 45

4.1.1 Rewind ............................................................................................................... 47

4.2 Toronto style: Sound and motion .................................................................................... 52

4.3 T-dot becomes The 6 ....................................................................................................... 54

4.4 Where we’re at ............................................................................................................... 55

Chapter 5 Jazzy Jester ................................................................................................................ 59

5 “I am Jesse Catibog, also known as Jazzy Jester.” ................................................................... 59

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5.1 Introduction to hip-hop ................................................................................................... 59

5.2 Acquiring skill (Knowledge) ............................................................................................ 64

5.2.1 People ................................................................................................................ 64

5.2.2 Spaces and places ................................................................................................ 72

5.3 B-boy identity ................................................................................................................. 76

5.3.1 Hip-hop state of mind .......................................................................................... 79

Chapter 6 DJ Ariel ..................................................................................................................... 85

6 From the West Coast to the East Coast ................................................................................... 85

6.1 Intro to DJing ................................................................................................................. 85

6.2 Finding hip-hop .............................................................................................................. 89

6.3 Where the ladies at? ........................................................................................................ 91

6.4 Hip-hop state of mind ..................................................................................................... 97

6.5 Style and place ................................................................................................................ 99

6.5.1 On the margins ................................................................................................. 100

6.6 Cultural limits............................................................................................................... 102

Chapter 7 LolaBunz ................................................................................................................. 105

7 Female in the cypher ............................................................................................................ 105

7.1 It’s just begun ............................................................................................................... 105

7.2 Where you’re at is where you’re from ............................................................................ 106

7.3 The message ................................................................................................................. 109

7.4 Ladies first .................................................................................................................... 110

7.5 Real hip-hop ................................................................................................................. 114

7.6 Knowledge ................................................................................................................... 117

7.7 On the come up ............................................................................................................ 121

Chapter 8 Synthesis .................................................................................................................. 124

8 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 124

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8.1 Defining the culture ...................................................................................................... 125

8.1.1 Place: Location, people, situation, self ................................................................ 125

8.1.2 Creativity: Mixing and sampling (people and time) ............................................. 126

8.1.3 The “real” story ................................................................................................ 128

8.2 Acquiring skill .............................................................................................................. 130

8.2.1 Observation, reflection, experimentation ............................................................ 130

8.2.2 Role of hip-hop community of practice ............................................................... 131

8.3 Role of music ............................................................................................................... 138

8.3.1 Music and memory ........................................................................................... 140

8.3.2 Creation – expressions, community, identity ....................................................... 142

8.4 Factors affecting artist identity formation ....................................................................... 143

8.4.1 The loop and the break ...................................................................................... 146

8.5 Conclusions and implications for further study ............................................................... 150

8.5.1 Learning and pedagogy ..................................................................................... 150

8.5.2 Collective narratives: Toronto hip-hop history .................................................... 152

References ............................................................................................................................... 154

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Chapter 1 Introduction

1 I wanna be a b-girl

A personal narrative, 2013

I was 27 years old when I got it into my head that I wanted to learn to breakdance. A friend of mine

was so excited to share videos of b-boys from Korea that his excitement was contagious. Another

friend in my university residence had begun learning how to “break” from him and I started to

become curious. So, I did what many do to learn – I took classes, taking some friends along for fun

and support.

The dance studio was located upstairs at the El Mocambo, a grimy old building legendary for the

musical acts that graced its stage (e.g. Rolling Stones, U2), whose front walls are now decorated

with graffiti. Our teacher, B-boy Awkward from Ottawa, was energetic and taught with sound

effects rather than words. He taught a few foundational moves, like the six step, bronx, and brooklyn.

There was then time to practice these, and finally, to use them at the end of the class while everyone

looked on encouragingly. My footwork, the dance steps performed at ground level, developed quickly

and I remember feeling light and fast as I moved to the beats. I was surprised and felt a sense of

achievement when I was told, “Yeah, yeah, in a couple of months, you’ll be battling!”

After the first few lessons, a few of us from the class were invited to practice in a university building

basement, “Cat’s Eye” at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where b-boys and b-girls

nodded heads and tested new moves, encouraging and critiquing each other, helping each other

figure out the best way to move their bodies to the music in a style all their own. Though in the

dance studio I learned specific moves, the b-girls and b-boys I saw were using these as a basis for

drawing their own bodily figures within the musical space. Friends gathered around to watch a

dancer experiment, whooping when something incredibly good worked, and empathetically

expressing pain, “Oooooh,” when someone crashed to the ground after testing a physically

challenging move. Some groups created a cypher, the circle formed by dancers or spectators while

watching a b-boy or b-girl move in the centre. It is where a battle might emerge as b-boys and b-girls

attempt to outskill one another. It could also be a place to show how much you’ve improved,

without the need to be better than someone else. Sometimes, it can be a rather intimidating space,

especially for someone new, like me, who has always been more reserved. Most people seemed

friendly and supportive, though, so I felt motivated toward someday dancing in the cypher.

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I soon learned that most b-girls and b-boys didn’t take classes, they just sought practice sessions in

their neighbourhoods and learned from each other – there is no one “teacher.” In effect, peers help

each other. “Each one, teach one” is frequently heard in the hip-hop community as I’ve experienced

it in Toronto. In fact, it took me some time to figure out who organized practices in the first place.

With groups meeting at the University of Toronto, York University, a community centre in

Parkdale, in the St. Lawrence Market area, basically anywhere an inexpensive (or better yet, free)

room or floor could be had, the initiative to bring groups together could come from anyone.

The hip-hop1 I experienced was intensely musical, involving everything I had learned as a musician,

while compelling me to use my whole body to experiment and create movements together with

dancers of various ages, ethnicities, physical abilities (and even disabilities); students, those working

in all types of jobs, or unemployed; the personalities were diverse. For me, it was a full-person

immersion in a musical community unlike anything I had previously experienced.

1.1 Research problem

Conventional teaching methods place the teacher in an authoritative, expert, position relative to

their students. As a result, students are not always given opportunity to direct their own learning and

to discover their ability to creatively solve their own educational challenges. The informal learning

environments created within hip-hop culture, however, show that even in the absence of a formal

“teacher,” students can become self-motivated, inquisitive, and creative learners.

This dissertation is a narrative inquiry into how members of the hip-hop artistic community learn

outside an institutional classroom. In particular, breakers, emcees and DJs in Toronto, for whom

music is a cornerstone of their art, are interviewed in order to understand their learning process.

Ethnographic techniques are employed to gain deeper insight into the learning community in which

participants are situated. It is hoped that stories will reveal sources of self-motivation, modes of

evaluation, and the effects of the larger social context in which learning takes place.

1.1.1 What is hip-hop?

Defining hip-hop is a complex endeavour. Those to whom I posed this question struggled to express

its depths, shades, and frequencies, while nevertheless being able to state what hip-hop means to

1 Authors of both scholarly and popular literature use various spellings of “hip-hop,” without stating any particular reason

for their choices. In this dissertation, I have chosen “hip-hop.” Where I quote an author who uses the word, I keep their spelling as is.

3

them, personally. Hip-hop does not seem to have lines of definition, set as borders, but instead,

bleeds in unpredictable directions like DIY marker posters after a rain – so fresh. What follows in

this section is a brief overview of hip-hop’s generally-accepted historical facts, and its use in

educational settings.

Hip-hop is frequently conflated with rap music, particularly as portrayed in popular music videos

and magazines. Many of these images, primarily featuring African-Americans, glamourize violence,

objectify women, and seem to encourage consumer excess. Yet ask a local emcee (MC or rapper),

graffiti artist, DJ (disc jockey or turntablist), or b-boy and b-girl about hip-hop and a different picture

emerges. The less commercial (and in many cases, non-commercial) experience of hip-hop

emphasizes community, a strong sense of identity, a critical social stance, a respect for history, and a

dynamic artistic practice.

A few books have now been written on hip-hop that give prominence to interviews of the very

people involved in the neighbourhoods that created what would eventually be encapsulated as “hip-

hop culture” (e.g.Chang, 2005; Fricke & Ahearn, 2002).2 This image of hip-hop is one of parties that

brought neighbourhoods together. The realities of gang conflict, poverty, and racial tensions became

the inspiration for a new artistic culture, even as its participants sought to transcend them.

As the process of “‘urban renewal’”3 (Rose, 1994b, p. 76) began in areas of New York City in the

1970s, residents and businesses were displaced (Rose, 1994b) through the construction of highways

meant to connect the city to its suburbs. Simultaneously, an increase in corporate-type jobs meant a

decrease in demand for skilled labour, leaving many unemployed at a time when social funding was

decreasing. Most affected were Black and Hispanic people who were relocated to the South Bronx,

where hip-hop is said to have begun.

Rose argues that this emerging culture gave youth an alternative way to form their identities,

rejecting common depictions of their neighborhoods as “drained of life, energy and vitality. The

message was loud and clear; to be stuck here was to be lost. And yet, while these visions of loss and

futility became defining characteristics” (1994b, p. 77), a generation of artists was building a creative

movement amidst the rubble.

2 The use of the term “culture” in the context of this research study will be discussed in Chapter 2.

3 Rose (1994b) places this term in scare quotes to emphasize that the South Bronx was destroyed, rather than renewed by

this New York City project.

4

In contrast to the stark realities of life in the South Bronx at the time, interviews with its legendary

first participants recall events with the excitement and party spirit that gave it momentum. Many are

still alive today, able to pass on first-hand accounts of the culture’s development. DJ Kool Herc is

credited as the “father” of hip-hop, as it was his idea of extending the break beat (to which dancers

would show off their moves) that gave rise to the development of b-boying/b-girling, DJing, and

emceeing. These, together with graffiti writing, in which Herc also participated, became hip-hop’s

four main elements. Not long after, these elements would be used by Afrika Bambaataa, founder of

the Zulu Nation (removed from leadership in 2016 due to reports of sexual assault of minors4), to

provide youth with alternative routes for community and recognition through creative expressions.

Scholarship on hip-hop is growing and attention is being given to each of its constituent art forms.

Rap and its lyrics have been studied for its political content, social critique (Au, 2005; Parmar,

2009), and negative public representations (Rose, 2008; Watkins, 2005). Turntable techniques and

creative processes involved in DJing have been analyzed (S. Smith, 2000, 2007), while more

contentious issues of gender (Katz, 2006) and race (Snapper, 2004) have also been examined.

Explorations of b-boying and b-girling or breaking (popularly and imprecisely called breakdancing)

also address these issues as they present themselves in international competitions or battles

(Johnson, 2011). Ethnographic studies continue to further our understanding through researcher

immersion in hip-hop’s dance and musical cultures. Notable are Schloss’s comprehensive accounts

of DJ (2004) and b-boy/b-girl (2009) communities, which tackle common misconceptions and make

sense of sometimes conflicting historical memories. Also significant is Fogarty’s (2010) exploration

of musical taste development among breakers. Here, the extent of global cross-cultural exchanges is

revealed, enabled by increased travel by artists.5

1.1.2 Hip-hop and education

The idea of hip-hop pedagogy is increasingly explored as a means of engaging students in classrooms

(Hill, 2009; Mahiri, 1998). Hill (2009) describes hip-hop pedagogy as a flexible perspective based on

relationships between all participants in education so that students’ realities are reflected in

curriculum and strategies that aim to provide practical means of engaging in broader social contexts.

4 Allegations were brought forward years past the statute of limitations in New York for such charges to be brought to

criminal and civil courts. Victims, who were minors at the time of the incidents, only had two to five years after the fact, or two to five years after turning 18 to lay charges. Bambaataa denied the accusations. For details, see “Afrika Bambaataa

denies accusations he sexually assaulted boys in the 1980s” (2016) and Kreps (2016).

5 Complete review of literature is in Chapter 2.

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Similarly, Bridges (2011) aims to “re-introduce Hip Hop to the field of urban teacher education as

more than an educational tool or a segment of popular culture that Black and Latino youth

predominate, but as a critical epistemology or a theoretical framework that challenges our beliefs

about teaching, shapes our conception of the function of schooling, and informs our understandings

of the qualities of effective educators” (p. 3). It can also go a step further when viewed as a

transformative pedagogy (Abe, 2009) that uses its critiques of sociopolitical structures to change and

improve communities.

1.2 Exploring performance identity

Hip-hop artists who attain recognition have a particular look, sound, or moves that become

associated with their public personas. This impression of an artist’s image is what I’m calling their

performance identity.6

With this research study, I explore how DJs, b-girls and b-boys, and emcees in Toronto acquire the

artistic skills necessary for developing their performance identities. These three categories of hip-hop

participants are being isolated as their work is directly tied to the practice of hip-hop music. These

artists can also be seen as representatives of three of hip-hop’s original elements. Dancers are

included because it is for them that much of the music is created and, as Fogarty (2010) found,

“street dancers make consistent claims that ‘it’s all about the music’” (Abstract). It is also through

breaking that I have experienced hip-hop as an embodied musical phenomenon. Having contacts

working in the field was very helpful as I sought an in-depth understanding of hip-hop learning

environments.

1.3 Research questions

My research endeavours to answer the following question: How do a breaker, DJ, and emcee

develop a unique performance identity within Toronto’s hip-hop communities of practice? To

further illuminate this process, the following subquestions will be explored:

a) How is hip-hop culture defined by those who participate in it?

b) How does an aspiring breaker, DJ, or emcee acquire artistic skill?

c) What is the role of music throughout an artist’s development?

6 The complexity of performance identities will be explored in Chapter 2, Section 2.6.

6

d) What is the role of the hip-hop community of practice in artist development?

e) What factors affect artist identity?

1.4 Methodology and methods

Focusing on the question of individual artist identity formation amidst Toronto’s hip-hop cultural

communities, narrative methodology is well suited to my present inquiry. My goal was to conduct

research in a way that respects hip-hop culture’s ways of knowing and creating. By listening to

participants’ stories, I hear not only about events, but the emphases placed on them. The trajectory a

story takes, with its diversions of related thought, allows a glimpse into the connections a speaker

makes in response to my queries and acknowledgements. As DJ Spooky points out, “In hip-hop

people are building their own narrative structure. They don’t really care to engage the conventional

art world” (Becker, Crawford, & Miller, 2002, p. 90). By developing narrative texts for analysis from

artists’ own words, the structure of their recollections becomes the foundation for data

representation, as opposed to inflexibly applying a linear, chronological structure to their stories.

Situating these stories in Toronto’s hip-hop cultural context through ethnographic data – written,

pictorial, and video observations; publicly available videos and photos; attendance at events and

workshops; and popular media coverage of Toronto’s hip-hop scene – allows a greater depth of

analysis.

Potential participants with whom I have previous acquaintance through events, practice sessions, or

workshops, were contacted to gauge interest in being a narrative study participant. I conducted

preliminary, recorded interviews with nine hip-hop artists that led me to three people who were

particularly responsive to the idea of storytelling, and with whom initial conversations invited

further inquiry. One DJ, one breaker, and one emcee participated in one or two additional in-depth,

conversational interviews that were audio recorded for accuracy. These were transcribed and

returned to participants for comment, verification, additions, and detractions. This ensured that the

bases for my interpretations of their stories are as accurate as possible and maintained the integrity of

their perspectives. Artists from a diversity of backgrounds (e.g. gender, country of origin, crew

affiliation) were selected in order to reflect the greater hip-hop community in Toronto.

1.5 Interview data analysis

Data from the nine initial short interviews was used to triangulate information from in-depth

interviews and provided descriptions of the broader community of practice in Toronto. This

7

triangulation resulted in interjected quotations that were included in the interpretation and

presentation of the in-depth narratives that were central to my analysis.

Short interview data from the three selected narrative participants generated essential interview

prompts for their in-depth interviews. Thematic codification of this data resulted in section labels for

narrative texts, patterns of learning, recurrent influential characters, and factors deemed important in

each participant’s artistic identity development. This codification also provided points for discussion

and clarification that were addressed in the final set of interviews. It is at this point that the data was

“ask[ed] questions of meaning and social significance...[thereby] shap[ing] field texts into research

texts” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, pp. 130-131). To this effect, each participant’s narrative was

restoried in a manner that illuminates responses to the research sub-questions in order to conclude

with a response to the main research question from each participant’s perspective. This re-storying

included my interpretations, sequencing of events, and where appropriate, the interjection of ideas

from other artists interviewed. The resulting, re-storied, texts were informed by

Dialogic/Performance Analysis that views dialogue as a performance of self, collaboratively enacted

with the listener (researcher) (Riessman, 2008). These narrative texts were returned to participants

for final verification.

1.6 Potential impact on music education

A research study that focuses on and highlights the voices of students, particularly those

unrestrained by institutional curricula and agendas, would interest those with sociological,

educational, and political concerns. This study could also serve as an introduction to hip-hop for

those curious about its lived history, art forms, and localized expressions and interpretations.

Educators may find parallels between their students’ experiences and those depicted in this

dissertation, providing avenues for conversation with their students. They may also find personal

resonance with artists’ stories that prompt reflection on their own teaching practices.

Schmidt (2011) asks:

[C]an we envision music classrooms where music deals with performance, pedagogy,

composition, instrumentation, and technology, but done in close and mindful relation to

race, poverty, violence, self-expression, and economic production?...class, race, and ethnicity

need to be acknowledged as crucial if we are to understand and engage with urban schools.

8

The implication here is not simply fostering politically aware interactions, but a commitment

to educating students for the world, for their world and for the transformation of both. (p. 5)

Hip-hop culture, in its creation and artistic practices readily addresses, lives with, and fights against

restrictive social concepts and structures.

Understanding learning processes directly situated in such a culture may provide applicable

educational tools for the development of more relevant learning experiences that recognize students’

agency. Insight into how interview participants describe their role in developing their skills may help

educators create an environment in which students take charge of their own learning processes in a

way that recognizes their abilities and encourages individual, creative responses to challenges.

1.7 Key terms

The following are terms frequently used throughout this dissertation, which may not be familiar to

readers. Definitions arise from my experience of their contextual use in scholarly and non-scholarly

texts as well as in colloquial use.

b-boy/b-girl A male/female who break dances and is engaged in, and committed to, learning the

many aspects of hip-hop culture.

b-boy stance A pose assumed by a b-boy or b-girl, e.g. at the end of a dance sequence to show one’s

confidence.

boom bap Onomatopoeic term for hip-hop beats, particularly as used in New York hip-hop in the

era of Marley Marl, KRS-One, Gang Starr, Run DMC, etc.

crate digging The act of looking for musical segments, or samples, to be used in music production.

Before digital music was prevalent, DJs would search for these segments in vinyl record crates.

cypher A circle formed by an audience around hip-hop performers who take turns showcasing their

skills in the circle’s center. Audience-performer interaction is audible, palpable, and paramount in

this dynamic space. Alternate spelling, “cipher.”

jam A hip-hop party that can consist of any number of hip-hop artistic elements or art forms.

9

molly As in “poppin’ mollies.” A form of the drug ecstasy or MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-

methamphetamine).

represent To “represent” is to make a statement about your sense of self. It is a presentation of the

ways an individual has produced creative works amidst and through engagement with the

complexities of their lived experience.

sound As used in DJ Ariel’s narrative. Short for “sound system,” of Jamaican origin. A full

technical setup, including the emcees and DJs, for playing music at street parties emphasizing a loud

speaker system designed to create a wall of sound. Sound system battles were a precursor to Bronx

party competitions in early hip-hop.

1.8 Chapter overview

This current chapter has opened with my personal narrative, which led to my interest in the learning

contexts of hip-hop artists. It has also provided the rationale for the research questions that guide this

inquiry and how the field of music education might benefit from this exploration.

Chapter 2 is a review of literature that begins with a condensed history of hip-hop as it began in the

Bronx, New York in the 1970s. It outlines the use of hip-hop’s developing art forms by a politically

disempowered and racialized population to exert a political presence through gradual community

renewal that would come to be seen as a culture in and of itself. The review then probes questions of

individual and collective identity within this growing culture as its artistic expressions became

emblematic of the artists who performed them. Issues of performativity, as theorized by Judith

Butler, and the ways that the African-American process of Signifyin(g) forge and announce

individuality are examined through performances by emcees, DJs, and b-boys and b-girls as

illuminated in scholarly literature. The chapter closes with a discussion of hip-hop’s use in general

education and finally, in music education specifically.

Chapter 3 defines my use of narrative inquiry and methodology to answer my research questions.

The use of narrative to study a culture whose art forms aim to tell the stories of artists and their

communities can serve to amplify the voices of artists whose experiences of learning and acquiring

musical skills has not been frequently heard or sought until recently. I also make the link between

the formation of stories and the formation of identities as the narrative act can serve to speak an

identity into being, however briefly, through its telling.

10

Chapter 4 aims to paint the backdrop of Toronto hip-hop as a diversity of people and communities,

connected to a broader, global hip-hop culture. Historical information that I have gathered from my

research participants, together with popular media sources of information on Toronto hip-hop artists

and seminal events and spaces, form the brief local history presented here.

Against this Toronto hip-hop story, the narratives of three artists – B-boy Jazzy Jester, DJ Ariel, and

MC LolaBunz – emerge. Each artist’s story is interpreted, presented and analyzed in Chapters 5, 6,

and 7.

The Synthesis in Chapter 8 draws on these narratives to provide answers to my research sub-

questions, which lead to the conclusions of my overarching inquiry. The tensions between individual

creative aims and the normative demands of hip-hop culture, and of the broader social contexts of

each artist, serve as resources for expressions of difference embodied in their performance identities.

The chapter concludes with avenues for further research sparked by the complexities of my research

findings.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2 Introduction

The dynamism of hip-hop culture continues to provoke scholarly inquiry in ever-broadening fields of

research. The purpose of this literature review is to create a particular track, layered with existing

knowledge and questions that proceed from hip-hop’s early history through to certain, enduring,

frequently-expressed cultural agreements rearticulated as educational objectives, strategies, and

pedagogies. Hip-hop culture and the artistic forms within it have malleable boundaries refashioned

from the crossings of people and experiences through its permeable gates. Actions at the limits effect

identities and the intentional styling of their expressions. This potential for positively creating spaces

for self-identity experimentation through acts of learning is what attracts educators to hip-hop

culture.

2.1 Hip-hop: Art and politics

The social and creative practices that would come to be called “hip-hop”7 began to converge in the

South Bronx neighbourhoods of New York in the 1970s. Rose (1994a) describes the postindustrial8

political and economic forces that resulted in neighbourhood displacement as areas of New York

City were torn down to make way for urban renewal. Specifically, Robert Moses’s Cross-Bronx

Expressway project, linking suburbs to the city, decimated Bronx neighbourhoods, forcing the

relocation of residents and businesses. These once-thriving, culturally diverse neighbourhoods were

structurally torn apart, both physically (business and residence buildings) and socially as more

affluent residents, primarily Jewish, Italian, German, and Irish, fled to the suburbs, and others were

relocated to the South Bronx, which was nevertheless demolished in the process of this so-called

renewal. Additionally, an increase in corporate jobs meant a decreased demand for other types of

labour, leaving many unemployed. Most affected were Black (many American-born, and from the

Caribbean) and Hispanic (many of whom were Puerto Rican) residents who did not benefit from the

planned progress of urban renewal.

7 Cowboy from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is said to be the first to refer to “hip-hop.”

8 For Rose’s note on her use of “postindustrial,” refer to Black Noise (1994a, p. 189).

12

Youth gangs proliferated amidst this political and economic turmoil effected by political “‘benign

neglect’” (Chang, 2005, p. 14)9 that resulted in the withdrawal of public services from those who

needed them most. Yet amidst images of neighbourhoods “drained of life, energy and vitality”

(Rose, 1994a, p. 33) and despite media portrayals of “loss and futility” (p. 33), Rose notes, “the

youngest generation of South Bronx exiles were building creative and aggressive outlets for

expression and identification” (p. 33). This shared invective has been powerful in creating a “hip-

hop nation,” or community (E. Clay, 2009; Hayduk, 2004) that extends globally (Helbig, 2011)

among people of diverse backgrounds. From this perspective, the development of hip-hop is

inherently political. Indeed, for early participants, it became a refuge from societal pressures while

confounding expectations and categorizations.

In contrast to the gravity of the political and social issues faced by Bronx residents, hip-hop is

frequently said to have begun in August 197310 at a house party thrown by Clive Campbell. He

would come to be known as DJ Kool Herc, the “father” of hip-hop, whose youthful memories of

Jamaican sound system parties were transported to 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, inspiring another

generation of Afro-diasporic sound and dance. Herc’s observation that dancers “went off” on the

instrumental sections of his music sets led him to extend the break beat, spurring a movement that

would give rise to the development of b-boying/b-girling, DJing, emceeing, and graffiti writing as its

four main elements. Hip-hop music was (and still is, in many cases) inseparable from each of these

distinct art practices, born from the need to dance and express individual style and skill.

2.2 A culture called hip-hop

The creative impulses and forms fashioned amidst the socio-political context of the South Bronx in

the 1970s are now recalled as catalysts for a culture that came to labelled “hip-hop.” In the context

of my dissertation study, I define culture as a continually evolving system of relationships that

generates frameworks for interaction between individuals, and between individuals and the

resources in the spaces they occupy. Individuals within a culture need not hold perspectives in

common about the definition of the frameworks, nor how they are applied but nevertheless perceive

themselves to be acting within them or transgressing their boundaries.

What I call frameworks are akin to the “control mechanisms” that Geertz (1973, p. 44) describes as

circulating “significant symbols – words…gestures, drawings, musical sounds, mechanical devices

9 Specifically, in a letter to President Richard Nixon, New York's senator at the time, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote,

“The time may have come...when the issue of race could benefit from ‘benign neglect’” (Chang, 2005, p. 14).

10 See for example Allah (2018); Chang (2005, Ch. 4).

13

like clocks, or natural objects like jewels – anything, in fact,…used to impose meaning upon

experience…to orient [oneself].” These “webs of significance” are “spun” (p. 5) as symbols are used

in daily interactions. Geertz adds:

Undirected by culture patterns – organized systems of significant symbols – man’s11 behavior

would be virtually ungovernable, a mere chaos of pointless acts and exploding emotions, his

experience virtually shapeless. Culture, the accumulated totality of such patterns, is not just

an ornament of human existence but...an essential condition for it. (p. 46)

In his statement that culture is that totality of “culture patterns,” we see an inescapable tautology

which, rather than invalidating the concept of culture or the symbols of meaning within it, reminds

us of our embeddedness in our interactions with each other and with the resources at hand. We exist

in a loop and we break from it by manipulating it through the addition of reconceived symbols, that

is, “patterns.”

People are crucial to culture, and understanding how they act in the context of a culture, that is, how

they identify with a culture, according to Geertz, “exposes their normalness without reducing their

particularity…It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it

dissolves their opacity” (p. 14). Here is where Geertz’s delineation of culture reveals its situatedness

in an arguably less cross-woven, global perspective of interrelations. For him, cultural patterns are

“historically created systems of meaning in terms of which we give form, order, point, and direction

to our lives” (p. 52). By living according to these patterns, our actions become banal; we become

transparent. That is, by identifying a person or people as part of a culture, we can discover “what

men [sic] are…It is in understanding [their] variousness…that we shall come to construct a concept

of human nature that…has both substance and truth” (p. 52). In our current context of a

technologically-enabled inter-cultural web of meaning, surface banality and transparency can mask

opacity.

In investigating culture at the level of identity, as Geertz does, Bhabha explores this very

phenomenon through an inquiring ‘eye that does not see’ (paraphrased from the context of

“Interrogating Identity” in Bhabha (1994):

11

Geertz’s reference to “man” and his use of “him/his” throughout his essays is, of course, attributable to the time and

location of his writing. It bears mentioning here as concepts regarding what culture is, borne from a universalizing

perspective of “Man,” continue to influence what hip-hop culture is and in turn, whose gestures circulate as validated cultural symbols.

14

Each time the encounter with identity occurs at the point at which something exceeds the

frame of the image, it eludes the eye, evacuates the self as site of identity and autonomy and

– most important – leaves a resistant trace, a stain of the subject, a sign of resistance…the

demand for identification becomes, primarily, a response to other questions of signification

and desire, culture and politics. (Bhabha, 1994, p. 71)

Bhabha goes on to explain that the desire to understand an individual, or a group of individuals,

within a culture “enacts the complexity and contradictions of your desire to see, to fix cultural

difference in a containable, visible object” (emphasis in original, p. 72). Employing the eye seeks an

image which can never really get at the truth of the Other, because only that which can be mirrored

to and by the inquirer will ultimately be seen. The transparency trick of the mirror belies its

persistent opacity.

Hip-hop culture was populated by the socio-politically invisible, willfully erased, of the razed South

Bronx. Their images were reflected in the mirror cast toward them by the politics of the time. As

South Bronx communities became more isolated, they nevertheless continued to use the resources at

hand, not least of which was the opportunity to capitalize on their opacity to those who sought to

govern them. By emphasizing individualizing creativity through its art forms, hip-hop, as a culture,

repeatedly aspires to opacity through difference, refusing the invisibility of surface transparency.

The definition of culture I delineated above applies to hip-hop as culture: a continually evolving system

of relationships that generates frameworks for interaction between individuals, and between individuals and the

resources in the spaces they occupy. Individuals within a culture need not hold perspectives in common about the

definition of the frameworks, nor how they are applied but nevertheless perceive themselves to be acting within

them or transgressing their boundaries. What I refer to as hip-hop culture, then, are instances of these

relationships forged under the perceived context of its emergence as a site of innovative

identification in the South Bronx. How hip-hop culture is defined is a complexity to be explored in

this narrative study.

2.3 Hip-hop for social change

The party spirit of early hip-hop parties encouraged less volatile interactions between rival groups of

the Bronx in order to keep the jam going. The emerging culture’s potential for promoting peaceful

relationships among youth was harnessed by Afrika Bambaataa,12 the “godfather” of hip-hop, who

12

Bambaataa maintained leadership of the Zulu Nation until 2016 when reports of sexual assault of minors became public,

prompting the organization to reorganize its leadership (Kreps, 2016).

15

eventually formed the Zulu Nation in 197313 and intentionally began using hip-hop cultural art

forms to engage youth in alternative expressions that encourage positive, life-affirming communities.

Ruza “Kool Lady” Blue,14 recalls, “‘[T]here was this whole thing going on in New York where it

was the youth culture getting together in unity and peace and having fun. No segregation and

everyone joining together. Just the opposite of what was going on politically.’ And Crazy Legs, a

true believer in the power of hip-hop, saw what many others saw – a bit of magic happening. ‘It was

the beginning of the breaking down of racial barriers,’ he says, ‘‘82 was the beginning of worldwide

understanding.’” (Chang, 2005, p. 168).

“Peace, unity, love, and having fun,”15 became hip-hop’s credo, frequently heard to this day. By

1982, Bam was referring to the “hip-hop movement” (Chang, 2005, p. 170), and his record, Planet

Rock, “was hip-hop’s universal invitation, a hypnotic vision of one world under a groove, beyond

race, poverty, sociology and geography” (p. 172). Gender boundaries, however, do not appear to be

specifically transcended, despite being configured within this “world.”

2.3.1 Hip-hop feminism

Females have participated in hip-hop culture as performers, creators, and audiences from its earliest

days. The culture’s predominantly male celebrities and the mainstream media’s masculine (often

hyper-masculine) depictions of hip-hop expressions obscure the contributions and perspectives of

women and almost completely overshadow the presence of anyone who does not identify with

heteronormative categories.

Joan Morgan, in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost (1999/2017), bluntly grapples with the

contradictions that emerge when one is a woman who loves hip-hop, who might even groove to the

beats of the genre’s more sexist lyrics, and a feminist. This work ushered in scholarship on hip-hop

feminism, tackling the intersectional realities of layered socio-cultural experiences. Writing from her

own African-American perspective, Morgan’s interrogations and contradictions resonate through

the difficult questions she poses regarding female representation, race loyalty, and an embattled

relationship with “feminism.”

13

A history of the organization is available on its website (Universal Zulu Nation, 2016).

14 Kool Lady Blue began hosting “Wheels of Steel” nights at the Negril in NY in 1981, introducing hip-hop to the punk and

rasta crowd. According to (Chang, 2005), her nights were the “steamy embodiment of the Planet Rock ethos” (p. 173).

15 Lyrics from “Unity” (Bambaataa & Brown, 1984).

16

Her book speaks to generations of women of colour who could not find the strength of the women in

their communities reflected in the “feminism” Morgan was learning about in college. Despite feeling

the passion of “white” feminist activism, she “needed a feminism that would allow us to continue

loving ourselves and the brothers who hurt us without letting race loyalty buy us early tombstones”

(p. 36). Discovering black feminist thinkers such as Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde,

Paula Giddings, and bell hooks, “empowered [her] with language to express the unique oppression

that comes with being colored and a woman” (p. 37). In the process, Morgan articulates feminist

goals imbued with “the same fundamental understanding held by any true student of hip-hop. Truth

can’t be found in the voice of any one…but in the juxtaposition of many…the juncture where ‘truth’

is no longer black and white, but subtle, intriguing shades of gray” (p. 62). In this version, rap is

recognized as “one of the few forums in which young black men, even surreptitiously are allowed to

express their pain” (p. 74) and hip-hop, with “its illuminating, informative narration and its

incredible ability to articulate our collective pain is an invaluable tool when examining gender

relations” (p. 80).

Continuing inquiry within the “gray,” contemporary hip-hop feminists “refuse easy and essentialist

political stances about what is right or wrong and who or what gets to be called feminist” (Durham,

Cooper, & Morris, 2013, p. 723). In this way, hip-hop feminists can more readily connect with youth

who are affected by the issues confronting the hip-hop generation (Peoples, 2008), arguably

expanding Planet Rock through critical interventions that acknowledge and interrogate lived, often

contradictory, experiences and meanings. Specifically, Durham et al. (2013), “see hip-hop feminism

as a generationally specific articulation of feminist consciousness, epistemology, and politics rooted

in the pioneering work of multiple generations of black feminists based in the United States and

elsewhere in the diaspora but focused on questions and issues that grow out of the aesthetic and

political prerogatives of hip-hop culture” (p. 722). In addition to gender relations, hip-hop feminists

critique socio-political systems that threaten, and even end, the lives of people of colour.16,17 Hip-hop

feminists are concerned with more than just female representation in mainstream hip-hop (which

frequently stands in for all of hip-hop culture), simultaneously questioning the existing boundaries of

hip-hop expressions in order to make visible the participation of those on the margins (A. Clay,

2008; Lindsey, 2015). As Lindsey (2015) points out, limiting research, analyses, and critiques of hip-

16

Discussions of hip-hop feminism included in this Literature Review are centred on the experiences of Black and Brown

people of colour.

17 Lindsey (2015) in “Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip Hop Feminist Futures in Theory and Praxis,” highlights the pressing

issues that hip-hop feminists address and foreground in their works.

17

hop to rap (as is frequently done in the fields of general education and music education), “can

implicitly marginalize the spaces in which women and girls create, shape, and remix hip hop.

Within hip-hop-based education, the inclusion of elements of hip-hop beyond the traditional four of

emceeing, deejaying, graffiti, and b-boying/b-girling offers the opportunity to have students critically

engage corporeal knowledge and to see women and girls as innovators, and not just consumers” (p.

59).

Attention must also be given to the continued marginalization of LGBTQ2S+ participants whose

artistry in hip-hop communities is still frequently unrecognized both in scholarly literature and in

public media outlets (Dean, 2008). Among those who have noted these otherwise overlooked

members of hip-hop communities is Andreana Clay (2008), who challenges assumptions about the

boundaries of hip-hop music through the work of Me’shell Ndegeocello. Clay notes that

Ndegeocello’s lyrics give complex expression to her queer identity, adding that this music’s

categorization as “R&B” warrants discussion about what music receives the “hip-hop” label.

Lindsey (2015) points out the urgency of hip-hop feminists’ praxis in the area of queer studies as it

reveals hip-hop culture’s shortcomings and possibilities for progress. In this way, hip-hop feminists,

as Pough (2004) puts it, bring “wreck” to hegemonic systems that continue to constrain non-

heteronormative participation in all too many spheres of public life, redeploying and broadening the

social consciousness espoused by many of hip-hop culture’s earliest proponents.

2.4 Hip-hop identity

The hip-hop arts became a means for gaining recognition among peers at a time when the status

afforded by economic and political participation was out of reach. In cultivating these art forms,

individuality and skill was paramount:

Hip hop is very competitive and confrontational; these traits are both resistance to and

preparation for a hostile world which denies and denigrates young people of color….

Competitions among and cross-fertilization between breaking, graffiti writing and rap music

was fueled by shared local experiences and social position, and similarities in approaches to

sound, motion, communication and style among hip hop’s Afro-diasporic communities.

(Rose, 1994b, p. 79)

The established frameworks for understanding “sound, motion, communication and style” became

the foundations for the recognition of hip-hop as a culture represented in large part by the art forms

of breaking, DJing, and emceeing. In the context of the battle, so important in these musical

18

practices, variation is not just a possibility, it is the aim and basis for the conferrence of recognition.

Here, difference is expected and “no biting” continues to be the primary rule of artistic creation.18

Hip-hop battles then, became central to the development of a performed identity as one could not

win if one’s skills or style were comparable to another’s. Conflict and confrontation in these artistic

practices were not only a means to sharpen skills, they became symbolic of the struggle to participate

in and be recognized by the rest of American society to whom they seemed invisible. With reference

to a conversation with cultural critic, Arthur Jafa, Rose (1994a) observes that “stylistic continuities

between breaking, graffiti, style, rapping, and musical construction seem to center around three

concepts: flow, layering, and ruptures in line” (emphasis in original, p. 38). In other words, hip-hop

musical practices are meant to take advantage of repetitions (e.g. when a DJ loops a sample) and

layered sounds and movements in order to heighten expectation while making room for disturbance

(e.g. the beat drop19) as a source of creative pleasure (p. 39). Intentionally fashioning a recognizable,

unique, identity and style is, then, the enactment of agency in which deviation and the risk of

unintelligibility are transformed into a process of self-construction within the confines of one’s socio-

political situation, and in this case, artistic parameters.

This interplay between identity and social location (and situation) creates a field of performance in

which hip-hop artists must “represent,” i.e. to be “a walking signifier, the self-embodiment of one’s

value system concerning power, success, and individual/communal claim” (C. H. Smith, 1997, p.

347), by showing knowledge of, and respect for, one’s cultural history, often including spatial roots,

through “keeping it real.” This is paramount, as evidenced by Rahzel’s (from rap crew, The Roots)

reminder to youth at a beatboxing workshop in Toronto: “Know your information...That’s how

you’re gonna know your identity. Whenever I get up on stage, I know who I am” (Unity Charity

Beatboxing Workshop personal notes, 2013). This implies a conscientious and conscious attempt to

understand one’s personal and social history (ethnic, geographic, musical, familial, etc.) as a form of

personal identity narrative in order for others to “recognize.” This recognition can only occur where

“a sign or some other manifestation of an external stimulus conjures an awareness formed by a

previous encounter….To ‘recognise’ is to decode this interpellation and make sense of it in a manner

that often pays homage to the code bearer” (C. H. Smith, 1997, p. 350). It is a form of respect given

when an artist creates something new that delineates her/his individuality. Here, Judith Butler’s

18 “No biting” was mentioned by many scholars. This rule forbids imitation and requires that one's output be original, or

that one “flips” (i.e. alters) the original so that it becomes unquestionably one's own. See Fogarty (2010) for the rule's application to breaking, and Schloss (2004) as it pertains to DJing, specifically in the process of producing beats.

19 The “beat drop” is the moment in a musical track in which a beat begins a highly anticipated, new moment of energetic flow created through sound manipulation.

19

(2005) account of a substitutable singularity is useful. A hip-hop artist’s individuality, or singularity,

when it resonates with others, binds the relationship between performer and audience through a

commonality that highlights difference. If an artist’s representation of personal circumstances is

“real” it becomes more likely that the crafted individuality will be accepted and respected.

“Keeping it real” is an essential tenet of hip-hop creativity.20 For hip-hop artists, it means being true

to oneself and not “frontin’,” or expressing something you know nothing about. It encapsulates hip-

hop artistic culture’s quest for authenticity as linked to one’s self, embedded in its historical and

contemporary contexts, acknowledged through sampled sounds, “flipped” moves – quotations made

new in the instance of execution. Carefully crafted, these expressions and representations

intentionally announce influences in a way that recalls histories, including, at times, those that may

be otherwise be forgotten. How artists cultivate the presentation of “realness” is explored throughout

the narratives presented in Chapters 5 through 7.

2.5 Identity, performativity, and Signification

Comprehensively identifying aspects of identity is necessarily complex, owing to the rapid influx of

local and global influences afforded by technologies that impact one’s self-concept. Here, I suggest

that self-concept reflects an attempt to find coherence in one’s experiences that is, in turn, perceived

as an “identity.” This apparent coherence can only be apprehended based on perceived

performances, as we are unable to witness anything other than these outward gestures by signifying

bodies. With this perspective, I define identity as the temporal performance of one’s self-concept

within a socio-cultural locality. It is a temporal performance in that it is a bodily expression of being

in the moment it is asserted – in silence, with voice, action, or inaction. Its expression is local to the

space of performance even as it conjures a self-concept that may have developed in various locales.

A person is always situated, in time and space, within a socio-cultural locale to which one either

belongs or is excluded. Identity can therefore be seen as a spatial-temporal manifestation of one’s life

story, or at least some aspect of it, in the sense that one has a self-view that can be “performed” just

as a story can be expressed.

In speaking of a self-concept that gives rise to identity, the body appears to be at the centre of actions

and inscriptions of identity that tend to be essentialized into categories. These categories are

numerous and overlap. Frequently discussed in relation to hip-hop are: gender as male or female;

race, as signified by skin colour, tied to ethnicities; and ethnicities as tied to geography, with the

20

Chapter 2.6 details ways that “realness” is signified by emcees/rappers, b-boys and b-girls, and DJs.

20

performing body tagged with superficial markers of identity. The theories presented below provide

ways to understand how individuals come to be associated with, and, at times, essentially linked

(albeit incorrectly or inaccurately), to identity categorizations.

2.5.1 Performativity

Judith Butler’s (1990/2007) discussion of performativity in Gender Trouble, illuminates the ways

bodies are thought to express an internal self that is subsequently interpreted and categorically

marked:

[A]cts, gestures, and desire produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce

this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never

reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments,

generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they

otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal

signs and other discursive means. (emphasis in original, p. 185)

Societal norms provide the discursive basis for interpretations of performances. These norms or

cultural imperatives set the stage for a “stylized repetition of acts” (emphasis in original, p. 191) by

which bodies become intelligible. In such repetition, however, lies the possibility of “failure…a de-

formity” (p. 192). Agency is “located within the possibility of a variation on that repetition…[I]t is

only within the practices of repetitive signifying that a subversion of identity becomes possible”

(emphasis in original, pp. 198-199). Increasingly inter-cultural performance milieus are conducive to

the emergence of variations or “failures” in the moment of apprehended performativity, as multiple

frames of interpretation are accessed, complicating intelligibility.

Identity performances occur in a social field in which a person is addressed in order to ask for, or

even demand, an account, a narrative, of that person’s history. In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler

(2005) posits that it is this injunction to tell one’s story that gives rise to the possibility of knowing

oneself. The Other (the artist or the audience, depending on perspective) is therefore necessary in the

continued quest to satisfy the desire for self-discovery.

Butler (2005) goes on to point out that recognition of the “I” or the self is only possible within a

normative frame that is pre-set, in order for performances, as linked to bodies, to be intelligible. But

since we cannot know our whole story, as much has preceded our coming to the moment of

performance, incoherence is inevitable, putting us at risk of unintelligibility, and perhaps violence.

What is revealed at this break in our attempt to tell a coherent story is an “opacity that fall[s] outside

21

the terms of identity [as essence]…any effort made ‘to give an account of oneself’ will have to fail in

order to approach being true” (Butler, 2001, p. 28). The break or failure is then crucial to resisting

oppressive categorization in order to express difference that may eventually alter normative frames

of reference.

The moment of rupture or variation in which an uncategorized moment of expression confounds

established normative moulds, is the creative imperative of hip-hop artists whose “failure” to align

with hegemonic categories that attempt to “school” individuals becomes the basis of a unique

expressive style.

2.5.2 Signifyin(g)

It is here that Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s (2014) analysis of Signification illuminates the process by

which hip-hop artists participate in an African tradition of creative revision that harnesses

possibilities of meaning that can attach to any given gesture – of sound, word, or movement – a

constant “play of differences” (p. 67). Where Butler acknowledges the possibility of a variation, Gates

points out intentional revision; and where Butler frames the “de-formity” as a “failure,” Gates notes

a successful deviance.

In his book The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism, Gates explains that

Signifyin(g) is “a mode of formal revision...most crucially, it turns on repetition of formal structures

and their differences” (2014, p. 57). Through this process, the writer takes advantage of all the

possible meanings that attach to words or signifiers and, instead of erasing meanings to arrive at one,

puts any number of them into play.

In tracing possible origins of this tradition of revision, Gates uncovers its transport to the New

World through the stories of the Signifying Monkey, a conflation between the god Esu-Elegbara and

its monkey whose origins come from Fon (Benin) and Yoruba (Nigeria) mythology. Esu-Elegbara

reigns over indeterminacy and interpretation and the Signifying Monkey stories highlight the

Monkey’s tricks of confusion as a reminder that what we see, hear, read (or sense) has multiple

meanings based on perspective and context. In adhering to one interpretation, one risks playing the

fool.

These stories traveled to the New World and, in America, manifested itself in cloaked

communications between enslaved Africans who used their white oppressors’ words, their received

frames of reference, and flipped them, shifted them, manipulated them, to voice their subjectivities

and gesture towards their own identities.

22

Significant to the formation of identity and the utterances or gestures that signify them, is that

Signifyin(g), following the Yoruba belief system, does not require choice between binaries or sets of

binaries, nor a resolution of conflicting possibilities, but rather the production of a third, whose

meanings are indeterminate and open to a proliferation of possibilities.

Hip-hop artists create in this tradition, harnessing a consensus of meaning and manipulating it to

open up alternate meanings. Specifically, Gates explains, “When a black person speaks of

Signifyin(g), he or she means a ‘style-focused message...styling which is foregrounded by the devices

of making a point by indirection and wit’”(p. 85).

Gates’s theory provides a framework for understanding the intentional reworkings of normative

foundations by hip-hop artists in order to create novel expressions.

2.6 Performing hip-hop identity

Scholars have highlighted artists’ expressions of identity through music, dance, and lyrics. Forman

(2000, 2002b) emphasizes the importance of place – one’s neighbourhood, crew, or practice spaces –

in rappers’ representations and performances. Emcees around the world continue to use rap in order

to make marginal voices heard. This is frequently seen in mixed-language lyrics that infuse a region’s

dominant language with regional or foreign dialects (Mitchell, 2004; Sarkar & Winer, 2006) thereby

symbolically asserting diversity, particularly where minority groups are not politically empowered

(Mitchell, 2004; Sarkar & Allen, 2007).

The following sections look more closely at the arts of emceeing, breaking, and DJing in order to

analyze the ways identities are performed. In this discussion, I take performances to be performative

in that they are bound to normative frames that make them intelligible. This perspective also

acknowledges the repetitions of sound and movement that make creativity and originality possible

through variation and originality. The hip-hop imperatives to “keep it real” and “represent” also

warrant analyses of these arts with an eye to the lived experiences of artists as they inform

performances.

Literature on hip-hop culture and its art forms have most often focused on rap music, perhaps

because its performances provide visual, aural, as well as spoken evidence that lends itself more

easily to analyses. The literature surveyed consistently highlights race, ethnicity, and gender in

discussions of artistic performance. As a result, these aspects will be the focus of the following

sections, but it must be said that there are many more dimensions of identity that complicate its

construction, perception, performances, reception, and ensuing interpretations. It must also be noted

23

that issues of race, ethnicity, and gender will be seen to overlap even as one is foregrounded in each

section.

2.6.1 Emcees represent

The emcee, as artist, evolved from the role of the party MC (Master of Ceremonies) who was tasked

with heightening the crowd’s excitement. It has become a potent medium for lyricism and

expression. KRS-One differentiates emcees from rappers: emcees are “conscious” rappers who have

an educational or critical message to convey while other rappers rhyme for profit. However, any

given rapper can assume these roles at one time or another (Parmar, 2009). Emceeing, breaking, and

DJing were inseparable in the early stages of hip-hop’s development and live performance was the

focal point of participation.

The cultivation of rap’s image began with The Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 hit, “Rapper’s Delight.” Rap

could now be set on vinyl and disseminated to a larger public. Its lyrics feature a description of the

performance spaces through which people were moved to dance, referencing DJ’s beats, break

(dance) moves, and emcees rocking the mic (skillfully rhyming). It also features lyrical bravado in a

way reminiscent of “the dozens,” an interplay of African origin, that involves outwitting another

with insults that serve to emphasize the speaker’s superiority.

Dimitriadis (2009) and Forman (2002a) attribute the eventual separation of rapping from its original

performance-based setting to this single’s popularity and the increasing portability and mobility of

music through technological advances. In 1982, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five released

“The Message,” frequently cited for its depictions of “ghetto” life. This appears to be the earliest

example of the use of one’s neighbourhood and lived experiences, marked by its unsafe, apathetic,

impoverished landscape, as the basis for rap lyrics. The track’s popularity arguably signaled that

reality-based tracks would become increasingly marketable.

These early images of hip-hop culture visually promote identification of its artists as African-

American (in simplistic racial terms, “black”) regardless of their country of origin. However, other

ethnicities have always been a part of hip-hop’s development. In fact, Rock Steady Crew, whose

membership is comprised of mostly Puerto Ricans (Rose, 1994b) was one of hip-hop’s earliest

representatives. Flores (1994) points out the lack of recognition Puerto Ricans are given for their role

in hip-hop’s development. Charlie Chase, a Puerto Rican DJ says, “‘Puerto Rican rappers always

knew that they were operating in a ‘black world.’ However ‘down’ they felt and were made to feel

with the homies, however much they loved the music, the angry question: What the fuck are you

doing here, Porto Rican? Still resonates in their memory’” (Flores, p. 93). Despite this, “[a]mong

24

young blacks and Puerto Ricans, hip hop has generally been a mortar of remarkable intensity…its

unifying potential has certainly been one of its strongest legacies and sources of appeal among youth

in countless settings around the world” (p. 93). Notwithstanding this gap in historical

documentation, rap, and hip-hop in general, is commonly understood to be embedded in an African-

American aesthetic, perhaps because the music, the central element in the culture’s arts, developed

from Jamaican-born, DJ Kool Herc’s pioneering turntable techniques. An even stronger association

is made by Rabaka (2011), particularly with regard to rap: “[T]he hip hop generation has inherited

African Americans’ long-standing emphasis on eloquence, rhetoric, and the spiritual dimensions of

the spoken word, especially as conceived of, and articulated during the Civil Rights and Black Power

movements” (p. 4). Hip-hop is linked not only to African-American art forms, but to political

movements and the music that accompanied them.

Hip-hop’s association with “blackness” continues to raise important points for discussion. The first

of which is the essentializing force of this racial categorization, particularly discussed through Paul

Gilroy’s (1993) concept of “black Atlantic,” a “rhizomorphic, fractal structure of the transcultural,

international formation” (p. 4) not bound by geography, but rather by the “themes of nationality,

exile, and cultural affiliation [that] accentuate the inescapable fragmentation and differentiation of

the black subject…recently compounded further by the questions of gender, sexuality, and male

domination which have been made unavoidable by the struggles of black women and the voices of

black gay men and lesbians” (p. 35). With reference to hip-hop, Gilroy first recognizes the

translocation of Jamaican sound system culture to America and then exposes its problematic

interpretation as “an expression of some authentic African-American essence” (pp. 33-34). He also

points out that black political struggles have now become “automatically expressive of the national or

ethnic differences with which they are associated” (p. 31). The result is a flattening of complex

histories, origins, and intercultural exchanges under a singular “black” identity that belies, and at

times dismisses, the rich and varied experiences of hip-hop’s artists and audiences.

In addition, this supposed “black” essence has become increasingly linked with its location in the

American ghetto and its seemingly glorified images of poverty, violence, hyper-masculinity and

misogyny as performed in rap’s lyrics and videos. Forman (2000, 2002b) probes the ghetto’s

importance to gangsta rap in particular through the sounds and relationships that this space

produces and facilitates. Importantly, he differentiates the “ghetto” as an abstract concept of space,

from the “‘hood,” which acknowledges a more localized experience performatively enacted by

“gangstas,” who “expound their own versions of alienating power, drawing on the imagery and

codes of the street…entering into a discourse of domination that subjugate women, opposing gang

members or those who are perceived as being weaker and thus less than them....these expressions are

25

intended to diminish the presence of others who represent other cities and other ‘hoods” (Forman,

2000, p. 82). For Forman, what is important in these depictions is to ask why youth resonate with

such violent imagery and how they see this affecting their identities. These performances point to the

importance of “spaces and places…to an understanding of the ways that a great number of urban

black youths imagine their environments and the ways that they relate those images to their own

individual sense of self” (p. 83), a process that has not been adequately explored from youth

perspectives, with few exceptions.21 It is nevertheless apparent that youth do build imagined

communities22,23 through rap’s localized, authenticated, and therefore more believable, stories.

Forman (2000) also emphasizes that space facilitates bonds between rap crew members who gain

approval from their neighbourhoods, thereby bolstering their success outside the ‘hood. These are

bonds of near-familial support that nurture artists as they develop their craft and launch careers,

acknowledged in “shout-outs” at shows and on record/CD covers.

It must be noted that the “ghetto” and “blackness” are frequently used in references to American

hip-hop, which continues to be, at the very least, a basis of comparison for hip-hop practices around

the world (Forman, 2002b; Hernandez & Garofalo, 2004; Krims, 2002; Mitchell, 2004).24 In their

deviation from these essentializing categorizations, Forman (2000) applauds Canadian group Dream

Warriors, who, in their track “Ludi” (Dream Warriors, 1991), manages to acknowledge a worldwide

African diaspora without appeal to a single African origin, and without nostalgia for their Caribbean

heritage. At the same time, they situate themselves within Toronto’s hybrid Afro-Caribbean

community, expressing the particularities of their identity development as influenced by local and

global communities.

The attention given to blackness in scholarly discussions of rap highlights its binary opposition to

“whiteness.” Earlier explorations were primarily concerned with the consumption of rap music by

white youth as evidenced by record sales (Forman, 2002a; George, 1998) and concert attendance

(Forman, 2002a). Interestingly, George (1998) notes that in the early ‘80s, black music executives

were not very supportive of the burgeoning hip-hop music scene, and that it was small, white-owned

21 Some research has ventured to answer this question: Barnwell (2004), Dimitriadis (2009), and Hill (2009).

22 This is an application of Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities” (1983).

23 In another application of Anderson’s “imagined communities,” Fogarty (2007) noted connections made between

breakers who hold shared meanings formed through mediated interactions, referring to these connections as “imagined affinities” that cross geographic boundaries.

24 Significantly, definitions of “blackness” differ around the world as discussed with regard to Somali youth in Krims (2002) and with reference to Africans and other non-Europeans in Helbig (2011).

26

businesses that helped nurture and spur its popularity, which made “defining the music solely in

terms of an African-American context...problematic” (Forman, 2002a, p. 111). Interest in regulating

ownership of hip-hop grew with the emergence of white rap acts (George, 1998) despite the

emphasis placed on a ghetto reality that generally made rap more difficult to appreciate and

appropriate among non-black fans (Forman, 2002a). Beginning with the Beastie Boys, white artists

have been able to garner respect for their artistic skills. The salience of race issues remains, however,

as the success of the Beastie Boys has been attributed to their manager, Russell Simmons, who was

able to “bridge Black and white tastes” (Chang, 2005, p. 245) and to capitalize on what he thought

was “a rebellious, nonconformist attitude in rap…analogous to the rock attitude” that resonated

with teenaged white male rockers (George, 1998, p. 65). Rick Rubin, who is of Jewish descent, and

who started Def Jam Records with Simmons, also saw the potential of aligning a punk sensibility

with rap and a successful crossover resulted from his production of Run-D.M.C’s “Walk This Way,”

featuring Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith (Forman, 2002a). In this discourse, along a

racial, black-white binary, artists are seen to perform punk/rock and rap identities in order to merge

them into a musical product that would appeal to a wider audience.

This did not make Eminem’s entry into the rap scene any easier or less controversial, however, as he

had to prove his skills of rhyme and flow according to rap aesthetics before being “recognized.” As

with other white rap acts such as Pete Nice and Third Bass, he not only adopted hip-hop’s visual

identifiers (e.g. clothing and mannerisms), he also spoke about his own spatial environment, with its

attendant politics and economics (Fraley, 2009). Fraley argues that in this way, skin color became

less relevant. The ‘hood, however, as a spatial location of “real” experience remained necessary for

recognition.

Perhaps owing to hip-hop’s insistence on the “real,” located in more intimate neighbourhood

settings, rappers around the world differentiate themselves through their use of regional dialects that

are frequently viewed as “resistance vernaculars” that push against the hegemony of a country’s

dominant language, particularly where it enables oppressive living conditions. Such is the case for

the Maori in New Zealand who “re-territorialize…major Anglophone rules of intelligibility” and for

Italian rappers in Cosenza, who use their dialect to cause a rift in the dominant culture’s

understandings of Italian “standard” language use (Mitchell, 2004, p. 108). For the Maori in

Mitchell’s study, the waiata (song) tradition easily merges with hip-hop musical elements and

attitudes to create a syncretic musical form. Similarly, though for different purposes, members of

Cosenza’s South Posse use their dialect to forge affinities with the region’s people, while an

Ethiopian-born member of their group uses it to show his adoption of a new home in Calabria.

According to Mitchell (2004), South Posse addresses racism directed at southern Italians and

27

immigrants while inflecting the region’s dialect with slang and “switching different ‘resistance

vernaculars’ in the form of immigrant languages ‘macaronically’ to express transnational and

translocal linguistic hybrids” (p. 116).

For rappers in Quebec, an increasingly multiethnic urban milieu has made switching between

languages a significant challenge to Quebec’s nationalist aim effected through Quebec French

language instruction. This phenomenon is analyzed by Sarkar and Winer (2006), who found that

words from African-American Vernacular English, hip-hop English, standard Quebec French, and

Haitian and Jamaican Creole were all mixed into rap lyrics, providing new ways to address their

audience while expanding the possibilities of rhyme construction. Interestingly, these words are

adopted regardless of birthplace, infusing everyday speech with the same codeswitches. Quebec rap

artists are consciously using these new resources to signify their actual backgrounds, while gesturing

towards their view of a “unified” Quebec in which differences are acknowledged and adopted

(Sarkar & Allen, 2007).

In these examples, “the active use of language…allows individuals to present themselves in and

from a cultural standpoint, and reinforcing this standpoint can itself facilitate change….Rap…has

become central to identity formation within a context of social resistance, as part of a process of

collective self-definition” (Whiteley, 2004, p. 10). Rap’s performative possibilities are exploited in

order to envision and enact new social relationships.

Women also enact new modes of social relations through rap, questioning and ignoring normative

prescriptions of gender behaviour. In an analysis of the lyrics of Mia X (the “Unlady-like Diva”) and

Lady of Rage, Haugen (2003) illustrates each emcee’s reconfiguration of generally acceptable

“ladylike” behaviours. Both express their deviation from the norm by announcing their claim to

greater space, physically or figuratively. They place themselves in control of language (e.g.

reclaiming “bitch”) while showing themselves to be more skillful than men and capable of exerting

power over them in the rap arena and within sexual relations. Haugen further observes that in these

examples, women are seen to use the hegemony of gangsta rap practices in order to subvert them

with their own performative articulations of gender.

In the same vein, Jean Grae is discussed by Paradigm Smalls (2011) as “performing Black

heteronormativity, and exposing it as a show, a performative posture, allow[ing] one to engage with

the critical possibilities of alternative or ‘queered’ formations to heteronormativity” (p. 88). Grae’s

(2002) lyrics in “God’s Gift,” in particular, are cited for her adoption of a male misogynistic persona

28

while a distant male voice commands her, “Dumb bitch! Play your position!” Hearing her voice

while rapping “male” rhymes creates a dizzying exposition of heteronormative performativity.25

Though relatively little attention has been given to female rappers in scholarly discussions, it is

important to note that they have been a part of hip-hop culture from its early stages (Rose, 1994b)

and continue to exert their presence, often on feminist terms in the rap scene.26

2.6.2 B-boys and b-girls represent

Hip-hop’s original dance form, breaking, has currently not been analyzed to the same extent as rap.

Nevertheless, combing the existing literature for the ways breakers perform identities reveals

differentiated means of expressing identity.

Johnson (2011) specifically seeks to understand the way issues of race are integrated into dance

practices and discussions. In her analysis of a battle between the Mighty Zulu Kings (MZK), a New

York-based group made up of dancers from mixed ethnicities (Latino, African-American, and East

Asian) and the Korean Gamblerz crew, Johnson reveals key style differences that signify localities of

practice. MZK, founded by Afrika Bambaataa (one of hip-hop’s founding DJs) is seen to exemplify

bravado through quick footwork, burns,27 and emotional intensity. Gamblerz, on the other hand, are

described as slowly but surely creating anticipation for their powerful, acrobatic moves. Johnson sees

the victory of MZK as an affirmation of the “Old School,” New York-based style of breaking over

that of the “New School,” which, interestingly, has grown out of the dance’s circulation in Korea. A

debate ensued among spectators and continued through internet commentary, revealing contesting

philosophies behind the dance form. Evidently, “the layers of meaning drawn from differences in

dance style are extrapolated to represent, and even explain, differences in nationality, race, gender

and knowledge about b-boying history” (Johnson, 2011, p. 174). As the dance is now practiced

around the world, breaking highlights embodied cultural differences that are made to contest each

other in the battle context.

These differences are more clearly revealed in discussions that inevitably implicate race. In a

conversation with b-girl Rokafella, Johnson (2011) comes to understand that while skill is of utmost

25 It should be noted that this particular articulation of gender relations might be US-specific. Mitchell (2004) found that the

rap lyrics of Maori and Pacific Islanders do not exhibit misogynist tendencies, perhaps owing to a different perception and

recognition of women’s strengths and roles in these cultures.

26 Many examples are provided in an anthology of essays on hip-hop feminism by Pough, Richardson, Durham, and

Raimist (2007).

27 Footwork refers to moves performed on the ground, as opposed to those executed upright. Burns are gestures of insult

toward opponents.

29

importance and tends to overshadow conversations surrounding race, skill is nevertheless rooted in

an understanding of breaking as an African dance. For Rokafella, this recognition is key to

understanding the dance’s link to socio-political and economic history that translates into what

Johnson calls, a “kinesthetic knowledge,” and that Rokafella refers to as “soul.” In this way,

“breaking is not about race, yet it is about racism, at least in part” (p. 189), with “movement…both

the medium of contestation and an important form of meaning-making within the culture” (p. 174).

Battles help determine the boundaries of expectation that breakers are nonetheless expected to

convincingly transgress. As Johnson aptly says, “On the overlapping terrain of what one should do

and what one can do is where style is born” (p. 174), denoting a personal way of embodying the

dance’s history and aesthetics, however shifting its manifestations.

One’s repertoire of movements not only situates a dancer within a regional style (thereby giving

importance to space and place), it is also a testament to her or his developmental lineage, as revealed

through performances of acquired musical tastes (Fogarty, 2010), made visible through dance moves

(Schloss, 2009), that are passed on from teacher to student in workshops, between crew members,

and through contact with other b-girls/b-boys when travelling. Music is essential to the creation of

new movements and their execution. As such, one’s tastes are performative of personal28 and local

breaking histories. A dancer’s learning and social history within the dance form can also be indexed

by taste development. A dancer in Fogarty’s study informed her that he was listening to the “wrong”

music earlier in his development, indicating not only a sense of “progress,” but also a sense of

belonging to a greater circle of cultural taste.

In this sense, the existence of a body of songs most appropriate to the dance form is implied. Schloss

(2009), through his immersion in the b-boy/b-girl culture of New York, describes a “b-boy canon…a

recognized repertoire of songs that b-boys and b-girls are expected to be able to dance to” (p. 12) that

defines the community. This canon has a reach outside New York, as b-boys such as Ken Swift

travel and teach around the world. Fogarty (2010) also acknowledges that there are certain songs to

which even a novice breaker should be able to dance, marking membership in the culture. Within

this prescription, however, are opportunities to explore one’s own tastes, through one’s exploration

of music and through the array of musical styles presented by DJs at break events.

Indeed, individuality appears privileged in breaking due to the undeniably embodied nature of

dance. This becomes apparent in a YouTube video posted by R16KOREA (2013, July 23), featuring

internationally renowned b-boys. They challenge each other to “bite” or copy each other’s moves.

28 Fogarty (2010) noted that one b-boy she encountered preferred dancing to Depêche Mode and Björk, artists whose music is not usually connected with hip-hop.

30

Their attempts immediately expose each b-boys limitations in strength and flexibility, as well as

reveal the uniqueness of their catalogue of movements. Even when the attempt to bite nears success,

the executed move does not bear the stylistic mark of its originator. This phenomenon shows that

although the culture’s foundational dance moves are internalized, the creative rupture enacted,

Signified, by unique bodies will inevitably reveal the results of a negotiation between group culture

and individual agency.

Issues of agency, as exercised by women, have been discussed primarily through involvement in rap

where it revolves around male-female sexual relations and their representations. Such discussions in

breaking, however, seem centred around the idea of acceptance within the breaking scene. Indeed,

the dance is still frequently referred to as “b-boying” even while female participation is increasing.

For example, Johnson’s (2011) discussion of racial identities expressed through style uses the term

“b-boying” when referring to the general practice of breaking, revealing the continued prominence of

males in this artistic community. In his ethnographic study, Schloss (2009) alternates between using

the terms b-boy, b-girl, breaker, dancer, but frequently settles on “b-boy,” with the explanation that

this is widely viewed in the community as a generic term that includes women. “While this may

appear to be begging the question, [he argues] that the ambiguity of the term reflects an actual social

ambiguity: to what degree, and in what senses, is a b-girl a kind of b-boy?” (p. 15). His suggestion

that there are degrees of b-boying, one of which is “b-girl” further demonstrates the way women, and

indeed, anyone who does not identify with “boy,” are subsumed within the term, obscuring, and

arguably hindering the emergence of other identities.

And yet, as with rap, women have been involved with hip-hop dance from its earliest stages, though

Rose (1994b) points out that they usually did not perform the power moves b-boys were doing. Most

break crews at the time, however, did not include females (this is also true today) due to “lack of

exposure, social support, and male discouragement,” according to b-girl Baby Love from Rock

Steady (Rose, 1994b, p. 48). Rose further explains that b-girls were seen as unfeminine, and the

moves unsafe for a girl. Wiggles, a b-boy with the same crew admitted that he “would respect a

female breaker, but was not as comfortable with females exhibiting the level of physical exertion

breaking required” (p. 49). This is contradicted by Richard Santiago, a b-boy in Schloss’s study, who

said that he does not change his teaching style according to gender: “‘You want to be a b-girl? That’s

it: you gonna do the same training....I don’t care [if] you’re a girl....it’s no ‘b-girl cypher’ or ‘b-boy

cypher.’ No. It’s a cypher! There’s no gender breakdown, this is what you got. You want to do it,

you do it!’” (2009, p. 66). Echoing Johnson’s (2011) observation that skill is paramount in

discussions of breaking, Santiago’s statement hints at the tensions inherent in the practice for b-girls,

requiring them to learn and perform on men’s terms. Further confining women, when a b-girl shows

31

ingenuity, her moves may nonetheless be attributed to her b-boy boyfriend (Fogarty, 2010). The

following statement from Schloss’s (2009) interview with b-girl Seoulsonyk is telling:

“Is b-girling a different dance form than guys’?” asks b-girl Seoulsonyk:

We haven’t really talked about it as women....But at this point, the women that have

been dancing and been active and visible on the local, national, international scale

are the women who are physically accomplishing what men are accomplishing. But

they’re not setting the standards for everyone [regardless of] gender. The guys are still

the one[s] that are setting the standards. So, I don’t have a problem, personally. If

people are like, “Oh, that’s b-boying,” I have no problems with it. …

Complicating the picture even more, as Seoulsonyk notes, is that b-girls often refer to what

they do as “b-boying,” but b-boys never call their dance “b-girling.” This suggests not only

that the term b-boying is normative, but that so is the projection of masculinity itself. (p. 65)

This reveals a complicated set of overlooked issues that are only beginning to be addressed, in part,

through b-girl collectives that provide a supportive network, e.g. KeepRockinYou in Toronto, and

seek to break down gender role stereotypes (J. Lopez, personal communication, November 1,

2014).29

2.6.3 DJs represent

Perhaps due to the DJ’s role, usually performed in the background, except when battling, the art of

the hip-hop DJ has been analyzed to an even lesser extent than breaking. Nevertheless, DJs are no

less affected by hip-hop cultural imperatives and by the prescriptions of broader social norms.

Hip-hop DJs provide live music for clubs and breaking events, but are also “producers” of beats for

rap albums. DJs may also be called “turntablists” or “tablists,” which refers to DJs who perform

technically difficult sets in live settings, which include competitive formats. These roles may be

performed by any given DJ at one time or another.

In the introduction to his ethnographic study of producers in Seattle, Schloss (2004) notes the multi-

ethnic make-up of a DJ community that does not highlight issues of race, apart from situating the

music in the same African-American tradition from which rap and breaking emerged in the Bronx.

29 The experiences of participants in KeepRockinYou’s b-girling program is analyzed by Fogarty, Cleto, Zsolt, and

Melindy (2018) to understand the ways they negotiate gender representation through breaking.

32

In the music itself, diverse influences could be heard, even in the early productions of DJ Afrika

Bambaataa whose “sound became a rhythmic analogue to his peace-making philosophy” (Chang

(Chang, 2005, p. 97).30 This ethos of diversity within a unified form continues to be a basis for the

hip-hop DJ’s creative process with the result that each artist’s fragmented identity can be performed

through the musical samples they weave into a sonic performance.

This is achieved by taking musical fragments, sought for their sonic qualities (Schloss, 2004) and the

historical or communal links they forge (Lena, 2004), and weaving them into a new narrative

creation (Snapper, 2004). Turntablists access audience’s memories, “teas[ing] their listeners’

experience of narrative time” (Snapper, 2004, p. 12), by establishing a groove that is manipulated,

defying expectations. Snapper (2004) argues that DJs have the ability to disrupt history through a

symbolic critique of American “progress” that overlooks the well-being of those who do not, or

cannot, participate in what she sees as an imperialist agenda. For DJ Spooky, the fragmentation

inherent in turntablism mirrors the fragmentation brought about by the displacement of people that

nevertheless results in patois and a collage of identities (Becker et al., 2002), much like the

codeswitching evident in some rap lyrics.

Such merging of musical cultures through sampling is evident in the use of Bhangra samples in hip-

hop. According to Hankins (2011), Bhangra began to mix with hip-hop styles as it made its way to

the UK and was used in daytime discos by youth. Migrations eventually led to US hip-hop artists’

discovery and use of Bhangra samples in their music, at first without any respect for their origins. As

Indian music samples were increasingly used, criticism and legal action from the Indian community

and its artists raised awareness about the samples’ histories. Hankins notes that what first began as a

mutual exchange of sounds and a cursory knowledge of shared resistance discourses has led to a

deeper knowledge of shared struggle, thereby strengthening identifications and perceived identities.

This process of identity-building incorporating cross-cultural influences is shown to be important in

the expression of Japanese DJs’ national identities. In an interview with Manabe (2013), DJ Krush

explains that he originally did not use Japanese sounds in his compositions because he did not grow

up listening to them. In his view, this would have been a lie, inconsistent with “keeping it real.”

When he collaborated with American rapper, C.L. Smooth, however, his use of the shamisen sound

not only served their musical goals, but made him reconsider Japan’s music. Through subsequent

research, he gained an understanding of the Japanese aesthetic concept of ma (“space”), which

30

Stoever (2016) highlights the role of women in the development of early DJ’s musical inventories/taste(s) as they were

usually the ones at home selecting music to listen to as future DJs, children at the time, heard their mothers’ records.

33

began to inform his compositions. With this new understanding, he proceeded to include sounds

evocative of Japanese landscapes, later including the use of live performances on traditional

instruments to generate new music.

Contrary to Schloss (2004), Manabe (2013) finds that racial identity does affect social relations and

musical perceptions in the DJ community. Schloss mentions the mixed ethnic origins of American

DJs, while Manabe suggests that more subtle and complicated dynamics are at play, particularly at

international competitions where judges tend to be well-acquainted with each other through social

gatherings before and after battles. For those who are not comfortable speaking English or who are

more introverted, inclusion in the international network of DJs is more difficult. As there is no set

evaluation framework for battle judgments, people may win based on familiarity rather than

originality, potentially ignoring the creativity and musically expressed identities of non-English

speakers. Surprisingly, Japanese DJs do not sense any ethnic discrimination, explaining that skill is

the primary focus. Manabe (2013) argues however, that in order to be recognized, Japanese DJs

must perform to a higher standard than their English-speaking counterparts, despite the music

“speaking” for itself.

DJs themselves are cited by Katz (2006) and Snapper (2004) as wishing their music were the focus of

attention, rather than their gender or ethnicity. To begin with, before the music starts, many female

DJs seem invisible as they may not be recognized as the turntablist behind the equipment (Katz,

2012) or are mistaken for singers (Schloss, 2004). And once they are seen, commentary on their

image supercedes their music. Another obstacle to musical recognition is females’ alternate

perspectives on competition. Snapper (2004) and Katz (2006) suggest that though women do enjoy

battling, not all of them do so with the same masculine heroics applauded in male DJs.31 Similar to

developments in breaking, DJs who identify as women and/or on the LGBTQ2S+ spectrum have

started collectives (e.g. Intersessions in Toronto) that aim to provide education and a more

comfortable environment for aspiring DJs of various musical genres who no longer have to rely on

male friends for technical knowledge.

2.6.4 Performance identity

The discussion in the preceding section has detailed the ways that emcees, b-boys and b-girls, and

DJs perform their identities. These public performances are affected and effected by myriad factors

31 Katz (2006) also suggests that the momentary glory given to male DJs can be significant for those who have been marked

as technical “nerds.” This highlights the inherent hierarchies reflected in hip-hop culture practices that inadvertently emphasize one form of marginality over another.

34

interacting in multiple ways during the moment of performance, meant to be received by audiences.

This perceived image is what I call performance identity. Davidson (2002) refers to this as a “‘projected

self’” (p. 102) publicly presented. This projection also has the potential to open up discussions,

including evaluations, of both the performer and the identity they have shown, with a more positive

evaluation accorded performers who can both effect an engaging “presentational style, but

also…show something of one’s individuality and inner state” (p. 108). In hip-hop, an added

imperative is that this performance identity be “real,” true to the artist’s experience, and a testament

to their authenticity.

The processes involved in the development of hip-hop performance identities is the overarching

object of my narrative inquiry.

2.7 Hip-hop and education

Hip-hop culture was created through an active process, with live performance at its centre. However,

with The Sugarhill’s Gang’s discovery and subsequent record release, the music industry recognized

the potential for packaging the culture’s music (George, 1998), which would begin to travel and

settle across the globe.

This musical migration has been paralleled by cross-cultural migrations as people were uprooted,

unwillingly or by choice, from their geographic origins. This circulation of people and of music has

created a web of influence, meanings, and uses of hip-hop music that are subsequently performed,

read, interpreted, and re-circulated.

Rapidly evolving and increasingly efficient technological means of communication ensure that hip-

hop music travels quickly and has an ever-widening reach. This has enabled connections, without

geographical root, forged by “an altogether new condition of neighborliness, even with those most

distant from ourselves” (Appadurai, 1990, p. 2), expanding “cultural affinities and dialogues” (p. 2).

Through this exchange, images (visual or sonic) transmitted via technology cohere in imaginary

worlds that are inevitably indigenized when appropriated (p. 5). Appadurai (1990) goes on to

explain that global cultural flows have created ideoscapes comprised of intermingling and resisting

ideologies that have roots in Enlightenment “ideas and images, including ‘freedom’, ‘welfare’,

‘rights’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘representation’ and the master-term ‘democracy’” (p. 10). These ideoscapes

are inevitably fractured by very real reminders that these concepts were built on humanist premises

that rationalized the enslavement of colonized and marginalized peoples who did not readily qualify

as “human” (Gilroy, 1993). The continuing existence of these ideals amidst socio-economic tides

that leave widening disparities between groups, on a global (Grant, 2013, May 14) and local

35

(Hulchanski, 2010)32 level, trouble the communities in which many educators, music educators

among them, live and teach.

Student demographics therefore represent a mix of lived and changing influences that challenge the

rigid boundaries of essentialized identity markers such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, and religion.

As both teachers and students negotiate the dynamics of their relationships, new tools for pedagogic

engagement become necessary as difference stubbornly refuses to resolve into the wishful neutrality

of school curricula. Patrick Schmidt (2011) acknowledges this inevitability and challenges us to

engage with the effects of “race, poverty, violence, self-expression, and economic production....The

implication here is not simply fostering politically aware interactions, but a commitment to

educating students for the world, for their world and for the transformation of both” (p. 5). Such an

agenda is difficult to enact, as teachers’ own experiences and identity markers may distance them

from students.33 Such a diverse set of influences can create identity dissonances that surface in the

classroom in a variety of expressions and performances – silence, engagement, indifference,

violence, dialogue, debate, to name a few. The immediacy of this educational landscape calls for a

dialogue with difference that welcomes conflict as a means of forging transformative connections

(Abe, 2009; Schmidt, 2012). Hip-hop music, frequently cited as a voice for struggle and resistance

(e.g. Barnwell, 2004; Mitchell, 2004; Whiteley, 2004), presents itself as a medium for the

representation of identities in which “conflict becomes something not to be managed or dismissed,

but rather embraced....Conflict in rap and hip hop is and has always been a form of power

manifested in the attempt to ‘connect’ with or address others and ‘ramify’ our own selves” (Schmidt,

2012, p. 10). Importantly, it is a medium that does not dismiss the powerful emotions that can

accompany identity dissonances.

This possibility of identity recognition and negotiation in hip-hop culture’s musical practices has led

scholars to articulate the idea of hip-hop pedagogy (Bridges, 2011; Hill, 2009; Mahiri, 1998; Pardue,

2007) as a means of accessing students’ experiential knowledge, always represented in a

performative realm, in order to devise more relevant curricula (Jackson & Anderson, 2009; Vagi,

2010). The use of hip-hop in this manner implies that understanding identities as shaped by one’s

lived experiences is at the core of hip-hop pedagogy. This is substantiated by studies that have

illuminated the ways in which students use hip-hop music in their daily lives such that it becomes

part of how they understand themselves, others, and the socio-political forces in which they are

32 A report issued by the University of Toronto’s Cities Centre has delineated three income-based “cities” within Toronto

with the low-income “city” growing at a much faster rate than the others, accompanied by a shrinking middle class.

33 Rappers frequently express disappointment with the educational system, as seen in Au’s (2005) analysis of rap lyrics.

36

situated (Barnwell, 2004; Dimitriadis, 2009; Hill, 2009). Research in this area has, however, only

focused on rap lyrics and artists. Nevertheless, the ability of the music to permeate youth

understandings of their cultural milieus has lead educators to use it as a tool for engaging students in

classrooms. Hill (2009) articulates, “hip-hop pedagogy...[is] not...a prefigured set of strategies or

activities for reaching students through hip-hop culture...Rather, hip-hop pedagogy reflects an

alternate, more expansive vision of pedagogy that reconsiders the relationships among students,

teachers, texts, school, and the broader social world” (p. 120). In this way, hip-hop pedagogy aims to

prepare students for the world as they experience it.

Introducing this pedagogy in classrooms must begin with teacher training, as Bridges (2011) argues.

Hip-hop pedagogy in this context would aim to challenge future teachers’ long-held beliefs about

teaching philosophies, methods, and the role of schools.

As transformative pedagogy (Abe, 2009), hip-hop is used to critique sociopolitical structures to

change and improve communities. Isoke (2012) provides a concrete example of this through the use

of a cypher in her university classroom. In her description of the classroom experience, each student

is able to create an understanding of how hip-hop culture has shaped their lives. They discuss their,

at times, conflicting relationship to hip-hop and its cultural expressions. In the process, issues such as

black sexuality, family roles, hip-hop genres, hip-hop history are discussed in a way that does not

reference, as much as possible, the perceived authority of experience that the teacher might bring to

the classroom.

At the core of these pedagogical applications is the perspective that hip-hop artists’ representations of

themselves are indicative of their broader community contexts. Given that students gravitate toward

hip-hop expressions, artist representations are seen to resonate with students as they deal with

similar situations (in reality or in the abstract). These artists, in effect, perform their identities

through chosen representations, which include identity markers that have been discussed and

theorized by scholars, particularly those in the field of cultural studies. Understanding the way

scholars have interpreted markers of identity in hip-hop performances, as revelatory of artists’ lived

experiences, can lead educators to a more engaged and informed critique of hip-hop-based

pedagogies.

2.7.1 Hip-hop in music education

As the foregoing literature review shows, hip-hop culture, at its best, values community, identity,

transformative knowledge, and sociopolitical critique. It can offer a fighting, expressive stance

toward categorizations that marginalize people of colour, women, those who are LGBTQ2S+-

37

identified, the economically disadvantaged, indeed, anyone not readily accepted by dominant

societal structures. As a result, it continues to attract youth as they cultivate their own identities.

Pedagogical practices may be enriched by exploring the way that hip-hop artists have come to learn

within this culture, whose learning spaces are not institutionalized classrooms, but rather public

spaces such as community centres, church basements, friends’ basements, or concrete city squares.

Much of the scholarly writing on hip-hop focuses on American conceptualizations. However, hip-

hop art forms are practiced around the world, and localized experience, e.g. in the Ukraine (Helbig,

2011), Mexico (Ragland, 2003), and the UK (S. Smith, 2007), is increasingly studied and

documented. When I began dissertation research in 2014, no study had yet been found, that focuses

on hip-hop artists and culture in Toronto.34

Though scholarship on the subject of hip-hop is broadening and its creative artifacts are increasingly

incorporated into school curriculum (usually through the composition and analysis of rap lyrics), not

much is known about the learning processes of those directly involved in hip-hop artistic practices

whose works serve as the basis for student engagement and inspire hip-hop pedagogies.

In my search for literature, I have only encountered one autobiographical account by Fikentscher

(1999) that describes how one might learn to become a DJ. But in recent years, music education

scholars have begun explorations into hip-hop musicians’ learning processes. Through a collection

of interviews gathered from multiple angles of inquiry, Snell and Soderman (2014) provoke

discussions on learning, career trajectories, as well as the burgeoning field of hip-hop studies in the

academy. This has been complemented by scholarship that interrogates educator-researcher

positionality (Kruse, 2015) to more respectfully navigate the incorporation of hip-hop in music

education curriculum (Kruse, 2018a). Kruse (2018b) has also documented first-hand descriptions of

hip-hop musicians’ ways of learning as a way to develop teaching and learning techniques more

closely aligned with hip-hop culture’s practices.

As we turn to hip-hop culture as a resource, critical reflection is necessary for addressing issues of

appropriation. Tobias (2014) cautions, “[I]t is problematic to treat Hip Hop culture and rap music as

content that can simply be inserted into a classroom or ensemble….Developing appropriate

pedagogies for integrating Hip Hop in music classrooms necessitates an appreciation of the depth

and complexity involved in disrupting homogenized narratives” (p. 63), with attention to images

34

Mark V. Campbell (2018b) has illuminated the Toronto hip-hop context through sonic representations by rappers and

DJs in an archival exhibit. He also explores this context as part of a broader focus on the Afro-diasporic experience as

present in “sonic narrative” (Campbell, 2010, Abstract) form executed by turntablists, particularly as it reveals practices of freedom and notions of home within the politics of multiculturalism.

38

and representations of hip-hop culture that contribute to “misogynoir”35 (Bailey, 2013, p. 35) and

denigrate its participants. Music educators should aim to develop pedagogies, curriculum, and

strategies based on the knowledge, contributions, and experiences of hip-hop artists directly

embedded in the culture. Looking for artists close to home has great potential for enhancing

students’ resonance with the music and culture in the communities around them, while juxtaposing

local ideas with commercially available hip-hop music.

With my current inquiry, I aim to contribute to the growing body of work in music education by

amplifying the voices of hip-hop artists, themselves. Through this emic approach, “rituals,

metaphors, and constructs of hip-hop [artists] are starting and ending points of analysis” (Petchauer,

2012, p. 9).36 In this way, I hope their perspectives, situated in their current local contexts, illuminate

the processes of musical, artistic development that circulate and re-circulate with hip-hop’s global

influence.

35 Bailey explains, “The term is a combination of misogyny, the hatred of women and noir, which means black but also

carries film and media connotations. It is the particular amalgamation of anti black racism and misogyny in popular media and culture that targets black trans and cis women” (emphasis in original, 2013: 35).

36 In Hip-hop Culture in College Students' Lives: Elements, Embodiment, and Higher Edutainment, Petchauer (2012) took an emic

approach to analysis of data that included interviews with college students involved with hip-hop art forms in order to

show how their hip-hop identities were used to navigate their campus lives. This was a conscious attempt to “understand [hip-hop] on its own terms as much as possible” (Petchauer, 2012, p. 9).

39

Chapter 3 Methodology

3 Identity as narrative

Given the performative perspective I take on identity as an iterative process of acts and signifying

gestures, narrative inquiry and analysis are well-suited approaches to explore artist performance

identity formation.

The creation of storied responses runs in intriguing parallel to the creation of participants’ artist

performance identities with narrative, Signifyin(g) gestures mediating recollections of performative

acts that signify their artist selves. “[T]hrough this interrelationship between the dramatic event of

narrative performance and the narrated events depicted therein…the temporal-sequential character

of narrative culminates in the present, in the crescendo of ‘real time,’ rendering the narrative telling

into a social action in and of itself” (Noy, 2004, p. 117). What I have the privilege of witnessing as a

researcher is a snippet of live, dynamic identity production. Hearing a patchwork of recollections

sewn together from a conversation of questions, responses, silences, vocalizations, and non-vocally

produced sounds is a micro-view into the ways the social is reflexively incorporated into the self,

refashioned, and reflexively authored as elaborations of identity for others to hear/see/read/feel. In

this way, narrative inquiry traverses a path alongside questions of identity development and its

performed construction.

Given that “we are a living body of gestures and articulations that exist in extensive inter-action with

other acting bodies and the products of semiosis….Our notion of self will depend upon our reflective

grasp of, and participation in, this network of social communication and praxis” (Kerby, 1997, p.

139). The storying of selves, then, necessarily reveals participants’ social worlds and their attendant

socio-political tensions.

3.1 A structure of stories

Identity is narrative – a story that accesses our senses to make the intangible substantial and

consequential. Hip-hop culture’s history is a narrative of the culture’s identity – a mosaic of the

stories of the Bronx’s people that began in the 1970s. Storytelling pervades hip-hop culture and its

many art forms and the use of Signifyin(g) (Gates, 2014) by many hip-hop artists, manifests the

oral/aural aspects of a storied heritage.

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Hip-hop culture is approximately 50 years old, its birthdate dependent on the narrator’s chosen

starting point. Some argue that it began with Kool Herc’s first party, while others pin it to the period

in which the art forms came together through Afrika Bambaataa’s founding of the Zulu Nation. The

telling of hip-hop’s histories is versioned, as recollections by its early participants, many alive today,

are told and retold in interviews (in Signified, performative iteration). It is telling that Jeff Chang’s

(2005) account of hip-hop’s development is subtitled “A” History of the Hip-Hop Generation, rather

than “The” History of the Hip-Hop Generation. It is one account put together from the stories of a

certain generation who have a specific view of the culture’s development. Rather than detract from

the verity any account, overlapping and differing perspectives tell us something about the richness of

experiences that any one story cannot capture. It is a reminder that “[t]ruth is what happens

when…cumulative voices fill in the breaks, provide the remixes, and rework the chorus” (Morgan,

1999, p. 26). Hip-hop artists’ stories and artistic creations reveal their personalized versions of the

hip-hop story as it merges with their own contexts, adding to the mosaic of the culture’s story, of its

identity.

3.1.1 Tell me a story

Through narrative inquiry I gathered stories of learning, knowledge production, and identity. This

process provided space for the participant and I, as researcher, to converse toward our

understandings of the research purpose. Though describing inquiry directed at the self, Novitz (1997)

raises an important point about narrative inquiry in general, “The process is an active one,….What

we recall depends in large measure on the sorts of questions we ask, and these, in turn, depend on

our purposes in asking them: purposes which do not spring out of thin air, but are, in their turn,

shaped by a variety of social influences” (Novitz, 1997, p. 145). My questions and comments as an

active listener in this research process are informed by my research purposes and the experiences I

bring to moments of inquiry. Participants, in reflecting on my questions and comments, weave

responses built on their own purposes and experiences. The result is a “shared narrative construction

and reconstruction” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1991, p. 265) that rebuilds, through conversation, our

respective identities in relation to hip-hop culture and to academia.

I have chosen to use narrative inquiry as a primary method as it allows individual histories and

identities to shape the data and its collection. It also lays bare the ways that my personal interests

and the gaps in my knowledge of hip-hop spark the trajectory of participant narratives.

Hip-hop’s history is passed on orally, as DJs, emcees, and breakers improve their skills. This results

in debate, depending on one’s experience and location within the history (explored with regard to b-

41

boying/b-girling in Schloss (2009)). Even in Toronto, discussions rage over who created which

dance style first. Various spellings of “hip-hop,” as I have encountered them in both academic and

popular literature, also illustrate the fluidity of the culture. Personal stories then become essential in

the way hip-hop’s history, together with its teaching philosophies, are internalized and passed on in

community spaces. “These stories, told and retold, furnish the stock from which individual life

narratives can be constructed. In other words, the story of an individual life usually plays off of one

or more historically and socially transmitted narratives, which serve as prototypes for the elaboration

of personal identity” (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997, p. xxiii). Narratives elicited through

conversational interviews have the potential to more respectfully trace individual-communal

relationships. Individual stories will therefore reflect individual negotiation of artistic performance

identity within the circulating possibilities in Toronto’s hip-hop community.

3.1.2 Ethnographic techniques

Ethnography has proven, particularly in Schloss’s (2004, 2009) work, to provide an immersive

experience for the researcher-participant in hip-hop culture. Ethnographic techniques, including

observations, informal conversations, and artifacts (e.g. forum posts, event flyers, photographs, and

videos pertaining to the events, places and people mentioned by my participants), situate the

gathered narratives in its broader context. Data gathered in this manner allows me to “study music

in its social context, to consider the nuances and inflections of musical sharing, the shaping of

musical values and the nurturing of musical attitudes and the nature of the experience which attends

the practice and performance of music” (Bannister, 1992, p. 134). Since community engagement,

social interaction, and musical expression have always been a key feature of hip-hop, ethnographic

techniques seem particularly suited to my study, allowing for both an insider and outsider view

through its reliance on participant observation. The intent is not to generalize about hip-hop learning

practices in Toronto, but rather to understand the social backdrop within which individual

experiences, retold as narratives, take place.

3.2 Method

3.2.1 Recruitment

Twelve hip-hop artists – b-boys and b-girls, rappers/emcees, and DJs – were contacted in December

2013, January and February 2014 and October 2015 to see if they would be interested in being

interviewed. I began the recruitment process by sending Facebook messages to four breakers I

personally knew. Two of them referred me to two other artists. Most of the emcees I contacted were

part of a collective called 1st Ladies of the Rebellion who performed at one of Toronto’s biggest hip-

42

hop festivals, Manifesto, in 2013. Two of the emcees I finally interviewed were not part of this

group. One, whose music I’ve listened to, both recorded and live, was referred to me, unexpectedly,

by my dental hygienist. That emcee connected me to a DJ whose work I thoroughly enjoyed. The

other emcee was mentioned a few times by participants I had interviewed earlier. Only one artist

didn’t respond. The rest were interested in being interviewed.

3.2.2 Interviews

Interviews were conducted in two stages. Each interview session lasted an hour and 15 minutes on

average. Stage 2 interviews took place over two hours. Interviews took place between February 2014

and August 2016.

Stage 1 Interviews

The purpose of the first stage was to understand the Toronto hip-hop scene and the communities

that are part of it. Out of the group of 12 interested artists, three breakers, three emcees/rappers, and

three DJs (9 participants) were interviewed for Stage 1. The first three artists from each art form who

responded to my interview request became participants. These interviews were audio-recorded and

transcribed.

Stage 2 Interviews

Out of the nine Stage 1 participants, three (one DJ, one breaker, and one emcee) who were

particularly responsive to the idea of storytelling, and with whom initial conversations yielded

further questions that could produce rich texts, became the focus of my narrative study and therefore

participants in Stage 2 interviews.

Transcribed Stage 1 interviews with these Stage 2 participants were returned to them for comment,

verification, additions, and retractions. These transcriptions also served as points of conversation for

Stage 2 interviews.

During Stage 2 interviews, participants were asked questions that encouraged reflection on the

confluence of their life experiences and artistic practices as they storied their artistic development.

These in-depth interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and returned to the three participants

for comment, verification, additions, and retractions.

The interview data gathered was complemented by online research of publicly available information

about each artist, including photographs, biographies, interviews, videos, and music, sourced from

43

websites and social media (between 2014 and 2018). Wherever possible, I attended artist

performances and any hip-hop events.

3.3 Analysis and interpretation

Interviews from Stage 1 were used to detail the chapter on Toronto’s hip-hop scene (Chapter 4). The

patchwork of details is not meant to provide a history of Toronto hip-hop, but puts together

information about Toronto hip-hop as passed on to me through participants’ stories. This is the

backdrop for the re-storied, and therefore analyzed and interpreted, narratives presented in Chapters

5, 6, and 7.

The interview data gathered from Stage 2 participants became the primary objects of analysis and

interpretation. Necessarily, this data included the information they provided in the first stage of the

process.

3.3.1 Re-storying and thematic analysis

An important feature of narrative research is the process of re-storying participants’ accounts in a

way that responds to research questions and creates the research text. Allowing artist voices primary

importance in my project posed challenges to the (re)presentation of their interview responses as

narrative texts in the following chapters. As I had hoped, artists did more than just answer my

questions. I was privileged to hear aspects of their life stories that allowed me a glimpse into the

background histories from which their performance identities emerge. These life stories were,

however, not always easy to fit into the trajectory of my research questions, but were nevertheless of

obvious importance to artists. This was evident through the emotions that accompanied their telling,

the vocal emphasis they placed on events, or the repeated allusions made. Wherever these shorter,

enriching glimpses occurred, they are represented in the chapters as “snapshots” and italicized.

Thematic analysis allowed me to categorize interview data under labels that pertain to my research

sub-questions and to determine “snapshots.” The focus of this stage in the re-storying process was

the content of artists’ stories as they provided much of ‘who-what-when-where’ answers that some of

my research questions sought. Theme labels are not the same across the three narrative texts, despite

being closely related, as each artist’s interviews showed obvious nuances that reflected their specific

learning and performance identity development trajectories.

In creating these narrative texts, I eschewed a primarily chronological approach to organizing

events, and instead ordered the data in a way that provides the reader the necessary information at

the right time for understanding the narrative text. This manner of arranging data also allowed me to

44

make transparent the ways that my understandings came together – at times, in the disjunct fashion

that the theme labels (represented as subheadings in the narrative chapters) help clarify, as well as

through snapshots. This arrangement also makes more apparent the ways in which memories, told

as stories, zoom in and out of view, so to speak, and are pulled from different, non-chronological

time periods, depending on the points being made about the speaker’s current sense of identity.

I decided to quote artists at length in my re-storying as their manner of speech, captured as best I

could through pauses, parenthetical sound effects, and descriptions of emotional cues, in order to

provoke a sound image (and perhaps a visual one) in readers. My interjections are included

wherever I perceived them to have influenced the trajectory of the conversation, but are otherwise

left out. I did not correct sentence structures or styles of speech to make stories grammatically

correct. Styles of speech, evident through repetitions of phrases, add to the dynamism of the moment

and are not mistakes. In fact, these characteristics at times served to index37 place and belonging,

pointing to contexts and meanings with which they are associated (De Fina & Georgakopoulou,

2012).

3.3.2 Dialogic/Performance analysis

Once the interview data were analyzed for important events/stories and themes and finally re-

storied, the resulting narrative texts were analyzed against the backdrop of Butler’s performative

view of identity and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s literary theory of Signifyin(g). These theoretical lenses

are at play in my dialogic/performance analysis of narrative texts, which is enclosed in textboxes

throughout Chapters 5 through 7 and marked “DPA.” I have also included quotations from Stage 1

participants, signaled by a font change (Calibri), in order to show the broader circulation of related

ideas. These provide context and allow a glimpse into the interactions between narratives within

communities. Through this process, I am able to discover “how talk among speakers is interactively

(dialogically) produced and performed as narrative” (Riessman, 2008, p. 105). Attending to

language, form, contexts, and audience, I gain a deeper understanding of the identities spoken and

speaking in the interview moment. My own perspectives, assumptions, and biases can also be more

honestly depicted. The goal is to reveal both the performative aspects of artists’ identities as well as

their intentional, creative revisions.

37

See De Fina and Georgakopoulou (2012), Chapter 6, Analyzing Narrative: Discourse and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, for a

discussion of “indexicality.”

45

Chapter 4 Hip-hop in the T-Dot

4 From Tdot Odot to The 6

The artists I interviewed for this project range in age from their early 20s to their early 40s. As a

result, the perspectives and pieces of Toronto’s hip-hop story are presented from a spectrum of times,

places, and learning and career stages, not necessarily continuous. I used participant recollections as

starting points for further research, gathering this additional information from publicly available

online media, i.e. videos, online magazine articles, and blog posts featuring interviews of hip-hop

artists, publicly available during my data collection period (late 2013 to 2018). During this time, no

comprehensive resource existed on the development of hip-hop culture in Toronto.38 A search of

Toronto documentaries and magazine articles quickly revealed that Toronto’s hip-hop culture,

through hip-hop’s art forms was starting to get media attention by the mid- to late-1980s.

This is not a comprehensive Toronto hip-hop history as I have sewn pieces of this story from my

interviews of only a few individuals. Nevertheless, the following descriptions provided a basis for

contextualizing the narratives presented in Chapters 5 through 7. Many of the artists interviewed

know each other personally, or have, at the very least, heard or seen each other’s work.

4.1 Golden Era

Toronto in the mid-1990s was a hub of hip-hop activity. As DJ Dopey, 2003 DMC World

Champion, put it, “Toronto was the place to be if you wanted to […] put your name up there and

[…] do the proper parties” (J. Santiago, personal communication, March 24, 2014). And

Checkmate, one of the Vancouver emcees on the “Northern Touch” track that put Canadian hip-

hop on the map, agrees, “There was no hip-hop scene anywhere but Toronto” (Goh, 2018). The

elements of breaking, rapping, DJing, and graffiti writing were developing amidst personal

connections between today’s important figures in Toronto hip-hop history who were, back then, just

learning the ins and outs of their art form and discovering the vibrant culture that mixtapes and VHS

tapes were revealing. These recordings were brought to Toronto primarily by friends and family

visiting from the U.S.

38

In September 2018, Mark V. Campbell published, Everything Remains Raw, an archival collection depicting Toronto hip-

hop, particularly rap and DJing, through its infancy in the 1980s. This followed an exhibit at the McMichael Art Gallery of material collected at nshharchive.ca and curated for the Gallery.

46

Toronto’s multi-cultural mix, however, likely effected variedly mediated information. B-boy Benzo,

from legendary B-boy Crew, Bag of Trix, recalls his brother coming back from Barbados, “with this

NYC mentality of being a b-boy and he was like, […] ‘This is the dance that everybody’s […] doing.’

He’s like, ‘That record you’re listening to, that’s how you dance to that record.’” He also points out

the European influence on his style of dance, “We used to get VHS tapes of Maurizio, Storm, like

Battle Squad and […] even Toughton and Twist from England, and...I can go on with the older guys

from […] the Europe scene. We used to get their tapes. Now, when you put it a VHS tape that’s

from overseas, it doesn’t play at the same speed. It actually plays faster. […] So we get these tapes

and we’d be like, “Yo! This guy’s flying!,” like windmills at a hundred miles per hour! We’re like,

“I’ve gotta do that!” (C. Daniel, personal communication, March 13, 2014). Hip-hop was already

being remixed through its transport around the globe.

High schools and hip-hop-minded youth played an important role in Toronto hip-hop’s early

development. MC Abdominal (Abs) was drawn to the sound of rap and as he began writing rhymes,

he drew encouragement from the success of rapper, Thrust, an older student at his high school,

Northern Secondary (A. Bernstein, personal communication, February 13, 2014). DJ Dopey was

surrounded by peers from Father Michael Goetz Secondary School in Mississauga, a short drive

from Toronto, who all took an interest in turntablism. This group of friends helped each other and

gave honest feedback that pushed all of them to develop their skills (J. Santiago, personal

communication, March 24, 2014). B-boy Benzo recalls that Michie Mee, the first Canadian rapper

to sign with a major American record label,39 would emcee at his high school dance; DJX played,

Cougar and Blass (Maestro Fresh Wes’s) dancers would come to dance – Weston Collegiate was the

place to be and even students from nearby Mississauga and Brampton knew it (C. Daniel, personal

communication, March 13, 2014).

For these eager young students of hip-hop, learning and practicing art forms was done in isolation

and in small peer groups. Fortuitous encounters with artists who were starting to gain recognition

generated excitement and visions of possibility.

Abdominal recalls working as a busboy at a restaurant called Studebaker’s when he was 18 years

old. One of the chefs was DJ DTS from CIUT’s Masterplan Show who gave him sound advice when

Abs handed him a cassette tape that he and DJ Serious40 made, pretending it was “a friend’s.” He

39

For more on Michie Mee, visit (Michie Mee, n.d.), (Mee, 2016).

40 DJ Serious has been making music for over 20 years and has produced for both hip-hop and rock acts (DJ Serious, n.d.).

He was nominated for a Juno Award in 2001 for the album “Dim Sum.” (The Juno Awards, n.d.).

47

was told, “You gotta tell your ‘friend’ that these rhyme flows are terrible…He needs to go […] listen

to some EPMD and stuff and write down the lyrics and study their rhyme patterns and hit the

drawing board.” The next step was performing. “[T]here was scenes in Scarborough, with like, the

huge Monolith Crew, Dan-e-o, […], there was guys in the West end…so there’s lots of stuff

bubbling, but it was all over, so really, like the only way to hear and see what was going on and to

connect with people was to go out to shows […] So that was, you know, that’s also how you got

better” (A. Bernstein, personal communication, February 13, 2014).

Abs recalls a particularly memorable event at Industry Night Club where all his rap heroes and big

names, like Kardinal Offishall and Monolith Crew, were in the audience with hundreds who came

to see the show. He and D-Sisive were on the list of performers, but they kept getting pushed back.

Abs was so frustrated that by the time his turn came around, his pent-up energy was channeled into

“one of the best freestyles of [his] life and the whole place was going bananas” (A. Bernstein,

personal communication, February 13, 2014). It made the audience take notice.

Parties were another a place to observe, learn, and gain exposure. Both Benzo and Dopey recall the

parties that Ivan and Junior of 2 Swift Household threw. Benzo credits them with involving many

Filipinos41 in Toronto’s hip-hop scene, while Dopey, himself Filipino, saw these parties as an

opportunity to understand the live DJ context. It was also a time for learning about other DJs, like

Turnstylez Crew, whose DJs were already gaining recognition as skilled turntablists.

4.1.1 Rewind

Rap, Radio, and Records

Though there isn’t a particular year cited as the birth of Toronto hip-hop, documentation provided

by video clips, documentaries, and magazine and newspaper interviews of its early participants show

that its art forms were already developing by the mid-1980s.

Rap, then as now, was representative of the culture in popular media, and most references to early

Toronto hip-hop pertain primarily to its lively, passionate rap history. Developing artists of the

1980s were spurred and inspired by hip-hop sounds coming from the U.S. and broadcast through

influential college and university radio station DJs and their programs.

41

The term “Filipino” has generally referred to both men and women. No mention of Filipina artists was made

throughout the interview process but, having been on the periphery of the burgeoning hip-hop scene in Mississauga,

specifically, at my former high school Father Michael Goetz Secondary School, I readily observed hip-hop’s (and R&B’s) popularity among Filipinas as well.

48

Ron Nelson’s “Fantastic Voyage” at Ryerson University’s42 88.1 CKLN was the first hip-hop radio

show in Toronto. Running for three hours on Saturday mornings, it allowed Toronto listeners an

aural experience that no other media outlets were providing. Nelson expanded his role as DJ to

promoter of Toronto hip-hop concerts that gave exposure to young Canadian talent, and connected

them to Toronto’s hip-hop fans (Anderson, 2017; Duncan, 2018; Ritchie, 2017). It also drew

American acts to Toronto. Michie Mee recalls a 1987 rap battle against Sugar Love from New York

at the Concert Hall, a Nelson-promoted show, in which she won the crowd over: “Winning at the

Concert Hall really let them know I could battle any American. It let them know I’m Jamaican and

I’m Canadian. There was nothing to fear. And female artists are here to stay – all from that one

show” (Ritchie, 2017; WorldWide Entertainment TVWWETV, 2009). A little-known fact,

according to MC Thrust, is that “Toronto, at the start, was known for female rappers, like, it was

crazy. We had so many female rappers, when I was comin’ up, I was like, ‘should I even rap?’ I’m

just being funny, but, on the real tip, like, it was crazy. It was real crazy!” (Thrust & Big Tweeze,

2017b). DJX concurs, explaining that Michie Mee was more requested than Maestro Fresh Wes

was. She was also “cool,” in a way that Maestro wasn’t and was getting respect from well-known

New York City rap personalities and radio stations (Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a). Toronto DJs of

that era had a perspective on the unfolding story that no one else has.

Also in the 1980s, York University housed CHRY 105.5, where Dave Clarke, a.k.a. DTS, got his

start and was challenged to do better by fellow DJ, Malik X. So, when an opportunity came along to

apply to host a show at the University of Toronto’s CIUT 89.5, he and friend, John Bronski

proposed a hip-hop show. Their proposal was accepted. At CIUT, they eventually teamed up with

other DJs, Wendy “Motion” Braithwaite43 and DJ Power to launch Toronto’s longest running hip-

hop show, “Masterplan” (Davis, 2004), which is still going strong. It was also the first hip-hop show

in Canada to have a female host.

CHRY also carried DJ Mastermind’s show, in the 1980s. Mastermind (Paul Parhar) got his start

after one of his mix tapes was heard on “Fantastic Voyage” on CKLN. He was also part of Ron

Nelson’s concert promoting street team and got his DJ name once Nelson recognized his ability to

recall details about every rap record. Mastermind’s show was the second hip-hop show in the city

(DJ Bill Cool & Diggy the DJ, 2018; Pastuk, 2015b). By the 1990s, CHRY was home to “Strait

42

At the time, it was called Ryerson Polytechnic Institute. The school was granted full university status in 1993.

43 Braithwaite was a youth activist with Unity Force, a group formed to educate Black youth in Toronto (Drummond,

2018)

49

Frum Da Undaground,” with DJ Grouch,44 who would later form Turnstylez Crew with battle rival,

D-Scratch, and Lil’ Jaz. Together and individually, they would go on to win international

competitions, collaborate with renowned artists and influence up-and-coming ones (DJ Grouch,

n.d.).

Motion (Motion, 2018) describes the role of college/university radio stations:

Through the power of the airwaves, The Masterplan gave us the platform to centre Toronto –

T-dot – as an identity. Many of us running shows on the trilogy of college radio stations –

CIUT 89.5 FM, CKLN 88.1 FM, and CHRY 105.5 FM – were first generations born of

migration or transplanted in the Northside, changing the face, sound, and culture of both the

city and “O Canada.” The show was audible affirmation: through the music, so-called

‘minorities’ could become the mass…the show constantly sounded the clarion call to “Stand

up and be identified!”

These stations were particularly important and influential as Toronto would not have a commercial

rap (labelled “urban”) radio show until FLOW 93.5’s appearance in 2001 (DJ Bill Cool & Diggy the

DJ, 2018; Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a; Weekes, 2015).

Non-commercial radio DJs also played a role in the development of Toronto’s turntablists. Not only

were they sources of Black music history, new American hip-hop releases, and promoters of

Canadian talent, they also provided a broader platform for turntablists to be heard. Adrien King,

DJX (who was also part of Nelson’s street promotion team), began as a turntablist, gaining

recognition through renowned competitions, like the DMC (Disco Mix Club). Mastermind invited

him to DJ on his show on CHRY, but after their “egos clashed,” DJX called Nelson who then

invited him to come on “Fantastic Voyage” (Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a). Eventually, Nelson gave

DJX his show spot, advising him to rename it and make it his own. “Power Move” ran from 1989 to

2001 (A. King, 2015) and would eventually provide on-air time to Mastermind after he was fired

from CHRY (Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a). DJX was of the same generation as DJ Power, also a

turntablist, from “Masterplan” on CIUT, who was also winning DJ battles. The interaction between

hip-hop personalities on these shows was representative of the percolating creative energy that came

together through the elements of hip-hop at school and house parties, concerts, and battles.

44 In 2015, Grouch joined Los Poetas, a Latinx hip-hop group that showcases “music and poetry brought as gifts from immigrants and refugees” (Los Poetas, n.d.).

50

These turntablists inspired and influenced many future DJs, turntablists, and producers, like DJ

Grouch who would come to host “Strait Frum Da Undaground” on CHRY in 1993. Grouch would

go on to win championships himself and become inspiration for future DJs, like DMC World

Champion, DJ Dopey.

Space and Sound

Nourished by the new sounds of their neighbours to the south and of preceding Black music

influences on these radio airwaves, Toronto hip-hop heads were stirring up an aural concoction of

old and new homelands and making space for Toronto sound. In late 1980s and 1990s Toronto, the

sound was West Indian (primarily Jamaican) identified through generous doses of reggae and

increasingly popular dancehall, attracting Toronto’s Caribbean youth to The Concert Hall to hear

Toronto rap. Ritchie’s (2017) article gathers memories from key participants of that era. They recall

an atmosphere of raw excitement as artists from hip-hop’s mecca,45 New York City, came up to

celebrate and battle Toronto’s hottest rappers. CKLN’s Ron Nelson led the way and brought Public

Enemy, Boogie Down Productions (BDP), Roxanne Shanté, Salt-N-Pepa, Eric B. & Rakim, Ice

Cube and Queen Latifah to Toronto. Nelson promoted shows on the streets, and MC Thrust

remembers, “We had a grid of the whole city and went from the east end to the west end. We met

up downtown to get flyers and hit every major bus stop where high school kids were (Ritchie, 2017).

King Lou of the Dream Warriors reminisces, “The Concert Hall became the ideology of growth for

people in project neighbourhoods. That’s where we all went to meet other people like us from other

environments.” He adds, “Once you went there, you knew right off the bat where certain guys were

from. A downtown person, that’s different from a Scarborough person, that’s different from a west-

end person” (Ritchie, 2017), the same areas where hip-hop scenes would “bubble,” as Abdominal

described (A. Bernstein, personal communication, February 13, 2014). Capital Q from Canadian rap

group, Dream Warriors, also described dance battles that would take place on the floor, particularly

if a neighbourhood battle took place before a show. The Concert Hall was the place to listen, dance,

meet people, sell and wear fashion, and be recognized. As Kardinal Offishall (Kardi) put it, “The

Choclairs, the Socrateses, Kardinals – we were influenced by Concert Hall in an aspirational way.

You lived your life hoping one day you’d be able to rock that stage” (Ritchie, 2017).

45

New York is often referred to as hip-hop’s “mecca,” i.e. the birthplace of hip-hop. A closer examination of the

relationship between Islam and hip-hop shows that “mecca” connotes a deeper engagement with Islam as evidenced both

by rappers’ lyrics and their personal connections to the Nation of Islam (especially the Five Percenters) (Alim, 2006; McMurray, 2008; Miyakawa, 2005).

51

It was the blend of reggae, dancehall, and hip-hop that made Toronto’s sound unique, unabashedly

declared in Michie Mee’s use of Jamaican patois that has influenced Toronto hip-hop from Kardi,

the Dream Warriors, to Drake. In this tradition, Toronto’s hip-hop artists revel in the mix of

immigrant influences, revising its hip-hop culture with each wave.

The Break

Breaking (or breakdancing as it is called in mainstream media) was blowing up in Toronto in the

early 1980s, made popular through US movies,46 music videos, and commercials. There is currently

no comprehensive resource on the history of breaking in Toronto, nor of Canada, a fact lamented by

B-boy Benzo from Bag of Trix who only learned of Ottawa breaking crew, Canadian Floormasters

12 years after their formation in 1984:

[be]cause we weren’t exposed to it and a lotta the radio stations and TV stations, they

weren’t tryina show us any of that stuff. They were, they were like, trying to keep all that

stuff out of Canada at that time. Saying all that, who knew Canadian Floormasters47 […]

was doin’ all of this while most of us where like, learning off of Beat Street? (C. Daniel,

personal communication, March 13, 2014)

Robin “Rocabye” Coltez has begun documenting Toronto’s hip-hop dance history through first-

person accounts. He released a 10-minute documentary (2012) highlighting interviews with some of

Toronto’s b-boys between 1983 and 1985. According to Dale Sammy from Cold Crush crew,

“racism was rampant” at the time, but crews became an “amalgamation” of Guyanese and Eastern

Europeans, inspired in part by Sunday kung-fu movies on TV and images of hip-hop broadcast from

the US. He adds, “As much as we were rebellin’ being hip-hop, we were also becoming a part of a

society by being hip-hop. That was our identity” (Coltez, 2012). As practitioners of a new dance

style in Toronto, “funkers,” as Dizzy from Magnetic Rockers remembers being called, were made

fun of, their music disliked and misunderstood. Nevertheless, breaking was spreading and every area

and every school had a crew.

46

The movies Wild Style (1983), Beat Street (1984), and Flashdance (1983) are frequently cited as inspirational by many b-

boys and b-girls that I have met in Toronto.

47 Canadian Floor Masters is Canada’s original break dance crew, founded in 1983. Co-founder, Stephen Leafloor, aka

Buddha ("Stephen Leafloor," 2019) founded Blueprint for Life, “a hip-hop outreach program that focuses on Canada’s youth prisons and First Nations communities” (Strombo.com, 2013).

52

By 1985, however, breaking seemed to die out, as a new genre of popular hip-hop music (e.g. by Kid

‘n’ Play, according to Sammy in Coltez (2012)) brought with it new dance styles. A similar

phenomenon happened in Europe (DJ Renegade, 2015; Robitzky, n.d.). The years between 1986 to

the early 1990s coincide with the rise of hip-hop dancers who came to accompany rap artists, mixing

freestyled movements with choreographed steps (DJ Renegade, 2015; mauludSADIQ, 2015), some

of which were popularized as club or party dances (DJ Renegade, 2015). Rather than dancing to

break beats, these dancers grooved to full rap songs, inspiring the next generation of Toronto

breakers who added these new visuals to those passed down on earlier video recordings and from

inspirational European b-boys like Storm (Battle Squad crew), and Maurizio. B-boy Benzo

specifically cites freestyle hip-hop dancers who inspired his own movement: Fendi (with EPMD),

Scoob and Scrap (With Big Daddy Kane) and Moptop (C. Daniel, personal communication, March

13, 2014).

The near disappearance of breaking between 1985 and 1990 and its percolation through rap,

turntablism, and music production developments in Toronto, need further research. Nevertheless, by

1990, hip-hop in Toronto was catching mainstream media attention. The Masterplan and Fantastic

Voyage radio shows had built excitement for Ron Nelson’s shows, and DJ Grouch’s Strait Frum Da

Undaground was getting started. Michee Mee had been introduced by Scott La Rock and KRS-

One48 on her track “Elements of Style” (1987), making the US and the rest of Canada begin to take

notice of Toronto’s hip-hop scene. Soon after, Maestro Fresh Wes’s “Let your Backbone Slide”

(1989)49 became a hit. This latter and Michie Mee’s “Jamaican Funk,” released in 1991 featured the

freestyle hip-hop dance that had become popular in rap videos. Through all this, the new generation

of b-boys and b-girls, inspired as young children by earlier hip-hop movies (i.e. Beat Street, Wild Style,

Flashdance) were growing into teenagers while listening to hip-hop gradually being broadcast on

Toronto’s airwaves and travelling between friends’ and relatives’ hands.

4.2 Toronto style: Sound and motion

Artists continue to talk about Toronto’s multicultural mix as creating its unique sound and dance

style, “a testament to Toronto’s unique cultural diversity: the city’s population is about 50 percent

foreign born, with immigrant communities from countries like Jamaica, the Philippines, India, and

many others. To be influenced by Toronto, in other words, is to be influenced by cultures from all

48

Founders of Boogie Down Productions together with Derrick “D-Nice” Jones in New York City ("Boogie Down

Productions," n.d.).

49 Maestro won the first Rap Recording of the Year Juno Award in 1991 (Del Cowie, 2018).

53

over the world” (Neyfakh, 2015). Barker (2018) adds, “if any city shouldn’t have an easily

pigeonholed sound, it’s Toronto. One of the most diverse cities in the Western Hemisphere, the

Toronto hip-hop scene is likewise a rainbow coalition of ethnicities…all making their presence felt,

introducing new sounds and textures to mainstream hip-hop’s sonic landscape.” Kardinal Offishall

gives credit to Drake and the Weeknd for promoting Toronto and “being Canadian-centric, that’s

starting to be more and more a part of who they are as artists. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s

all about. That’s what myself and the people that came before me, I think that’s what we always

wanted” (Kardinal Offishall, 2015). But while Toronto’s hip-hop artists proudly proclaim their roots

and present place through music, dance, and visual art, the city’s curatorial propensities lean toward

stereotypically white, western productions:

Black music, and black art, like black people are undervalued in Canada, and here we are

back to the question of value.

Cultural curators that belong primarily to one culture are harvesting and curating a cultural

space that is increasingly multicultural and multi-genre, but the influence of these cultures

and genres is largely superficial though their stories fit into the multicultural rhetoric of

Canada. For instance, hip-hop in Toronto may be “diverse” but is disproportionately

controlled and curated by non-blacks. Cultural curators build cultural capital by using the

power and privilege that they receive from their own socio-political position to amass this

cultural capital and often intentionally hoard or neglect to share their power, privilege

and/or profit with the communities they appropriate from. Some of them, like many of us,

are aware of the processes of marginalization that keep people away from decision-making

but remain mostly silent on the subject. Assumptions about advertising revenue, a small

mostly homogeneous business class, and some willful blindness on the part of seemingly

progressive cultural curators exacerbate this unfortunate situation. All of this may be seen as

an example of institutional racism that values a particular Canadian experience over all other

Canadian cultural experiences. There is a hierarchy of power, a hierarchy of privilege and a

hierarchy of opportunity and access. If Canada’s independent rock community experienced

the same limited investment and marginalization in its infancy I’m not sure that we would

have a thriving indie and alternative rock culture either. This is about value. (Kamau, 2015)

Though artists were claiming a Canadian, hip-hop identity, Toronto did not have a commercial

radio station dedicated to hip-hop until FLOW 93.5 went on air in 2001. Toronto, and indeed the

rest of Canada, did not readily acknowledge the talent, and by extension, the youth, proudly laying

54

claim to Toronto, and Canada, as sites of cultural expression, artistic creation, and hip-hop identity.

It took three attempts, the first in 1990, by Milestone Radio Inc., Canada’s first black-owned and

operated broadcast company, before a radio license was granted (Clarke, 2013; Weekes, 2015).

Though the “commercial” quality of FLOW meant DJs couldn’t promote whatever they wanted, it

was a welcome avenue for many of Toronto’s Black music devotees. Unfortunately, the station

format changed to become a Top 40, dance beat-oriented platform when it was sold to CHUM

Radio in 2011 (Infantry, 2011; Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a; Weekes, 2015), despite consistently

high listener ratings.

The Juno Awards also continue to face criticism for not giving due, deserved, acknowledgement to

Canadian hip-hop artists (Kennedy, 2017). Vancouver’s Rascalz declined their Juno for Best Rap

Recording in 1998 to protest the absence of rap, reggae and dance in the televised portion of the

awards show (CBC Editorial Staff, 2018; Del Cowie, 2018; McBride, 2014). The Best Rap

Recording Award was televised in 1999, but not again until 2011, when Drake hosted the show but

did not win a single award. In 2018, the Rascalz, Checkmate, Thrust, Choclair, and Kardinal

Offishall performed “Northern Touch,” on the Junos, but by then, hip-hop artists had found other

avenues for gaining recognition (Ashley, 2018; Campbell, 2018a).

4.3 T-dot becomes The 6

Online music and outlets like Soundcloud and YouTube now play an important role in allowing hip-

hop artists to gain a fan following worldwide. Regardless, today, as in Toronto’s early hip-hop days,

artists need to be recognized Stateside by renowned American artists to eventually be signed to a

reputable label that will launch their careers.

Drake did just that by being introduced to J Prince, who then introduced him to Lil Wayne (Pastuk,

2015a), who signed him on to his label, Young Money Records (Reid, 2009). It seems Drake took

Mastermind’s advice when they met years ago: that he needs to leave Toronto to start his career,

then come back, and Toronto will pay attention (DJ Bill Cool & Diggy the DJ, 2018). Drake has

come to signify Toronto such that the city is no longer nicknamed “T-dot,”50 a name cemented by

Kardinal Offishall, but “The 6,” first uttered by rapper Jimmy Prime and popularized by Drake on

his album, “Views.” Drake’s success has included his launch of OVO Sound, which some argue

50

“T-dot” is short for “Tdot Odot,” (i.e. Toronto, Ontario frequently abbreviated “T.O.”). K4CE, known as a hip-hop

“impresario” (McAndrew, 2010) and “legend” (Higgins, 2015) first used the term in lyrics to shorten the frequently seen, “T.O.” (Higgins, 2015). Kardinal popularized it on his track, “Bakardi Slang” (KardinalOffishall416, 2001).

55

allows emerging talents from the city to be more easily recognized (Barker, 2018); but as Tory Lanez

explains, “I haven’t had a chance to have my teammates with me. On XO they got Weeknd, Nav,

Belly. You’ve got OVO with Drake, Party, everyone. They’ve got teams. I’ve just been out here by

myself, like yo, running through the jungle” (Barker, 2018).

Commercial radio’s focus on big name hip-hop acts continues to make the path to success difficult

for Toronto artists (Thrust & Big Tweeze, 2017a) whose music continues to remain “underground,”

played through online platforms and college and university radio stations. This has lead MC

Skyboxx to observe that “the fans are not really supportive as they could be. […] [T]here are a lotta

good artists in Toronto, but if you go to shows, you don’t see a lotta people watching, you know.

You don’t see a lotta people coming out and showing support. Whereas like, if we have other people

coming in, […] the crowd is bigger” (MC Skyboxx, personal communication, March 6, 2014). In her

view, contrary to popular news outlets’ declarations of a “Toronto sound,” the city hasn’t defined

itself yet.

This may not necessarily be a detriment. Small artist communities throughout the city offer support,

challenge, and loyalty, growing Toronto hip-hop culture just under the commercial radar. The

original ethos of grassroots art that accompanied hip-hop culture’s early history is deeply felt by the

artists I interviewed. Importantly, the current culture’s rootedness at the intersection of place and

time is announced every time someone calls Toronto, “T-dot” or “The 6,” a claim to the city by a

“minority” demographic, that recalls people and their generation of experience; names adopted by

the wider population largely unaware of the histories that gave Toronto its hip-hop names.

4.4 Where we’re at

Toronto hip-hop culture lives in the web of commercial and non-commercial forces. Local artists are

community-grown, as evidenced by artists’ citations of practice sessions, open mics, jams, clubs, and

battle venues. Students of hip-hop can be placed within generations, according to the spaces they

frequented and where they honed their skills.

For MC Abdominal and his contemporaries, Freestyle nights at The Weave were memorable, while

Planet Mars, run by Planet P in the mid-1990s on College St. was the place to hear, be heard, and be

challenged (A. Bernstein, personal communication, February 13, 2014). Recordings from this

56

location, featuring acts such as, Choclair, Solitair, Kardinal Offishall, are now considered legendary

artifacts.51

Today’s up-and-coming emcees have other outlets. Skyboxx considers RISE Poetry Mondays in

Scarborough, just north of Toronto’s centre

a safe place, like, you could go in […] with your flaws, and people will still observe and take

you in and appreciate you. Like, you still get a good love for whatever you do. Like, you’re

accepted no matter what, and they have a platform for anyone who comes out. And you just,

[…] be free and do you, you know what I mean? It’s a good place for like, up and coming

artists like myself to just go and test out the latest craft that you created, you know what I

mean, and see what responses you get from the people. And um…yeah, I’ve […] seen so

much growth at RISE […]. [T]he response I get there makes me more comfortable to go out

and share with other places. (MC Skyboxx, personal communication, March 6, 2014)

For b-boys and b-girls, practice sessions throughout the Greater Toronto Area continue to be spaces

to learn from more experienced dancers while training with newcomers. Sessions are run by fellow

dancers and crews, e.g. in the early 2000s, Benzo from Bag of Trix ran practices at what we called,

“The Grange,” i.e. University Settlement Community Centre beside OCAD University; Drops from

Supernaturalz (and previously, Drunken Monks) ran them at Cat’s Eye, Victoria College at the

University of Toronto; Doogie and Debo ran Clown Hall at a warehouse on Broadview Avenue.

Dancers would then go out to clubs and listen to DJs like Serious (Gypsy Co-op),52 Fase

(“Footwork” at Andy Poolhall, NASA) (Slootsky, 2007), General Eclectic, and Jason Palma

(“Footprints” at the Rivoli), while mingling with other “street” dancers. Una Mas (Perlich, 2000)

was mentioned frequently during my early years of learning to b-girl, and came up again during my

interviews. B-boy Handlez, who is also known as DJ Andy B Bad, recalls the club fondly:

Una Mas was like my first introduction to like…cause there’s b-boying, you know and like

competitions, but then you could still b-boy at parties, and my first like example of that was

at Una Mas ‘cause it was more of like, they played hip-hop and house. So like when hip-hop

was playing people was breaking, and then when house was playing, people were housing

51

Planet Mars brought together hip-hop artistic elements but became known for its rap sessions (Officer, 2009; “Planet

Mars,” n.d.).

52 See discussions on these club nights in Perlich (2000); Slootsky (2007); Villeneuve (2016).

57

it’s just like, but everyone’s partying. […] yeah there were battles but it’s not, like about a

competition, you know, it’s just like, they’re goin’ at each [other] so I’m like, “Yo, this is,

this is sick.” (A. James, personal communication, March 16, 2014)

B-boy Jazzy Jester agrees and recalls the full line-up of Toronto’s seminal dance spaces:

Una Mas was, I think, the most pivotal point in my opinion, in Toronto Dance history. […]

‘Cause, that was the one night where there was no discrimination of any dance style, any

gender. You had a circle, and you had a tapper, you had a ballet dancer, you had, b-boys.

Anybody, anything, would just run the circle. No one kicked anybody out. Everyone would

just, it was just […] like, clump of dancers and it was all through house, hip-hop, R&B, you

know, reggae. It was just so good. And it was just all unifying the dance styles. And I feel

like that was just such an evolution of, uh, the dance scene in Toronto, because the dance

scene was heavily […] focused on, like, Do Dat, which was the main hip-hop group here in

Toronto, and Bag of Trix. And because they were so closely tied together within like, you

know, the movement and the music, which is what binded us, Una Mas was kinda the

evolution, because Una Mas took them into there and then had the music […] that would

give other people a chance to like, move, with that […] community and I, I feel like […] built

the community up even stronger […]. [I]t was amazing, so like, having that like, having

NASA on Tuesday nights, having Una Mas Thursday nights, but also having Alto Basso on

Monday nights, and Reilly’s on Wednesdays […] Sometimes Fez Batik on Thursday nights

and then Roxy Blu on Fridays, it was a whole week of […] getting out there and dancing

during the week, with like, different styles […] and I met a lotta good people through that

time. (J. Catibog, personal communication, May 5, 2016)

Andy Poolhall, until very recently, was another place to find inspiration. B-Boy Benzo hosted “Let

It All Hang Out” with DJ Serious, (and sometimes, guest DJs), “‘cause that’s the closest we’ll ever

get to being involved in hip-hop in it’s true essence. It’s just a party [matter-of-factly]. There’s no

guidelines. […] [H]ave a good time, and enjoy the music. And we play different genres of music.

Talking to Kool Herc about that opened my eyes. It made me realize that it’s not the competitions

that are important. It’s not the videos, it’s not the tours, it’s being able to present hip-hop in its truest

form, which is the party. And what are parties? Festivals. What are festivals, rituals?” (C. Daniel,

personal communication, March 13, 2014). And rituals, of course, connote a way of life, spirituality,

traditional modes of community connection, all engagements that continue to generate and

regenerate Toronto hip-hop culture.

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It was at this “ritual” party that Judi Lopez (a.k.a B-girl JuLo) would start to learn about the

Toronto breaking scene. She happened upon this event at a time when it seemed there were no

females participating53 (J. Lopez, personal communication, November 1, 2014). This confirmed her

resolve to launch KeepRockinYou and The Toronto B-Girl Movement, which graduated its first

group of new b-girls in 2013, further broadening the diversity of the dance form and showcasing a

new facet of youthful hip-hop creativity.

Toronto’s local artists convene in festivals over the summer as Unity Charity54 and Manifesto55

showcase developments in hip-hop music and dance genres, featuring amateurs and world-

renowned performers in a series of mostly free events that introduce the general public to the growth

of Toronto hip-hop culture. Both organizations are engaged not only with Toronto’s music and

dance industries, but with community artist hubs and educational organizations – another, updated

take on the grassroots, neighbourhood vibe from which hip-hop began.

It is against this backdrop of global artistry, steeped in local community affinities, that the narratives

of the following three hip-hop artists emerge. These participants defy the popular image of hip-hop

culture as Black, African-American and a rapper, yet it is in keeping with hip-hop culture’s tenets of

keepin’ it real, no biting, ‘each one, teach one,’ that these artists create works of art, and in the

process, sculpt their identities.

53

Toronto has been home to many b-girls, e.g. Shebang Crew (Mae Hem, Ms. Mighty, Jennrock, Blazin’, DJ Dalia),

founded in 1999 (Caldwell, 2003; Liss, 2001; Slootsky, 2007); Lady Noyz; Soupy; TBag; Tangerine.

54 Unity Charity was founded by Michael Prosserman, aka B-boy Piecez, in 2008. Its focus is to empower youth to live

healthy lives in healthier communities through the hip-hop arts (Unity Charity, n.d.).

55 Manifesto was founded in 2007 by Che Khotari and Ryan Paterson to provide a platform for artist development and

performance, rooted in their communities. It now has sister organizations in Jamaica and New York City (Manifesto, n.d.).

59

Chapter 5 Jazzy Jester

5 “I am Jesse Catibog, also known as Jazzy Jester.”

Jazzy Jester has been breaking for about 20 years. He has taught, performed, and competed around

the world and has been a member of various crews throughout his career – Intrikit, Supernaturalz,

and now, Albino Zebrahs. Though he is a b-boy, he doesn’t entirely see himself with this label and

instead, chooses “dancer” or “mover,” pointedly reminding me, “I’m first and foremost, a music-

lover.” He was born to Filipino parents, but interestingly, sees himself primarily as part of hip-hop

culture, which aligns more faithfully with the way he views the world.

As his name suggests, he’s “always…happy, I’m a…goof, right? I want people to see that. I wanna

share it with people. […] That’s what you wanna give as a dancer, as a b-boy. You wanna give

through feeling…I want people to feel what I’m feeling.” Comedically, he continues, “I can do the

shittiest shit, but if people feel my shit, that’s all that matters to me, man, like, ‘Yeah, I fuckin’ love

that shit, man, love that shit…you should feel that shit too, man, feel that shit.’” He recalls the

seriousness he encountered when he first started dancing, with everyone looking “grumpy.” In fact,

he thinks his smiling face became a signature of his b-boy identity over the course of the years.

Jester makes a connection between his movements and jazz music. Particularly inspired by

Thelonious Monk’s musical ideas, his movements began to change. He added “Jazzy” to his name

to reflect this influence while audiences increasingly came to recognize his improvisational dance

style. His affinity for jazz creativity is apparent when he describes an Elizabeth Sheppard song he

used for a promotional video, “[I]t’s so sporadic, it’s everywhere and it’s controlled chaos...it was

like, all over the place, and I’m all over the place. It’s sometimes big, it’s sometimes small and

I’m…kinda the same way.”

5.1 Introduction to hip-hop

Jester was introduced to breaking by his cousin when he was 15 or 16 years old. He was living in

Hamilton at the time and wouldn’t move to Toronto until 1998 when he began attending George

Brown College for Graphic Design. He also recalls watching VHSes from Germany and being

amazed by what he saw. He never pictured himself breaking at the professional level. Dancing was

simply fun. He adds,

I was seeing the potential of the culture, the growing of the b-boy culture, and I loved just

hanging out with people, […] creating moves, and […] moving your body…And um, I’m

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not gonna lie, a part of it was getting girls. I’m not gonna lie…But, uh, I just really

wholeheartedly enjoyed the movement of it and that’s why I kept doing it.

He recounts his first glimpse of Toronto breaking:

[W]hen I first saw Toronto breaking, on Much Music, you know, watching Bag of Trix, I’m

like, “Woah these guys are crazy.” All of them had a different style, and really, I really

appreciate that. And they were breaking to hip-hop music, because they loved the music,

because that was around them…That was what was influencing them how to move. Yeah, it

came from a specific spot. It came from New York, and New York had a specific way of

moving. […] When it started in Toronto, hip-hop was already growing and you had your

Melle Mels and your Furious Fives, […]. And they had Maestro Fresh Wes, who was like the

first big hip-hop artist coming out of Toronto, or of Canada, and all of a sudden, you’re just,

you wanna move to it because he’s got dancers […]. They were dancing to hip-hop music and

the hip-hop dancers were hip-hop dancers, they weren’t really breakers. So what happened

was, Bag of Trix, because that was their influence […], they mixed it, and all of a sudden you

have this “bag of trix,” right? That’s just what defines a Toronto style, because you have this

hip-hop element and you also have this breaking element, but we’re dancing to hip-hop.

In the ‘90s, when I started being part of the scene here, everyone had their own style and it was

crazy. I remember everyone just looking so different…So to me, Toronto is all about style and

being yourself. […] Yeah, you can claim your own moves, you can claim a style, but fuck it

man, Toronto is about style in general. […] We don’t lock it down for one thing, we lock it

down for a whole bunch of different things because we’re all different people. […] [E]ach crew

can have their own style, but it won’t define every individual in that crew […]. Bag of Trix all

had their own style. They didn’t say, “This style is our style.” No, they were like, “I’m so-and-

DPA: Jesse steps into Toronto’s hip-hop scene as an observer who “first saw Toronto breaking” on TV. His

narration gains authority as he cites hip-hop’s spatial origins and early artists. As he does this he positions

himself amidst layers of history that connect Toronto’s hip-hop culture to origins in New York. Maestro

Fresh Wes is highlighted as an influential, legendary Toronto artist, in a parallel role with New York’s

legendary figures. Growing up, he, too, was the artist I heard about, making the discovery of Michie Mee’s

role as the “Queen,” who put Toronto hip-hop, and rap in particular, in the spotlight, even before Maestro

did, even more important for me to highlight as a missing piece of our hip-hop history.

Dialogic/Performance Analysis (DPA): Jesse seems hesitant to admit that part of his motivation for starting

to dance was to get girls. He may be pre-acknowledging the contradictory aspect of his statement that he

“just really wholeheartedly enjoyed the movement.” A later conversation I had with him about females

breaking revealed that a friend had made him re-think what it means to “to be a girl” in the scene; i.e. that

“being a girl” is different for everyone. I take his hesitation and admission to result from an awareness of

gender issues in breaking, as well as hip-hop culture in general.

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so, this is my style,” and that’s kind of what I got from them, not even by talking to them, just

being like, just taking it in.

It is interesting to hear Jester’s interpretation of “Bag of Trix,” particularly when juxtaposed with B-

boy Benzo’s telling of how the crew came together and got its name:

BENZO: Bag of Trix started in 1990.…we’re coming from a background where […] most of us are from, um,

um, low-end neighbourhoods, like, low-property neighbourhoods. Some of us, some of us are from

suburban areas that, they don’t have anything urban around them, so they don’t know anything about it.

So we built our dance off of basically what we know, and our imagination. […] Bag of Trix got started

from...high school. Nah, I wasn’t in high school when it happened. I was in like, junior high...Um, so yeah, I

was just like, what, 13? [Laughs] And...my brother, his best friend Magic, Tony, um, we were on one side

of the city, the West end. And then Gizmo, Tic Tac, and Denise were on the same side as the West end but

further west. [I laugh]. Right? And we were already been dancin,’ we’d been dancin’ for like, some of our

friends that were tryina start an emcee career and all this other stuff. And we’d done a few shows here

and there. Not as Bag of Trix, just us as friends and siblings, you know. And then all of a sudden we go to

this one party. One of Grouch’s,56 probably one of Grouch’s first parties. This basement party in the

Weston Road in some old building. And the light [laughs], the light for the jam was this bulb wrapped in

like, this red, the like, tin foil almost, that gave off like the ambience of like, club time.

And we showed up...And because we know it was like, it was a party, we didn’t show up like, whoops, to

really like, dance. We showed up to like, look for girls. [I laugh]. So we, so we’re all like, kinda like dressed

up, you know, we got on like, the nice soft shoes, and you know, some nice pants and a button-up shirt

and we’re, we’re comin’ down to the party to, to party. We’re not really thinkin’ about we’re goin’ to

56

See Chapter 4, pages 47-50 for a brief segment on DJ Grouch’s role in Toronto’s hip-hop history.

DPA: Jesse is absorbing the character of Toronto hip-hop culture through performances by Bag of Trix. I

have often heard b-boys and b-girls emphasize the importance of style. Interestingly, emphasis is usually

placed on an individual dancer, and not on the crew to which the dancer belongs.

DPA: By referencing DJ Grouch and this early party, Benzo confirms his Weston neighbourhood, high

school, and crew as being present at hip-hop’s early development in Toronto. By not having to explain who

Grouch is, Benzo acknowledges that I know who Grouch is and/or effectively gestures that everyone should

already know who he is. The amateur setup of “club time” mirrors the amateur stage of this group of b-

boys who would become broadly cited by future generations of breakers as helping shape a part of

Toronto’s hip-hop history. This party reference as well as the description of his “low-end neighbourhood”

displays affinity with New York’s struggling neighbourhoods of the 1970s.

62

dance or anything. And we see these two guys dancing. [Laughs] Like, killin’ it. Two little guys, little

Filipino guy, little West Indian guy, and I’m like, we’re lookin’ around like, ‘cause this is our area, we’re

like, “Who the hell is this? And why are they at our jam? And why are they breaking? What’s going on?”

No word of a lie, me, my brother, Tony, and Magic, we hop back in the car. We drove all the way home.

Changed our shoes [We laugh. He laughs so hard]. [I notice as this story went on, his words got clearer

and he was more animated and excited]. We didn’t even change our clothes. Change...

MYRTLE: Just the shoes.

B: Change our shoes, went back down [more serious tone] to battle those guys. Um, so we got, we get

back to the jam, we walk in, we take off our jackets, [said with recalled intensity] we’re like, “Yo.” Right to

the circle, right away. We go to the circle, and we’re kinda like in front of them and then we start

exchanging dance move, dance move. And we realize, yo, these guys aren’t push-overs. These guys are

actually really damn good and they thought the same thing of us. But Gizmo did one move. I think he, I

think he ended the entire jam with this one move. And we all jumped on him, like, literally...He thought

he was gonna get beat up. A whole lotta big black guys tryina jump...We jumped on him, threw him in the

air. We’re like, “OH MY GOD!” And he was like, “What?” We’re like, we were like, “Yo, let’s make a team,

like let’s roll together, where you live?” And [unclear] ...he’s like, “I live in the west end, like near Martin

Grove.” We’re like, “OHHHH MY GOD! You’re in the, you’re in the neighbourhood!” [I laugh through this].

And that’s how it all started. […]

DPA: We begin to feel the anticipation of the upcoming battle. The two b-boys on Benzo’s school dance

floor are outsiders and they are prepared and confident that they will be able to battle these trespassers.

Once again, we hear the party set-up as a place to meet girls. My laughter acknowledges parties as

places where youth might check each other out. Reading this text for analysis reveals my role in

acknowledging the hip-hop party context as a place where b-boys look to meet girls. My laugh has both

an external and internal cause and effect. It is both a result of the unexpected battle, but also validates

this situation as okay and normal, while I simultaneously struggle with the knowledge that this context

has made it difficult for female artists to be taken seriously. My internal struggle is multi-faceted due to

my roles as researcher who wants to acknowledge my participants’ viewpoints, as someone who has

spent time learning the dance and can relate to recollections of the battle atmosphere, and as a Filipino

woman who feels the effects of heteronormativity.

DPA: Sneakers are a necessary hip-hop accessory, even more important when you have to dance in them.

The focus on shoes signals both the role of fashion in hip-hop styling, as well as the importance of good

shoes in which to break. Both emphasize this battle moment as being all about b-boying, a focus on skills.

Two expectations are thwarted in this scenario. Benzo acknowledges the stereotyped, racist image of “[a]

whole lotta big black guys tryina jump…[Gizmo]” as well as the idea that battles occur between enemies.

Instead, this scene resolves in celebration over Gizmo’s move and the formation of a crew.

63

M: How’d the name come about then?

B: So we were going to a high school dance [laughs]. You know, and back then high school dances, were

like, was like the club. […] Like, DJX used to play at our, our high school dances. Michie Mee would emcee

at our high school dances. […] Cougar and Blass, Maestro’s dancers would come to our school dances, […]

our school dances were like reeaaaal big things. It wasn’t like, oh, school dance, here’s a tape deck player.

No, we had a DJ [laughing].

M: Where was this high school?

B: Weston Collegiate….It’s famous for school dances back then. Our school dance would outdo clubs.

People would come from Mississauga and Brampton to our school [taps table] just to party.

And, one night, we were at the school dance, and, ah, we had a great night, just a great night of dancing

together. We were all walking home. We were all walking in the middle of the street cause it’s like, I

dunno, 12:30 in the morning. [A]nd we start, we’re like, “Yo, we need a name” like, “This is ridiculous, we

don’t have a name? […] [W]e were like, what about we think of like something with ‘rock’ in it, ‘cause we

love Rock Steady.57 How ‘bout Hard to Rock, or something to Rock, whatever. […] I was just like, nah, man,

we can’t be callin’ ourselves nuthin’ like that. They already got so many crews with that name. So one of

our friends, his name is Adversary, he’s still an emcee, and he’s like, “How ‘bout Bag of Trix?” [Laughs]. […]

Out of nowhere. Out of nowhere. It’s like, we went silent for a minute and he’s like, “How ‘bout Bag of

Trix?” And we were all like, [I’m laughing], “Yeaahahahahah.” And he broke down his analogy of why he

called it Bag of Trix, ‘cause, he’s like, ‘cause you guys are like, like a unit. You guys come together like a

bag, like as one, and you guys do tricks. And that’s how it came. […] Bag of Trix. [….] I remember that day

vividly, like, walking past which, I remember what house I walked past as he was telling us this. It was

crazy.

57

Rock Steady Crew was formed in the Bronx in 1977 and became affiliated with Zulu Nation in 1982. They are a very

influential, world-renowned crew, having represented hip-hop’s birthplace and arguably bringing popular media attention to break dancing through their appearance in the movie, Flashdance. See also Chang (2005); JohnG (2010); Orange (2017);

Schloss (2009).

DPA: The crew is exhilarated by a night of dance and walks in the middle of the street, in a sense, owning the

neighbourhood. At this point the need for a hip-hop name by which to be recognized comes up, through a

recollection of other crews, Rock Steady, in particular, an important NYC crew who revitalized the breaking

scene through battles and performances. Claiming space and recognition create this obviously important

memory.

DPA: Benzo situates his school as a hub of early, pioneering activity through his mention of big name

Toronto artists. This adds to his crew’s credibility and authority within Toronto’s hip-hop culture.

64

The juxtaposition of these Bag of Trix stories shows how Jesse has absorbed this crew’s character

without knowing their formation story, and without talking directly to them. Their narrative was

performed as dance and circulated within Toronto’s hip-hop context, influencing Jesse’s philosophy

of individuality and style.

Jesse finds himself amidst a segment of Toronto’s hip-hop history that is already a blend of histories

from New York, Toronto, and Germany, as well as personal histories influenced by these. As we see

from his early recollection of breaking, interpretation is crucial to how Jester comes to internalize the

culture. This “piecing” together, akin to sampling, will continue to be explored throughout Jester’s

story.

5.2 Acquiring skill (Knowledge)

5.2.1 People

Teachers

Jesse’s cousin introduced him to breaking but it seems that observation is the primary means by

which he learned the dance. He explains, “My first, my first teacher, my cousin, Beej, was the one

who taught me how to like…I started because of him and then my friends uhhh…I don’t know, we

all just kinda taught each other, it was, it’s really hard.” Now, he says, younger generations have the

benefit of advice from their mistakes as well as strategies for training that strengthen bodies to

improve career longevity.

He cites VHS tapes from Germany that amazed him with “crazy” moves, as well as b-boys on TV,

as influences, but when asked directly about who he considers his teachers, Jesse lists people who

provided ideas, rather than specific technical dance skills.

Nevertheless, he generalizes the process as follows:

[H]ip-hop, […] it teaches you to take things and build your own structure within the

structure that’s given to you. And that’s I think, the main basis of what hip-hop is about, is

[t]aking whatever it is, and building your own fundamentals out of that […] and … defining

yourself through that with… the structure, the loose structure of hip-hop, you know. […]

And then um, you take that and then you’re like, okay well this is what those guys is… […]

This one works for me, this doesn’t work for me. And then you start taking other things and

then you start building your own structure, your own, your own, you build your own

formula and then you’d run with that formula. And then you keep altering it and then you

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keep…you know, switching things around and whatnot. But that’s what hip-hop’s always

been. […] [H]ip-hop’s been like, moving and changing and evolving and like, shape, shaping

uh…to a certain individual, […] maybe some groups will have that same structure or like,

view, but for the most part, individuals look at it all differently.

In keeping with the idea of “taking things,” Jesse’s list of teachers is not limited to breakers. In fact,

Jesse thoughtfully pauses before responding:

JAZZY JESTER: …I’m trying to think of it…Um…Obviously, my dad…I don’t know,

like… […]

MYRTLE: What did your dad teach you?

J: I don’t know. I just learned a lot of things, growing up, I’m just kinda like, huh, …I

actually learned a lot from my dad with like, indirect, like, being taught indirectly just by

watching, you know. […] [Y]ou learn a lot from your parents even though, you know, […]

you just, you’re around them all the time when you’re growing up, so it’s like, you’re

obviously gonna take some of those qualities and some of those like, habits. I don’t know.

My dad indirect, well directly and indirectly, is my first teacher. Um…as far as like, I don’t

know, that’s a hard one. … Like, you know, I had my senseis in karate, you know, those are

like, those are like, very literal teachers….

The b-boys that Jester goes on to mention are not “literal” teachers, by which he means those who

teach the how-to of movements. Instead, Jesse speaks gratefully about the guidance and influence of

other b-boys. Mariano, a.k.a “Glizzi,” from Bag of Trix modelled a successful career for Jesse. This

was particularly important because Jesse had “dropped everything” to become a dancer, full-time:

DPA: “Structure” generally connotes firm boundaries and rigid definition. Nevertheless, Jesse describes hip-

hop’s structure as “loose,” completely contradicting this definition. In addition, hip-hop structure is created by

the individual through intentional evaluation of structural “samples” taken from others and assessed as they

are used. The idea of a “taught” structure provided by hip-hop (i.e. not by a person teaching) results in the

culture shaping to the individual.

DPA: Just as he struggled to recall what his cousin taught him, Jesse has trouble describing what his dad

taught him, having gathered information, some intangible, over years of relationship with his father. By

contrast, he does not hesitate to name his “literal” senseis, who would have taught him specific movements

and perhaps a body of philosophies about the martial art.

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I really looked up to [him] and, I wouldn’t, again, indirectly, not a teacher, but, to me, he

was a teacher in a way where, at a time where I was trying to figure out what was gonna

happen with my career as a dancer, as a b-boy, he was already doing stuff where he was in

studios, he was teaching, he was still dancing, and he was choreographing things and

whatever. I’m like, Ohhh. He was working through the summer. [….] He’s doing it smart

because he’s a b-boy but he’s not taking, he’s taken it to hip-hop, […] he’s doing it everyday

[…]. So, I’d always like, call him, and be like, “Hey,” like, like, “I wanna know how you’re

doing this, this and that.” Like, I was just trying to take notes as much as I could, you know.

Jesse considers his good friend, Marcel (“Frost”), a thought-provoker:

even though he’s...uh…the generation under me, like, I still learned a lot from him. He’s a

very insightful guy, […] there are a lot of similarities between him and I and how we look at

things, how we think. […] I feel like he’s tapped into his like, deepful, more like,

philosophical state more than me. Or maybe I just do it differently, I don’t know, but, I still

learn a lot from him, so, even though he’s not a teacher to me, he is, he, I still learned a lot

from him, so. You know, it’s a big shout out to Frost. Um… […] The way he looks at things

is very interesting to me, and like, I’ve learned a lot through the ways of, through how he

looks at things, you know what I mean, so. But yeah…Who else are the teachers? Shoot. I

don’t know... [pauses] [says something inaudible]. I don’t know. I’ve done a lot of dance, so,

obviously, yeah I don’t know.

Jesse seemed to struggle to name break dance teachers, perhaps because breaking was not taught in

dance studios during the time Jesse was developing as a dancer. He then recalls his roommate Lenny

Len.58

58 I met Lenny in 2003 when he invited me to attend his hip-hop dance class which was occurring around the same time as

a break dance class I was taking at the El Mocambo. He is a choreographer, video director, and teacher. For more, see Flavor Shop Dance (2014).

DPA: Pointing out that Mariano is “not taking,” from hip-hop, but has instead, “taken it to” hip-hop signals to

me an awareness of the questions of appropriation that surround the use of the culture’s creative output. Not

only is Jesse looking for career guidance, he is searching for ways to develop a career that also gives back or

offers something to the culture.

DPA: Jesse’s description of Frost as being from a younger generation of dancers is telling of the generally-

accepted idea of teachers, i.e. that they are older, perhaps more experienced, and therefore have greater

knowledge and expertise than their students. As we have already seen, those who pass on information in hip-

hop do not necessarily fit this description.

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Lenny. Lenny’s a good teacher, actually. [….] I’d go to his class whenever I got the chance

to, but I was also so busy. But every time I went, I was like, damn. I learned a lot like,

through the way he taught and like, you know, the way he heard sounds and music, so it

was, it was interesting. […] Anything that has to do with like, the boom-bap or like, anything

of that like, hip-hop rhythm like it just, …it just, I gravitate towards it a lot more than I do

anything else musically, or aurally, or anything like that, so. Yeah, so it was just natural that

I would gravitate towards Lenny’s classes, because of the way he taught. His, his ear for

sound, so. Learned about, learned a few things from, from class, for sure, besides routines

that are like, super, [I laugh] like, “boom shaka shak,… […] bap shaka shak, boom slide and

then up and…hahaha and boom and slide and up and jump and down and slide and chik a

chik turn.” I’m like okay, I got it. Sure, I got it, Lenny.

Lenny taught hip-hop dance. In these classes, the teacher shows the students a particular

choreography. The students’ task is to remember the moves and perform it by the end of the class. In

this sense, Lenny is more like a “literal” teacher, passing on the “how-to” of movements. What

Jester picks up most from Lenny, however, is a way to listen to and hear music, rather than the

choreography itself.

As the above descriptions show, Jesse learns primarily by observation and through familial or

friendly relationships with those who share ideas or become role models through action, rather than

through directly being taught what to do.

DPA: Just as Jesse was interested in how Frost “look[ed] at things,” he is interested in how Lenny “hear[s]

sounds and music.” Learning in hip-hop seems for Jesse to be about being genuinely interested in how others

process what is around them. Given that Jesse does not view those from whom he learned within hip-hop

culture as literal teachers, I am beginning to understand the limitations of the word, “teacher,” as we use it

colloquially. The definition requires expansion.

DPA: There is, to me, a strong paternal aspect to circumstances around Jesse’s learning, reinforced, perhaps,

by the majority male participants in hip-hop. By paternal, I don’t simply mean that his mentors are all men, but

rather that there are bonds of relationship with them. In this way, learning in hip-hop parallels the life learning

he absorbed from his father.

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Teaching Oneself

Jesse’s interviews demonstrate the importance of self-teaching in his learning process. Upon moving

to Toronto, he began to immerse himself in its hip-hop community.

[W]hen I first moved here, one of my main things to do was, not to be close to the b-boy

community, which obviously was a given, because I was a b-boy, but like, to be close to the

hip-hop community. I wanted to know the emcees, I wanted to know the DJs, I wanted to

know the graffiti artists [. …] so I could be, you know, I could be part of them and know

what it’s like to be part of a hip-hop community, to be part of what I love so much – the

music, the fashion, the art, the style, the dancing, like, everything in one.

Immersion in music is crucial to Jester’s development. As he puts is, “without music, you’re not

dancing…Above all, the main foundation for breaking is music and the essence of letting go and

being free. That’s the essence. That’s the true foundation to me. Because without that, without the

music, you’re not breaking.” In keeping with this, he would watch Rap City for an hour after school

and learn the Top 5 rap videos of the week. As he started breaking, he started crate digging to

understand what breaks were and to figure out what samples artists were using. Next, he would

download all the music of the artists sampled:

I would Napster it. […] So I’d type in the name. I’d see […] oh yeah, Bill Withers.

Download everything Bill Withers. Like, oh, Eddie Kendricks? Oh, download all of that.

Let’s try to listen to all of it. […] And then being at NASA every Tuesday night, before it

became […] Andy’s, right. I would […] stand beside Fase at the DJ booth and just, every

time he’d play something new, I’d look over, I’d be like, who is this? What is this? I’m like,

oh my god, this is amazing. I gotta go home and Napster that shit. […]. I wanted to know

what made this culture tick. What, how it started. Why it started. The, the feelings that those

songs exuded for people to move a certain way and like, think a certain way at that time. So

that was part of why I enjoyed learning, like moving at that time, because I was

understanding its history and […] the roots of where people were starting to move and like

feel, and sing, and talk, and do all this stuff. But then, you relate it to today, and you relate to

like, how I started, [….] you go through it, you, you understand it, and you’re like, okay,

you get it. I get it. But then now you relate it to yourself. Is it relatable to yourself?

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According to B-boy Jazzy Jester, those who claim to be part of hip-hop culture must know the

history of its early development. This information is not merely a body of facts, it affects the way

Jesse feels music and creates dance movements. He recalls preparing for a major event:

One year, the year before we went to Seattle for our first international flown-out event, I was

training hard but then that’s when I was doing a lot of research into the history of it. And I

also had a book called Yes, yes, y’all. And they were selling it at Home Outfitters for $5. I

remember getting mine for $5 because it went on sale. No one was buying it. […] I read that

book three, four times, but I think the second time I read it, I really wanted to understand the

culture of what was happening in that era. [….] I studied it, I studied the culture through the

internet, through that book and then I was like, I made a CD of songs that I thought that

they listened to that was happening in their era and I had it in my CD player, yes, it’s old,

my CD player, listening to it, reading that book over and over and over to get a sense of

what was happening and the feeling that was coming out of that book and the sounds that

were coming out of that book in order for me to understand the feeling of what hip-hop was.

It is important to him that the spatial origins of hip-hop be acknowledged as he reminds me that

“these kids came out from the ghetto, you know, the ghetto ghettoes and they wanted the world to

see who they were through a way of, through a way of fashion and style and movement and sound.

So they were like, ‘This is who we are.’”

The feeling of hip-hop, particularly its music, as well as the creative expression of identity become

tenets by which Jester later creates his performance identity.

DPA: These episodes of self-learning hinge on learning hip-hop’s history, including forming felt impressions of

its early music and spatial/visual setting. Not only does he read about hip-hop’s history, he acts out a kind of

ritual learning --- crate digging --- to discover sounds and artists that influenced the mixes of both early DJs

and present-day DJs.

Hip-hop began at a neighbourhood party, with music arguably providing a sense of freedom from the

oppressive, imprisoning politics affecting the Bronx. Jesse has internalized this and his personal search for an

understanding of hip-hop culture begins with immersion in its Toronto community and music. Being free

becomes a foundational goal, achieved, perhaps, by asking “Is [the history] relatable to yourself?”

DPA: Announcing oneself requires a name. The story regarding the naming of Bag of Trix shows how

important one’s name is and reveals something about the sense of opening up that comes when the right

name is found. Once again, this act and feeling of, in a sense, naming one’s identity, has historical roots in a

desire to be acknowledged.

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Crew

B-boys and b-girls can come together and form crews with whom they practice, battle, and share

ideas. Members tend to work together for a long time, such that strong friendships, and familial

relationships can form.

B-boy Handlez explains:

Oh man…and that’s why they’re my crew. Because we just, we inspire each other like, on a daily basis,

like…Just um, uh, yesterday, we were at practice and like, uh, my boy Troublez, he’s just like, “Yo man!,”

[imitates his voice] and it was like a joke, too, “Yo, yo, imagine doing swipe and windmill,” but your one

foot has to be on the ground the whole time and that’s like almost impossible [I laugh] ‘cause like your

legs have to be up and stuff, right? But we did it. […] [A]nd we were laughing, we’re like, “Yo, mts, yo

that’s fucked up, that’s not gonna work,” and then he, we’re like looking at him, we’re like, “Yo, that’s

possible.” And then we added like a bellymill to a windmill to a swipe, but one foot would always be on

the ground and we’re trying to like make it like, fluid. Oh my…and that’s inspiration, it’s just like [snapping

fingers] and that happens all the time with my crew. […] It’s like endless, endless. Endless inspiration.

Jazzy Jester has formed friendships in three different crews throughout his career. First, with Intrikit:

[W]ith Intrikit it was hard, because you know, […] those guys were already established and

uh, you know, when I got down with those guys it was, it was like I’m part of Intrikit, what?

Like, uhhh, ok cool! Like, I’m part of this like, at the time, they were like, the elite team, you

know, them and Bag of Trix, were like, the teams. You know, they were […] the crew to, to

know, you know. They had ties with Rock Steady and all that stuff, so. You know, you

wanted to be with one of those crews…It just so happened that one of the […] Inrikit guys

found me just dancing one night at like this club in Burlington. And I knew him. I knew who

he was ‘cause I saw him on TV. So I was like, oh my gosh like, that’s, that’s Sonic. I’m like,

that’s so sick. So, with them, it was like, practice was great, I liked, I liked hanging out with

DPA: I insert B-boy Handlez/DJ Andy B Bad’s short description of a crew practice here to show how

interactions with a crew can make the seemingly impossible, possible. This story also serves to give a shout-

out to fellow artists who surround Handlez and constantly provide support.

I have personally gained from this kind of friendship. Though we were not officially a crew, I have benefited

from being pushed by Maehem, Doogie, Chuie, Rowdy, and King Josh a couple of times a week back in 2013-

2014 at Streetdance Academy sessions. In that short time, I became confident enough to enter a battle in

which my partner and I made it to the finals of a 2 vs 2 battle. Something I never thought I would do. These

small, casual sessions are the right mix between work and “shit talk” that can keep a dancer on her toes.

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them, but they, they fought a lot [laughs] in practice. And I just couldn’t get it, ‘cause like,

they grew up together, like, you know, […] …they were like boys. So they were always

fighting. I was like, aahh, I felt awkward there.

Jesse describes his next crews as having a more “natural” fit, both through the way he came to join

them, and perhaps because each one came at particular points in his development. Jesse became part

of Supernaturalz Crew gradually. He was invited by B-boy Dyzee to practice with them in

Scarborough after seeing him at a performance with Rock Steady Crew. He recalls, “I don’t even

think I was really, like, initiated into the crew. I just started hanging out with […] Karl a lot and like,

hanging out with […] the rest of the crew, like Mouse and like Amo and those guys. And it just

became a natural thing.” He was about the same age as the Supernatz members and they talked

about more than just breaking, which made him more comfortable.

Today, Jesse is part of Albino Zebrahs. He already had a connection with Zebrahs, Lance and

Donny, and knew that they shared “the same mindset.” Additionally, he thought Lance was the best

b-boy in the world, whose style he describes as “sporadic, […] spur-of-the-moment, […] all over the

place, [with a] flow [that] spoke in a different way to [him] […] a Thelonious Monk style.” Again,

he describes becoming part of this crew as a “natural progression” from just hanging out to

discovering a shared view of life and of the artistic and creative aspects of hip-hop as a culture, and

not just of breaking. He explains,

It was all about the art side. The artistic side and the creative side of hip-hop. And to me I

LOOOOOVE that shit. That, that’s my shit […]. Not to say like, you know, my previous

crews weren’t like that, because they definitely were. It just, it got to a point where it just

wasn’t speaking the same to me anymore, so it’s like, I, you know, you just […] transition to

another thing.

DPA: Here, the often-stereotyped behaviour of “boys” fighting creates a bit of an uncomfortable feeling for

Jesse. There is also a familial situation that contributes to this atmosphere, and I get the sense of the sort of

fighting that siblings might get into, making non-family members uncomfortable.

This snippet of story shows a potential limit to crew experience, as well as the complexities of “belonging” in

hip-hop culture. Indeed, DJ Ariel, whose narrative forms Chapter 6, speaks about seeing men interact in a way

that makes hip-hop feel unwelcoming.

DPA: Jester uses the word “natural” to describe situations or interactions that resonate with him and feel like a

good fit. Once an artistic context no longer felt this way, he made a transition to another that coincides with

his career or development stage.

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Jester felt connections with different dancers throughout his development as a b-boy. His

membership in crews are, nevertheless, a result of a mutual admiration of each member’s skills,

ideas, and histories.

5.2.2 Spaces and places

Cyphers

Cyphers are described by MC Abdominal as “the most basic, fundamental hip-hop, even with […]

the internet, and the multimillion dollar industry, you’re always gonna have 15 dudes in the circle,

one guy beatboxing, or clapping their hand, or pounding on a table and someone freestyling, right?”

Not surprisingly, cypher spaces emerge as an important site of self-learning. Jazzy Jester explains:

[I]t’s hard for you to have your own natural feeling…if you don’t cypher all the time. You

need to…, cause that’s where you’re gonna get the true feeling of wanting to go in, and

wanting to dance cause that’s where it was born from, bred from, right? The dancers, the b-

boys, when it all started were just having a good time at a party and when that one

specific…I would say, ‘break,’ but whenever that sound, a sound, came on, that’s when they

would be like, ‘Oh, I love this sound.’ Boom! The circle opened, they were dancing.

This is a space that recalls hip-hop history even as self-discovery takes place through attention to

one’s responses to music. The urgency of his response to music in the cypher is illustrated in the

following recollection:

I remember one time, we were, we were, me, Dyzee, and Puzzles were judging a

competition in Halifax,... […] then during our judges’ break, you know, it was at a club, so

you know, people were dancing or whatever. And then, Slum Village’s “Raise it up” came

on, I was like, ohhh, this is my song. And Dyzee went in, I was like, “Noooo! You’re

butchering the song!” [I’m laughing] I just, I literally pushed him out of the way and I, I was

so tired, I was out of breath because I was so excited, I was like, “Moove!” and how I didn’t

care what I was doing. I just needed to dance to that…song, [….] [I]t’s just, it’s a want, it’s a

need, like, you know. Some people react to certain sounds…differently, right?

To cypher is to publicly enact identity negotiation amidst the dynamics created by the members of

the cypher, audience and performer alike. Cultural influences and pressures are felt in this space

while music is used to access personal histories replete with memory, emotion, and feeling that Jesse

hopes to communicate to others.

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I like connecting with people and it doesn’t matter how it’s done, or how it’s perceived as

long as there’s a connection. […] I freestyle everything I do. I do. But, the more and more I

think about it, the more and more I, I, it plays in my head. I, I really don’t, I, as much as I

freestyle, right? I feelstyle it. Like, I feel it, and I’m very situational and I have to feel that

situation in order to move that certain way, right? So, I feel like that’s […] the way I

contribute to my community, is by giving people a feeling of something, you know [….]

you’re a performer, […] regardless if you like it or not. Once you’re in that circle, you’re

performing and you have an audience, so you gotta, you gotta be conscious of that, right?

[….] [T]here is a consciousness that’s still there, that’s still relevant while you’re still dancing

for yourself. So because of that consciousness, you, you’re now exuding this, this energy,

and you want, for me, I always want to give that energy out in a way where it’s not just like,

“Yeah, that was really cool, that like, what I saw,” but I want people to feel what I, what

they’re watching. […] [T]here’s new sounds now that’s just, just like, “Oh,” and then you get

that stank face [makes face and I laugh] and then you’re just like, “Oh shiiit. That’s so

good,” right? That’s, that’s the feeling […] I wanna try to exude […] when I’m dancing…or

when I’m moving, for people to have that, that same reaction.

Performing in a cypher can also be complicated by personal histories, audience-performer dynamics,

and an awareness of issues of gender representation. The following segment from my conversation

with B-girl JuLo, founder of KeepRockinYou,59 highlights these.

JULO: I think too much, that’s my problem [laughs]. […]

MYRTLE: The more you think about it, you’re not gonna go. I know, that happens so many times.

JL: And I have to feel the vibe and the energy. The music has to be good. I gotta be like, just be able to like

not care about what anybody else thinks and just go in there.

M: Yeah. It’s so hard […]

59

For more information on KeepRockinYou, see pages 40, 67, 87 (and footnote 60).

DPA: The performative aspects of performance can be observed in the cypher context. This performance

occurs amidst the normative b-boy environment alluded to in MC Abdominal’s statement about “dudes” in

the cypher, and the seeming absence of b-girls in the circle (“The dancers, the b-boys, when it all started…”).

Yet, the purpose of the cypher is to try to “break” out, using the music as impetus for the emergence of

individuality; this is the moment of potential agency. As a result, there is a tension between dancing for

oneself, i.e. in accordance with one’s feelings about the music, and dancing for the ever-present audience.

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JL: Yeah, because when you’re a girl, you have this in your mind that people are expecting you to be at

least decent, right? You’re doing a dance that’s male-dominated. So it’s like, I’m a female entering into a

scene with a whole bunch of guys, I better represent for the females. You know, I better represent, […].

So, I feel there’s a lot of pressure at times, but really, at the end of the day, nobody really cares.

M: That’s true [we laugh].

JL: Nobody cares. As long as you get down, and dance, and have fun, no one cares what you do. […] You’ll

get to hear, you get the props here and there about entering the circle, or even if you did something

good, you’ll get respect, but […] no one cares unless you’re like, international, big, top-level, right? […] But

if you’re just a beginner […] you’re a beginner.

Dancers in the cypher aim to connect with their audiences through musical responses. This is done

amidst circulating histories that individuals draw on in the moment of movement. Jester recalls hip-

hop’s “b-boy” history in order communicate musical feeling. JuLo recalls this “b-boy” history, but is

also aware that she is entering the cypher as a “girl.” Her musical responses then, also serve to quiet

the pressures of gender representation, adding another layer of commentary to whatever she

communicates to her audiences.

Battles

Battles, as previous stories have mentioned, can also break out in cyphers. Jester recalls, “I

remember the first time I heard that I had to battle somebody. I’m like, I almost cried, ‘cause I was

like, ‘Waaah, I don’t like confrontation. I don’t wanna...’ But, it was really cool.” He goes on to tell

the story:

DPA: Here, JuLo and I acknowledge shared experiences through our laughter. Saying “nobody cares”

highlights the kind of self-talk that helps us focus on our dancing. Having to dispel the audience view,

however, suggests a presence that is always there and does care in varying degrees. We are also an audience

for ourselves, judging our performances against cultural norms that we have internalized.

Representing for others (here, females) is a great responsibility, frequently placed on the shoulders of

marginalized or underrepresented individuals whose acts are, rather unfairly, attributed to a group who is

then evaluated on these bases.

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We were at the Filipino Community Centre in Hamilton, where there’s jams there all the

time. And my crew at the time, um, were a bunch of Filipino guys and our DJs used to

throw jams here and there. So I threw a jam and there was a local b-boy group that we knew,

[…] they’re a few years older […] as in they started breaking a lot longer than we had. […]

And then, um, they started to battle. […] They came by to battle us, and I was like, “No, no,

no, no, no.” I was so scared, and my boys, all like, they all threw down, but then slowly

started fading out and it was just me ‘cause I guess I was like the strongest guy. But I, I

remember I had to go against Tricks, his brother Jake, um, who else...like, I had to go up

against most of them and that’s when I also first met Troy, Whiplash. I first met Troy there

because, or like, and I remember like, “Who is this guy?” I’m like, oh...and we’re roughly

around the same age. Not knowing, almost 20 years later, that we’re still best friends after

that. But, I remember that. I remember the fear. Me, like, having to be in front of somebody

else and like, “Waaaaah,” being nervous, and all my friends going like, “Go, go, go!” But

yeah, yeah.

In this story of an early battle experience, Jester discovers his strengths amid encouragement from

his crew. In this recalled musical space, he publicly discovers himself as a developing artist. For

Jazzy Jester, this is done amidst a recollection of hip-hop culture’s history, thereby positioning

himself as a part of a local and global cultural context. The individual is implicated within and

against the hip-hop community. Cypher contributions are not simply performances; they are public

displays of artistic identity negotiations between self and community.

According to Jester, however, increased focus on competition or battle can detract from the spirit of

hip-hop. B-boys and b-girls seem to lose a connection with the music and the cypher vibe:

DPA: Here we have another battle-to-friendship story (cf: Benzo’s story). This time, however, we have a

protagonist that hesitates to battle, differentiating Jesse from the stereotype of a fighting masculinity. His crew,

whom he refers to as “my boys,” provide familial support and help him recognize his strengths.

This battle story and the battle-to-friendship phenomenon index gang initiation rites (e.g. “Apache line”

discussed in Chang (2005) and Schloss (2009)) that were supplanted by symbolic break battle movements as

the dance developed. Referencing other dancers as “my boy” or “my girl” shows close bonds between artists,

paralleling gang ties.

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It’s […] what their moves are worth at the end of the competition, you know what I mean.

And I think with that, the whole term b-boying is loosely starting to like, fade into this other

thing that isn’t really b-boying/b-girling anymore. It’s now become to me, just breaking

again, where, you know, you could say, yeah, I’m a b-boy, I’m a b-girl, but, if you’re not

cyphering, if you’re not down with the actual culture and do, knowing, what’s happening in

that culture, then you’re not part of that culture. [….] Competition is one aspect and it’s a

part of our community now. […] …Much like 50 Cent being in our community, like, […]

regardless if you like him or not, […] and…you can’t say he’s not hip-hop, you know. It is in

some way, shape, or form, hip-hop, much like competition is. Do I like it? Not really.

With corporate-sponsored national and international competitions helping spotlight and propel

dance careers, it is not surprising that focus shifts toward impressing judges. In Jesse’s view:

[B]-boying was about you, b-girling was about you, right? It was about you breaking the

mold of society, and like, the, um…breaking, just taking a break, you know. It’s just all those

whatever you can think of with the word “break,” no matter how, which direction you look

at “break,” that’s what it was back in the day. Now, it’s just, b-boying is competition. It’s a

b-boy competition, you know. So, it, it’s like, what is b-boying anymore?

5.3 B-boy identity

I have often heard breaking called “b-boying,” emphasizing the predominance of male dancers. As

we have seen above, Jester has referred to the “b-boy community” and has used the word b-boy to

refer to breakers in general. A segment of conversation with B-girl JuLo, illustrates the way that

breaking is, conversationally, equated with “b-boying:”

[S]o I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna come out to this jam and see you,” right? And just kinda get a feel again

of the b-boy scene in England. So he was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, come. I have a girl also from Canada,

from Toronto, who lives in London and she’s coming as well so you guys can connect. And I was like, “Oh

DPA: Jesse gives a rough delineation of the boundaries of hip-hop culture and that of breaking, which is,

interestingly, what many call the dance in order to avoid gender exclusions. There is a sense of blurring at

these limits where the cypher loses importance and a sense of cultural participation is lost. This blurring occurs

alongside erosion of clear labels, i.e. “b-boy” and “b-girl,” which bear the cultural meanings of the cypher as

well as the inclusion of competition, which he likens to 50 Cent’s popularity. Jesse “can’t say [these are] not

hip-hop,” but he also doesn’t say that they are.

Arguably, these blurred boundaries are where cultural expansions are possible as individuals assert their

positions through creative acts.

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that’s dope!” And so I ended up meeting Mary and really having a great connection with Mary and having

a good discussion about Toronto, even though I was completely, at this time, even being in England, I had

no education on Toronto b-boy scene, ‘coz I started in Korea, right? And then I came back, to Toronto, and

I was here for maybe three months and during that three months, I trained with Supernaturalz Crew, but I

still didn’t experience the b-boy community while I was here, so I had no knowledge of anything about

Toronto, except for Supernaturalz crew, and then, um...that was about it.

With the increasing number of females participating and contributing to the dance’s progress, the

term “b-boy” is strongly being contested. Jester explains, “I guess you’re just so used to it, calling

something what it is… […. but] we are living in a time of like, it’s, everything is always changing

and always evolving.” Nevertheless, given the meanings attached to the term “b-boy,” I asked Jester

what the term means to him.

JAZZY JESTER: B-boying is, like, I’ve, I’ve been saying it for a long time. Maybe even like,

more than 10 years, I’ve been saying that like, I’m not a b-boy, you know. […] [W]hen you

label something, it’s hard to get straight away from it, but when you don’t label something,

it’s open to ideas far beyond what people think it is. So, theoretically, I am a b-boy, in

theory, but I’m also not, because I’m, I’m me [….] I’m, I’m Jesse. I’m, I’m a d, a, a, I’m a

dancer, I guess? You know. I’m a mover, but I’m, I’m more of a…I’m first and foremost, a

music-lover […]. So, if you’re not connected to the music or sound, then it’s hard for me to

see or relate to what you’re doing if you’re not connected to something that’s making you do

something, uh, musically.

[from slightly earlier in the conversation…]

[re: term b-boy] [B]ut yeah, I feel, I feel like it’s a strong word, and it’s, it’s something that

can be intimidating especially to, like, the opposite sex, so when they hear b-boying, they

think the specifically gender-biased, towards, you know, obviously, the boys. But um, I think

nowadays, we all know what that term usually is about. Even though it’s more comforting to

DPA: The breaking community in Toronto is called the “b-boy community,” and indeed, JuLo described to me

how there were no girls in the cyphers she saw whenever she visited Toronto. Her statement that she did not

“experience the b-boy community” can be interpreted in two ways: a) She did not have enough time to

immerse herself in the community, and b) She cannot truly experience a “b-boy” community as she is an

aspiring b-girl. To put this in perspective, I have never heard b-boys talk about immersion in the “b-girl”

community. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. Comparatively, there are fewer females who break.

And because males predominantly practice the art form, females have to make an entry into a traditionally

male, b-boy space.

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know that it’s breaking than it is b-boying, but the thing is, with that, the, that word is being

used so loosely […] nowadays that that term is now almost thrown out the window in my, in

my, you know, in my opinion.

MYRTLE: Breaking… […]

J: B-boying.

M: Oh, b-boying. Okay.

J: You know, people use it all the time, be like, “Yeah, I’m a b-boy, I’m a b-boy, I’m a b-girl,

I’m a b-girl.” But, nowadays, it’s so hard to call yourself that, because everything is based

around the competition now. And to me if you’re a b-boy or b-girl, I mean, like, you can still

be that, but, the competition has shaped that word into something completely different now.

[….] ….So, I don’t know, it’s just…to me, as intimidating as the word is, I feel like females

are strong enough to know what it is now, and I think the females…uh, are starting

to…there’s a resurgence in, in like, the b-girl movement, in general, all over the world that,

uh, is…making the, females see it in a different way and empowering in like, independent,

you know, than, than what it used to be like, for just b-girls and stuff.

We begin to see the challenges surrounding the acceptance or rejection of the term “b-boying.”

There is a sense that “everyone” knows what the word means and that the issues of inclusion and

exclusion against the learned history of the dance pose questions of identity and cultural belonging.

But B-girl JuLo, is far from discouraged. In fact, the unrealized potential of women in this dance scene becomes the

impetus for the creation of her now well-known organization, KeepRockinYou, which sponsors the Toronto B-girl

Movement.60 She recalls that what excited her about breaking was, in part, seeing the number of Korean b-girls

training in the dance while she was a teacher in Korea. She wanted the same community that she found there, as

well as in the UK, to form in Toronto and so, started KeepRockinYou

…to make it something that’s common. It’s not a strange thing, it’s not abnormal. You have girls who

break….there are plenty of girls who do this. And so we’re trying to make it something that’s more

mainstream, more like it’s nothing, like, “Oh she breaks, oh ok, that’s cool.” When a guy breaks, they

don’t get that reaction. May...maybe they do, I don’t know...but it’s not as, like, shocking, [as] when a

female says it.

60

As a project of KeepRockinYou, Toronto B-Girl Movement is a collective founded by Judi Lopez, Dr. Mary Fogarty

Woehrel, Souphaphone "Soupy" Souphammanychanh, and Victoria "VicVersa" Mackenzie. It forwards KeepRockinYou’s mission to encourage and support b-girls in Toronto.

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Through breaking, JuLo’s particular experience of hip-hop history directly confronts its past history and

calls it into question. JuLo’s description of her time in the UK shows her acceptance of the term “b-

boying.” As she embeds herself in the culture, it also becomes a source of inspiration that encourages

empowerment, as the tensions of gender (re)definition are performed and negotiated through dance.

5.3.1 Hip-hop state of mind

Jazz, Thelonious, Bruce Lee

Jester’s study of hip-hop’s history led him to want to find out more about jazz history, eventually

adding “Jazzy” to his name as he made a personal connection to particular music and musicians. As

he explained his connection to jazz music, Thelonious Monk, and Bruce Lee, I began to understand

what Jesse has taken from his years of involvement with hip-hop communities – that one can take

concepts that are taken for granted and transform them through one’s personal responses into

something that becomes associated with one’s identity.

JAZZY JESTER: […] jazz has been around for so long, but, like the sound has been around,

but I think it was when I did a little bit of digging and research with Thelonious Monk, is

when I started realizing that there’s more to it than, than just what it is, and what it was.

Because a lot of, a lot of the roots of hip-hop stemmed from jazz music […]. So I did a little

bit of research on that, and I was like man, this is, this, this is crazy! […] You know, not to

be like, corny or anything like that, it was just that’s what fed my soul and, you know, it’s

just, it was the complete, not opposite, but it was just relating it back to like, what the times

were like back in the day with jazz, and like, the whole meaning of, like, rebellion,

rebelliousness of like, the freedom of expression […] and how it like, transformed into like

this thing called hip-hop. […] [U]sing the sounds of jazz and how close it is to like, hip-hop,

made me appreciate what I was doing more, and made me appreciate the culture more and

[…] how jazz has influenced the culture so much, so. I don’t know, it just fit so well, I liked

Jesse Jester, but then Jazzy Jester… […]

MYRTLE: Why Thelonious Monk?

DPA: Girls who break, rap, and DJ are still not “normal,” in the sense that saying this is what one does as a

female elicits surprise or awe. It is therefore fitting that JuLo’s aim is to making breaking “not abnormal,”

embedding in this unconscious choice of words, the lived experience of not adhering to the norm while still

not being quite “normal.”

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J: Uhhh…I liked his philosophy and his take on, on, on jazz and like music. Um…he would

hear a note and say that that note is traditionally, classically, what it is, but he heard a

different sound of the same note, so he would play…it was always like […] that’s your A,

that’s your C, that’s your D; this is my A, this is my C, this is my D, right? And when you

hear it, when you hear him play, back in the day, what he was doing was…sooo, out, out of

the, the box, that people were like, what is he playing? What is he doing? […] [H]e was

adding new sounds where people weren’t, like, used to it. They were used to the classical

sounds of like, chords, and keys, and all that stuff. And he went with a different sound, but

you couldn’t deny that what he was doing was still jazz, so, to me that spoke a lot […]. I

wanted to be somebody that, if you saw me, […] you’d be like, oh he’s a b-boy, but he

doesn’t have that typical, b-boy, like, structure, […]. So I was always in that, like, I don’t

care, this is how I perceive it to be and this is my interpretation of it […] because it’s just my

interpretation and, hip-hop is so […], subjective, […] there’s no right or no wrong, right?

You have your base, you have your structure, you build from that, and then, you create and

you add your own personality, […] every jazz musician had their own personality, you

know. […] And it just feels natural to me to have jazz in front of my, my name […]

Thelonious Monk really helped me realize the, the importance of standing out, and through

the same structure that, uh, of the culture that you’re a part of, you know. You’re using the

same structure and the same traditions, but your approach of it is different.

Jester always seems acutely aware of his responses to music. The attention he gives to the feelings

that arise with these responses not only informs his “feelstyle,” but also become part of his identity,

signified by the addition of “Jazzy” to this name.

Though seemingly a distant source of knowledge, I have often heard b-boys mention martial artists

as inspirations. Jesses explains:

Bruce Lee was […] like, he’s super hip-hop [….] Jeet Kune Do could not be any more hip-

hop than that. Like, he took, he’s like, I’m gonna take this, I’m gonna take this, I’m gonna

take this, I’m gonna take this, I’m gonna make my own shit out of that. I’m like, oh shit!

DPA: Jesse constructs his identity and ways of creating dance moves through ways of thinking about structure.

The idea that one note can be changed such that it sounds different is profound. In parallel, Jesse obviously

ascribes to the identity “b-boy,” but as we heard earlier, he also distances himself from it at times, particularly

when it comes to issues of gender. One could contextualize this according to his internalization of Thelonious

Monk’s structural play --- Is b-boying the dance? The act of being a boy in the dance? Is it breaking from the

masculine image of the dance and from the b-boy stance?

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That’s Jeet Kune Do, that’s fuckin’ hip-hop, man. [I’m still laughing]. […]. That’s so

blatantly hip-hop, you know what I mean? [….] [G]rowing up, Bruce Lee was such a big, big

iconic, like, figure for me to be looking up to, ‘cause, (a) he was ahead of the game out of

everyone in […] action movies, whatever. But he was this Asian-American that was pushing

boundaries and trying new things. Aaaand, he was built as shit, he was cut as shit. So like, “I

wanna be like Bruce Lee.”

Bruce Lee’s seeming ability to learn different martial arts styles and build on them to create

something “that can become more than what his traditional training was from,” became a powerful

guiding principle. Combining this with what Jester sees as Thelonious Monk’s ability to change the

perception of a note, Jesse has been able to conceptualize his creative impulses, as well as present

these in his daily life as a “lifestyle.”

Through these story segments, I noticed a recurring theme of taking what is around, breaking them

apart or transforming them, and using these building-blocks to create something new. In other

words, sampling from cultural influences is allowing Jesse to craft an idea of himself as an artist and

opens him up to possibilities of expression.

Music: Role and changes

Music is, perhaps quite obviously, an important part of the creative movement process. For Jazzy

Jester, music is instrumental to the way he processes the world around him. A lyric can make him

see his environment in a more detailed way. He explains, “You don’t need a recording or anything

to tell you how to feel or think, but it influences how you think. It influences how you move and

how you live your life through the course of everyday things around you…everyday surroundings.”

Music is therefore “the most powerful thing in the world” to him, to the extent that “whatever is

happening in music is happening to [him] too, ‘cause it affects our moods and changes our […]

being.”

Music generates a feeling in him that makes him want to move a certain way. “Jazz influences my

movement a lot […] …I move according to how I feel…Different music will make you move

differently. Not all music’s gonna make you move the same. That’s when you don’t have your own

sense of…what’s going on in your surroundings.” He further explains that new music helps him

discover new ways that his changing, aging, body wants to move. Interestingly, he ties memory to

breaking, “[E]very time I move my body, every time I break is a new memory that I’m fond of,

because it’s a feeling and you go off your feeling, you know what I mean?” Music then helps detail

Jester’s visual field, which informs his movement as music is once again used to create and to recall

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dance gestures. All this creates a memory that once again informs and builds on his identity.

Progression in the music he listens to creates progress in his movement, “change[s] it, alter[s], and

adapt[s],” which makes him “into a different b-boy, a different dancer, a different hip-hop person, a

different hip-hop guy.” In this way, Jester can see himself as the same person, in and out of hip-hop

culture as he adds himself to breaking, to the culture, and helps it grow.

Self-discovery

For Jesse, it seems the salient skills learned have to do with how to research the culture and its history,

and how to create within its artistic parameters. In the process of creating moves, he begins to understand

himself and how he wants to represent his performance identity to others.

Jesse recalls that despite some people making fun of him because his style is so different, he “lived

off of” it. In fact, he got more recognition once he was able to allow this difference to show.

I wanted people to see how much I love doing it and I wanted to show them my personality

through my dance. […] And at one point I was just like, fuck it! Like, I don’t care what

people think or say about me. I was practicing how to fall. I was practicing like, just myself.

And then when Intrikit called me, they were like we haven’t seen you all summer, it’s been

two months, we were doing a show. [….] [T]hey saw me, they were like, “What the fuck

happened to you? Like, you totally changed. Your style is just totally different now, like…”

I’m like, “I don’t know.” Like, I just, I just got comfortable in my own, my skin, and then I

had somebody come up to me at the end of like our performance, it was like, she’s like,

“That thing you do with the smiling and your face,” she’s like, “that’s really good, you

should keep that.” And I’m like, you’re a dude, you should keep that. You know, you’re a

dude and a girl’s saying that to you, you’re like f yeah, I’m gonna keep that smile [I laugh], a

girl liked it. Like, hell ya. So, you know, […] they, all of them were sitting in front, all the

Supernatz guys, and then uh, at the end, uhh, everyone was outside, and then I went to go

say what’s up to Dyzee [. …] he’s like, “Oh I thought you were Rock Steady, man. I was

like, ‘Yo, I know that guy, I don’t think he’s Rock Steady.’ But you look so different now.”

You know I was just like, I got into his whole like, being me is…and that’s what hip-hop is

all about is being yourself, right? [….] That’s the thing I’ve learned from this culture. […]

’[C]ause that’s all, that’s all you can be at the end of the day, I don’t know.

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Growing up hip-hop

For many people, being asked about their socio-cultural background usually includes information

about their family’s country of origin, ethnicity, or broadly, cultural heritage. Jesse highlights

another part of his background.

JAZZY JESTER: Um…by blood I’m Filipino, I don’t know.

MYRTLE: [I kind of laugh] I know.

J: Umm…Canadian. Cultural, culturally like, …I’m not Filipino. Am I Canadian? Yeah,

yeah, I have the attributes of being Canadian, but like, everything about me stemmed

from…like, what I’ve learned from hip-hop. Like, through the way I dance, the way I talk,

the way…the way I, I look at things and how they are perceived. Um, everything came

through, came out through…the culture of hip-hop. […] So like, when […] people ask me

what my culture is, I’m like, hip-hop is my culture, ‘cause that’s what kinda raised me. […] I

was raised in a […] Filipino house…so I have a little bit of that culture in me. You know,

through foods and through, through mannerisms and stuff like that, but it didn’t really click

to me until hip-hop, I started taking hip-hop more as where I fit in, you know.

He also spoke about his love of various art forms – visual arts, music, dance, fashion – hip-hop

encapsulated all of this.

DPA: Falling is an important skill to learn. Knowing how to land one’s body ensures less risk of injury, but it is

also important because getting out of the fall requires creativity. I also read a deeper meaning in Jesse’s

statement, “I was practicing how to fall. I was practicing like, just myself.” The fall is expected and

acknowledged as an opportunity for further creativity, rather than an end that necessitates starting over. The

practice of this occurs in a solitary moment, when he is by himself, so that “practicing…myself” is both a

statement of practicing alone but also a practicing of “self,” so that he is “comfortable in [his] own…skin.” The

result is a performance of his new style, recognized by other b-boys as well as a female in the audience,

affirming his b-boy identity. His link to history is further strengthened by a similarity to Rock Steady Crew

movements --- Jazzy Jester has become a recognizable b-boy within hip-hop culture’s framework, which

includes the requirement and expectation of creativity and innovation.

DPA: Echoing statements about a multicultural Toronto by other hip-hop artists in Chapter 4, Jesse

acknowledges his mixed cultural upbringing. His statement that “everything came through, came out through”

hip-hop is significant. With his body acting as agent, hip-hop culture is a kind of filter that allows sensory

experiences in. His story-telling suggests that he asks himself what feels right, what fits, and this comes out

through hip-hop expressions. In this way, he is able to say that hip-hop is a lifestyle and that it is part of his

identity.

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You know, I went through all those moments where I was like, am I this? Am I that? Am I

Filipino? Am I Canadian? What am I? Like, I’m everything, but the one thing that puts it all

together is hip-hop. […] Because hip-hop is showing me…I’ve learned to put everything

together because hip-hop is a, a mosh pit of just, different things put together…to define

yourself.

Immersion in hip-hop culture has taught Jesse to acknowledge histories and influences, take what

resonates with him and use these pieces to create what he sees as his identity, no longer artificially

divided between his b-boy identity and his non-b-boy self.

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Chapter 6 DJ Ariel

6 From the West Coast to the East Coast

DJ Ariel and I met for the first time on April 4, 2014 at 1:30 p.m. at a Tim Horton’s at Bloor and

Bedford Streets. Andy B Bad, a b-boy and DJ, passed on my e-mail address and let her know about

my research.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, she moved to Toronto about five years before I met

her to pursue dance, but eventually connected with Manifesto Festival (one of Toronto’s biggest hip-

hop festivals) and other organizations throughout the city. She also began working for the Equity

Department at the Toronto District School Board, continuing her history of working with youth.

Since my last interview with her on December 18, 2015, she has continued to DJ for a variety of

community events, such as Toronto’s first Indigenous Fashion Week.

6.1 Intro to DJing

My first impression of Ariel is one of serious thoughtfulness, which I would come to understand

better as we conversed.

I kind of started DJing after b-girling a little bit in high school. A friend of mine, Prev One

from Swollen Members linked me with one of his boys named Casper and we used to break

all the time. And um, it kind of got to the point where I was buying vinyl to find the music

that I wanted to dance to, and uh, yeah, so that’s how I became a DJ.

Two years after b-girling, she began DJing.

Yeah, it didn’t take long at all. But I was going to, you know, like, Rock Steady Anniversary,

and um, B-boy Summit, and those kinds of places, and my boyfriend at the time was a

DJ/producer and we’d just go digging everywhere. And, um, in the early days, I was really,

really interested in female hip-hop. Still am...Um…so back in those early days, I just kept

finding all this female hip-hop that nobody knew. And so it was easy shopping with all my

boys, you know, like, they were out for grails and I’m out for female hip-hop; nobody

wanted that stuff. So, you know, I really got to learn how to dig back then. I got to learn how

to feel my records and have that little bit of a spidey sense as to what might be good […] And

those were the days where, you know, whosampled.com wasn’t around. You know, Ultimate

Breaks and Beats was around, but it was kind of a thing that you had to learn on your own

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before...You couldn’t learn, you know, all of the old stuff just by inheriting the knowledge.

You had to find it. It was back when DJs would actually not show what they were playing

because they worked hard to find those crates, worked really hard, so they don’t want people

to just look over their shoulder and be like, now I’m gonna go find that. So I think I kind of

learned a lot of those kinds of foundational ways of looking at being a part of the culture,

which is different than now. […]

So I was lucky to have that, I think. I was lucky to have landed myself in a group of people

that...who were really...they were about the culture, you know. Some of them were, you

know, Zulu Nation, some of them were Rock Steady, um…there was that connection even

though I lived in Vancouver, you know. I was far from New York. But, you know, Madchild

was a part of, I believe he was a part of Rock Steady. Same with Dedos from Rascalz. One

of my friends has a family with him. So like, these people were people who I looked up to,

‘cause they were a really big part of this early scene, and they taught me some stuff. They

taught me so many things.

Ariel tells of learning about the culture from significant figures in Canadian hip-hop. Interestingly,

no one taught her how to DJ. She says that she learned by watching and practicing, saying “it wasn’t

really anything that was...like it wasn’t a process. It was just something you did, something I did.”

Immersion in hip-hop art forms through interaction with its practitioners has been her most

formative learning experience. It is also the environment in which she got the name “Ariel”:

Dialogic/Performance Analysis (DPA): Ariel speaks about a “foundational” way of getting into hip-hop

culture. In her story, this involves being surrounded by people who would go on to become influential

figures in Vancouver’s hip-hop context and participating in the act of digging. This places her at an integral

time in hip-hop’s development and this piece of her story could be seen as an acknowledgement and

respect for this part of Vancouver hip-hop history. We also hear mention of Rock Steady, indexing hip-hop’s

roots while tracing a route from the Bronx to Vancouver.

The male presence in hip-hop is once again highlighted in this introduction, as Ariel’s immersion in DJing

begins with many male peers. She learns to dig for records in this setting, but already seeks different

sounds, “female hip-hop,” that others didn’t want. The marginality of her musical tastes, and the early

trajectory of her learning provide important background information for the rest of her story.

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Prev61 gave that name to me. Just one day, he was like, you need a name. I was like, I have

one thanks. [We laugh.] But he was like my big brother so I was just like whatever,

whatever, not even paying attention to you right now and then by the end of the day, he was

like, I got it. It’s Ariel. He’s like, “It’s dope because it’s like a gymnastics move.” I wasn’t

DJing back then right? Um, “It’s a girl’s name, it’s just, it’s dope. It’s good. It’s great.” So he

just started introducing me to people as “Ariel” and I was like, this is weird, it’s really weird.

And then a couple who I really looked up to, like Kilocee, he used to do a radio show called

the Krispy Bisket,62 he still does, actually, but he was one of the first DJs to break a lotta that

New York ‘90s era music, right, and um, so I would listen to it every week. Or like, if I

couldn’t listen to it, I would record it and listen to it on the way to school in the morning.

And then […], he was like, “Can I call you Ariel?” And I was like, yeah, okay, I guess, if

you really want to. It just stuck. And then my mother started calling me it. Now I just, I

don’t even know who knows me by...my name […] Soon as anybody starts saying one or the

other...natural to answer.

Through a network of like-minded peers, Ariel made connections to hip-hop’s developmental roots

in New York and California. She explains how cross-connections were formed:

61

Short for Prevail, who, with Madchild, make up another of Canada’s legendary rap groups, Swollen Members. For a

recent interview with Prevail, including a short history of the Vancouver hip-hop context, see Shemesh (2018).

62 The Krispy Bisket radio show, hosted by DJ Kilocee was an early influential show in Vancouver. Descriptions of the

show’s popularity are similar to reminiscences about Toronto’s early college and university radio shows. See Spits and Giggles Crew (2018) for an impression of Kilocee’s influence and Krispy Bisket Show Podcast for recordings of broadcasts.

DPA: Performance identity is signified by an artist’s name. The naming process, whether a would-be artist

chooses it, or someone else confers it, begins with some observed aspect of the person being named while

adding an element of future possibility – a self not yet completely realized. In this case, though Ariel is not a

gymnast, she did take an interest in b-girling which can incorporate gymnastic moves. “Arials” also suggest

taking flight and the creation of impossible feats in the air --- the projection of artistic potential. Ariel’s

circles of community increasingly accept and use this new identity label as artistic possibilities come to

fruition. For hip-hop recognition, the name’s use by established media personalities, like Kilocee, would be

significant.

I also note, once again, the way that hip-hop peers can begin to feel like family as Ariel describes Prev One

as being like a big brother.

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Um, I think a huge piece of it was growing up with a few really innovative freestylers, um...I

know that it’s very different now, but back then…Moka Only63 and Prev One, they were

constant, like, I’d hang out with them after school or whatever...It would just be a constant

freestyle. You talk to them, their answer back to you is, like, in rhyme. Just everything was

always like that. And they got so good at it that they were able to create a name for

themselves that infiltrated in ways where, you know, they were able to connect with people

in California, Freestyle Fellowship, a lot of, like, the older, foundational hip-hop groups

that...I mean they even still get recognized today by, you know, like, young labels out in LA.

[…] They were connected to, you know, like, Dilated Pupils, they were connected to

Aceyalone,64 they were connected to some people in New York, […] for me, the only

travelling I really did were to like, conventions. I didn’t have a lot of money, right, so I

would just go whenever I could, and um, just meet people that were in the scene from all

over the world. That was […] the amazing thing about those b-boy events, is that literally,

people from all over the world would attend them, and yeah, it, it’s crazy how small that

world gets when you really look at it. So, yeah, those were my early days.

Ariel grew up around music. Many family members played instruments while she gravitated toward

choral music, an interest fostered by religious influences from her father’s side of the family.

Eventually, she trained with Ray Carroll from the Platters and Riley Inge from The Temptations.

She has also worked with Broadway-style singing and more recently has been offered an opportunity

63

Moka Only is an award-winning member of Swollen Members (see Note 56 above) who continues to release solo

albums (URBNET, 2019).

64 Aceyalone (Ducker, 2018; Kangas, 2015) is a member of hip-hop group Dilated Pupils and founder of Project Blowed,

an L.A.-based freestyle session that has become the launching pad for new artists. For a study on the learning and social environments of Project Blowed, see Lee (2016).

DPA: After New York, California became another important site for hip-hop’s development, particularly as

anti-establishment rap acts such as NWA gained media attention and popularity. Ariel’s connections to

Vancouver’s hip-hop figures who also have connections to California’s important hip-hop personalities

confirms Vancouver’s location as a hub of hip-hop creativity, in a sense, validating its scene as part of the

growth of the culture.

Ariel’s immersion in hip-hop culture continues through the rhyme flow of Moka Only and Prev One. Their

creative banter becomes part of her daily life.

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to learn song-catching,65 which she likens to DJing in that she “take[s] the space and, and run[s] with

it, as opposed to coming with something prepared.”

She was also “largely influenced” by her parents’ record collection:

You know, when I was a kid, I used to always play with their 45s and get them all mucky,

and they would be like, okay, you gotta wash them, so I’d have to wash them like dishes in

the sink...on the drying rack. And they were always, you know, listening to the radio.

Despite her dance and vocal training, Ariel prefers to be in the background, providing the “heartbeat

[…the] fuel.” DJing has been the right fit.

6.2 Finding hip-hop

I think a big part of me being attracted to hip-hop when I was younger is because I had this

mixed heritage and you know, I was always looked at differently, even though I carry, you

know, lighter features. It...still, people look at me differently because they can see there’s

something a little bit different, and, not that I’ve really experienced a lot of racism, although

I have...um, it...it just, […] It’s, it’s just something that brought me to hip-hop culture, to hip-

hop music, because it was the only thing when I was growing up that was kind of really

about everyone, you know, like, it came from a serious place of oppression. Well, you know,

I may not have experienced that directly, but my mother did, my grandmother did, um, my

grandfather on my dad’s side, he’s a farmer... […] we didn’t come from money or anything

like that, but I think that because neither of those sides spoke about culture at all, and then

being in the real world, people would impose their idea of culture onto me because they

would always be like, oh what are you? Are you Japanese? Are you like, Chinese, right, like,

they would always try to guess what I was […] depending on how I wore my hair, people

would think I’m Black. I got everything. My ex’s mother, she was Chinese, and she was

convinced that I was Black. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. It’s like, sometimes when I

wear my hair curly, it’s really curly, so like, it...I’m not...I don’t say...like, it could be, you

know what I mean? I just don’t know. And so you have all of that outside perspective of who

they think you are when you’re family doesn’t even talk about it. And I’ve literally gotten

everything under the sun. You know, like when I’m in New York, I’m Puerto Rican. It’s just

crazy to me. [We laugh.] And so I think because I was so much more interested than anyone

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I understand song-catching to be a way of composing in which one opens oneself up to a space or situation in order to

observe whatever musical ideas come one’s way.

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in my family about culture, and about where we come from, that was the thing that I could

identify with.

The instance of hip-hop culture in which Ariel found herself allowed her to explore her multi-layered

histories.

SNAPSHOT:66

I grew up in downtown Vancouver, where we have like, by-products of Crips coming up from California, tryina

get away from whatever trouble they were in over there and tryina lay down some other garbage, you know. I

come to school wearing red and I have someone being like, “You know you need to go home and change.” And

I’d look at them and be like, “You know I’m native, right? That’s never gonna happen.” Like, I am red.

Ariel became increasingly involved with Indigenous communities when a Vancouver group called

the Native Youth Movement began hiring her to DJ. She doesn’t seem to quite know how they

heard about her Indigenous history saying, “I wasn’t really ever, you know, out front, I didn’t really

tell anybody where I was from, but I also didn’t hold it back.” Eventually, Skeena Reece, a well-

known multidisciplinary artist and a good friend nominated her for a position on a youth council for

a joint initiative between the National Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres and Canadian

Heritage. She was hesitant:

I was like, no I don’t...I’m like, I didn’t grow up traditionally, I can’t...I don’t have anything

to say about this, and she’s like, yeah you do, just, just rep. And I was like, ohhh [uncertain

sound] ...she put my name forward. And I guess because I had the cool factor, you know, I

was the DJ at the party, they...I got elected. So, that turned into like a 7-year stint of being

66

A “snapshot” features a life story that did not fit into the trajectory of my research questions, but was nevertheless of

obvious importance to the artist.

DPA: Here, we see the draw of hip-hop, particularly for those enmeshed in the influences of multiple

cultures. Visually, Ariel does not fit a single ethnic/racial category, causing confusion and varying

attributions, depending on context (Gilroy, 1993; Helbig, 2011).

The performative aspects of race are quite clear in this narrative, particularly those that arise from a demand

to account for oneself (Butler, 2005; Ehlers, 2012). The people Ariel meets become curious about her

ethnicity, particularly, it seems, because she presents unclear identity markers. The frames of understanding

that might be applied to her are multiple. Interestingly, the confusion or curiosity leads to an imposition of

particular frames of reference, rather than conversation or inquiry.

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on this Council […] So I started to know about all of these youth projects and youth

organizations, wound up being on a couple of different boards.

Her musical and youth council experience led to opportunities to run music workshops for youth,

e.g. Gathering Our Voice, where she and a friend worked with participants to help them “figure out

how to record and how to flow, and like, using your cadence.” She was able to help because of what

she learned by growing up “with people like Prev and Moka and, I don’t know, like, Bird of Prey,

like there was a bunch of people…, they’re all really, really ill freestylers…like, I’m not an emcee but

I know how to rhyme, so like, I can just teach people how to do it.” She recounts what seems like a

particularly rewarding experience with a nervous young woman:

[T]here was this young lady, her name is JerBear, she’s really, she’s really big now, she’s like

one of the top five indigenous emcees to check for last year. There was a point when we were

in the studio together and she was just so nervous and […] I was like, look, okay, I’m gonna

record it, I’m gonna record your lyric on my beat. I’m gonna have it in your headphones so

that you can hear it while you’re recording so that you know how to make it […] seamlessly

flow onto the track...So like things like that, you know, really simple small little things that

helped people kind of get their footing and she’s like, she’s just all over the place. People love

her, and I’m really proud of her, like, she really found her voice and she’s using it in a major

way.67

6.3 Where the ladies at?

SNAPSHOT

I was doing this event out on the West Coast called Hip-hop for Hunger. I didn’t know anybody at the event,

and there’s, you know, there are a lot of different communities in Vancouver, but this event happened to be a

largely Caribbean-based event. So they had a sound that were playing with me and I was using their setup and

67

JerBear is now known as JB the First Lady, nominated for Aboriginal Female Entertainer of the Year and Best Rap/Hip

Hop album for the Aboriginal People’s Choice Awards in 2011. She is part of the First Ladyz Crew that aims to tell their personal experiences through hip-hop. For more background information and to see a music video, see Hong (2011).

DPA: Ariel’s work as a DJ has become connected to part of her personal heritage. The idea that hip-hop

arts can allow individuals and communities to be recognized is realized in this narrative segment (see

Recollet (2014) for a discussion of similar uses by Indigenous hip-hop artists within Canada). As her youth

work continues, Ariel is also able to participate in the “Each one, teach one” tradition of the culture as she

passes on what she knows to eager youth.

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they were having so many technical difficulties, and like, I wanted to help. I wanted to help them figure it out

‘cause I felt like I could. I kind of had an idea what was going on. They were really hesitant, so after about a half

an hour of them mucking around I was like, “Look, let me just try something.” And I fixed it, and it, all of a

sudden, went from these people completely like, standoffish, not knowing really who I am, being from the city

and a different community, to them being like, [mimicking a more distant voice] “Oh she knows what she’s

do...what’s up? What’s your name,” dadada…. Just totally flipped it because I knew what I was doing. And

that kind of stuff happens a lot. It’s kind of interesting where, you know, people will have a certain perspective

and they think they kind of have an idea of what you’re about or where you’re from and all of that, but as you’ve

heard part of my story, there’s no way anybody’s ever gonna be able to guess it. So like, I always have a trick up

my sleeve and it kind of winds up being to my advantage a lot of the time ‘cause it throws people off and they’re

like, oh wait, oh yeah, you’re kinda cool, I kinda like you. So I get ins in different ways.

Ariel and I mused about women in hip-hop and what makes it so difficult at times for female artists

to keep working in the industry despite their love for the culture and its art forms.

I’ve seen grown ass men cut out young boys, young men, for being toys, because they think

that they’re not doing it right. You know, if they’re not DJing right, if they’re not breaking

right, or […] if they’re so-called biting or whatever. And, I understand the competitive nature

of hip-hop and I understand that that’s important to have, you know, an ability to call

someone out, but when a 30-something-year-old man is calling out a […] young, early 20-

something kid, and trying to shame them for doing something that they think is wrong, […]

that’s like analog to digital, that’s like, there’s so much difference in between those two

people. I would honestly, would really like to see some kindness being shown every once in

a while through that. […] I personally think that’s part of the reason why a lot of women

don’t stick around for long in the scene, because it, it can get really childish, and it gets to the

point where you’re like, “Wow, these are my so-called peers. I feel like I’m 20 years older

than them right now.” It doesn’t feel like a community anymore. […] So it’s an oxymoron,

right? It’s like hip-hop’s supposed to be this like thing that brings people together, a way to

DPA: Once again, a normative framework is applied to Ariel here, illustrated by the surprise and

camaraderie shown after she is able to help with the sound’s technical issues. Rather than take offense, Ariel

sees this as “a trick up [her] sleeve,” that affords a special meaning to the connections she is able to make in

this manner.

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like, deal with beef and squash it in ways that’s non-violent and all this kind of thing, but it’s

still really violent. I don’t know, that’s my opinion.

She also recognizes that there are efforts being made to showcase female artists:

I played Manifesto Festival quite a few times since I’ve moved here, probably 3 or 4. And

um, they’ve all been really great. The first year, we did like a all-female set, which I was like,

c’mon guys. You’re trying to be inclusive and you wanna bring more women into the fold

and then you just stick us all in one night? […] [Laughing]. I was like, okay, okay, you

know, kudos for trying, but you gotta do better next time. And then they started spreading

the female artists out a little bit more. I mean, they listened at least, right?

Like many of the other artists I spoke with, Ariel sees the dearth of females in the field as “more

societal than something that’s part of that music culture.” The way she sees it:

[I]t’s phenomenon from time. Ever since the whole thing started, you know, like women

don’t have the same longevity as men do. I think they just have different responsibilities, I

think. You know, […] like DJ L’Oqenz,68 she’s managed to do really well for herself and

she’s, you know, she has a son. She raised, this young man on her own and continued to

stay in her craft, which I, I find that phenomenal. […] Raising kids is a big deal. So you

know, there’s that element. […] Worldwide, there’s not very many female DJs that get the

same type of response. You know, like, a friend of mine and I a few, couple months ago,

68

DJ L’Oqenz gained much experience from being on-air on CIUT’s Masterplan show. I had the opportunity to hear her

speak as part of a panel of DJs at “Ain’t No Joke: Hip Hop DJs and the Evolution of Toronto Hip Hop Culture” on April 1, 2019, part of Dr. Mark V. Campbell’s series An Idea of the North at the Toronto Reference Library. I observed that she did

not seem very fazed by being female in a male-dominated scene.

DPA: It is of note that I became connected with Ariel through B-boy Handlez/DJ Andy B Bad, who passed

on my e-mail address and informed her about my research. At the time, Ariel was spinning at a break night

at Andy Poolhall, celebrating music by female artists. Non-male artists must work with existing structures in

order to gain recognition that might eventually change the usual formats for performance.

DPA: One of the pedagogical features that come out of hip-hop’s artistic practices is the potential for those

in different age groups to compete, doing away with the hierarchy of levels based on age. In this narrative

segment, we see a possible downside, which, nevertheless, is not unique to hip-hop as older adults in

authority (even music teachers) have belittled or even punished students.

A possible explanation is also given here, for the relatively small number of females who continue to work as

artists in hip-hop. “Kinder” ways of dealing with creative differences may result in increased female presence.

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were just looking up all the DJs that we could think of that were huge. Some of them have

like, couple million followers here and there whatever. And then we’re looking up some of

the bigger name female DJs, can’t even push 500,000. Like the following is just not the

same. It’s like, I think actually the largest number that we could find in a following was

about a hundred thousand. That’s like 10% of like, the biggest male DJ.

I asked DJ Dopey, a DMC World Champion turntablist, why there don’t seem to be very many

female hip-hop DJs in Toronto:

I feel like the, the Toronto women DJs that were actually like, somewhat starting to make some noise

have either like, moved on to like, another genre, or have started kinda like doin’ [something] really

different from hip-hop, like Sarah Sims, I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She was kinda like

someone that was comin’ up in our scene that was kinda a girl DJ that was considered like, a turntablist I

guess, but she started doin’ some other stuff [….] I don’t know [pauses] I mean, just like in anything that’s

kinda like, male-dominated, it’s like, it’s very tough to break through without like, you know, any,

anybody, like tryina hit on you or like, tryina…Like if you, if girls are tryina learn, like, it’s very weird to, not

that it’s weird, but like, I feel like girls are intimidated because it’s such a…maybe ‘cause it’s such a male-

dominated, like […] art form. And like, there’s been a few people that have like, rose through, and like,

Killa-Jewel69 was one girl that […] immediately came to mind [….] she was […] really big back in those days,

like she was doin’ big shows, workin’ with big artists from Montreal, ‘cause she was a French girl, […] but I

don’t know where she is now, so. […] But I don’t know. I, I… […] It does suck, because I feel like, I feel like

there need to be, like, more girls in it. But I don’t know why it’s so hard for them to. Like, understand why

it’s so hard for them to do it. But, I don’t know…

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Killa-Jewel continues to broaden the context of her music-making, establishing herself as an artist through turntable

championships, and composing for theatre and television (Killa-Jewel, 2019). For Killa-Jewel’s perspective on gender and the DJ battle, see Katz (2006).

DPA: Dopey’s statement, “just like in anything that’s kinda like, male-dominated […] it’s very tough to break

through without like, you know, any, anybody, like tryina hit on you” corroborates Ariel’s observation that

relative lack of recognition of females in hip-hop is a reflection of society in general. Dopey’s theory recalls

the party scenes in Chapter 5 as well in which a hip-hop context was accompanied by a desire for young

men to meet young women. In conversations I have had with female artists, this sort of atmosphere creates

discomfort and another level of challenge or obstacle to being recognized as an artist, rather than a sense

of intimidation.

The use of the word “girl” to refer to young women, or women generally, is indicative of a broader societal

tendency that, arguably, whether consciously or unconsciously, perpetuates a diminutive image of females.

That male and female breakers are called b-boys and b-girls then, creates opportunity for further inquiry,

beyond the scope of the current study; but as a cursory observation, it signals the youthful aspects of the

art forms and its history while having the (perhaps) unintended effect of obscuring the reality that hip-hop

art forms are practiced by people of different age groups and gender identities.

95

DJ Ariel continues her reflection on the current status of women:

[I]t makes me sick still how women are treated in this day and age. Like we still live in

primitive times when it comes to that you know. We have so-called equal rights, but it’s

bullshit, you know. […] I think it’s easier for guys to get bookings in bars and clubs because

they’re taken more seriously. I’m like, I’m currently looking for a manager. […] I personally

feel like I need to have someone that is very masculine in their way of dealing with this kind

of thing because I’m too nice. And I don’t wanna change my demeanour just so I can get

more work. I don’t wanna change the way I deal with people just so I can handle my

business. And I know that some people would listen to that statement and be like, well then

you’re a fool. It’s like, well, maybe you’re good at dealing with your business on that level,

but you know, there’s something to be said about having a professional level and not ever

having to talk to your client about money, you know. […] [H]aving your people talk to my

people is a real thing. Like, it gives a different type of legitimacy, right? And representing

myself after all of these years, you know, I’ve done well for myself, but I know I would be

able to get further if I have someone else representing me.

SNAPSHOT

ARIEL: I’m really dealing with some heavy stuff like I have post-traumatic stress syndrome…

MYRTLE: Oh.

A: …because my roommate…I think just before we met, passed away.

M: Oh my gosh.

A: She’s, um, one of the murdered and missing indigenous women. So it’s been, I don’t have a timeline in my

mind anymore. I’ve lost a lot of information. And um…just like, the process of seeing what the public and the

government and all of, like, that awareness that’s coming about through all of the pushing that’s going on in

communities and my friends and…and just, yeah, it’s been a really intense couple of years.

DPA: I find Ariel’s response to the business challenge of getting work intriguing, because it shows a different

facet of “Keeping it real.” She knows who she is and how she likes to deal with people and does not want to

change this, but recognizing the current reality of the DJ industry, she needs the help of someone “very

masculine.” I note that she doesn’t say it needs to be a man, but rather someone who can better deal with

personality types that do not respond well to her. In this way, she can focus on making music her way.

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M: Woah. Yeah.

A: Um…in good ways and in bad, you know. You know, Bella’s case is still unsolved. We don’t know.

Um...and that was just over two years ago. So we’ve been in the dark for a while on that. Umm…And sure, it’s

positive that Trudeau’s government is looking into an inquiry, but what’s an inquiry gonna do for us?70 I don’t

know. Yeah, so like just being in this time and space after, you know, having, you know, worked front-line for so

long, not really realizing that, you know, like, I, I am that front line. Like, this is affecting me directly and

immensely and so personally that it’s sometimes hard to live and just like keep pushing day to day knowing that

things aren’t going to be okay somehow. Somehow. […] But the one thing that kept me going through at least

through DJing was that, you know, Bella was one of my biggest supporters. […] I met her when she was 19. She

came to live with me when she was 25 […] She took to me as like I was her big sister. Um, and you know, being

stuck in the big city without a lot of family, you know, we would be missing out holidays or whatever, just saying

you know, like, oh too bad we can’t be with…you know, she would say like, I wish you could come back home

with me, like we have a big family thing going on right now, just, you know, like those kinds of things.

Um…yeah, when you don’t have people to help you through that it just takes a lot longer.

M: Yeah, for sure.

A: Um, the one thing that I just kept pushing is knowing that she would want me to continue the DJing. And I

probably would have quit otherwise. […] I think the difference between meeting you before and seeing you now,

is that previous, I had a more of diverse group of friends. Um…and unfortunately a lot of them didn’t know how

to deal with this. ‘Cause then it becomes like a little bit of a political viewpoint for people because it’s like, oh

wow, you actually are tied to the stuff that I see in the news, and it’s too real for me, so I have to keep my

distance or whatever they decide in their mind. They just don’t know how to deal with it. And so, prior, I feel

like I was maybe walking in a couple of worlds. Not that I was splitting my personality or the way that I was

being. It’s just that I had access and I was able to be in those spaces. But now I’m not comfortable in those other

spaces because they see me as that other. And they’ve known now that I’ve faced different traumas due to who I

am and how things have gone. And, and, I don’t like being seen in that different light. It’s racist. It’s…selfish.

It’s hurtful. And...so I’m keeping my core group really, really small. And it happens to be mostly community

people of my, my own likeness because I don’t need to be retraumatized every time I’m in a different space to be

able to say, “Hey, that’s not…right” or “That’s not cool” or “This is the way it is” or, you know, I don’t need to

explain that when I’m with my people. I don’t need to tell them how it is, or the way it is, because of how it was

70

The number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada is reported to be in the thousands, but the exact

number is unknown. The inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) has concluded

with a report released in June 2019. It found the Canadian state complicit in the sustained genocide of Indigenous peoples (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019; The Canadian Press, 2019).

97

and…that decolonizing work is still really, you know, like, prevalent. We need to do so much more, but…more

so of people who are not from these communities. They’re just, a lot of them are just really oblivious, and I

don’t…don’t have time for that right now. I don’t have time for it, but I also just, it’s too, it’s too painful. I can’t

tell other people how to do their work. Whereas before, maybe I had more patience for it.

6.4 Hip-hop state of mind

Given the recent tragedy Ariel experienced, she has come to reflect on the role of hip-hop music in

her life:

[I]n this journey of the past couple of years, I’ve seen how some of the music I grew up with

was integral [to] building the way I see things. Uhh…my self-esteem went right through the

floor, like…I couldn’t hold myself up anymore. And, I think, to be honest with you, part of it

is just hearing how women have been so disrespected in hip-hop music for so many years. I

thought I was invincible to it. It’s like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s just them saying whatever

they’re saying. I’m not really paying attention.” But then when you have something so crazy

of like, what had happened, you get to see how your people aren’t looked upon as human

beings. And then when you carry that type of sadness, your, your energy is being, you know,

put out there into the world where even just walking down the street, people can pick up on

it. […] [E]ven in not saying anything, there’s a relation with people and it got so bad that I

couldn’t, I couldn’t, I didn’t know how to deal with that. ‘Cause I couldn’t even sit in my

own way of being in order to heal…to…come to the point where I am now, which is I’m

sort of balanced, […] at least I feel like a human being again. And um, my mama had a lot to

say about that, though, ‘cause she felt that, that the music that I was listening to, compiled

with the immense disrespect of my family being attacked and just feeling like the bottom of

the rung, the bottom of the barrel, just threw me. So I think that there’s more to it

than…than I was willing to admit prior […] And uh…and I’m more sensitive to how people

say things and do things now. Um...I was sensitive when I was younger absolutely, but I was

able to separate, because I, you grow up in so many ways, in this country at least, of being

an individual. And, I guess that’s part of like, the way I was able to maybe walk in two

worlds maybe a little bit easier, is because I had that understanding. But now that

I’m…understanding maybe more of who I am, and understanding that it’s more of a

collective effort and more of a community that we need to get through all of this garbage that

we’re dealing with in the world, I can’t go back to that individualistic way of dealing with

things [….] And…especially in the rap world. Like it’s so…I have no tolerance for garbage.

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Ariel couldn’t quite explain how she processes these two worlds, because she doesn’t “even just have

two worlds.” She adds, “My background is just so multiracial [….] I can only really deal with what I

understand of the land that I’m on. So that’s where the basis of my thought process comes in.”

Understanding herself now is bound with how she sees her friends and their communities dealing

“with oil battles and trying to move to renewable energy resources and those kinds of things, it’s like,

that’s what gets me through, is that, the work is being done, whether the state likes it or not. […]

[There’s also] the immense and difficult racism that we have to deal with. People that are so

ignorant that they think that we’re just dogs and that we should just die anyways.”

It is not surprising that Ariel is no longer sure that hip-hop has any role to play in her current

context. She doesn’t see how anyone can broadly convey important messages through hip-hop music

when such music is no longer very marketable. Sounding disillusioned, she adds, “Yeah, hip-hop

has that ability, but [….] I don’t necessarily see it.”

SNAPSHOT

ARIEL: Yeah, there was another event…not the only other one that I did with Manifesto, but the only one I’ll

keep talking about was [unclear]...a little bit attached to the Idle No More Movement. Like, the Yinka Dene

Alliance was doing a cross-Canada tour in support of water, First Nations rights and issues, treaty rights, and

um, ‘cause I’m part mixed from a First Nations heritage […] We’re from um, the Blackfeet Nation from Kainai,

which is “blood’ in Piegan as well as, um, Ojibway or Anishinaabe and Cree, um, it’s just a snippet...But...just

like a little sliver of who I am. I’d need, like, a dozen fingers to name them all probably, but anyway…So,

because some people in the scene knew that was part of my background, they wanted me to be a part of that

event. So I DJed and I hosted and it was really amazing, ‘cause it was like traditional west coast dancers and

singers at the Great Hall, with like, my friends that are DJing and me and like […], it just, it reminded me of

home so much because I was also one of the people back in Vancouver who kind of bridged that gap between like

Indigenous rap and like, like the worldly rap, whatever, like that kind of mainstream rap scene, the Indigenous

DPA: Ariel lays bare the ways that growing up in hip-hop culture accompanies her individual growth within

her personal family cultures. There are two aspects of her personal identity that conflict and converge at

different points in her life, hinging on relations between individual and community.

Rap’s hurtful lyrics could be ignored so long as she walks with an understanding of a Canadian idea of

being an individual. She could pretend that the words are not about her. However, as she began to

understand the “collective effort” of community in overcoming adversity, those same lyrics became part of a

collective rendering of misogyny, intersected and complicated by racism in her lived experiences.

Hip-hop culture is rife with this tension between individuality and solidarity with community, exposing the

fissures at the culture’s boundaries that were, perhaps, never fully secured.

99

rap scene like, kind of like, merged together with a few integral artists and I was one of them. And it just kinda

felt like that all over again, almost like, you know, bridging these kind[s] of, you know, they’re not different

genres, but you know, like, it’s a different perspective for sure, I think. And, I don’t know, it was, it was cool. It

was nice just having these people that I grew up so closely to, closely-ish people, and being able to support that

issue, having something actually really important being supported in a club, in a mainstream club where it was

packed and people were having a really great time for a good cause. Like, I love that, I just love that.

6.5 Style and place

When I first asked DJ Ariel to describe her style, she didn’t quite know how to describe it:

I don’t know how to characterize my style. It’s definitely one of my...it’s my own. I’ve

developed my own style. I mean, I’m not afraid to play what I wanna play if I feel like the

room will be receptive to it. I play a lot of music that people don’t know. Or that’s too old,

it’s not current, right? But it’s still good music. Um...so I guess if anything, I would say that

I, I introduce people to new things, whether it’s old or new. Um, I probably really need to

actually work on that. I probably need to figure out a way to describe my style.

In coming to Toronto, she says her music has been evolving, “I kinda had to switch my gears a little

bit when I got here. I got a job at the school board, working with youth and that took all my time. I

kind of stopped DJing a little bit. But this past year, I’ve kind of been rebranding and reworking a bit

of my angles and...just because I’m in a new place, I kind of wanted to start it all over a little bit

DPA: DJing continues to provide Ariel ways to be on her own terms, in the community settings most

important to her. Making music and social justice action combine in her creative expressions, producing an

overlap between hip-hop cultural knowledge that she has gathered and the knowledge she obtains from

connecting within Indigenous spaces. As Ariel shared the above snapshot, I got a sense of calm and joy

from her that was not evident to me in any other parts of her narrative.

DPA: My question about Ariel’s style amounts to a kind of injunction for her to give an account of herself as

Butler (2005) describes, i.e. it assumes a person’s ability to give a history that can be or is known.

I assumed that someone who has been working as a hip-hop artist for years would be able to describe their

style. What I discover here instead is an important parallel between understanding one’s identity and

understanding one’s style. There are many parts of Ariel’s heritage story that she is uncovering and

exploring. The musical corollary is the way she is still digging and discovering what resonates with her. She

is who she is and the music she plays is what she wants to play. Just as she cannot summarize her personal

story, she cannot summarize her style. In a way, the form of my questions is similar to the form of curiosity

about Ariel’s ethnicity that we heard earlier, as people tried to guess her family background.

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more fresh,” working on music by newer artists while continuing to introduce crowds to sounds

from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Ariel gravitates toward festival and neighbourhood venues, rather than clubs, because, she explains,

“I just don’t really feel like I wanna play to have people get smash-faced and party it down all night.

Like, I like to play jams, I want people to have fun. I want people to dance and not feel like they

have to drink to feel comfortable or they have to know all the latest hits or new music or whatever.”

She provides the sonic backdrop to events that are meaningful to her and that provide spaces for

communities that are not always seen as mainstream music market targets: family events, movement

collective sessions, and those that promote Indigenous causes.

I think even just the diversity that I play shows [originality and where I’m from]. I don’t

really have to stretch very far. I have a different look. I have a different vibe. I have a

different way of presenting myself. Um…I don’t have to think about that. The way that I

play my music. It’s like I’ll play…an R&B trap song. I’ll mix it in with like, a disco track and

then I’ll play some break music that turns into jazz that then comes back to hip-hop, like,

you know, that’s my diversity. That’s where I find that I’m able to express it.

During the course of our conversations, I notice that Ariel speaks of life and music as entwined and

with political underpinnings. I asked her to comment on this:

I mean, even just the fact that I am here as a body in this life is political. My family consists

of so many different nations. So many different people that, how we even got here…to say

that I’m Indigenous and that I’m still here is a miracle. To say that part of my family

survived the Holocaust and we’re still here. That’s a miracle. To say that, like, you know,

that all the other pieces in between that I don’t even really know much about, you know

like…heaven itself is political. I’m supposed to not be here, like […] I mean, technically, on

paper, the Canadian states got me, ‘cause I’m not status. So technically I’m not here, right?

You can’t take that away from me, so that’s their problem, not mine. But, but it is. I don’t

see it as being different. I don’t see it as being a thing either. It’s just what I was born into;

that’s who I am. I’ve always just seen it that way because that’s my complexity. Which

thankfully it’s, I’m not alone in that. Otherwise I’d go insane.

6.5.1 On the margins

The idea that hip-hop is a culture with many dynamic contexts around the world provides the

impression that artists form an immersive community. Ariel’s hip-hop community experience is

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different from that experienced by the others I interviewed. She doesn’t really hang out with DJs,

though there is a mutual acknowledgement between them. She explains:

I think I’m more in line with people who are curators. Who…have their own websites that

are music-based, or they do events that are music-based, you know. They’re actively

involved from another prong. And they’re facilitating what I do, and how I come to be able

to do what I do by promoting music. I’m not in the realm of DJs. I’m not interested in

working for Red Bull and being a corporate DJ. I would love to travel the world, but I don’t

want it on those terms. I don’t wanna have to play the same set in 30 different cites while

I’m on tour, because, because I’m a guaranteed, you know, crowd pleaser. I can’t live that

life. I have a few DJs who do scratch sessions and do different events like that, where it’s just

like a bunch of DJs coming together and practicing their skills. But they’re all guys. And I

just don’t feel comfortable, to be honest with you. So I choose to stand out of that. My

intention is to, to join every once in a while, but it just never happens. Um…I don’t know, I

think I’m alone on that one. I don’t like that though.

Part of the reason she moved to Toronto from Vancouver was to see if there would be more

opportunity to find a bigger group of female DJs. What she found in Toronto instead was an eclectic

group of music-lovers – b-girls, graffiti artists, podcasters, etc. She calls it a “curated […] journey. It’s

cool, it’s fine. Um, no DJs that I connect with […] I’m not a part of the group that is the…the

scene.” This was not an answer I anticipated, so she added:

[T]hey [the ‘scene’] see me as the other, right? […] I’m female. […] I’m clearly now

Indigenous. [….] [T]his has been my life for the past couple of years and then it’s like the oh,

arm’s length. Your life is too real for me, so…I can’t be in my Red Bull bubble if you’re

around. […] I don’t want that life. I don’t wanna have to fake who I am just be a part of

something. [She pretends to be at a club] From across the room [I laugh as she mimicks seeing a

fellow DJ] …I see you, I see you. You see me? Okay, we’re good [we laugh]. […] It’s a boy’s

club. I don’t wanna fight to get in it.

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6.6 Cultural limits

As in my interviews with other artists, discussion about the contradictions in hip-hop and the

oppressions within the culture led to feelings of disillusionment about the current state of artistic

output (as popularly represented) given recollections of hip-hop’s early purpose and ethos.

The way I see hip-hop really still is like the way the culture began, right? A way of dealing

with an oppressed, you know, either group of people or state or situations where people can

actually deal with them in a way that gets a message across. For a while I believed that there

was enough there to create a whole culture. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that a lot of

[…] Western cultures that have emerged from like, industrial evolution really [inaudible]

actually have an intact culture. Like, yeah we have our own language I guess, yeah we have

our own ways of doing things, but it’s disconnected form spirit. So I really honestly can’t say

that it’s a culture if it’s disconnected from spirit. That can be interpreted in so many different

ways, but I see [hip-hop] as a way to tell stories and that to me, that’s really inherent to some

of my traditional background, because a lot of us are storytellers. […] [W]e all have a story

to tell and the more that we listen to each other, the more that we’ll be able to see the

common truth in everything, to be able to find that commonality, to actually form a

brotherhood or sisterhood. That’s where I see hip-hop at its strongest. But then we have the

modern slavery of, you know, corporations that are trying to turn it into something else. [….]

And we see that even today with our government trying to destroy Indigenous communities

because they want resources. So like, the struggle is real, it’s there, it’s just, it’s been

perverted by people who are getting paid. To see huge acts come out and what sells these

days is just money, bitches, and I don’t know what, drugs, and doesn’t make any sense to

me. Like, don’t get me wrong, […] I do like some ignorant music, I grew up on some of it,

right? But it got too far and it’s almost out of hand in some ways because it’s become too

mainstream. […] [hip-hop]’s gonna have to die a little bit before the underground can take it

DPA: As Ariel explained the above, I let her know that I was a bit surprised that she isn’t immersed in the

hip-hop DJ community in Toronto. This prompts her to draw clear connections between her history (in

particular, her ties to Indigenous communities), her desire to practice her art form in a smaller, local context

(i.e. not big Red Bull competitions), and the reality of dominantly male presence in hip-hop. She accepts

these realities, saying, “we’re good,” not as placid acknowledgement, but the ground she stands on at the

moment. Rather than fight, she simply asserts who she is and her sense of place.

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back and represent it in the light that it really came from. And there’s a lot of people in that

world that identify with the original, like, ways of why hip-hop even came to be.

I had to wonder what keeps DJ Ariel motivated to continue working with this genre of music, and

within the culture that inscribes it. So I asked, “How important is hip-hop culture to you? [pause and

laughingly] And would you have answered it differently at different points in your life? [We laugh.]”

ARIEL: […] [still laughing]. I never cared for it less in my life than I have now. […] [L]ike

even say, watching the Straight Outta Compton movie, for example. […] [B]eing as old as I am

now and seeing what that looks like to people who don’t know NWA [….,] it’s really

polished nicely now. […] There’s like, not so much grit to it anymore. And people forget that

Dre actually punched a woman out, you know, at the Grammy’s, you know what I mean?

Like, all of those crazy things that happened like, get like, kind of washed under the rug […]

Again, like I’m gonna go back to hip-hop being like, modern slavery, ‘cause that’s really

what it’s being used as. […] You know, like, I called to change my Fido plan on a so-called

Black Friday, whatever that was. And the Weeknd [….] the whole time I’m on hold, “I can’t

feel my face when I’m with you, but I like it.” And I’m like, you all know that you’re

listening to coke music, right? This is so corporate and you’re listening to drug music. This is

mainstream, acceptable behaviour now, to do cocaine. Who the heck are you? […] Where

do we live? I’m so confused. This is corporate America. It’s totally okay in their eyes. To me

that’s slavery, because they’re pushing it down throats. They are…again, like, when you

have a group of people that is so […] impoverished, and all they wanna do is be able to like,

eat food, have a roof over their head, be able to pay their bills. Then they’re getting

inundated with the media, the media, the media, because that’s their escape. They can’t

really afford much, so like, they’ll, they’ll delve into music, they’ll move into the radio,

they’ll delve into TV, whatever they can get their hands on, to have that immediate break of

life, then they’re being brainwashed into thinking like all of these things are okay. [….] It

hurts my brain. But that’s intentional. And that’s what hurts the most, right? [….] It hurts

because it’s like, “Oh god, like…” we’re really that broken in North America specifically,

because this is the new, so-called new world, that…we are the nation that is upholding the

world’s vision of…the future, of everyone being prosperous and wealthy and…and yet we’ve

DPA: This a different angle on the definition of “real” hip-hop. She doesn’t say that hip-hop music that touts

money, bitches, and drugs is not real, she simply does not think it should be the norm. The “underground”

in the sense of non-mainstream hip-hop still exists, and this is the part of the culture that continues to

resonate with her.

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done it in such a way that is horribly twisted and backwards and…unsustainable. [….] It’s

the delusion of the haves, ‘cause most of us are the have-nots. I can’t get with it. I don’t

know what to do about changing it. Did I answer your question?

MYRTLE: Yes. No, it’s not that important to you. [I laugh]. Um…but there’s still a

continued interest in the musical aspect of it, right? Of the culture?

A: ‘Cause every once in a while there’s the gems. Like Freddie Gibbs just put out a new

record and he has a track with Black Thought called “Extradite.” [….] [I]t’s those ones that

I’m like, “Oh you sampled Bob James. Oh you didn’t even need to, like, you just looped it.”

And I love Bob James,71 and…you know like he’s like that jazz/funk era that inspired so

much hip-hop. And he brought it back to that era, he brought it back to that time. And then

he brought the message back to a way that I can relate. Where it’s like, Ohhh! You’re talking

about something real now. […] Um, because that’s obviously where my heart is. I love, I

love that sound. [….] Gonna love the stuff that I love, I can’t help it. It’s not…I’m never ever

gonna put it off the table, but maybe I need to start making it. That’s probably part of it.

At our last conversation, DJ Ariel mentioned that she is retraining her voice to perhaps use it to

move her music-making in a new direction. Since then, she has also begun working for Indigenous

Climate Action an organization that helps Indigenous communities assert their rights and put into

effect projects that advance climate change solutions while respecting Indigenous knowledge and

identities. In this context, the singular assertion of being and place that Ariel demonstrated through

her musical work is expanded through multiple individual assertions in a collective movement of

self-determination.

71

Bob James’s “Nautilus” has been sampled many times by hip-hop artists. For a discussion of its influence, see lil’dave

(2016).

DPA: Sound as memory is important for Ariel. And as far as memory plays a role in identity delineation,

sound is so much a part of Ariel’s personal identity that the feeling this sound-memory conjures inspires the

possibility of making new music.

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Chapter 7 LolaBunz

7 Female in the cypher

I heard LolaBunz mentioned in an earlier interview I conducted with a b-girl. Much later, I was

listening to female emcees from Toronto online and the Jane and Finch Female Cypher72 caught my

attention. These rappers are hard-hitting, with a boldly-styled image, and unflinching flow.

LolaBunz, who opened the cypher, commanded attention.

I first met her at Michel’s Bakery Café in Yorkdale Mall on November 20, 2015. In person, the

confidence LolaBunz exudes in performance is accompanied by the apparent joy of discussing hip-

hop and her music.

7.1 It’s just begun73

“I was kinda born into the hip-hop scene […] I was born with hip-hop around me.” LolaBunz

received her first radio and cassette player from her sister when she was seven years old, sparking her

love for music. As a kid, she got into fights frequently enough to concern her parents so she began

writing as a way to express herself:

I would say it really saved me, because before I was […] doing music, I kind of felt lost, like

how do I express myself other than physically? Or,...you know what I’m saying, or putting

myself in a hole that I’m not talking to anybody and things like that. And how do I express

myself about things that are going on around the world, people, things that are going on in

my life? And it was music.

One day, her brother, Femi Lawson, now a YouTube and VICE media personality, came home

talking about freestyling. He made her listen to some songs and soon Lola could see herself using her

writing as the basis for her own rap lyrics. She was about 16 years old when she began seriously

considering rapping as a career. She was 25 at the time of our first interview.

Throughout our conversation, Lola refers to the beginning of her career in hip-hop as the time “I fell

in love with music.” She accompanies many of these reminiscences with the idea of freedom:

72

To watch the video, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHEt_bzglII.

73 A frequently sampled song by the Jimmy Castor bunch that has become part of the breaking canon of beats to dance to.

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Music […] makes me so free, like, I always say, there’s one thing nobody could take away

from you and that’s your voice, right? […] They can say, “Okay can’t speak here,” but

you’re still gonna have your voice, right? So, music for me is just…it’s like, it’s the world,

you know what I’m saying. I can say anything I want in my music. Everybody might not like

it, but I can still say whatever I want. […] And that’s the thing about music that’s not like

anything else, you know what I’m saying? Like, […] they don’t have to listen to you but […]

[n]obody could really stop you from creating, you know what I’m saying? It’s […] my

ultimate form of creativity […] and it’s just so free […]. [A]nything going on in the world

right now, I could express it musically, you know what I’m saying. And I can reach who

knows, god knows, you know what I’m saying, I could reach everywhere. So, yeah, music is

definitely freedom. […] I just love getting like a beat or something. It’s like a playground,

literally. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do with this next?” […] That’s music […]

[I]t has no rules to it, you know what I’m saying, and that’s…and I think that’s why a lot of

people could, like, relate to music too, because there’s no rules. Like there’s, it’s not like tap

dancing, there’s a right and a wrong way to do it, it’s just…freedom.

It was in a Grade 7 or 8 English class poetry unit that LolaBunz discovered that her expressions

resonated with her peers. Eventually she added music to her poetry, “so then some of it was hip-

hop.” She had discovered a forum for her shy, quiet thoughts.

7.2 Where you’re at is where you’re from

LolaBunz is “Toronto-born and bred, but […] also from a Nigerian background.” On a trip to

Nigeria in October, 2012, she surprised a Nigerian audience with her ability to rap in Yoruba.

Tapping into aspects of her background allows her to discover skills that could be used in her music-

making. She reflects:

People know I’m from Jane & Finch and blah, blah, blah, but, who am I really? Like, this […]

Canadian, but Nigerian, girl, so even with [the Controlla remix] track, like I was really

excited to do that song ‘cause I’m like, people don’t know I could do this, like, who, and I

even speak the language, everything. And so my people back home, it’s just like, it’s, it’s like,

Dialogic/Performance Analysis (DPA): Lola’s hip-hop story immediately recalls the refrains of freedom that

accompany the culture’s history. Having been “born” into hip-hop gives weight to the role Lola plays in

developing her art form and contributing to hip-hop communities. Upon first meeting LolaBunz, we

instantly make the connection between her and the communities around her and how invested she is in

hip-hop culture. More specifically, we are introduced to a rapper who is using lyrics to converse about

topics of importance to her and to those around her.

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woah, you’re from Canada, but you’re still sticking to your roots, right? Like, letting people

know where you are.

Being in a particular performance space recalls meaningful geographic roots expressed in qualities of

sound that allow her and her audiences to discover who she really is.

SNAPSHOT:

I have a song called ‘Sick” that I dedicated to my, one of my girls that passed away and it just talks about like

“I’m sick of all the RIPs. I’m so sick of all the RIPs.” And it’s just, it’s paintin’ a picture of like, growing up in,

in Driftwood and what we used to do, sit on the green box, you know the electric box [we laugh], […]. Sittin’ on

a green box and having barbecues in our, in our backyard, with our little 5-cent gums and things. When we were

young, we didn’t have money, but we’ll go to the store [beats the table] with like a dollar [beat], come back with a

whole bunch of candy [softer beat], play some music in [softer beat] the backyard, and act like we’re having a

jam, like [I laugh]. But it, it’s just, it’s just the real life, you know what I mean?

As I was re-storying Lola’s narrative, various news outlets were reporting a quotation from

Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister and MPP Michael Tibollo, “I want to

reassure everyone that the focus of this government is to ensure that safety is paramount in all

communities. Personally, I went out to Jane and Finch,74 put on a bulletproof vest and spent 7

o’clock to 1 o’clock in the morning visiting sites that had previously had bullet-ridden people killed

in the middle of the night,” Tibollo told the Legislature.75 Tibollo has faced criticism for continuing

to disseminate a racialized, criminalized narrative of the Jane and Finch neighbourhood that paints

it as a violence-ridden community. I asked LolaBunz what she thinks about this sort of portrayal of

her neighbourhood:

LOLABUNZ: I mean, let’s...I usually start with the term that […] there’s a different term

now, but it used to be called “at-risk.” These neighbourhoods that we live... […]

MYRTLE: I think you said “priority”? […]

L: Yeah, priority neighbourhoods or at-risk neighbourhoods. […] Growing up, when that

74

The Jane and Finch neighbourhood in Toronto’s northwest region has been called a ‘priority’ neighbourhood, a label

frequently used to describe areas that lack economic investment. This particular neighbourhood has been stigmatized by

reports of crime, even as the neighbourhood supports thriving resident communities. Jane and Finch’s demographics consist primarily of immigrants, many of whom recently settled. The most recent city census categorizes most of the area’s

residents as ‘visible minorities’ (Toronto City Planning Strategic Initiatives Policy and Analysis, 2018).

75 See Ferguson and Benzie (2018).

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term came along...like a lot of people don’t even know what, what is “at-risk?” So, for me,

it’s like, everybody is at-risk. If you’re in Richmond Hill, you’re at risk, you know what I’m

saying, of like, violence, or, you know what I’m saying, gun violence. It can happen

anywhere. It’s not because you live in a certain area that it can only happen...yes, these

certain areas maybe they have more poverty rates, more community housing, more drug use

and things like that, but, I mean, if you don’t have the funds and the means to get by, people

are gonna do things to make money […]. But it’s just the whole term “at-risk,” that kind of, I

wasn’t, I didn’t really agree with, type thing. […] so, I mean, like, Jane and Finch

community in the past, definitely, there’s been high crime rates and things like that, but that

doesn’t determine the type of people that live there, ‘cause I […] would go to different

communities, like, well-off communities and stuff like that, and I would not feel as

comfortable as I am in Jane and Finch sometimes. […] Like, yes, there are the bad people

and the good people, but that’s everywhere, you know what I’m saying. Just because they

don’t look like thugs, or look like whatever this idea of at-risk youth are, doesn’t mean that

they’re not in every neighbourhood. So, I mean, I don’t, I wouldn’t really say that these at-

risk neighbourhoods are worse-off neighbourhoods than other ones. Yes, there are high

crimes in certain areas, but that doesn’t...Just because of the things that happen around the

community, it doesn’t label how the people are, you know what I’m saying. Because there,

there are business owners, there are scholars, there are people doing a lot of amazing things,

but the media focuses on the negative, so […] Even being a York University student, like, all

the time, like...we’ll be in any social science class and then they will always bring up Jane

and Finch […] and then there will be that one person in the class, who’s like, “Oh, I would

never go to Jane and Finch, I’m gonna get shot,” or something like that, you know what I’m

saying? [I laugh.] But a lot of people really think like that, you know what I’m saying. And

then, I always feel like I have to be that person like, [raises her hand] “Hello, no, it’s not

really like that. I live there. And York University is in Jane and Finch,” like, what people

don’t understand, you know what I mean. […] But, I mean, it’s all about breaking the stigma

and that kinda...goes back to what I… I’m only one person but it takes, sometimes, it takes

one person to, to make people break out of that stigma and that idea.

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7.3 The message76

LolaBunz did not begin rapping in order to be a mentor or a role model, but she is very aware that

her performance platform comes with a degree of responsibility. She strives to have a message in her

songs that will resonate with audiences and generate a meaningful feeling. In this way, she stays true

to what she sees as the reason hip-hop was created,

for people to express themselves, for people to come together and have a feeling, have

parties, and vibe, and relate to. It wasn’t created for us to promote like all this poppin’

mollies, and looking like Barbie, you know what I’m saying. That’s not, that’s not real hip-

hop, you know what I’m saying? To me.

As a result, she is not afraid to talk about pressing issues, such as police brutality, too often fatal,

against young, Black, males. This was the topic of her track “Ring the Alarm.” She explains:

[S]ometimes I feel like if I don’t say it, who’s gonna say it? Right? I feel like it’s, it’s my duty

to just address these things musically, because, I mean, yes, we could listen to the news, we

could read reports, but sometime you just need to hear a song to remind you. Like, even if

you just remember the hook or one part, one part of the song, it’s, it’s sparking the discussion

in somebody’s head. [A]nd me just bringing life experiences to music, that’s always what I

wanna do, just spark that expression in somebody’s head. Make you think about it. If you

didn’t think about it yesterday, listen to this song. Just listen. Give me one minute and listen

to this song. Think about it. ‘Cause you never know, when, maybe when you think about it,

maybe you gonna do some’in’ about it, right? I’m only one person, right? I’m only a artist.

The, the best way that I could reach multiple people at once? For me? Is music. [She

accentuates her speech with simultaneous hand beats on the table] […] [W]hen you attach a [beat]

76

“The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five appears to be the first commercial rap that describes the

socio-economic landscape of artists’ neighbourhoods.

DPA: We gain some understanding of the creation of the “ghetto” image via media and politically driven

perpetuations through chosen slices of reality. The location of hip-hop in socio-politically “oppressed”

spaces began with its spatial history in the South Bronx. Transported through place and time, the “ghetto”

connects locations of hip-hop individuality through the echoing resonances created by inaccurate or unjust

portrayals of residents, perceptions of gun violence, poverty, etc., (for further discussion on the discourse of

criminality, see Aprahamian (2019)) as well as the empowerment that comes with asserting one’s stance

against these limited and limiting portrayals.

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real life [beat] experience [beat] to a song [beat] or a moment [beat] like, you can’t [beat] forget

it.

7.4 Ladies first77

SNAPSHOT:

LOLABUNZ: Okay, so the cypher, it went viral. Like literally, it went viral within two weeks. That was our

first video that we ever did. […] [I]t wasn’t supposed to be a female cypher. Um, these guys in Driftwood, north

of Jane and Finch. […] [T]hey’re from north of Jane and Finch, we’re from south of Jane and Finch. It’s called

[…] “Uptop” and “Southside,” whatever, but they did a video of the cypher. I saw it and I’m like, oh my gosh,

like, we should do a Southside cypher […]. So I actually reached out to a couple known rappers from the

Southside, like guys, like guys, too. No actually, it was only guys and one girl, um, Badass Buck, the girl in the

video. And it’s like, okay, nobody got back to me, nobody’s taking me seriously, I’m like, okay. So then me and

my friend, Badass Buck, we’re talkin’ about it and then she’s like, “Yo, we should do a all female cypher instead.

Like, forget the guys, like whatever, let’s do a female one.” I’m like, “Yeah, that would be so cool.” And then

even the hoodies with our names on it, we did that the same morning. […] [W]e were gonna wear like black

hoodies and white hoodies and we got them downtown Chinatown for like cheap. And then she’s like I know this

guy in Vaughan Mills; we could go. And we went [snaps] like that morning 10:00 first thing. We’re like okay

[we’re] gonna be [y]our first customer. […] [A]nd then we invited people to come to the video too and then it just

happened to be like, only the girls showed up, so it just looked like a whole female thing, right? So, it was just, it

was amazing and then we released the video, literally like, two weeks, it, I think it started at like, got like 1500

views. And then all of these blogs, they started reposting it. That’s why it got so many, so many views. And then

we started getting booked for shows and all of this stuff.

MYRTLE: Woahh.

77

“Ladies First” was a collaborative track by influential female rappers, Queen Latifah and Monie Love. It is seen as a

celebration of Afrocentric feminism that brought recognition to the important presence of women in hip-hop. Roberts (1994) delves into the issues addressed in this track.

DPA: As an artist, Lola aims to educate, participating in both the “Each one, teach one” tradition of hip-hop

as well as acting as a news and editorial source, much like Chuck D of Public Enemy described rappers

about 30 years ago when he declared that rap is “black CNN” (requoted in Mahoney (2010)). LolaBunz feels

a responsibility to make listeners think critically, to make them converse. Interestingly, though action might

be an appropriate end goal, it seems discussion and critical thought are more important, pointing towards

goals consistent with the purpose of cyphers.

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L: And it’s like woooahh, like what? […] [I]t was a crazy experience […] [F]rom that it was just so much

motivation, to, to just even do more and even just push the whole female empowerment thing, too, because like,

these girls, where did these girls come from? And there’s, there’s, they have these hard lyrics, and it’s like, woah,

like where’d you guys come from? And it was just, it was just amazing that experience. But literally, it was like,

it was almost like by accident type thing, you know […] we didn’t expect that at all. Like, we’re just like, this is

our first video, like, nobody knows us. And it went, right now it has, I think like 84,000 views and it’s still

growing. […] It was amazing, man. People still remember me. Yeah, and then yeah, and then the DJ I met at

uh Michie Mee’s show, he’s like, “Yeah, you’re that girl from the, the cypher.” And then I’m like, I’m like, “Oh

wow, they saw this in New York?” They’re like, yeah, like, people out there, he’s like, “Yeah, people in New

York know you.”

M: Wooow.

L: Like what? I’m like, whaat? Like. He’s like, “Yeah, people in New York know you. Yeah, you’re one, you

were wearing the hat, right? You…” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s me!” It’s like, you know me for real? This is some

big DJ and things like that, so it’s crazy how something, like, so little, like, a lot of people really know me off of

that cypher, too, and then they, they look for my music and stuff like that, but. […] That’s how it came about.

And, it’s funny like, even when I talk about the whole female empowerment thing, it’s, it’s funny, because, okay,

reach out to the guys, but they don’t take you seriously. So it’s like okay, we’ll do it ourselves and it’s like

“Heeey, we blew up.” Like [laughs]…

M: I was also like, I saw it and I was like where are they? I think that’s a parking garage.

L: Yeah, exactly. […] Yup, it’s a parking garage and the music’s playing from the car, but you don’t know that.

[…] We made it work. We said we wanted to do something. Regardless, we said we’re doing this and we did it.

Another young emcee I interviewed, Skyboxx, was part of a group of female emcees called 1st

Ladies of the Rebellion, together with Zakisha Brown, Xolisa, Dynesti Williams, and Mapela. They

met at Reaching Intelligent Souls Everywhere (RISE) poetry sessions, a weekly event in

Scarborough, Ontario, through which aspiring lyrical artists test and refine works. Inspired by the

Jane & Finch cypher, they set out to do a video as a collective.

We wanted to make a, you know, a really good video where each of us would actually embody a female

emcee in the game right now in hip-hop, like a mainstream female emcee, and so we each chose our

favourite. [….] [W]e had our verses and we had a vision for the video, that’s, that’s basically all we had.

And um, and, and hence, we’re not […] a group. We’re not a group. We’re just female emcees that are

getting together […] and just wanted to work on something. And, and, so we titled ourselves 1st Ladies

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from that. […] 1st Ladies of the Rebellion. [….] I think there’s gonna be some disappointment out there,

because a lotta people perceived us as a group and…they might just think, like, “How come female

emcees can never stay together forever?” [….] [T]he response we got? […] It was like, wow, this has been

missing. This is rare, this…this is not happening, you know. And um… […] to see it in […] Toronto was, was

like wow, like. And we were all good and we, and we all had a chemistry, we all, we were all like, good

with each other, and it was all peace and, and love at the end of the day, but like, it wasn’t the goal [to be

a female rap group]. And, and, from that we were able to see that wow, people were actually craving this

type a energy, like this feminine hip-hop energy out there, you know.

The hip-hop music industry continues to be dominated by males, making it difficult for a variety of

reasons, for women to get the same buzz as men. LolaBunz could not give a particular reason for the

shadow cast over women, but she observes that the same obstacles are apparent in other aspects of

the entertainment industry:

[I]t’s sex, selling sex, you know what I’m saying? Ass and titties, for lack of a better word.

[…] But I’m like, I don’t wanna...That’s not the only way you have to go, you know what

I’m saying. […] Being a male, it’s not that much focused on image, but being a female, it is.

So me, just coming, ‘cause I grew up in Jane and Finch, like I grew up in a priority

neighbourhood. I saw a lot of things growing up as well. So it was also my community and

just the way that I grew up that I wanted to create music that people can relate to, but at the

same time I didn’t wanna be like a puppet or a Barbie, you know what I’m saying. I wanted

to be something else and I wanted to show people that females can do this too. We can even

do it better than you guys. […] You know, that’s how, that’s kind of what my drive was.

DPA: Female rap crews are a rarity and here we sense that there is a demand for such a group. It is

interesting to note that Skyboxx feels there may be disappointment, stated as a question, “[H]ow come

female emcees can never stay together forever?” followed by, “[W]e were all like, good with each other, and

it was all peace and, and love at the end of the day.” She seems to be battling the negative perception of

women competing with each other to rise to the top, as opposed to seeing a woman’s success on its own

merits.

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She breaks expectations as soon as she introduces herself.

Even when I tell people I’m a artist, like what do you do? Sing? All the time, like, I get that

all the time, “What do you do? Sing?” “Nooo, why do you think I sing? I rap.” Like,

“What?” I’m gonna like…“Rap for me.” Why do I have to rap for you? If a guy told you

he’s a rapper, would you tell him [...] to rap for you?

There is a strength that comes from confronting biases against females in hip-hop, rather than

buckling under the imperatives to prove herself.

To steel herself against the media and commercial pressure to conform to particular images of

women, Lola strives to know herself and to determine what she values so that what she presents to

the public aligns with her self-view.

I make it my duty to just keep it real in my songs and what I talk about and my image, you

know what I’m saying. If I can’t turn on the TV or if I can’t put something on and, and I feel

comfortable for my parents looking at it, or the kids that I work with looking at it, why

would I do it, if I can’t be comfortable?

The underlying task of representing her community, and women, appears once again linked to the

idea of being a role model, a manifestation of a frequently heard hip-hop culture call to action,

“Each one, teach one.” She muses that if she had someone to tell her about how to become

DPA: Despite writing a song called “Real hip-hop,” that laments the popular, sexualized image of women in

the rap industry, LolaBunz does not deny that the image of a hypersexual female rapper is part of hip-hop.

She points out instead that it is not the only path available. B-boy Benzo, in his interview, parallels this

statement as he reminds that “[Y]ou have the right to express yourselves in any way you want. Whether it's

raunchy, political, anyway we want. There's rappers that have come up that have gone dark deep into like

some vampire stuff and you have rappers that just, are conscious all the time and talking about political

issues. But for some reason, when it comes down to the women, it's like, we don't care what you have to

say, you have to look a certain way. That's discrimination. That's not hip-hop.” The issue is not expression,

it’s limitation.

Another point of interest is Lola’s use of the term “priority,” which she uses here to describe her

neighbourhood, despite the tensions the term provokes. This is a performative iteration that we see

reworked through her storytelling process; in effect, Signified (Gates, 2014) upon, through her experiences

and their eventual incorporation into her creative output. Using the term “priority neighbourhood” calls

upon our understandings of this type of place via popular media portrayals. At the same time, she opens up

new possible meanings through the excited tone of voice she uses, the way she speaks of this place as a

source of inspiration and an empowered, female representation that signals the difference that can arise out

of her place in this “priority neighbourhood.”

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successful in the music industry, she may be further along today. As a result, she is both encouraged

and rewarded when a young person asks her questions:

I’m learning so much and then I, I could personally, […] share the information that I know

with, you know, the young 15-year-old that’s getting into it right now, so like, by the time

he’s 20 […] like he knows, okay, this is what I have to do, this is what I have to do.

7.5 Real hip-hop

Whatever happened to the real hip-hop

Where real recognize real

And I look at them and see me? 78

LolaBunz’s definition of real hip-hop stems from her understanding of hip-hop history and the

purpose of its cultural expressions. Specifically, hip-hop music must generate a feeling and have a

message that resonates with lived experiences. For her, in particular, this message or feeling provides

a positive, productive perspective, otherwise it’s just “noise.” To guide her creativity, she asks

herself,

What have I been through? What, what do I wanna talk about? What message do I wanna

put out into the world […]? […] I wouldn’t make music about something that is untrue to

me, you know what I’m saying? That’s, that’s what keeping it real is for me. And then on the

image side, it’s just like, what […] skin am I comfortable in, right? So that’s keepin’ it real for

me, you know?

In line with this, she models her performance image on Aaliyah,79 an artist whom she considers a

“teacher.” Lola describes her look as “urban with a sexy feel to it.” She tells me that she was a

tomboy up until recently, wearing baggy pants and a cropped top or white tee, in Aaliyah’s style.

78

LolaBunz has a track called “Real Hip-hop” in which she laments the loss of hip-hop’s original purpose. In it, she names

influential figures in rap music’s early development who used hip-hop’s art forms to celebrate or uplift hip-hop cultural communities.

79 Aaliyah was a popular American R&B artist whose successful career (through the 1990s) was cut short by her passing in

a plane crash in 2001.

DPA: Lola’s desire to pass on knowledge to an imagined, male, aspiring artist, says much about the

prevalence of the image of the male rapper as well as the increasing influence and presence of females in

the rap scene.

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She has updated her look in part to look her age (people continued to think she’s 16) and also to

reflect the name LolaBunz. Indeed, when I first met her, she didn’t have her hair as she did on our

second meeting, with long braids rolled into stylish buns, accented by blue (and other bright colours

at other times). She also pointed out the African influence in her braid style, which I see as

complementing her relatively recent foray into adding Nigerian lyrics to her repertoire.

Having been “born” into hip-hop she has been immersed in and has internalized a standard of

authenticity that requires artists to “keep it a hundred, […] no bullshit.” For her, certain songs are

not just songs, they speak about life as it is. For example, when Jay-Z sings, “It’s a hard knock life”

he taps into a recollection, “it was a hard knock life for us, you know what I mean? But, but, we still

got through it, you know what I mean? So like songs like that, I mean, it’s just real life, and

sometime it’s just, somehow you just need to hear that for motivation. Like somebody’s feeling you

too, like, it is a hard-knock life for you. We are going through these things, but guess what? We’re

still here, you know.” She describes hip-hop music as “very…no-filters […] [I]t doesn’t hide nothing,

which she thinks leads to much criticism of its artists’ expressions. This is also hip-hop’s strength as

its stories allow audiences to participate in the re-storying of the performance moment.

LolaBunz points out that hip-hop is also incredibly humorous, a point that many who view the

culture from an outside perspective forget:

[I]t’s very humorous, too, like; it’s not always only scary stuff, it’s very humorous,

like…Growing up, all a these crazy dances, like [I laugh] do the laffy taffy like, lean back,

like, it was just, it was just really fun. And […] growing up in middle school […] everybody

used to be a dancer, everybody was in a, a dance group […] ...It was crazy [she seems so

happy to recall all this]! And just looking forward to those talent shows like, what show are

they gonna do? Are they gonna do the Harlem shake? […] [I]t’s just fun. […] And the thing

with hip-hop, too, it’s always changing. So I mean, it’s still hip-hop but it’s always, which

route is hip-hop going now? You know what I mean? Like there was the Biggies and the

Tupacs. Then there’s like the Nicki Minajs and then there’s like the Kendrick Lamars. And

then there’s like the Jay Coles and the Jay-Zs like it’s hip-hop, but it’s just, […] [I]t’s the

same genre, but it’s sooo different, you know what I mean? […] [I]t’s a playground [beats on

table]. [I laugh]. It’s a playground.

The varieties of difference that are encompassed by “hip-hop” make it challenging for LolaBunz to

define the term. Another difficulty is that it is a “lifestyle,” a definition frequently heard from those

immersed in the culture.

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[H]ip-hop’s a mixture of everything. It’s […] just seeing what you see in the world and, and

putting it into your, into your style, into your [...] words […] Um, it’s, it’s [sighs] it’s hard

to...explain [laughs]. […] It’s a community of, of people who believe in lyricism as a way of

expressing themselves. Um, of people who believe in movement as a way of expressing

themselves. […] I can’t define hip-hop without also talking about struggle, too, because, even

if we look at the early hip-hop artists, like, what they were rapping about and talking about

was stuff going on in the world, you know what I’m saying. And the way hip-hop does it, it

does it in like, […] I would say like a fierce way. It’s different than any other genre of music,

you know what I’m saying. It’s very raw, it’s very intentional.

She adds that each art form brings with it “a different world.”

She then turns to the specific hip-hop context of Toronto, citing that our sound is very different from

the sound coming out of other places: “It’s like taking a whole bunch of different colour Skittles,

putting them in a bottle and shaking them up.” She also says,

[T]here’s something about the feeling in Toronto music. It’s very diverse. It’s still hip-hop,

but we will incorporate sometimes, like, reggae artists in our hip-hop, different R&B artists in

our hip-hop, you know what I’m saying? Different, I don’t know, it’s very unique in

Toronto, like, ah, how do I define this? […] I listen to an American artist, they have kind of

a similar sound to them. Like, okay, let me look at hip-hop today, right now. Popular is like,

trap music, um, you know, Young Thug, like those type a artists. In Toronto, you’re gonna

find sooo much variety. Like, it’s not gonna be one type of hip-hop music. It’s gonna be the

fast-paced, the slow-paced, the mixing rock with hip-hop [voice gets rawer sounding], mixing

country with hip-hop. […] [We laugh]. […] Like, it’s like taking R& B, taking old school hip-

hop, taking new school hip-hop and putting it in a water bottle, shaking it up. […] That’s

Toronto culture [laughing].

DPA: Here, LolaBunz reiterates the correlation between Toronto’s diverse demographics and its diverse hip-

hop soundscape. In so doing, she becomes connected to Toronto hip-hop’s historical roots (see Ch. 4,

“Hip-hop in the T-dot”).

That Toronto sound is “different” also makes it part of a global hip-hop soundscape. B-boy Benzo points

out, “hip-hop we, you have so many different sounds. You have the onyx sound which is like that loud,

underground sound, very grimy, you know what I mean? You even have the sound like, uh, Queen Latifah,

like that Jersey uptown anthem sound. Like, all those are different sounds, because they are people

expressing themselves differently without even thinking about what's the record label gonna say, or what's,

what are people gonna say, you know. Because expressing yourself is not about thinking about what

someone’s gonna say. You're just doing it freely.” Once again, the idea of hip-hop as a location of

“freedom” is evident.

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Regional dialects and slang are frequently injected into rap throughout the world. Toronto’s specific

multicultural make-up creates its unique sound. LolaBunz points out,

[W]e’ll have the Jamaican accent patois slang. […] [T]his is the thing about Toronto, too,

because there are so many different neighbourhoods, like even if you come to Jane and

Finch, there’s different slangs here than if you go to Scarborough, you know I’m sayin’? […]

[O]ur language and our dialect […] relates to our little hip-hop culture, too […] Even in the

music too, like, sometimes you can just pick it up like yeah that’s, that’s Toronto, you know.

The relationship between speech and rap weaves a soundscape particularly recognizable for those

who live in the same region as the artist, which allows LolaBunz, as both artist and audience, to feel

part of hip-hop culture and its particular instance in Toronto.

7.6 Knowledge

SNAPSHOT:

[…] a very memorable experience. […] [O]ne of my favourite artists, um, Styles P and Jadakiss, […] I went to

their concert when they came to Toronto […] And I actually got to meet them in person. And then I gave

Jadakiss one of my mixtapes. Like, he actually took it. I’m like, “Oh my god, he took it, it’s so good.” Um, so

that like to me is like, just going up, listening to somebody and then building yourself up to the point that you

actually have your own CD and everything and then you meet them and they actually like, actually, you, who

knows if he even listened to it, but the fact that like, they actually took it, like I felt sooo, like appreciated, you

know what I’m saying? And I also met Mobb Deep as well. And like the “Real Hip-hop” track, ‘cause it was

Mobb Deep inspired, right? So I, like, I gave my um, CD to Prodigy and he’s like, yeah, I’m gonna try to listen

to it and I had a little conversation with him about my music and stuff like that. And he’s like, “Keep doin’ what

you do,” like he gave me a little pointer, so I’m like, oh my gosh, my life’s complete now, like, you know. […]

[B]oth of them are memorable, but like, even the Mobb Deep one, is like, oh my gosh I just, this track on your

thing and you guys are really, you guys are like real hip-hop and, and it’s like I’m meeting you guys, and he’s

like, he’s REAL. […] Because it’s just people you look up to and then you never think you’re gonna actually

meet them right? It’s just like, oh my gosh, I met them AND you took my CD? Oh my gosh. My life is over. I

don’t need nothing else, you know what I’m saying?

Like the other artists I interviewed, LolaBunz was not taught how to rap by teachers. Instead, she

absorbed knowledge through keen observation and close contact with people who encouraged her

development. Though she mentions Aaliyah as the artist she has always tried to emulate, it is her

brother, Femi, who is two years older than her, that has played an important role in motivating her

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progress. She and her brother first got their artistic start as actors and both are cultivating careers as

performers. She recalls that he and other students would have freestyle battles at school and she

would battle him at home after school.

[T]he freestyle battle is kinda like a test. So it’s like, before, before the battle, like I’ll be

listening to music or whatever, whatever and then freestyle battle and make a beat [beats the

table], and then, we just…rap. See what comes to mind […] freestyling, that was, I would

say that was kinda training, you know, because freestyling is off the top of your head,

right?… […] [T]hose little freestyles playing around with my brother, it was training, to just

get my mind running and getting my lyrics going through my head all the time, ‘cause you

have to be on top of it [snaps fingers as she says this], right? […] Yeah, so I would say, that’s

kind of like my learning – listening, mimicking and freestyling.

Lola researched artists she admired, such as Jadakiss, Styles P, Remy Ma, Eve, and DMX. Not only

would she listen to their music, she paid attention to topics they talked about and what they had

been through in their lives. She describes the process:

[E]arly learning for me was literally just listening to different types of music, […]

understanding styles and different sounds and different flows, like tempo and things like that.

And just watching, like, watching videos like on, on TV and um, artists that I like and just

kind of almost mimicking them in my own way, but also just like, seeing what they do, you

know. Like the more I saw and the more I listened, the more I had an idea of what music

was, like hip-hop in specific; but just being a artist in general as well. […] Um, other than

listening to music and watching things on TV and things, it was like um, my brother would

be like, the challenge.

She continues to learn about the music industry and what it takes to succeed as she goes through the

stages of music recording and marketing. She is always asking herself questions:

DPA: I recall my interview with MC Abdominal in which he says, “even with […] the internet, and the

multimillion dollar industry, you’re always gonna have 15 dudes in the circle, one guy beatboxing, or

clapping their hand, or pounding on a table and someone freestyling, right?” (quoted in Ch. 5, p. 66). Lola,

at this point, does not seem to have participated in battles publicly, making me wonder whether the

participants at school were primarily male. Abdominal’s observation, though not meant to say that females

cannot participate in freestyle cyphers or battles, does validate the statements about the taken-for-granted

image of cyphers as being male-dominated. This brings further significance to the Jane and Finch All-

Female Cypher. It also brings to mind questions about the learning environments of aspiring female artists,

which was not a specific focus of this study.

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How you gonna brand yourself? How you gonna market yourself? How you gonna get the

views? How you gonna get the downloads? How you gonna sell the mixtapes? Who’s gonna

shoot your cover? How you gonna apply for SOCAN to get your credits, get your royalties?

[…] [W]hat kinda pictures are you putting up? How are you getting followers? How are you

getting out to blogs?

She also has to keep up her presence on Twitter, Instagram, SoundCloud, and YouTube. Meeting

other artists and artist organizations allows her to promote herself and her music. She takes the

initiative to attend grant-writing workshops like those hosted by ArtReach,80 and music conferences,

always asking, “Can I…?,” in order to have the opportunity to showcase her music. “Okay, let’s do

it. No sleep tonight? Alright. Two hours’ sleep? Alright, let’s go, get some coffee, let’s go!” – she

juggles school, life, and family on top of this.

LolaBunz’s early career challenges are interesting to juxtapose with MC Abdominal’s reflections

about his career stages. Abs recalls:

[B]ack then, that was like in ‘03, so the net was around, but people were still actually going out and buying

CDs as I said, we sold you know, like 80,000 hard copies of the CD, whereas that’s almost unheard of now.

[…] Now it’s like all about your [said in a different voice to differentiate from his own] online presence […]

and building a brand and like how many YouTube views [still in that voice] and like labels they’re all just,

that’s all they look at, it’s like how many Facebook friends, how many twitter followers… […] and blah blah

blah blah. […] So, I, I’m still trying to figure it out now. It’s, it’s you know, it’s good and bad, because it’s

much easier now to get your music to people, obviously, because you have all these incredible platforms,

like these powerful tools, with no budget at all. I mean, whether you’re signed to a major label or not, you

could upload a video to YouTube, you could put stuff on Facebook, blah blah blah, but, um, yeah, it’s just

different, you know. ‘Cause labels aren’t really signing as many people because it’s just like, how do they

make their money, it’s the, you know, it’s the big question that’s plaguing […] the whole record industry,

right, like…? […] It’s like anything content driven. Like whether it’s TV shows, you know, it’s all available

for free, streaming, right, like, books, newspapers, magazines, so…Yeah, it’s, it’s tough to…How do you

make it? You have to try to tour and get, get revenue from live shows, or licensing is important, like trying

to get your music used in video games, and uh, ads, advertising, that kind of stuff. Um, radio play is still

important. […] [A]n already difficult career choice is now, I would say, harder. […] ‘Cause, I mean, as

difficult as it was, your main source of income was, still at least you could still sell CDs, but now that’s like,

kinda dried up, so… […] Um, I’d say live shows definitely is up there. Um, yeah, I, I do okay as far as like

80 ArtReach is an organization that supports community-based arts projects that empower youth from under-served areas of Toronto.

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radio play. Um, my, my quarterly SOCAN cheques, thank, bless SOCAN always. Um, so you know, CBC’s

always good about playing my stuff, so…It’s not like I’m making a ton, like I can’t rely on that, […] it’s just

every 3 months you get a payment, so I might get like, you know, like a few hundred bucks here and there

and be like, “Oh, cool.” You know, “I forgot that was coming,” so…It’s of more like you get a few hundred

here, a few hundred there and you could cobble together…

SNAPSHOT:

Well, there…well, for me, like when I was recording my first mixtape there was a place called The Loft. […]

[S]o, for me, like, and there needs to be so much more places like that. […] The Loft, it was a place, every

Wednesday, from 10 to 3, it was free studio time. Come at like, what, 10:00 and then you just book, everyone

books their hour. But coming every Wednesday, just being in the circle of all of these artists, um, while people

was waiting for their time or just chilling, having a conversation and stuff like that, like, it was sooo refreshing,

and I feel like I, I even feel like I wrote more, because, going there so often. Like, when you surround yourself

with, and, and I think not even only for music, for business, for anything, when you surround yourself with like-

minded people, the conversations that you have and the things that you think about, […] it runs and it keeps

your mind working, you know what I mean? But when you’re kind of on your own, or like, you don’t really

have a artist community to tap to, I mean, I’m not saying you, you still can’t be successful, but it’s a different

vibe. And when you just have those people around you, it, it’s a good feeling and it keeps you more kind of

motivated.

LolaBunz describes herself as a “sponge,” absorbing knowledge wherever she can. Other artists,

within and outside of hip-hop, provide inspiration, informal mentorship, valuable information, and

healthy competition. From them, she learns about how to obtain grants, tips on conquering writer’s

block, and finds encouragement through the sharing of challenges, mistakes, and successes. She also

meets people with whom to collaborate. All told, other artists keep her on her “A-game.”

Other music genres also become a learning resource as she discovers new rhythms, new sounds, and

fresh ideas to inform her lyrics. The community of artists is not just made of up of those people she

comes across often, it exists across time and geography.

DPA: Abs’s career was starting to ramp up in 2003 and he released (in 2012) another album, “Sitting Music,”

whose sounds and styles are considerably different from his early entries. LolaBunz, in 2015, was just getting

started and released her first EP, “Wild Card” in 2018. Despite the span of time between them and despite

their different locations is Toronto hip-hop history, similarities in music industry challenges remain.

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7.7 On the come up

Despite being shy, LolaBunz has always loved performing and was a union actor at the age of 10. It

was through high school talent shows that she began growing a fan-base with her music. She recalls

volunteering to record for other students’ music projects and creating songs with friends. “Now,” her

eyes get bright, “give me the mic and it’s like my playground, you know what I’m saying? It’s

awesome. It’s like a different world.”

SNAPSHOT

LOLABUNZ: Gr. 10 talent show. I remember me and my two friends we did this song we created from scratch

and everything. And then my girl sang, and then I rapped and everyone’s like, “Yeeaahhh…you’re so great.

And then, then like, yup, [taps on the table] I’m an artist, you know what I’m saying. And the thing is, like, my

name is Lola, right? So people used to call me Lola Bunny, because you know…Did you watch Space Jam, the

movie? Like, you have to watch, it’s Bugs Bunny […] Lola Bunny is Bugs Bunny’s girlfriend, right?

MYRTLE: Oh yeahh.

L: Yeah, so like, I’m Lola, so everyone used to call me Lola Bunny, right? But then it was like, it was probably

when I got a little older, 16, 17, my brother started calling me LolaBunz, I’m like, yeeahh, I like that, LolaBunz,

you know what I’m saying? So then yeah, so it was around that, high school, I’m like, yeah, I’m LolaBunz,

that’s, that’s who I am. That’s my artist name, let’s do this, you know what I’m saying? […] And I started, um,

just researching artists and stuff like that and it’s like, “Oh, what do they do?” They make, like a mixtape. I’m

like, you know I’d research, oh what’s a mixtape? What do you need? Some songs. So then I just started working

on it, writing songs […] [H]ow do artists kinda get out there? […] [I]t was about that time when I said, yup, my

name is LolaBunz. Then I’m like, yup, I’m gonna make a mixtape, I’m gonna do this. I wanna be a artist, you

know? […] Yeah [laughing], yeah. Cause even the name LolaBunz, people always ask me, […] No, it’s not my

buns. [I laugh] That’s what guys think it is. I’m like no, it’s not the buns, look up.

Lola has come up against many challenges as she strives to carve different lines in her career as a

rapper. “I feel like I’ve always been a fighter. […] [N]ot only like physically fighting, but

like…fighting for a voice, fighting for… […] space, fighting for… […] justice in the community.”

She recalled when she had booked recording time and the staff person didn’t seem to take her

seriously, saying it was time for a smoke break. With savvy, she pointed out that she was paying for

session time.

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[T]hat kinda built my confidence too, it made me stronger […] the male people in the

industry, […] other females too, it’s like people don’t think you really know what you’re

talking about. So it’s like, okay, [taps back of one hand on palm of the other] nah, I got my,

I’m on top of this. Like, you know, […] don’t treat me like that, like, I got this, you know

what I’m saying? So, it’s, it’s been...yeah...I learned, I’ve learned a lot, you know? And then,

being…, and it made me kind of pro-…, I wouldn’t say like feminist or something, but, yeah,

kind of, you know, ‘cause like, okay I see all these different experiences that people go

through.

I asked her about her hesitance to call herself a feminist:

[W]ell, for me, personally, it’s like, even earlier when I started to make music, people would

say, oh I’m a conscious artist, right? […] I don’t wanna be stuck in that box of ‘conscious,’

that when I do something else, it’s like, oh my gosh, what is she doing now? Because it, it

kinda limits you, and […] I’m not saying I’m against feminist rights or something, but I

don’t wanna be just labelled as, okay, I’m pro this, or negative that. I’m, I’m building and

I’m versatile, you know what I’m saying? My values are still the same, but I don’t wanna just

be stuck in that box. […] And, hey, today I could make a conscious track and tomorrow I

could make a trap song, you know what I’m saying, but I’m still LolaBunz and I still have

that versatility, but I don’t wanna just be labelled as one type of artist until I kind of find my

comfort zone, or my, my style, my sound. […] I can make conscious music, definitely, but

I’m more than that, you know what I’m saying? So, I think’s just to not get stuck in a box

that people kinda say that, oh I’m not a feminist, I’m not whatever, but...I mean I have a

feminist in me definitely. Like, I would fight for this and I’ll do the march with you, but I

just don’t wanna be stuck in a box, that’s the thing for me. […] When you don’t really know

yourself yet, what you are, so you don’t wanna say yes, I’m this, and then when you do

something else, it’s like, [said in a mock scornful voice] oh my gosh, like, what are you doing

now?

DPA: Here we have a glimpse into a female rapper’s learning environment. Talent shows were part of her

artist development, not necessarily just rapping. Her early performance memories do not cite rap battles or

freestyle cyphers, but the more commonplace talent shows that are a highlight for performance-inclined

high schoolers (myself included).

Lola also learns from having to manage her own career, necessitating an assertiveness and perhaps a

watchfulness due to prevalent responses to females in music industry settings.

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There is a relationship between Lola’s questioning of her experiences and values and her search for a

sound and image that reflects her discoveries, encapsulated as a “self” that becomes “LolaBunz.”

The process of search and discovery, renewed as she lives and observes, results in sound

experiments.

I love playing with words, playing with flows, playing with, um, the tempos, the ups and

downs. […] [W]hen it comes to my style, like, finding your style, it takes a while to know

what your style is. […] I’m just now kinda trying to, starting to find my sound, and my st…,

well, style, sound, I don’t know it’s like the same thing. But my sound, like, who is

LolaBunz? What kinda sound is LolaBunz? […] I would say I’m still kinda working on it, to

try to find what my sound is. […] I’m still kind of developing my style and my sound, you

know. […] And it sometimes, […] it’ll take a lot of songs to realize, okay, no, this is the type

of sound I like. This is me, this is my style, you know. So I can’t really, really, really pinpoint

it right, right now, but it’s something that it takes a while for you to kind of realize what your

sound is [, …] what sound really fits you [….] Along with learning and stuff, finding your

sound is, is a process as well. […] So literally, just, you have ta make a lot of music to really

figure out what is, what is you. What’s LolaBunz? […] [T]rial and error. That’s my process.

Just putting music out, recording a much as I can, collaborating with different artists and

different producers and then seeing what the viewers, what the listeners, what the listeners

like, you know? That’s kind of what it is. What I’m comfortable with and what the listeners

like as well.

As she constructs her style, Lola incorporates not only her sense of self, but what audiences respond

to. The resulting style is a manifestation of her situation within the various communities in which

she finds herself. As she puts it:

Music is my life. And…my life reflects my music […] [I]t’s really important because it’s a

lifestyle […] I don’t know, I don’t know, I, I don’t know what I would do without it, like.

And it’s, it’s just like where I grew up [….] [T]here’s so many experiences and so

many…memorable life experiences that I could trace back to like hip-hop experiences, or

even songs that I remember that you know, I was going through this and then it’s this song

that kinda brought me, that kept me [changes voice as if holding herself in], you know what I

mean, in it, or, there was a lotta times in life that I felt like, you know what, like fuck it, I

don’t wanna do it no more. But it’s, it’s, it’s music and it’s hip-hop that kept me sane.

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Chapter 8 Synthesis

8 Overview

The established history of hip-hop provides lasting normative frameworks that circulate within hip-

hop culture. It provides a basic template for images of the DJ, the b-boy, the emcee. It is also the

source of cultural values and philosophies that stem from its roots, established at a socio-politically

oppressive time for those in the South Bronx of the 1970s. The artists I interviewed evaluate their art

forms and artistic expressions against these images and values. The way hip-hop should be, that is, a

force for expression of oppressed, repressed voices, continues to exert influence over who is seen as a

legitimate artist, whether or not they produce works that are liberating or that ameliorate the socio-

economic and political situation of those who make them and/or consume them. Regardless, hip-

hop’s liberating force, as established on this dominant understanding, continues to afford

possibilities of production than could have equitable effects. For the artists I interviewed, the

contradictions in hip-hop culture, the reflections of the social challenges entwined with it, provide

materials to sample and create with in order to produce something new that highlights difference.

The following sections respond to research questions that guided this study:

a) How is hip-hop culture defined by those who participate in it?

b) How does an aspiring breaker, DJ, or emcee acquire artistic skill?

c) What is the role of music throughout an artist’s development?

d) What is the role of the hip-hop community of practice in artist development?

e) What factors affect artist identity?

Responses to the above inform the answer to the dissertation’s overarching inquiry: How do a

breaker, DJ, and emcee develop a unique performance identity within Toronto’s hip-hop

communities of practice? My purpose, with this narrative research project, is not to generalize

development processes but to uncover something of the complexities involved for each individual.

What I have discovered takes a linear form below, but I note that the response to Question (b)

involves ideas emerging from conversations pertaining to my other research questions. This shows:

1) the simultaneity of learning activities in which my participants engaged and 2) that this

simultaneity layers and intersperses skill acquisition with circulating historical narratives about hip-

hop’s development and the ensuing normative expectations for those who aspire for artistic

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recognition. To this end, the section on “Acquiring Skill” (8.2) includes the role of communities of

practice, Question (d), through which aspiring artists come to formulate meanings and

understandings about hip-hop.

Answers to these exploratory trajectories are drawn primarily from the narratives presented in the

last three chapters, including reiteration of key quotations, and corroborated with statements from

the other artists I spoke with in Stage 1 Interviews where necessary.

8.1 Defining the culture

The artists I interviewed found it challenging to define hip-hop in large part, because they see it as an

ever-evolving culture and a lifestyle, changing with individuals who express themselves through hip-

hop’s art forms.

B-boy Benzo, flipping the usual connotation of the word, “universal,” as something that applies

similarly to everyone, explains, “that hip-hop is […] constantly changing, and it’s going to. If

something is universal, it’ll never stay the same, right? […] And that’s where it always will just be

this constant cycle of everybody trying to make a definition of what hip-hop is, when really, it is

what it is” (personal communication, March 13, 2014). Hip-hop may come from the past, but it is

defined by any given present. Explanations by my research participants point to hip-hop’s historical

foundations – expressions of individual creativity amidst the party spirit of a racially and

economically marginalized community – as the source of “a hip-hop point-of-view” (DJ Dopey,

personal communications, March 24, 2014) or perspective, rather than a definition. This perspective

appears to be derived from conditions that gave birth to the culture: place, creativity, and story-

telling.

8.1.1 Place: Location, people, situation, self

A sense of place continues to shape hip-hop contexts around the globe. The idea of its original

birthplace in the South Bronx as a socio-economically and politically disadvantaged location

continues to inspire participants who share similar lived experiences, or who ally themselves with

the social justice causes that emerge from similar conditions.

My narrative participants, B-boy Jazzy Jester, DJ Ariel, and LolaBunz, connect to the Bronx in their

stories, usually through references to New York and through mention of influential hip-hop artists

from that area. Jester proudly references being mistaken for a member of Rock Steady Crew (who

was part of Zulu Nation) and part of the excitement of membership in his first breaking crew was

their connection with Rock Steady. Ariel recalls hanging out with people with connections to both

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these groups as well, even attending a Rock Steady Anniversary jam in her early career. LolaBunz

shows the relevance and legitimizing power of New York as a hip-hop cultural centre, even today, as

she excitedly tells of being recognized by a DJ in New York. New York as location is important,

however, because of the artistry of people who generated the creative energy necessary for hip-hop’s

development. The above examples are meaningful because they connect creative actions to artists

from New York.

The earliest hip-hop artists and audiences are acknowledged as coming “from a serious place of

oppression” (DJ Ariel) and LolaBunz adds that we “can’t define hip-hop without also talking about

struggle.” B-boy Jazzy Jester elaborates, “hip-hop started through the ashes of like, the burning

buildings in, in the Bronx and whatnot and then rising above it and like, finding your voice for

yourself and being your own person and then showing the government that there’s more to this area

and the people that live in this area.”

Though coming from Jester’s narrative, his framing of the ties to hip-hop’s cultural beginnings

provides an appropriate summary for the ways other participants describe their connections to the

broader culture. Jester’s commentary pulls together, like drawstrings, aspects of location, people and

their situations towards himself, just as the other artists I interviewed have done as they situate

themselves within hip-hop as lived in Toronto. He traces a web between the past residents of the

Bronx, himself, and imaginary spaces existing across moments in time. He begins with a distanced,

third person perspective on hip-hop culture’s history. The view then narrows and turns into what the

culture encourages in individuals as he uses the second person, ‘you.’ It is obvious, however, that he

includes himself in this ‘you.’ ‘You’ includes ‘me.’ The ‘I’ is in the ‘we.’ The importance of this

cultural embeddedness to Jester is made clear when he declares that, though Filipino by familial ties,

hip-hop is his culture.

8.1.2 Creativity: Mixing and sampling (people and time)

Beginning in the 1970s, hip-hop’s rough start date, the South Bronx became increasingly populated

by people of colour who identified as Black and/or Hispanic (Robin & Robin, 1998, p. 8).81 Cultural

cross-pollination was taking root, arguably, in many aspects of life, music and dance included. Early

DJs spun music from a variety of genres such as funk, soul, rock, and disco.82 Breaking incorporated

81

Robin and Robin (1998) gathered South Bronx census data that shows that by the 1980s, the majority of the South

Bronx population identified themselves as Black and/or Hispanic, with Hispanic people also identifying themselves as “White,” “Black,” or “Other.”

82 For discussions on musical genres sampled in early hip-hop music, see Chang (2005), Ch. 1.4; George (1998), Ch. 2; and

Rose (1994a), Ch. 2.

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an array of moves that demonstrates the confluence of music and movement from Afro-Caribbean

and Hispanic-Caribbean traditions that, in themselves, are already a mix of Spanish, African, and

Indigenous artistic expressions (Schloss, 2009).83

The use and combination of cultural sound and movement practices at this particular time, in this

particular place, was reflected in the developing practice of sampling by which segments of sound

and movement from a variety of sources were re-worked and mixed in different ways to produce

new, creative expressions. The artists I interviewed have integrated these approaches into ways they

conceive of and execute dance movements, music, and rap lyrics.

The following interview excerpt, taken from Jazzy Jester’s discussion of the foundations of breaking,

shows how he has come to understand this ethos of sampling and mixing.

I think, the main basis of what hip-hop is about, is [t]aking whatever it is, and building your

own fundamentals out of that […] and … defining yourself through that […] loose structure

of hip-hop […]. This one works for me, this doesn’t work for me. And then you start taking

other things and then you start building your own structure […]. And then you keep altering

it…

These creative processes are, in turn, employed in the production of his dance movements.

Channeling creativity through this continuous process of experimentation and situational change

becomes a defining perspective in hip-hop culture: “musical elements…reflect worldviews…critical

in understanding the meaning of time, motion, and repetition” (Rose, 1994a, pp. 67-68).

DJ Ariel uses this perspective not simply as a means of producing music, but a means of

understanding her mixed heritage, her memories of which are simply pieces, samples from what she

has learned gradually. She takes these and seeks a greater understanding to create a rough sketch of

her cultural history, much of which still seems unknown. Her musical expressions seem to go

through the same process: “I don’t know how to characterize my style. It’s definitely […] my own.

I’ve developed my own style. I mean, I’m not afraid to play what I wanna play if I feel like the room

will be receptive to it. I play a lot of music that people don’t know.” The samples of her heritage,

pieced together through my invocations to narrative parallel the sound collages she puts together, if

the audience seems receptive. Explorations manifest through sound.

83

See Chapter 7 in particular, “From Rocking to B-boying: History and Mystery.”

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The practices of sampling and mixing to produce something new have been reified over time. As

iterative practices, they provide a way to gesture at the malleable borders of local instances of hip-

hop culture. LolaBunz describes Toronto hip-hop with reference to the varieties of style available,

resulting from the city’s diverse population: “It’s like taking a whole bunch of different colour

Skittles, putting them in a bottle and shaking them up.” This shake-up scrambles sounds and dialects

that can even point the audience to specific neighbourhoods in Toronto, and to specific points in

time in the city’s history.84 For my narrative participants, sampling and mixing become not just ways

to create artistic works, but lenses through which they make sense of their lived experiences and

eventually fashion a sense of self.

8.1.3 The “real” story

The creative process finally results in a story – the manifestation of the past-influenced now, the

current whole as embodied pieces of inter-cultural knowledge and (un)intentional gaps made visual,

aural, palpable through dance, music, and lyrics.

Jester reminds us, “[T]hese kids came out from the ghetto, you know, the ghetto ghettoes and they

wanted the world to see who they were through a way of […] fashion and style and movement and

sound. So they were like, ‘This is who we are.’” This representation is the result of the process of

living; that is, it is both thoughtful and unthoughtful, but in the moment of performance, intentional.

It is also a story recalled and retold by those I interviewed as they tried to describe and define hip-

hop.

Representation, “This is who we are,” is a claim to identity, a pronouncement through stylistic

gestures; and, because stylistic, implies the result of creative process. LolaBunz describes the critical

aspects of this process:

What have I been through? What, what do I wanna talk about? What message do I wanna

put out into the world […]? […] I wouldn’t make music about something that is untrue to

me, you know what I’m saying? [W]hat […] skin am I comfortable in, right? So that’s

keepin’ it real for me, you know?

Hip-hop’s history, individual experiences, and a determination of performance intent and content,

become wrapped in “skin,” attached to oneself in a way that packages these pieces into a whole.

84

See Chapter 4 for a discussion on Toronto’s changing hip-hop names.

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This crafting of a story as identity is seen by Jazzy Jester as “what hip-hop’s always been. […] [H]ip-

hop’s been like, moving and changing and evolving and like, shape, shaping uh…to a certain

individual” when remixed with one’s experiences. LolaBunz demonstrates this as her self-inquiry

continues:

People know I’m from Jane & Finch and blah, blah, blah, but, who am I really? Like, this […]

Canadian, but Nigerian, girl, so even with [the Controlla remix] track, like I was really

excited to do that song ‘cause I’m like, people don’t know I could do this, like, who, and I

even speak the language, everything. And so my people back home, it’s just like, it’s, it’s like,

woah, you’re from Canada, but you’re still sticking to your roots, right? Like, letting people

know where you are.

That hip-hop takes its shape from individuals involved in its culture creates reverberations between

each person and those around them who form communities of influence with them. This dynamic

relationship created by stories upon stories upon stories, ad infinitum, means that hip-hop is

always changing. So I mean, it’s still hip-hop but it’s always, which route is hip-hop going

now? You know what I mean? Like there was the Biggies and the Tupacs. Then there’s like

the Nicki Minajs and then there’s like the Kendrick Lamars. And then there’s like the Jay

Coles and the Jay-Zs like it’s hip-hop, but it’s just, […] [I]t’s the same genre, but it’s soo

different, you know what I mean? […] [I]t’s a playground. (LolaBunz)

“Keepin’ it real,” then is a continuous act framed through the artistic gestures of socially embedded

individuals harnessing the momentum of change.

Blended, steeped, and aged, gestural expressions of “This is who we are,” appear effortless when

performed. Ariel states it as a matter of fact, “I think even just the diversity that I play shows

[originality and where I’m from]. I don’t really have to stretch very far. I have a different look. I

have a different vibe. I have a different way of presenting myself. […] I don’t have to think about

that.” This presentation of self, referencing place, as performed through musical gestures are tied to

personal stories, which, because they emerge from the individual and their particular experiences

can be construed as original works of/from self, that is, as stories of a culturally-embedded identity.

Diverse and diffuse, these stories told through dance, lyrics, and music complicate attempts to define

hip-hop in static terms. My participants seem to agree, however, that hip-hop is defined by the stories

it holds, as unique and changing as the people who create, perform, watch, and listen.

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8.2 Acquiring skill

To create a story with intention requires skill. Today’s students of hip-hop art forms can learn in

more conventional, institutional settings, i.e. DJing classes, dance studios, and writing workshops.

Despite their increasing availability, there is no requirement to take classes in order to be

acknowledged as a student of hip-hop, and no matter how one begins to acquire skills, being able to

create with greater expertise requires the same general process through which earlier practitioners of

the art form developed. That is, they must find and participate in local learning environments where

participants with a spectrum of skills, and from a spectrum of skill levels interact under presumed

engagement in hip-hop art forms and with hip-hop culture. Within these learning environments, the

call, “Each one, teach one,” continues to be enacted as knowledge of artistic practices is formed

together with the acquisition of a hip-hop cultural perspective.85

8.2.1 Observation, reflection, experimentation

The artists I interviewed both in the First and Second Stages of study did not take classes. Instead,

they were introduced to hip-hop through family or peers. None of them began by going to an

“expert” or “teacher” in order to learn how to do the art form in which they were interested, though

they may have learned from someone who knew more than they did at the time.

Beginning the learning process includes listening to recorded music and/or watching videos to get a

feel for the music and the movements associated with the art forms. In other words, observation, is a

requirement of the learning process. Jazzy Jester recalls that he and his cousin taught each other

what they know. He also watched breaking videos that showed more skilled dancers performing. He

then “tried on” the moves: He saw what worked for others and discovered whether or not these

worked for him, adapting as necessary. This trying-on requires an active, physical reflection. It is an

ongoing experiment that simultaneously queries both the working process and the creative output

itself.

Though consisting of only himself, his cousin, and distant performers on video, Jester’s early

learning took place through information-sharing and feedback within a group consisting of both

local and distant individuals. Observation then does not simply entail watching and listening, but

85

Fogarty (2012) discusses the way this call is manifested in Toronto B-boy, Dyzee’s, mentorship of neighbourhood

youths as he ensures that anyone who cannot yet exhibit a particular break move is taught by those who have learned how to do it (pp. 57-58).

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will be shown to become an increasingly immersive experience that attends to the making of an art

product, as well as the performance interactions that surround it.86

The same collection of steps can be drawn from Ariel’s narrative. She and a friend would go digging,

searching for sounds in record stores. What goes unsaid here, though it is implied, is that she had

heard enough hip-hop music to develop a particular sound taste – “female” hip-hop – that no one

else seemed to want. Because Ariel’s entry into the culture was through b-girling, the music she

heard would have been, as for Jazzy Jester, an experience of sound, lyrics, and movement – already

a full body experience. In addition to crate digging with peers, she was surrounded by freestyle

rappers and their rhythm and rhymes. Her musical education permeated her daily high school life

and not just the moments when she would produce music. It was so ingrained that “it wasn’t really

anything that was...like it wasn’t a process. It was just something you did, something I did.”

Acquiring skill, then, includes immersion in the cultural interactions that generate the art forms.

This allowed Ariel to eventually gain a “spidey sense” for what would be good through “watching

and practicing.”

LolaBunz had a very similar process: “I would say, that’s […] my learning – listening, mimicking

and freestyling.” Listening and mimicking are fairly self-explanatory, but freestyling includes

experimentation in rhyme and flow within a rhythm. LolaBunz honed this practice through battles

with her brother: “[T]hose little freestyles playing around with my brother, it was training, to just get

my mind running and getting my lyrics going through my head all the time.” Again, music was not

relegated to practice or lesson time, but was something that was happening all the time. To know

what works is to be repeatedly critical, which is both a reflection on self and on acquired skill in

relation to a community of surrounding participants engaged in hip-hop artistic production.

8.2.2 Role of hip-hop community of practice

At a University of Toronto conference in 2010 focused on women in academia, Dr. Alissa Trotz,

now Director of Women’s and Gender Studies Institute at U of T and a Caribbean Studies professor

declared that we often mistakenly think of “community” as a group of people who agree with each

other. In practice, members of communities disagree all the time, but are nevertheless invested in the

well-being of the community.

86

This will be further discussed in Section 8.2.2, which pertains to the role of communities of hip-hop practice.

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This is also true and ever-evident in Toronto’s hip-hop community, where differences of opinion,

and even of fact, create a dynamic dissonance that enriches artistic development as skill is acquired.

8.2.2.1 Competition and evaluation

Communities of artists and audiences are crucial to creative development. The ways that my

participants spoke of connections with other art practitioners echo Wenger’s (1998) description of

communities of practice. As part of a social learning theory, Wenger (1998) explains that a

community of practice is comprised of the relationships that form between people mutually engaged

in the enterprise of meaning and identity negotiation in a learning environment. Through this

sustained engagement, a “repertoire [that] includes routines, words, tools, ways of doing things,

stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts” (p. 83) develops. This repertoire can then be

deployed in this negotiation. Such a community also develops modes of accountability between its

participants (p. 84). The communities of practice that make up Toronto’s hip-hop community

provide developing artists with an implicit or explicit competitive platform for differing creative

perspectives to manifest in efforts to be original. This point was emphasized by the artists I

interviewed, all of whom indicated that the expectation of producing something different, which

would then be evaluated as artistic expressions, motivated them and developed their creative

abilities.

Competition need not happen in a formal way, e.g. a contest with judges, but rather seems always

present as a self-test. LolaBunz says that other artists keep her on her “A-game,” while audience

reaction provides her with feedback about how effectively her messages are received:

[I]t was also my community and just the way that I grew up that I wanted to create music

that people can relate to, but at the same time I didn’t wanna be like a puppet or a Barbie,

you know what I’m saying. I wanted to be something else and I wanted to show people that

females can do this too. We can even do it better than you guys. […] You know, that’s how,

that’s kind of what my drive was.

Her competition is against no one in particular, but rather against the limiting conventions she

perceives as a female rapper. Striving to be better and more than expected is a strong motivator.

Formal competitions also exist, however, and Jester’s narrative reveals its varied effects.

Opportunities for musical expression amidst a formal battle context are described on a spectrum

from celebratory, to tense, to constricting. His first battle experience was nerve-wracking as he is not

a confrontational personality, but this initiation opened up a close friendship with another b-boy.

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Indeed, as Jester’s narrative continues, we see friendships arising from his competitive experiences,

brought about by respect for other dancers’ skills and ideas.

Yet Jester also comes to realize that competitions can severely limit creativity of movement and

musical exploration, despite propelling b-boys and b-girls into an international career, when dancers

sculpt movements in order to cater to the perceived tastes of judges. Tensions then arise between

creative freedom and tactical battle requirements, amateur and professional ambition, and

underground and commercial viability.

The above competitive contexts are delineated once again by historical expectations surrounding the

practice of hip-hop art forms. Ideas of freedom, creativity, and individual representation are

normative ideals that splinter with the friction of everyday realities.

DJ Dopey, turntablist, and DMC World Champion in 2003, speaks about the tension by comparing

DMC battles in the late 1990s and early 2000s to the more recent Red Bull turntable battles. He

thinks that more “old-school” turntable skills and vinyl may make a come-back because of corporate

interest in DJ battles. In his view, after the DMC World Championship in 2003, turntablism’s

popularity waned, but recently, “because of probably Red Bull, and how rich Red Bull is and like

how, how these guys can like literally just shit money, and like spray the whole city with like, ads

and like, give free tickets […] out to everybody, right? […] with that kind of recognition, I think […]

it’ll slowly come back to like, turntablism again ‘cause kids are started to get interested again.”

Despite this renewed positive valuation of turntable expertise, we can read suspicion of Red Bull’s

intentions in Dopey’s words as generous corporate sponsorship can lead to a devaluation of less

profitable hip-hop cultural practices.

DJ Ariel also acknowledges normative battle expectations but for the most part seems to distance

herself from competition. Though participating in international battles seems to be expected as one

progresses, Ariel refuses to be successful on terms set by corporations who capitalize on hip-hop

culture art forms, such as those increasingly set by hip-hop event sponsors, also citing Red Bull as an

example. By absenting herself from this performance arena, she faces another set of tensions as her

decision not to play in this game is also a decision not to participate in the inevitable competition

against and with the popular, masculine face of hip-hop commerce and culture.87 Given that this is

87

The DMC World Championships, which began in 1986 saw thousands of DJs battle for world renown. And yet, as

Mark Katz reports, “Among the thousands of DJs who have entered the organization’s events since 1986, perhaps no more than ten have been women; only one—Kuttin Kandi—has progressed to the U.S. finals” (2006, p. 580). Though hip-hop

culture values diversity and women have been part of its development from the beginning, the popular face of the culture is undeniably masculine.

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the existing terrain that all DJs must navigate, non-participation according to established pathways

to success can put one at a disadvantage.

At one point in our conversation pertaining to the importance of crate digging and being able to

create music with vinyl records, Ariel muses about the implicit requirement to learn essential

turntable skills, despite the increasing prevalence of technology that no longer requires it (Serato is a

popular example). Ariel thinks that “the old ways are being kept by the older heads [most of whom

are male…]. It’s like an evolution, but a lot of people don’t want to accept it, because it’s not fully

rooted in the culture of it all.” She adds that she is probably seen as less of a DJ because she “hasn’t

been practicing on [her] turntables as often […] not scratching as often. But it’s okay, because [her]

history, actually, is there in DJing.” Authenticity as a DJ seems to stem from learning and practicing

on turntables and working with vinyl.

This excerpt from my interview with DJ Dopey, explains how he views the value of spinning vinyl:

DOPEY: Serato, you could like, you really see, it’s visual, too, so you could see like, say the

kick and the snare, uh, they provide lines for you and you could actually line them up with

the other songs. So, I would still say that, like, learn to use the vinyl and like, learn to like

mix with it, because it’s such a different way of mixing and like, you don’t look and it’s…it’s

very challenging, right? And a lot of DJs that learned only on Serato probably can’t mix with

vinyl because it, it’s a lot of it is, is, you know, very minute changes that you can’t see with

your eyes, so.

MYRTLE: Yeah. So, what do you think the advantage is to…

D: To just vinyl?

M: Yeah, just like not having the visual and you’re just…

D: Um…honestly, I think it’s m…I don’t wanna say it’s a disadvantage. I think it’s, it’s

actually a disadvantage [I laugh]. And I think it’s just…because it’s, it’s a lot harder, so, I

mean, I understand why a lot of people wouldn’t even like, bother. But, I mean the

advantages are, you get the sound and like, you get, a truer feeling of like, what the true art

form is. It’s a, it’s basically a purist point of view.

M: Yeah, yeah.

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D: So it’s like, there’s no real advantages to playing vinyl, other than, maybe track selection,

and the sound being, you know, a little bit better, so.

There is a tension between keeping up DJing’s historical, technical roots and the advantages of

newer technologies. History has become expressed in physical movements over an instrument and

these gestures have given form to the idea of “the hip-hop DJ,” with these technical abilities

stereotypically assigned to men (Katz, 2012; Schloss, 2004). That they continue to be valued as a

sign of authenticity makes explicit the ways DJs are evaluated, conferred recognition, and

authenticated. Ironically, this work of “realness” is what sponsors like Red Bull hope to capitalize

on, prompting questions about cultural appropriation and the degree to which traditionally

maintained practices and values are up for sale. Who buys? Who or what is unmarketable, and what

Signifyin(g) possibilities might this afford? Breaking away from this normative DJ image makes

possible new filters and the emergence of new images of the hip-hop DJ.

Evaluation is implicit even in ostensibly non-competitive scenarios, effected through and against the

normative frameworks, expectations, and images developed through the culture. Communities of

hip-hop practice are sites for renewal of these expectations as well as sites for breaking them as

individual artists must be recognizable as part of hip-hop while also being different from previous

hip-hop formulations. Artists must be real and be recognized as part of the culture. They are evaluated

by audiences (which include the artist in reflexivity) against these complex criteria that both sustain

and expand the boundaries of hip-hop.

8.2.2.2 Knowledge of self and community

The artist narratives presented in the previous chapters show the ways the delineation of hip-hop’s

boundaries, informed by its history and reinforced or reshaped by hip-hop communities, are woven

into their daily lives and developing perspectives. For aspiring artists, the imperative to “Keep it real,”

in order to be recognized by their communities of hip-hop requires working with the tensions that

arise from efforts to be true to oneself and to be true to hip-hop. Understanding self and the

surrounding hip-hop community become essential requirements for the production of art works, and

the interrelatedness between the individual and the collective is shown by the artists I spoke with to

be inextricable.

Throughout her narrative, LolaBunz describes her community as a dynamic space where she

continues to understand herself and her embodied artistry. This segment encapsulates the

complexities and symbioses between self and community:

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[W]hen it comes to my style, like, finding your style, it takes a while to know what your style

is. […] I’m just now kinda trying to, starting to find my sound, […] well, style, sound, I don’t

know it’s like the same thing. But my sound, like, who is LolaBunz? What kinda sound is

LolaBunz? […] I would say I’m still kinda working on it, to try to find what my sound is.

[…] I’m still kind of developing my style and my sound, you know. […] And it sometimes,

[…] it’ll take a lot of songs to realize, okay, no, this is the type of sound I like. This is me,

this is my style, you know. [….] What’s LolaBunz? […] [T]rial and error. That’s my process.

Just putting music out, recording a much as I can, collaborating with different artists and

different producers and then seeing what the viewers, what the listeners, what the listeners

like, you know? That’s kind of what it is. What I’m comfortable with and what the listeners

like as well.

Recognizing her embeddedness in community spaces, LolaBunz strives to create a sound to

represent “what is” LolaBunz. This sound will be both a reflection of self and of the listeners who

interact with it and with her self.

Similarly, Ariel tells me, “I don’t know how to characterize my style.” Adding that she will play

what she wants so long as the audience is receptive to it. Ariel’s “community of practice,” does not

consist primarily of other DJs or hip-hop artists, but rather

people who are curators. Who…have their own websites that are music-based, or they do

events that are music-based, you know. They’re actively involved from another prong. And

they’re facilitating what I do, and how I come to be able to do what I do by promoting

music. I’m not in the realm of DJs.

The circles of community she describes parallel the diversity of her cultural heritage:

My family consists of so many different nations. So many different people that, how we even

got here…to say that I’m Indigenous and that I’m still here is a miracle. To say that part of

my family survived the Holocaust and we’re still here. That’s a miracle. To say that, like,

you know, that all the other pieces in between that I don’t even really know much about, you

know like…heaven itself is political. I’m supposed to not be here, like […] I mean,

technically, on paper, the Canadian states got me, ‘cause I’m not status. So technically I’m

not here, right? You can’t take that away from me, so that’s their problem, not mine. But,

but it is. I don’t see it as being different. I don’t see it as being a thing either. It’s just what I

was born into; that’s who I am. I’ve always just seen it that way because that’s my

complexity.

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“Who I am” can be seen as the current result of a community-embedded, inquiring self. From the

onset of his interest in hip-hop, Jester decided to immerse himself in Toronto’s culture:

I wanted to know the emcees, I wanted to know the DJs, I wanted to know the graffiti artists

[. …] so I could be, you know, I could be part of them and know what it’s like to be part of a

hip-hop community, to be part of what I love so much – the music, the fashion, the art, the

style, the dancing, like, everything in one.

These people, (inter)acting in community spaces, became a source of hip-hop-oriented information

that Jester actively uses to craft his dance moves.

Activated by these music-infused spaces, Jester aims to communicate to others:

I like connecting with people and it doesn’t matter how it’s done, or how it’s perceived as

long as there’s a connection. […] I freestyle everything I do. I do. But, the more and more I

think about it, the more and more […] it plays in my head. I, I really don’t, I, as much as I

freestyle, right? I feelstyle it. Like, I feel it, and I’m very situational and I have to feel that

situation in order to move that certain way, right? So, I feel like that’s […] the way I

contribute to my community, is by giving people a feeling of something, you know [….]

[Y]ou’re a performer, […] regardless if you like it or not. Once you’re in that circle, you’re

performing and you have an audience, so you gotta, you gotta be conscious of that, right?

[….] [T]here is a consciousness that’s still there, that’s still relevant while you’re still dancing

for yourself. So because of that consciousness, you, you’re now exuding this, this energy,

and […] for me, I always want to give that energy out in a way where it’s not just like,

“Yeah, that was really cool, that like, what I saw,” but I want people to feel what I, what

they’re watching. […] [T]here’s new sounds now that’s just, just like, “Oh,” and then you get

that stank face [makes face and I laugh] and then you’re just like, “Oh shiiit. That’s so

good,” right? That’s, that’s the feeling […] I wanna try to exude […] when I’m dancing…or

when I’m moving, for people to have that, that same reaction.

Knowledge of self and of community is formed and expressed in a give-and-take dynamic that

becomes crucial to artist progress, recognition, and self-satisfaction.88 As my participants’ voices

narratively illustrate, it is through this interaction that acquired skills are employed toward lyricism,

music production, and dance, transformed into artistic knowledge through socially embedded creative

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The reflexivity of the freestyling process in a cypher context is described by Jazzy Jester’s fellow crew member, B-boy

LefteLep, in a video documentary (and article) by Fogarty (2016).

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acts. The resulting expressions emerge from the process of grappling with personal histories, hip-hop

history and its normative frameworks, feedback from evaluative moments of competition, and from

practicing acquired skills needed to fashion tensions into creative works through which their

identities as artists can be self-affirmed and recognized by their communities of practice.

8.3 Role of music

Music is a gateway. For my participants, it provided a point of entry into hip-hop. They describe in

one way or another, a gravitational pull caused by beats and lyrics that made their bodies respond

through movement. As they learned more about hip-hop culture, participated in its communities,

and worked with their chosen art forms, a personalized attachment to the music began to form.

DJ Dopey describes music’s connection to the movements of his life:

[T]here’s always a beat to my life, I find. So like with, with the golf, like a golf swing, it’s all

about tempo, and it’s kinda like the same thing with, with fishing, and like, hip-hop. And

like it’s, it’s just all about the tempo of things. […] And the tempo is always kinda like a hip-

hop tempo, which is like, maybe like, an 80 bpm, 84 bpm, and that seems to be […] the re-

occurring factor that I, I find always relates to everything in my life. […] And everything is

artistic in a way, where, and I know golf and fishing doesn’t sound artistic, but […] the golf

swing is very intricate and […] you kinda sculpt it to a point where you’re like hitting these

[…] beautiful shots. […] And with fishing, it’s kinda the same thing. […] [A]t least for the

type of fishing that I do [….] it’s not necessarily about catching the fish, […] it’s also about

like, the cast. And like I, I always try to achieve like a, like a beautiful cast [….]. It sounds

all, it sounds weird, but like, when, when you watch it, and like you actually watch it to […]

a hip-hop beat and like, you’re watching this fucking cast, like it might make sense. […] I’ve

never really like, talked about it, but like I feel like that’s, that’s what […] relates everything

back to hip-hop and like back to just that tempo in general in music.

Similarly, my narrative participants’ stories speak about music as an essential tool in the daily

meaning-making of experience. “It influences how you think. It influences how you move and how

you live your life through the course of everyday things around you, … everyday surroundings,”

Jazzy Jester explains. Music infuses his very body such that “whatever is happening in music is

happening to [him] too, ‘cause it affects our moods and changes our […] being.”

Far from being a benign reaction to sounds, DeNora (2000) notes that “when the music ‘hops’ and

‘skips,’ so too bodies may feel motivated to move, as it were, like the music. In these cases, music is

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doing something more than re-presenting or simulating bodily patterns and bringing them to mind; it

is providing a ground or medium within which to be a body…So, aligned with and entrained by the

physical patterns music profiles, bodies not only feel empowered, they may be empowered in the

sense of gaining a capacity” (emphasis in original, p. 124). The inverse is also true. If music can

empower, it can also oppress. And the ways of being in entanglement with music transform over a

lifespan.

The effects of musical immersion are cumulative and develop or change with the artist as listener.

DJ Ariel has come to understand that she has always carried these effects with her. At this point in

her life, she reflects:

[I]n this journey of the past couple of years, I’ve seen how some of the music I grew up with

was integral [to] building the way I see things. Uhh…my self-esteem went right through the

floor, like…I couldn’t hold myself up anymore. And, I think, to be honest with you, part of it

is just hearing how women have been so disrespected in hip-hop music for so many years. I

thought I was invincible to it [….] But then […] you get to see how your people aren’t

looked upon as human beings. […] So I think that there’s more to it than…than I was willing

to admit prior [….] But now that I’m…understanding maybe more of who I am, and

understanding that it’s more of a collective effort and more of a community that we need to

get through all of this garbage that we’re dealing with in the world, I can’t go back to that

individualistic way of dealing with things [….] I have no tolerance for garbage.

But hip-hop’s musical formations are diverse and “every once in a while there’s the gems” (DJ Ariel)

that LolaBunz views as moments of joy, celebration, and knowledge-building. Thinking back to her

earlier school days, she points out:

[I]t’s very humorous, too, like. It’s not always only scary stuff, it’s very humorous,

like…Growing up, all a these crazy dances, like [I laugh] do the laffy taffy like, lean back,

like, it was just, it was just really fun. And […] growing up in middle school […] everybody

used to be a dancer, everybody was in a, a dance group […] ...It was crazy [she seems so

happy to recall all this]! And just looking forward to those talent shows like, what show are

they gonna do? Are they gonna do the Harlem shake? […] [I]t’s just fun. […] And the thing

with hip-hop, too, it’s always changing. [….] [I]t’s a playground [beats on table]. […] It’s a

playground.

As a rapper, she also feels a responsibility to motivate listeners to social action:

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[W]e could listen to the news, we could read reports, but sometime you just need to hear a

song to remind you. Like, even if you just remember the hook or one part, one part of the

song, it’s, it’s sparking the discussion in somebody’s head. [A]nd me just bringing life

experiences to music, that’s always what I wanna do, just spark that expression in

somebody’s head. Make you think about it. If you didn’t think about it yesterday, listen to

this song. Just listen. Give me one minute and listen to this song. Think about it. ‘Cause you

never know, when, maybe when you think about it, maybe you gonna do some’in’ about it,

right?

These ways of being in hip-hop entwine musical engagement with acts of living. The above artists

don’t seem to disconnect from the effects of music and by extension, hip-hop culture. Their

narratives reveal the complex weaves of musical and life strands.

8.3.1 Music and memory

Anecdotally, it seems that a familiar song can take us back to particular times in our lives, making

the moment reappear not just through imagined images, but through the emotional tints and shades

that accompany them.

The process of sampling that permeates hip-hop culture makes tangible the ways we assemble

patches of recalled information or memories to create what we might call “knowledge.” DJ Spooky,

who calls himself a “memory artist” views the improvisational aspects of hip-hop artistic creations as

an act of knowledge because during this process, new information is formed (Becker et al., 2002). In

effect, a circular creative path emerges wherein music helps recall the past (i.e. history) which is

reworked in the present and forms new music that bears re-visioning of past samples, which is used

by new audiences to recall all over again, repeating the act of knowledge formation.

The artist narratives I gathered illustrate this memory-accessing function of music in a way that feeds

the present moment of creation and performance. In a description that did not seem to flow into her

story-telling about lyrics she wrote for a track called “Sick,” commemorating loved ones who have

passed away, LolaBunz provides me with a memory fragment:

[G]rowing up in, in Driftwood and what we used to do, sit on the green box, you know the

electric box [we laugh], […]. Sittin’ on a green box and having barbecues in our, in our

backyard, with our little 5-cent gums and things. When we were young, we didn’t have

money, but we’ll go to the store [beat] with like a dollar [beat], come back with a whole

bunch of candy [softer beat], play some music in [softer beat] the backyard, and act like

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we’re having a jam, like [I laugh]. But it, it’s just, it’s just the real life, you know what I

mean?

“Sick” recalls lost lives whose ghosts bring up youthful stories already set to remembered backyard

music, which, in a stroke more complicated than a return to the present, informs the writing of

“Sick.” The workings of this circular path were not, or perhaps could not be, described through the

narrative linearity of our interview process, resulting in what seemed to me as a fragment that I, the

new audience, turned into an act of knowledge.

For Jazzy Jester, music aided learning and internalization of hip-hop history.

I really wanted to understand the culture of what was happening in that era. [….] I studied it,

I studied the culture through the internet, through that book and then […] I made a CD of

songs that I thought that they listened to […] in their era and I had it in my CD player, […]

listening to it, reading [….] over and over and over to get a sense of what was happening and

the feeling that was coming out of that book and the sounds that were coming out of that

book in order for me to understand the feeling of what hip-hop was.

Facts were felt through careful listening. Jester then used this information to influence his dancing

during his first international performance. Music accompanied that past and was re-heard in the

present knowledge-making moment and used through Jester’s performance, arguably, a re-mix of

history in dance.

DJ Ariel provides a glimpse into the way that hip-hop music inspires her creativity:

Freddie Gibbs just put out a new record and he has a track with Black Thought called

“Extradite.” [….] [I]t’s those ones that I’m like, “Oh you sampled Bob James. Oh you didn’t

even need to, like, you just looped it.” And I love Bob James, and…you know like he’s like

that jazz/funk era that inspired so much hip-hop. And he brought it back to that era, he

brought it back to that time. And then he brought the message back to a way that I can

relate. Where it’s like, Ohhh! You’re talking about something real now. […] Um, because

that’s obviously where my heart is. I love, I love that sound. [….] Gonna love the stuff that I

love, I can’t help it. It’s not…I’m never ever gonna put it off the table, but maybe I need to

start making it.

Again, hip-hop’s early history is emphasized, sampled by Freddie Gibbs, given meaning through

Ariel’s experience, generating yet another creative, knowledge-forming possibility. Hip-hop music

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allowed my participants to access parts of hip-hop history, their own personal memories, and the

feelings that attend these recollections.

8.3.2 Creation – expressions, community, identity

LolaBunz describes an example of the connections hip-hop music can make between people

distanced from each other in many ways by referencing Jay-Z’s “It’s A Hard Knock Life:”

[I]t was a hard knock life for us, you know what I mean? But, but, we still got through it, you

know what I mean? So like songs like that, I mean, it’s just real life, and sometime it’s just,

somehow you just need to hear that for motivation. Like somebody’s feeling you too, like, it

is a hard-knock life for you. We are going through these things, but guess what? We’re still

here, you know.

Jay-Z accessed LolaBunz’s memories and becomes allied with her struggles, which are also the

struggles of others around her, as evidenced by her use of “we.” The inclusion of life history

references in lyrics resonated powerfully with LolaBunz and Jay-Z is no longer just a celebrity, but a

person “impacted by the very same social, economic, and political conditions that affect other

members of [her] communit[y]” (Alim, 2006, p. 971). It is through this type of connection, explained

by Appadurai (1990) as a kind of cross-global coherence, that the idea of a “hip-hop nation” can

form (E. Clay, 2009; Hayduk, 2004).

DJ Ariel describes this strength of hip-hop, saying:

[It is] a way to tell stories and that to me, that’s really inherent to some of my traditional

background, because a lot of us are storytellers. […] [W]e all have a story to tell and the

more that we listen to each other, the more that we’ll be able to see the common truth in

everything, to be able to find that commonality, to actually form a brotherhood or

sisterhood.

These collective voices, whether sounding in close proximity, or resonating across the globe, connect

because of a perceived common experience, or minimally, feeling, brought about by the music. In

his discussion of the importance of personal stories in building a community history, Alim (2006)

asserts, “Life histories become the social history of a community. In this case, individual Hip Hop

life histories, when grouped, actually serve as an oral, social history of the Hip Hop Cultural

Movement from within” (Alim, 2006, p. 971).

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Communities don’t simply come together to party, to discuss in online forums, or to comment on

videos and tracks, they have the ability to assert a political presence, as Jazzy Jester reminds me in

reference to the originating South Bronx context of hip-hop, “These guys are…these guys are scary

in a way where they have a voice. A community that has a voice that can be overpowering.” Music,

as entwined in skill acquisition, in hip-hop history lessons, in individual and collective memories,

and spaces of party and protest, “is a resource against which holding forms, templates and

parameters of action and experience are forged, if it can be seen to have effects upon bodies, hearts

and minds, then the matter of music in the social space is, …an aesthetic-political matter” (emphasis

in original, DeNora, 2000, p. 129).

This music, replenished by renewed access to recalled information, makes space possible for a remix

with experiences past, present, and in the future from both individual and communal perspectives.

As a conduit for memory and a medium for creativity, “[m]usic, then, plays a significant part in the

way that individuals author space, musical texts being creatively combined with local knowledges

and sensibilities in ways that tell particular stories about the local, and impose collectively defined

meanings and significance on space” (Bennett, 2004, p. 3). As an entrenched resource for hip-hop

community participants, music becomes material to be worked on, fashioned through social and

personal tensions and resonances, with the potential to gesture towards artist performance identities.

8.4 Factors affecting artist identity formation

A confluence of complex cultural influences, as discussed in the foregoing sections, demands that an

artist find one’s place and express their uniquely understood and structured knowledge in an

embodied way – a present, embodied exegesis that becomes associated with their artist performance

identity, what they refer to as their style.

The accomplishment of a personal, recognizable style takes work over time, shown by the ways the

artists I interviewed speak of it as an exploratory process. LolaBunz, equating it with sound creation,

says:

[S]tyle, sound, I don’t know it’s like the same thing. But my sound, like, who is LolaBunz?

What kinda sound is LolaBunz? […] I would say I’m still kinda working on it, to try to find

what my sound is. […] I’m still kind of developing my style and my sound, you know. […]

[T]rial and error. That’s my process. Just putting music out, recording a much as I can,

collaborating with different artists and different producers and then seeing what the viewers,

what the listeners, what the listeners like, you know?

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Style, as realized in her sound, becomes embodied (“What kinda sound is LolaBunz?”) and heard as

her artist performance identity (“But my sound […] who is LolaBunz?”). It is also the result of a

negotiation with audiences who may have different creative expectations.

Similarly, the unity between person and style is made adamantly clear by Jazzy Jester: “[W]ithout

style, you’re never gonna know who that person really is. […] without having to say anything,

you’re showing everyone who you are.” He further ties style with the idea of the “real,” connecting

it with hip-hop culture’s call to authenticity (“Keep it real”). Once again, meanings made by

individuals of their life experiences must be represented as honestly as possible to the ever-present

hip-hop community, which has the capacity to decide the authenticity of creative works.

Ariel’s explanation speaks of style as something she has worked on over time. Her descriptions also

hint at its development as a search, “I don’t know how to characterize my style. It’s definitely […]

my own. I’ve developed my own style. I mean, I’m not afraid to play what I wanna play if I feel like

the room will be receptive to it. I play a lot of music that people don’t know.” She plays out her

desired sounds, knowing that she risks rejection. She expresses authorship of her style, despite not

having the words to describe it; and, as it comes out in her music, she creatively works with the

tensions news sounds and a different style could produce.

These ways of speaking about style show how it is bound to an individual and the extent to which it

can be inextricable from the identity that is performed through creative gestures by artists. In other

words, style, performed identity, and the artists’ sense of self (aspects of which may or may not be

part of the identity they choose to perform) become entwined. So much so that style becomes a

signifier for the “real” artist self. Style as performance identity is embodied in a way that entangles it

with artists themselves.

The role of hip-hop community validation can also be seen in the above descriptions. There is

always a nod to the audience who can accept or reject expressions of style. And because style is so

closely bound to artist identity, which in turn, is so closely bound to lived experiences that are

formative of identity in broad terms, the recognition conferred by hip-hop communities is essential

for a sense of belonging to hip-hop as a culture.

Ultimately, learning how to be a hip-hop artist, beginning with the ways creative skills are acquired,

can best be characterized as processes of action that make possible the formation and expression of

artist performance identity. Normative frameworks that arise from the body of stories (mediated

overwhelmingly by music) that define hip-hop further require that artist performance identity be

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bound to their non-performance selves who make meaning out of their histories and day-to-day

experiences through the hip-hop discourses circulating in their communities of practice.

The foregoing sections provide insight into the ways normative hip-hop cultural expectations create

tensions for artists as they make sense of their experiences in communities. As the artists I

interviewed practice creative skills, they do so with the expectation that they will come to represent

the reality of their selves as narrated through the gestures of their art forms. That is, acquired skills,

moulded into artistic knowledge, can be employed toward the performance of artist identities.

Judith Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity and Gates’s (2014) explanation of the act of

Signifyin(g) provide useful lenses for understanding these processes of action. This next section

provides analysis of the way artists’ learning experiences, through which they acquire skill,

culminate in the development of unique performance identities.

Judith Butler theorizes the ongoing activity of acquiring ways to act within a culture with an eye

toward identity performance:

[T]o understand identity as a practice, and as a signifying practice, is to understand culturally

intelligible subjects as the resulting effects of a rule-bound discourse that inserts itself in the

pervasive and mundane signifying acts of linguistic life. Abstractly considered, language

refers to an open system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently created and

contested….In a sense, all signification takes place within the orbit of the compulsion to

repeat; ‘agency,’ then, is to be located within the possibility of a variation on that

repetition…the rules governing signification not only restrict, but enable the assertion of

alternative domains of cultural intelligibility. (1990, p. 198)

A hip-hop performance identity will be “intelligible” so long as it falls within the culture’s normative

frameworks. But as Butler points out the rules both restrict and enable ways of acting, ways of being

intelligible.

My interviews with Toronto hip-hop artists exhibit, however, a more active role in performance

identity creation. They are not simply restricted or enabled, they do something with the overlapping

imperatives of discourses, normative frameworks, circulating in their communities (hip-hop or not).

It is here that Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s explication of Signifyin(g) illuminates the work that goes on

in Butler’s location of “agency.” This space is inhabited and, as my participants’ narratives

illustrated, sought, not merely as possibility, but more importantly, opportunity to perform the

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realness of their experiences and the identities that result from their personal meaning-making

processes.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. explains that Signifyin(g) is “a mode of formal revision...most crucially, it

turns on repetition of formal structures and their differences” (2014, p. 57). As opposed to

“signification” (small cap), which in everyday usage pertains to what words, and as an extension,

gestures, mean, Signification (capitalized) plays with possibilities of meaning revealed through

creativity and interpretation.

[T]o revise the term signification is to select a term that represents the nature of the process of

meaning-creation and its representation….We are witnessing here a profound disruption at

the level of the signifier, precisely because of the relationship of identity that obtains between

the two apparently equivalent terms….To revise the received sign…is to critique the nature

of (white) meaning itself, to challenge through a literal critique of the sign the meaning of

meaning. What did/do black people signify in a society in which they were intentionally

introduced as the subjugated, as the enslaved cipher?….By an act of will, some historically

nameless community of remarkably self-conscious speakers of English defined their

ontological status as one of profound difference vis-à-vis the rest of society. What’s more

they undertook this act of self-definition, implicit in a (re)naming ritual, within the process of

signification that the English language had inscribed for itself. (2014, p. 52)

The artists highlighted here understand the art forms they create as their expressions of difference in

the break, that location of “agency,” made inevitable by the loop, the iterative replaying of normative

discourses that lulls individuals into sameness, reified over time. The performance identities hip-hop

artists present through the process of Signifyin(g) are embodied revisions of preconceived notions

others might impose on them. Importantly, this process of identity development frequently results in

a renaming. All the artist names used in the narratives of the previous chapters are hip-hop names

conferred through time and recognized through iterative Signifyin(g) practices that cohere as their

individual style in public performance arenas.

8.4.1 The loop and the break

Hip-hop’s normative frameworks provide a means of cultural belonging in ways that differentiate

those who identify with it from dominant, often limiting or oppressive, socio-political discourses.

Hip-hop culture’s origins story, characterized by its location in a socio-politically and economically

disadvantaged 1970s Bronx, and by the ethnic origins of its early practitioners and communities, is

referred to in ways that illustrate the foundations for hip-hop’s modes of creativity – its art forms.

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Mixing, sampling, and layering became means of gathering materials for musical (including dance)

creations. These processes closely paralleled the multi-ethnic interactions taking place at the time.

When viewed as an Afro-diasporic artistic culture that co-existed and interacted with other

ethnicities, first in the South Bronx, and then globally, hip-hop’s development is a story of making a

whole of myriad, diverse pieces – whether to make sense of individual and communal identities, or

to craft creative works of music and dance.

Indeed, the narratives presented in this dissertation show the dialogic relationship between musical

creativity and identity-building. Together with Bronx inhabitants’ (particularly its youth) need to be

heard and recognized in contradiction of prevailing narratives of poverty, loss, and racist

stereotypes, musical creativity and identity-building became a means of announcing the challenging,

raw, and hard-hitting realities overwhelmingly faced by the marginalized populations of 1970s

Bronx neighbourhoods. That is, artistic, musically-oriented gestures were born by unabashedly

“Keepin’ it real.” Hip-hop communities generally and, for the artists I interviewed, communities of

practice, grew to become arbiters of this “realness” – carving out the borders of cultural belonging

with its own “rule-bound discourse” (Butler, 1990, p. 198) that safe-guarded their communities (e.g.

through the Zulu Nation’s efforts at peacemaking between gangs; and later, from capitalistic,

appropriative forces).

Butler’s definition of performativity, growing out of analyses of dominant, heteronormative

discourses, with a caution against a “transcultural notion of patriarchy” (Butler, 1990, p. 48) shows

that this belonging, or normative intelligibility, is a function of the ways bodies are interpreted as

bearers of identity. Within Toronto’s hip-hop culture, the artists I interviewed show, above and in

the preceding chapters, the ways their bodies are “read” within the rule-bound discourses Butler

describes, but more compellingly, how those who don’t readily conform to these discourses are

skimmed over: LolaBunz has to perform her self against the predominantly Black, male image of the

“rapper,” Jester smiles and jokes against the serious, more aggressive b-boy stances, and Ariel faces

challenges in a masculinist DJ industry while grappling with the realities of neo-colonial systems.

These artists Signify upon existing forms of the rapper, the b-boy, and the DJ (themselves replete

with intersectional normative social, political, and economic discourses) to project their “realness,”

and the realities of their experiences.

Each artist’s agency, according to Butler is to be found in the possibility of not repeating identity

discourses, of changing the frames of understanding by which identities can be understood and

therefore, accepted. The use of the loop in hip-hop art forms, a repetitive musical segment generating

interest with insistence, can be seen as an analogue to the iterative aspects of identity development.

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The loop’s inherent repetition is harnessed by hip-hop artists as a means of setting up the excitement

of the break that cuts off the loop and opens up space and time for something new and exciting.

The loop is performativity at play, an iterative whirlpool with a hypnotizing, gravitational pull. To

be drawn in is to submit to the possibility of a comfortable normativity that points to a well-paved

path to easy-to-read identities. As Butler continues to point out, however, signification resides in the

loop, always ready to be activated towards new possibilities.

Kool Herc, who threw that now-historic Bronx party said to have heralded hip-hop, upped the

game. If the break was exciting musical possibility, where dancers would showcase their moves as

original, different, then he would loop the break, extending it with turntables playing it back to back.

With this technical ingenuity, Kool Herc seized performative signification and Signified, that is, he

took preceding forms of meaning and revised them toward a new purpose that continues to

proliferate new artist identities and creative works to this day.

Aspiring hip-hop artists can be seen to take advantage of the proliferation of meanings opened up by

the African American act of Signifyin(g). As it is practiced, performed, and recognized, these

creative gestures cohere into what audiences attach to artists’ performance identities. As embodied

in an artist and named – B-boy Jazzy Jester, MC LolaBunz, DJ Ariel – they signify a Signifyin(g)

style, shaped by histories, people, and places.

According to Jazzy Jester, Toronto hip-hop is stamped with individual artists’ styles:

[T]o me Toronto is all about style and being yourself. And…I don’t know, it’s just very hip-

hop to me when I see it. Yeah, you can claim your own moves, you can claim a style, but

fuck it man, Toronto is about style in general…We don’t lock it down for one thing, we lock

it down for a whole bunch of different things because we’re all different people. Yeah, […]

each crew can have their own style, but it won’t define every individual in that crew…Bag of

Trix all had their own style. They didn’t say, “This style is our style.” No, they were like,

“I’m so-and-so, this is my style” and that’s kind of what I got from them, not even by talking

to them, just being like, just taking it in.

The artists I spoke with informed me in various ways of the imperative to create a unique style, an

imperative absorbed through observation and immersion in local instances of hip-hop culture. These

values were “taught” and interpreted through gesture. Through this learning process, artists forge

links between themselves, hip-hop writ large, and the Toronto hip-hop community. Artist and

community, in turn, and through each, are linked to hip-hop’s origins in the South Bronx through

confident expressions of identity through style. In this way, history repeats through revised

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individuated interpretations. In turn, one’s process of style configuration is subject to normative

frameworks of intelligibility, not only those imposed by hip-hop culture, but those applied in day-to-

day life. The individual is multiply embedded in cultural imperatives and artistic works are

manifestations of each one’s (un)intentional acceptances and rejections thereof.

Performative identity production occurs within “rules governing signification [that] restrict, [and]

enable the assertion of alternative domains of cultural intelligibility” (Butler, 1990, p. 198). By

Butler’s explanation, this rule-governed discourse renders bodies intelligible or not, seemingly

passive until the enabling moment of the law. Within this normative framework, however, the

prohibitions are emphasized and possibilities they open up seem accidental to the purpose of the

law. For Signifyin(g) hip-hop artists, these possibilities are understood, seized and intentionally

inhabited and harnessed for creative purposes.

As my participants’ voices lay bare,89 difference and change are not enabled by discourse, they are

always already on the body, ready for recognition, inextricable yet ever-renewed as skin.

I was always looked at differently, even though I carry, you know, lighter features. […] still, people look

at me differently because they can see there’s something a little bit different./You know I’m native,

right? […] Like, I am red. (DJ Ariel)

[W]hat […] skin am I comfortable in, right? So that’s keepin’ it real for me, you know? (MC

LolaBunz)

I just, I just got comfortable in my own, my skin/I started taking hip-hop more as where I fit in./You

know, I went through all those moments where I was like, am I this? Am I that? Am I Filipino? Am I

Canadian? What am I? Like, I’m everything, but the one thing that puts it all together is hip-hop. […]

Because hip-hop is showing me…I’ve learned to put everything together because hip-hop is a, a mosh pit

of just, different things put together…to define yourself. (B-boy Jazzy Jester)

By living with and questioning normative frameworks imposed by hip-hop culture and the broader

social circles inter-layered within, artists craft performance identities alive with the creative tensions

unique to their own lived experiences by formally revising (Gates, 2014) and confounding dominant

readings applied to reflections of their selves. Ultimately, their performance identities are crafted by

manipulating the foundational skills of their art forms to tell a story about difference.

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The slash (“/”) indicates that sentences were taken from different sections of my participants’ narratives.

150

8.5 Conclusions and implications for further study

Hip-hop pedagogies and curricular activities are employed at all levels of education, yet when I

began my project, the voices of practicing hip-hop artists were absent from the conversation. How

they learned, what they learned, and how they used this information and knowledge was

undocumented in music education scholarly literature. In 2013, when I proposed this project, I had

only found one account of how a hip-hop artist learned to DJ (Fikentscher, 1999) from a specifically

music education-oriented inquiry. Since then, Snell and Soderman (2014) have sought answers from

DJs and emcees, and Kruse (2018b) has explored the question with emcees, DJs, and producers,

emphasizing the voices of his participants. Previous explorations in music education have also left

out the voices of dancers from the hip-hop music storyline, resulting in an incomplete picture of a

music culture that continues to be inseparable from the movement of the body.90 The result is an

exciting opportunity to connect with a diverse group of musicians who may inspire new ways of

teaching and a more inclusive community of learners (teachers among them) in our institutions.

In pursuing my research inquiry, I hoped to discover sources of motivation and the ways educational

challenges are overcome in the process of learning hip-hop art forms. To do this I wanted to hear

directly from Toronto hip-hop artists about their learning contexts. I wanted to discover not just what

they learn, but how, together with their views on the communities that surround their learning

processes. If we are going to begin using hip-hop art forms in our classrooms, we should understand

how practitioners of these art forms develop within a culture whose stories might be forgotten in the

day-to-day stresses of teaching and managing classrooms. By using narrative inquiry and its

attendant methods I was privileged to witness first-hand stories unfolding not just about learning, but

about each individual, themselves. Their narratives are rich resources teeming with more pathways

of inquiry and exploration. Below are avenues that will further enrich not just the field of music

education and other areas of scholarly research, but just as significantly, a public audience who has

yet to hear the lively stories of local communities often overlooked and forgotten in the writing of

grander histories and narratives.

8.5.1 Learning and pedagogy

Having synthesized key findings in this narrative inquiry, formulations of pedagogy that may

influence learning techniques and curricula can be forwarded. My nascent formulation of a cypher-

90

Kyra Gaunt connects this issue to dearth of inquiry and literature on gendered bodies, writing, “Music scholars are

compromised by the fact that our training tends to exclude analyzing choreographed movement, embodied percussion, and dance, not to mention gender and sexuality, in our interpretations of musical performance” (2006, p. 11).

151

based pedagogy (Millares, 2019) requires development. The voices of the artists I have spoken with,

whom I observed at sessions, performances, and workshops, whose words have inspired my own

music and teaching practice, remind me that spaces of tension and even combative interactions can

serve the positive growth and expansion of a dynamic, creative culture. These spaces, where cyphers

are heavy with emotion can become, within classrooms, safe spaces where embodied differences

agree and disagree. This developing pedagogy would benefit from action-research that tests

possibilities of music-making that engage with tensions or conflict rather subsuming them in an

effort to foster commonality. The objective would be to outline useful techniques and strategies in

the classroom that create new forms of connection from an alternate standpoint.

Such strategies may also be better informed by the incorporation of dance pedagogy, which this

current dissertation brushes up against but cannot properly address. This is particularly important

because of hip-hop music’s entanglement with the body – those beats will make you move (and

how?). To refer to hip-hop respectfully in our teaching means to understand this crucial part of the

culture’s music-making, lest we find ourselves extracting resources from Black, Brown, Indigenous,

People of Colour while leaving out the bodies that produce these forms of knowledge.

8.5.1.1 Popular music education and discourses of democracy in the classroom

Popular music has increasingly been employed in attempts to diversify the study of music in

classrooms in tandem with the growing diversity of music students. This inclusion has often been

framed within discourses of democracy. Karlsen and Westerlund (2010), writing from a

Scandinavian context, discussed how such discourses, in conjunction with the notion of plurality,

could benefit immigrants. Significantly, they argue for the productivity of disagreement and

difference in endeavours of inclusivity, a discussion previously forwarded by Schmidt (2008) in

“Democracy and Dissensus.” In 2011, Schmidt additionally highlighted “the need to consider

uneasy propositions, while moving away from politically correct slogans” (p. 2) particularly given

the demographics of the urban classrooms under discussion in his text. Hip-hop was cited via a

teacher’s voice who recognized the culture’s impact on their students but did not feel well-prepared

to engage with issues of race and poverty in the music and in students’ lives. Yet the potential for

meaningful engagement is apparent: “Conflict in rap and hip hop is and has always been a form of

power manifested in the attempt to ‘connect’ with or address others and ‘ramify’ our own selves”

(Schmidt, 2012, p. 10) through engagement with difference.

Despite these ongoing calls for plurality and more democratically inclusionary practices, as recently

as 2016, Allsup reminded music educators of a need to “remix” the classroom. After establishing the

spirit of Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education by quoting rapper,

152

Snoop Dogg, he notes, “A breach, a general failure to act in required ways, is taking place in the

field of music education. Tired of closed forms of life and living, we want to break free – we are

longing for openings” (p. 1), explicitly pointing to hip-hop’s pedagogical potential for productive

divergence. This longing is echoed by Christophersen and Gullberg (2017) who continue to note an

emphasis on dialogue and consensus, ignoring “dissensus” (Schmidt, 2008). This results in the

continued primacy of rock music91 in classrooms, ignoring other genres, and leaving out what may

be critical disagreements. My study provides a much-needed resource for those who want to engage

with hip-hop, but recognize that “given who ‘we’ are…a predominantly White, middle class,

classically trained population.…educators and scholars in music education…are often predisposed

to lack knowledge of and experience with hip hop music” (Hess, 2018, pp. 8-9). It directly addresses

difference and productive outcomes through entanglement with disagreement, injecting a hip-hop

perspective into these discussions.

8.5.2 Collective narratives: Toronto hip-hop history

In the process of researching Toronto’s hip-hop history, I discovered that no comprehensive volume

yet exists that covers the history of hip-hop art forms in this city together with the people and

communities that worked in this newly transplanted culture. Toronto hip-hop was comprised early

on by participants whose families come from regions across the globe. Those I interviewed revealed

the names of Filipino artists who influenced and created the musical soundscapes of many early

jams and battles in the city. Their roles in the development of Toronto hip-hop promise a rich source

of socio-cultural and artistic history that would enrich the teaching of hip-hop music and culture

through an understanding of migrant experiences.

I also note a specific gap in the story of breaking, between 1985 and 1990 an area of research that

may reveal the dynamics of art revival and the meanings sustained across a “lost” time. Following

up with my participants may uncover sources of information from this time period, while also

discovering how their relationship to hip-hop may have changed since we last spoke.

I focused on only three narratives in this dissertation, but the other artists I quoted throughout each

have their own rich stories. They also generously offered connections to Toronto hip-hop “legends,”

who would be able to share a special perspective on early cultural developments in the city. Detailed

inquiries into the specific art forms, their convergences and divergences, would also enrich public

91

Lucy Green’s extensive and influential study of students’ informal learning of rock/guitar band music resulted in

pedagogical suggestions published in Music, Informal Learning and the School: A New Classroom Pedagogy (2008).

153

knowledge of the diverse communities of learning and creative practices that come together to be

called “Toronto hip-hop.”

We have seen how my participants cite stories within their stories, giving us a glimpse of the way

that hip-hop has grown from a small area in the Bronx to a worldwide cultural phenomenon. As in

this dissertation project, voices are paramount to future inquiry, particularly from those looking for

their chance to get in the cypher.

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