Description
This paper is a companion piece to the short documentary Breakin’ Away. The paper aims to
touch on Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry at large, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood film industry and related aspects of pop culture
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Mining the cypher: branding and breakdance
Linden Dalecki
Article information:
To cite this document:
Linden Dalecki, (2011),"Mining the cypher: branding and breakdance", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research,
Vol. 5 Iss 4 pp. 364 - 375
Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506181111174646
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Mining the cypher: branding and
breakdance
Linden Dalecki
Abstract
Purpose – This paper is a companion piece to the short documentary Breakin’ Away. The paper aims to
touch on Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry at large, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood ?lm industry and related aspects of pop culture.
Design/methodology/approach – Part ethnographic memoir, part confessional, part anecdotal
how-to, the article is written in the ?rst person and ?ts within the tradition of autoethnography.
Findings – Given its autoethnographic focus, the paper follows several unique cases rather than
attempting to abstract generalizable principles.
Originality/value – The paper provides an inside view of Texas b-boy subculture and reveals speci?c
aspects of the hip-hop industry.
Keywords B-boys, Hip-hop culture, Book publishing, Media-synergy, Hollywood, Popular culture,
Young adults, Narratives
Paper type Viewpoint
cypher
1
(Soanes and Stevenson, 2004)
noun
1. a secret or disguised way of writing; a code: he wrote cryptic notes in a cypher j [mass noun]
the information may be given in cypher.
B something written in a code. B a key to a code.
2. (dated) a zero; a ?gure 0.
cypher
2
(Urbandictionary.com, 2009a)
noun
1. two or more b-boys or b-girls breakdancing in a circle together in an informal freestyle manner
– they could be battling or simply playing off of each other.
Breakbeat 1: intro
The Oxford Dictionary of English de?nitions of cypher include ‘‘a code,’’ ‘‘a key to a code,’’
and ‘‘a ?gure zero.’’ As the b-boy (breakdance) movement emerged in the Bronx in the
1970s, dancers from competing crews (basically, dance-gangs) cleared a circle on the
dance ?oor before battling at hip-hop parties, and it is likely that this zero-shaped
competition space inspired the term cypher as urbandictionary.com de?nes it above. The
idea that hip-hop culture is coded and requires decoding before the mainstream can
understand and consume it is also relevant. Given the atypical section headings in this
paper, note the leading Urbandictionary.com (2009b) de?nition of breakbeat is:
A drum part, usually sampled from old funk records used in hip-hop tracks. Breakbeats are also
sliced and manipulated in drum-n-bass and other forms of electronic music.
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VOL. 5 NO. 4 2011, pp. 364-375, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181111174646
Linden Dalecki is an
Assistant Professor in the
Department of
Management and
Marketing, Kelce College of
Business, Pittsburg State
University, Pittsburg,
Kansas, USA.
Revised May 2009
Revision October 2009
Accepted February 2010
Please ?nd the video that
accompanies this article at:http://www.emeraldinsight.
com/promo/hospitality_
research.htm
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This article acts as a companion piece to Breakin’ Away (Dalecki, 2010), a short
documentary I directed and which the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and
Hospitality Research (IJCTHR) has included with this special edition. This paper touches on
Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood ?lm industry and related aspects of pop culture. Part
ethnographic memoir, part confessional, part anecdotal how-to, the article is written in the
?rst person and ?ts within the academic tradition of autoethnography (Heider, 1975; Hayano,
1979; Jackson, 1989; Tedlock, 1991; Reed-Danahay, 1997; Ellis, 2004; Miller, 2008). Given
its autoethnographic bent, the paper follows several unique cases rather than attempting to
abstract generalizable principles (Ellis, 2008).
Breakbeat 2: enter the cypher
Two weeks prior to 9/11, I moved from Washington DC to Austin, Texas. As a hip-hop fan and
amateur b-boy from back in the day (the late 1970s early 1980s), my ears were immediately
struck by the screwed-and-chopped sound blasting from passing SLABs – SLAB is a
Houston hip-hop acronym for a slow, loud and banging [car]. Screwed-and-chopped
hip-hop music is a slowed-down-and-cut-up[1] post-production innovation that Bastrop,
Texas-born DJ Screw developed and made popular in Houston’s hip-hop underground from
the early 1990s onwards. DJ Screw died on 16 November 2000, less than a year before my
move to Texas. Although I never met him, I learned fromfolks who knewhimthat we shared a
love for the 1984 movie Breakin’ (Silberg, 1984). The ?lm is the furthest thing from an
authentic representation of popping or breakdancing – ‘‘b-boying’’ as it is known in the
subculture – but it offered several magic moments to teen viewers at the time of its release.
Particularly impressive then – and still – is the so-called broom-scene in which the character
Turbo (played by Michael Chambers, AKA Boogaloo Shrimp) slacks off at work, dancing on
a deserted urban sidewalk at night with a broom, rather than using it to sweep.
A year or so after moving to Austin I became aware of another Texas hip-hop innovation –
b-boy competition full of gravity-defying gymnastic power moves. Texas b-boy talent is
concentrated in Austin (AKA ATX, short for Austin, Texas) and Houston (AKA H-town). I
decided to direct a short video-ethnography about the Austin b-boy scene and went in
search of a central character. A month or two into the search I discovered 17-year-old Josh
Ayers – AKA B-Boy Josh, Josh Youngblood, Milkman, Milky, and Leche Gringo – training to
compete in B-Boy City, the Southwest’s premiere b-boy competition. Josh planned to
compete in two-on-two and in crew-on-crew battles. Several months into the production
process I had over 15 hours of day-in-the-life and competition footage of Josh – shot by
masterful cinematographer John Fiege – which I edited to a broadcast-half-hour 22-minute
?lm. The cut included here is roughly 16 minutes and has no two-on-two competition footage.
I named the project Breakin’ Away as a play on both Breakin’ (Silberg, 1984) and the
coming-of-age ?lm Breaking Away (Yates, 1979), which I will touch on in the Outro of this
paper.
In developing the abridged version of Breakin’ Away included in this special edition of the
IJCTHR, there are many people to thank for their time, assistance, and insight. Early in the
process, the esteemed documentary ?lmmaker Paul Stekler encouraged me to use him as a
reference wherever needed. Dropping Paul’s name when I ?rst contacted Chale Nafus –
chief programmer at the Austin Film Society, and trusted advisor to leading Texas b-boy
Romeo Navarro – was of great value. Soon after Chale introduced me to Romeo – who was
and remains the godfather of the contemporary Texas b-boy scene – Romeo led me to Josh,
the main subject of the ?lm. Cinematographer John Fiege went far beyond the call of duty
and captured inspiring action-dance footage in the cypher. And during interviews with Josh,
John helped cover important narrative gaps time and again. Javier Bonafont was available
for technical advice at all stages of postproduction. IJCTHR special issue editor Marylouise
Caldwell – and one anonymous reviewer in particular – provided perspective and feedback
for the abridged version of the ?lm.
Before you download and screen Breakin’ Away, a few housekeeping notes are in order. In
one scene Josh says:
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Breaking’s expanded, like everyone’s got their own set of tricks and their own unique style that
somebody would notice. Like if they’re all just dressed in a suit, like a black suit, and everybody
looks exactly the same, just by going out and dancing they can tell by their own style who that
person is.
Josh’s comment is deeply revealing and it moved me. I think it gets at why he dances – to
express his uniqueness and be noticed. Josh’s comment may also hint that he believes
America tends to overvalue men-in-suits, regardless of what sort of character is dressed
within. Given the limitations of my footage, it is hard to show that a girl who once teasingly
referred to Josh as Eminem is the same person who proudly proclaims that Josh lives in her
neighborhood. The otherwise confusing sequence is worth describing in some detail here:
an African American schoolgirl walks down the school hallway with a girlfriend and Josh
(who is white), and she proudly says to the camera, ‘‘He lives in my neighborhood.’’ Josh
responds, ‘‘They know me all of a sudden.’’ The schoolgirl continues, ‘‘Since we was little.’’
Josh responds, ‘‘Somebody follows me with a camera and all of a sudden y’all know me.’’
Josh to camera, regarding the schoolgirl: ‘‘She called me Eminem.’’ The exchange
demonstrates that Josh is highly aware the camera is affecting others’ perception of him.
And Josh’s last comment reveals at least one fellow student outside the b-boy subculture
teases him for being a white person pursuing a dance form which is widely perceived as
being non-white. And it bothers him.
Later in the piece Josh states:
Breaking did start on the East Coast, moved to the West Coast, then Texas just kind of popped up
out of nowhere. There’s always the foundation that everybody has to have, but from that they
expand with their own stuff. Texas has pretty much been known for power moves. We expanded it
the most and took it to a max – took it to a higher level than most other regions did.
Josh obviously feels a connection with b-boy history, as well as with what is distinct and
innovative about Texas b-boy culture. In terms of wider b-boy culture and history, the notion
of battling should be explained. One of the more remarkable historical aspects of b-boy
culture is that of a street-generated quasi-martial activity which channeled aggressive male
energy into an art form. B-boying started in the Bronx in the 1970s, largely as a substitute for
gang violence, vaguely akin to West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961) Sharks and Jets
dancing it out rather than duking it out. Gang violence was at an all-time high in the Bronx
and so-called break-boys – young men who would bust power dance moves at hip-hop
dance parties during the manually-looped breakbeats laid down by hip-hop DJs on two
decks and a mixer – were often from opposing neighborhoods. However, rather than
resorting to violence, they would simply get in one another’s faces on the dance ?oor. Thus, it
was fairly common for males from neighborhood ‘‘A’’ to belong to a violent gang opposed to
males from neighborhood ‘‘B.’’ Whereas, younger brothers coming from the same families
would often belong to a dance-crew from neighborhood ‘‘A’’ opposed to a dance-crew from
neighborhood ‘‘B.’’ This notion of crew-on-crew battling as a substitute for gang-on-gang
rumbles remains at the heart of b-boy culture. Individual dance ?ourishes and skills are
lauded, but those individual skills are usually rendered at the service of a collective
art/battle.
The ?nal crew-on-crew battle in Breakin’ Away features Masterz of Mayhem (Josh’s crew)
versus The Jive Turkeys (Omar Davila’s crew) battling in B-Boy City, an Austin-based
competition every April that attracts competitors and spectators from far and wide. Omar is
the b-boy who repeatedly gets in Josh’s face and at one point pulls Josh’s ball cap from his
head during battle. Usually physical contact between opposing crews is not permitted, and
many battle judges (themselves active or former b-boys) will disqualify teams for initiating
contact, though not all judges strictly enforce the tenet. Years prior to my B-Boy City footage
of Josh’s crew’s battle against Omar’s crew, Josh and Omar competed together on the same
crew. Thus, there is a deeply personal aspect to this battle that Breakin’ Away does not show
directly, though Josh provides limited voice-over which alludes to this history.
In terms of international-tourism related themes, there are three strands associated with
B-Boy City:
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B the Austin-based competition draws crews and spectators from abroad.
B individual b-boy establish international reputations at the event which they leverage in
competitions abroad; and
B select B-Boy City participants have toured internationally as an ensemble.
The following promo copy from the www.bboycity.com site touches on these ?rst two
strands:
B-Boy City: Texas International B-boy/B-girl Hip-Hop Festival, representing the b-boy/b-girl
movement in Texas worldwide [authors emphasis]. B-BOY CITY 16 ‘‘THE REUNION’ ’
INTERNATIONAL HIPHOP FESTIVAL: B-Boy City is one of the biggest b-boy/hiphop events in
the southern United States. Every April in Austin, TX, b-boys from all over Texas, the surrounding
states, states across nation, and on occasion a few international locations, come to compete and
spectate [authors emphasis – crews have come from Mexico, Japan, Korea, Germany, and
Finland]. B-Boy City keeps the true competitive spirit of hip-hop alive by holding battles for
dancers, b-girls, poppers and dance crews. B-Boy City’s uniqueness has increasingly pulled in
spectators/performers from the other elements of hip-hop, such as emceeing, djing and graf
writing. Competitors from B-Boy City are now internationally renowned and scattered all over the
globe [authors emphasis]. So this year’s B-Boy City is The Reunion (Bboycity.com, 2009a).
Ten minutes of footage from the Breakin’ Away archive appear in a feature-length
documentary Marcy Garriott directed which is titled Inside the Circle (Garriott, 2008). The
?lm follows Josh’s story where Breakin’ Away leaves off and intertwines his story with that of
his best-friend-turned-arch-competitor, Omar Davila. In terms of the third internal-tourism
strand mentioned above – where select B-Boy City participants tour as an ensemble –
Inside the Circle played a central role. As something of an international rolling-road-show,
during an eighteen-month period Inside the Circle screened in ten countries and in many
cities across the US. The ?lm-tour involved the participation of the three main b-boys
presented in the documentary; Josh, Omar and Romeo. The foreign countries toured include
Canada, Germany, Norway, Holland, England, Scotland, Spain, and Finland. The ?lm
screened in cities across the Philippine Islands, including Zamboaga, Bohol, Siquijor,
Dumaguete, Bacolod, Iloilo, Roxas, Bacoor Cavite, San Fernando Pampanga and Manila.
The Inside the Circle Philippine Islands Tour also offered b-boy workshops, cypher battles
and tours of several of the listed cites and the Mambucal Mountain Resort (Bboycity.com,
2009b).
Readers are encouraged to watch Breakin’ Away at this point.
Breakbeat 3: retro?tting the cypher
While immersed in the ethnographic process of directing Breakin’ Away, I was inspired to
write a screenplay set in Texas’ b-boy subculture (see Appendix 1). To provide an evocative
backdrop I chose oil boom-town-gone-bust Beaumont, Texas – AKA Spindletop – as the
setting. The Kid B (Dalecki, 2006) screenplay had character and story elements I believed
would make for a good teen novel, so I novelized the script. I sent the resulting novel to Marc
Gerald, a Los Angeles based literary agent who encouraged me to develop a prologue,
which I did. I titled it ‘‘The b-boys of Beaumont’’ (Dalecki, 2004) and submitted it to the Austin
Chronicle’s annual short story contest – the prologue won ?rst place and is reprinted in
Appendix 2.
Houghton Mif?in’s young adult imprint Graphia published the Kid B novel in October, 2006.
From the outset my vision was – and remains – a Kid B media franchise with Breakin’ Away
serving both as a research project and an authenticating text. I saw the documentary as a
double means to an end. First, to gain access to and knowledge of a closed scene that is
hard to break into. Second, to make a ?lm which could serve as material evidence to
otherwise skeptical culture industry insiders that the scene exists and I had access. Thus,
directing Breakin’ Away helped both to educate me before and during the creative-writing
process, and to convince gatekeepers such as lit agent Marc Gerald and young adult book
editor Eden Edwards at Houghton Mif?in that the albeit ?ctional material was a more or less
authentic and well-grounded representation of the Texas b-boy scene.
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This second bene?t might be termed intra-industry media-synergy since Breakin’ Away
served to promote Kid B to culture industry insiders, versus traditional media-synergy
where one media text promotes another to retail consumers. If and when Kid B is
greenlit as a ?lm, it is likely that the Kid B novel will act as a legitimizing element along
with the documentary and thus the intra-industry media-synergy dynamic will be
ampli?ed. At this writing Kid B has sold slightly over 5,000 copies – decent for a ?rst
book, but hardly the sort of numbers which constitute a legitimate presold audience.
Thus, the intra-industry media-synergy value of the novel would be far higher than the
traditional media-synergy value. As something of a side note, many underground and/or
foreign graphic novels have high intra-industry media-synergy value in Hollywood
despite having low traditional media-synergy value. For a discussion of traditional
media-synergy see Dalecki (2008).
Breakbeat 3: publicizing the cypher
This section traces the PR-strategy, timeline, and collateral PR-text developed for the novel
Kid B and is also relevant to readers interested in book publicity in general, providing
something of a brief how-to for any budding book author. After learning that Houghton Mif?in
wanted to publish Kid B, I began to wonder what, if any, strategic support I might be able to
lend in the PR process. Houghton Mif?in has as PR department, though most book
publishers label their equivalent department the Publicity Department – for the purposes of
this paper, I use PR and publicity interchangeably. I discovered that the best information on
book-publicity is from books practitioners wrote. Two fairly recent books in the category are
Publicize Your Book! An Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves
(Deval, 2004), by Jacqueline Deval, and The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity
(Warren, 2004/2008), by Lissa Warren. Both authors worked for years at major publishing
houses in book publicity. Warren’s book was more relevant to Kid B, in part because she
worked in the PR department at Houghton Mif?in. Both books address ?rst-time authors
signed to major publishing houses and discuss ways to optimize publicity and generate
maximum sales for a title. The issues the books cover are not of much value to established
authors or self-published authors.
In terms of sales and publicity competition, Kid B plays in a broad ?eld. Lissa Warren states:
A wide variety of books become bestsellers – everything from Chicken Soup for the Soul, to hefty
biographies, to literary novels. What most have in common is strong publicity. It’s the main thing
that drives consumers into the bookstores and appears more trustworthy than advertising
because it contains the judgment of an independent third party (Warren, 2004, p. 2).
Given the imposing number of books competing in the young adult ?eld, it was imperative
that the publicity behind Kid B be well thought out and well executed. As Warren notes:
The days of publishing a book because it deserves to be published are over. Houghton Mif?in, the
publisher of Henry David Thoreau, was until just recently owed by Vivendi. More than ever before
and more than they should be, books are seen merely as a vehicle for pro?t (Warren, 2004,
pp. 7-8).
Before outlining the publicity strategy and timeline Warren suggests, I brie?y address two
points Warren does not, but which I believed would be key in generating publicity for Kid B.
Namely, determining target audiences and positioning-statements for the title:
1. Target audiences:
B reluctant junior high and high school readers;
B junior high and high school readers interested in hip-hop;
B junior high and high school teachers;
B junior high and high school librarians;
B university lecturers in YA literature; and
B university lecturers in hip-hop studies.
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2. Positioning statements:
B A bittersweet young adult novel about a multiethnic crew of breakdancers from a
tough East Texas high school.
B The ?rst hip-hop themed young adult novels from a major publisher, and the only
novel to focus on the breakdancing subculture.
B An S.E. Hinton type story for teenagers who are into hip-hop.
Although the end-readers of choice are teens, the opinion-leader in?uence of adult
reading-mentors such as schoolteachers and school librarians was not overlooked. In terms
of positioning, the ?rst sentence deals with the novel’s story/genre/tone/milieu. The second
addresses the uniqueness/sexiness/?rst-in-the-?eld aspect. The third is a useful framing
device, particularly when discussing the book with older readers and book reviewers.
Though brief and simple, these two exercises helped generate the title’s strategic publicity
timeline, discussed below. The ?rst order of business was to work with an in-house PR
representative. I thought Megan Wilson would be the ideal choice as in-house PR rep for Kid
B. Her experience included working as an assistant to Houghton Mif?in President, Wendy
Strothman, and she led the PR campaign for the movie tie-in release of the Lord of the Rings
book trilogy re-release. Megan also handled Houghton Mif?in’s Lord of the Rings
movie-related making-of book titles. And she did PR on teen-related titles such as Why
Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four Got Out by Dave Marcus. Finally, by coincidence,
Megan was the girlfriend of Todd Poudrier, an indie-?lmactor and friend of mine fromBoston!
Unfortunately, I had no choice in selecting my in-house publicist. I started working with
publicist Karen Walsh about six months prior to publication of Kid B (October 2006). As
Warren states:
Most publicists make contact four to six months before a book pubs – in advance of when galleys
go out to the media. Bound galleys are down-and-dirty versions of your book that look like cheap
paperbacks. There’s often no art on the cover, just the text. They’re for the media’s eyes only; they
help the media plan ahead (Warren, 2004, p. 10).
Warren suggests that authors make initial contact with their publicist via e-mail, which she
considers less intrusive than establishing contact by phone. She says authors should not
mention their desired publicity strategy upfront to avoid seeming too aggressive and
controlling – advice which I could have paid closer attention to. She contends that ?rst
contact with the publicist should be limited to simply putting the author and their work on the
publicist’s radar. Deval on the other hand says an author should develop a marketing plan for
their book early on and should ‘‘present the plan about six to seven months before your
book’s publication. You can present it closer to publication than that, but take advantage of
the time you have to build support. You want to deliver the plan to your editor before he or she
participates in any key launch or strategy meetings’’ (Deval, 2004, p. 19).
The ?rst task Karen Walsh assigned me was to complete Houghton Mif?in’s standard author
questionnaire. As Warren states:
An author questionnaire is a form you ?ll out, often several pages, that provides your publisher
with basic background information as well as your ideas about promotional opportunities for your
book – everything from who might be willing to blurb it, to stores or catalogues that should
de?nitely carry it, to organizations that might want to purchase large quantities of it (Warren, 2004,
pp. 10-11).
Though not explicitly stated, these recommendations suggest that growing one’s list of
relevant media contacts is a good strategy. In the case of Kid B, I created a database of
relevant media contacts and e-mailed them an elevator-pitch regarding the novel’s pending
release. Following initial contact with the in-house publicist, and having independently
cultivated relevant media contacts, the next step is to meet the editor and publicist
face-to-face. Warren mentions that this meeting is the point at which the author is transferred
from the editor’s care to the publicist’s. She recommends an informal environment and
stresses that this is more a getting to know one another meeting than a formalized strategy
session:
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It’s always a good idea for authors to meet with their publicist and the rest of the publishing team.
This is an instance where I recommend you push to get a date set. The meeting doesn’t have to
be a formal strategy session in the conference room. Sometimes, lunch at a nice restaurant works
just as well – or even better. The main thing is for you to get to know them and for them to get to
knowyou. It lays a good foundation on which to build a strong relationship, and it allows you to get
an idea of the amount of time, effort, and money they’ll spend on your book so that you can make
supplemental plans, if necessary (Warren, 2004, p. 11).
Warren recommends that the author ask the publicist which review publications and shows
have requested a copy of their title.
I thought it best to discuss several logline positioning options vis-a` -vis the title with the
publicist several months before the seasonal catalogue containing the title was sent out –
why leave such positioning exclusively to the PR staff? I believed the brief logline describing
the title would have a great impact on whether or not various media outlets would request a
copy of the book –the sparse language describing the book in this seasonal media-bound
catalogue is of utmost importance. My intuition was that initially positioning Kid B as one of
the ?rst hip-hop themed young adult novels from a major publisher – and the only novel to
focus on b-boy subculture –was more important than foregrounding structural, character or
language elements. MainstreamAmerican media is more interested in ?rst-mover status and
outre´ uniqueness than in the quality, character, or classicism of a piece. Once such
positioning had piqued media interest, story-oriented positioning of the novel as a
bitter-sweet tale about a multiethnic crew of breakdancers from a tough East Texas rustbelt
high school could be deployed. If only things had played out this way!
I anticipated the generic hip-hop themed nature of the material would interest both teen
readers and culture-reporters running the gamut from radio reporters at NPR and Arts and
Leisure-section reporters at the New York Times to MTV veejays. I expected that coverage
was as likely to come from general-culture writers as from book-speci?c writers thus did not
believe that potential Kid B reviewers should be restricted to book reviewers – I strongly felt
we should also target culture-writers covering lifestyle and leisure sectors of the media. I also
thought coverage in teen-oriented magazines with a hip-hop edge (such as Vibe) should
have been sought out, although this did not happen with Kid B. Far from it. Rather than
targeting individual reviewers and publications, the actual in-house PR approach was to
hope the Houghton Mif?in seasonal catalogue – which the in-house PR staff sends quarterly
to media outlets far and wide – would do all the work. An extremely long lead-time is required
for coverage in such glossies and for high-circulation newspaper inserts such as Parade
and USA Weekend. Fortunately, Tameka Hicks – a writer for USA Weekend in summer 2006
–spotted Kid B in Houghton Mif?in’s seasonal catalogue and requested a copy and an
interview with me. She did the interview. Unfortunately, it never ran because a new editor at
USA Weekend was averse to the idea of covering a hip-hop themed novel.
Breakbeat 4: outro
As mentioned previously, Marcy Garriott integrated extensive archival footage from Breakin’
Away into her feature-length documentary, titled Inside the Circle, which picks up Josh’s
story where Breakin’ Away leaves off. Marcy’s ?lm is excellent, and readers are encouraged
to see it. I also sel?shly urge you to read Kid B. FYI, the book must sell over 20,000 copies
before I clear my advance and see any royalties! For a free preview, go to:http://books.
google.com/books?id¼6I03Cn4ANpEC&printsec ¼ frontcover&dq ¼ %22kid þ b%22
In addition to my confessed self-interest, a goal shared by Breakin’ Away, The B-Boys of
Beaumont, and Kid B – is to bolster a cultural form which has gotten short shrift in terms of
mainstream respect and commercialization. Just as the father character Raymond Stoller in
Breaking Away (Yates, 1979) wonders what his son Dave Stoller will do after he gives up his
‘‘Italian’’ pro-bicycling pipe-dreamand grows up[2], so have many viewers of Breakin’ Away
asked what Josh will do once he gives up b-boying and grows up. In the past decade, ATX’s
own Lance Armstrong has done more than anyone to establish professional bicycling as an
eminently viable pursuit for athletes of any nation. Readers will be heartened to know that
Josh has gone on to great success as a b-boy, winning individual and crew-on-crew
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competitions in Asia, Europe, and the US before signing on as an internationally touring
background-dancer with hip-hop diva Fergie. And he is a featured dancer in what is sure to
be the most commercial – if not the most authentic – iteration of Hollywood b-boy
representation, Step Up 3-D (Chu, 2010)[3].
Notes
1. Somewhat ironically in the current context, screwed-and-chopped hip-hop music is far too slow and
choppy for dancers to break or pop to.
2. The character Raymond Stoller – played by Paul Dooley – says to his wife, ‘‘I’m just tired of it,
Evelyn. I’mtired of worrying about him[Dave]. Who’d ever hire a guy like that? He’s going to wind up
a bum . . . An Italian bum.
3. Step Up (Fletcher, 2006) generated $114,194,847 in worldwide box-of?ce. The ?rst sequel in the
franchise, Step Up: 2 The Streets (Chu, 2008), generated $148,424,320.
References
Bboycity.com (2009a), available at: www.bboycity.com (accessed 19 July 2009).
Bboycity.com (2009b), available at: www.bboycity.com (accessed 5 October 2009).
Chu, J. (director) (2008), Step up: 2 The Streets, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Chu, J. (director) (2010), Step up 3-D, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Dalecki, L. (2004), ‘‘The b-boys of Beaumont’’, The Austin Chronicle, pp. 40-1, 13 February.
Dalecki, L. (2006), Kid B, Houghton Mif?in – Graphia, Boston, MA.
Dalecki, L. (2008), ‘ ‘Hollywood media synergy as IMC’ ’, Journal of Integrated Marketing
Communications, Vol. 47 No. 52, pp. 47-52.
Dalecki, L. (director) (2010), ‘‘Breakin’ away’’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research, Vol. 5 No. 4.
Deval, J. (20042008), Publicize Your Book: An Insider’s Guide to Getting your Book the Attention it
Deserves, Perigee Trade, New York, NY.
Ellis, C. (2004), The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, AltaMira Press,
Walnut Creek, CA.
Ellis, C. (2008), ‘‘Autoethnography’’, in Given, L.M. (Ed.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative
Research Methods, Sage, Newbury Park, CA.
Fletcher, A. (director) (2006), Step Up, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Garriott, M. (director) (2008), Inside the Circle, Cinema Libre, Canoga Park, CA.
Hayano, D. (1979), ‘‘Auto-ethnography: paradigms, problems, and prospects’’, Human Organization,
Vol. 38, pp. 113-31.
Heider, K.G. (1975), ‘‘What do people do? dani auto-ethnography’’, Journal of Anthropological
Research, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 3-17.
Jackson, M. (1989), Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, IN.
Miller, D.S. (2008), ‘‘Disaster tourism and disaster landscape attractions after hurricane Katrina: an
autoethnography’’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 2 No. 2,
pp. 115-31.
Reed-Danahay, D. (1997), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Berg, Oxford and New
York, NY.
Robbins, J. and Wise, R. (directors) (1961), West Side Story, United Artists, Los Angeles, CA.
Silberg, J. (director) (1984), Breakin’, Cannon Films.
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Soanes, C. and Stevenson, A. (2004), Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press,
New York, NY.
Tedlock, B. (1991), ‘‘From participant observation to the observation of participation: the emergence of
narrative ethnography’’, Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 69-94.
Urbandictionary.com (2009a), available at: www.urbandictionary.com/de?ne.php?term ¼ cipher
(accessed 19 July 2009).
Urbandictionary.com (2009b), available at: www.urbandictionary.com/de?ne.php?term ¼ breakbeat
(accessed 5 October 2009).
Warren, L. (2004), The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity, Da Capo Press, New York, NY.
Yates, P. (director) (1979), Breaking Away, 20th Century Fox, Los Angeles, CA.
Further reading
Brown, K.G. (2009), ‘‘Island tourism marketing: music and culture’’, International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 25-32.
Dalecki, L. (2007), ‘‘You hip, you hop, you don’t stop being white’’, The Austin American-Statesman,
p. J-05, 4 February.
Firstenberg, S. (director) (2003), Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo, Cannon Films.
Hanson, C. (director) (2002), 8 Mile, Universal Studios, Los Angeles, CA.
Appendix 1
Below is the Q&A developed as part of the Kid B press kit and passed along to Houghton
Mif?in’s PR department six months before the novel was published [October 9, 2006].
Q1. What prompted you to write Kid B?
I’m from the east coast and was very surprised to ?nd out that Texas has an amazing
breakdancing scene when I moved here. I started directing a short documentary ?lm called
Breakin’ Away about the ‘‘Masterz of Mayhem,’’ a crew of breakdancers from Austin and the
Texas valley. I ended up focusing most of the ?lmon the one white kid on the crew, Josh. I got
to thinking, what if a white kid with a passion for breakdancing was from a racially divided
place like East Texas instead of Austin? I ?gured there was a good story there.
Q2. What’s the deal with the Breakin’ Away documentary?
The cinematographer on it was John Fiege, a very talented guy who’s been winning a lot of
awards lately including the Kodak award and the Princess Grace award. The ?lm got
screened in Cannes as part of their Short Film Corner. What’s even cooler is that Marcy
Garriot – a professional documentary ?lmmaker – saw a rough cut of my short and decided
she wanted to make a feature length doc about Texas breakdancing. She’s been following
Josh Ayers and the Masterz of Mayhem, Omar Davila, Romeo Navarro and a few of the other
top Texas crews and individual breakers. There was no money involved, but it was a big
honor for me when she asked if she could access the tapes frommy archive to use as part of
her ?lm. Her ?lm, Inside the Circle, will be coming out in mid-2008, about a year and a half
after the pub date for Kid B.
Q3. Where does your interest in hip-hop come from?
Musically it’s what I grew up with. I was born on the Jersey shore but grew up inside the
beltway in Silver Spring, Maryland. Around D.C. in the early 80s, Hip-Hop and Go Go were
the most popular musical genres, at least in my junior high and high school. Go Go is a DC
thing that never really broke out. Pretty much all the early hip-hop was from New York and
New Jersey – which I call the sixth borough since those areas of Jersey producing hip-hop
back in the day were pretty much an extension of NewYork. But DCradio played all the good
stuff from New York a week or two after New York was playing it. Plus those were the days
when boxes were cool and you’d hear Go Go and Hip-Hop mix tapes that way.
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Q4. What does Kid B stand for?
It’s the main character’s name but I wanted it to mean a lot of things. I always liked how
certain American subcultures pretty much mandate a nickname – like the gunslingers in the
old west, or jazz musicians, or gangsters, and of course hip-hop MCs, breakdancers, graf?ti
artists, and DJs. The protagonist’s birth name is Breslin but he doesn’t go by that name on
the street. The B stands for Breslin, but also for Beaumont and for break-boy, since the ?rst
wave a breakdancers were called b-boys and most of the hardcore breakers still prefer the
term b-boy to breakdancer.
Q5. Were you a breakdancer back in the day?
I did my best, which isn’t saying too much. I think my locking and popping was better than
my breakdancing. And my beat-boxing was probably better than my locking and popping.
Again, I’d stress that this isn’t saying too much. The extent of competition was basically at the
same level as guys from the neighborhood playing a game of touch football.
Q6. What’s your take on the use of breakdancing in movies?
I think it’s interesting that the ?rst hip-hop ?lms tended to privilege breakdancers. It makes
sense in a way because I think the mainstream entertainment industry saw hip-hop as a fad
and wanted to cash in on it quick and get out. And even though hip-hop was on the top 40
music charts from1979, breakdancing is way more visual than MCing, at least in my opinion.
It’s pretty funny to watch Ice T in Breakin’ (1984) and listen to him toasting only the
breakdancers, with no bragging about himself.
Q7. Why did you decide to set the novel in Beaumont, Texas?
I went through Beaumont on my way out from DC to Austin. It’s one of those rustbelt places
where you can tell things used to be buzzing along but now everything’s falling apart. Plus
racial tension is really high in East Texas. I don’t think I need to get in to a big discussion of
that aspect, but it de?nitely is an important part of what I was trying to get across with the
book.
Q8. What’s the current state of breakdancing, and hip-hop overall, in Texas?
Surprising as it might sound, Austin is where it’s at in terms of breakdancing. A lot of credit
has to go to Romeo Navarro who runs the biggest b-boy competition in the entire Southwest.
It’s called B-Boy City and goes down twice a year [note that it is currently an annual event
happening in April]. I have to thank himfor giving me all kinds of access when I was shooting
my documentary. No access and there would have been no doc. No doc, and there wouldn’t
have been any good research or basis for writing Kid B. In terms of Texas and hip-hop music
right now, Houston’s the place and always has been. Although he’s been gone for a few
years, DJ Screw, who came from Smithville, innovated the whole screwed-and-chopped
sound. There are a fewHouston names like SlimThug, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones,
Lil’ Flip, Big Moe and Scarface who’ve broken out big, but most of it stays local.
Appendix 2
The B-Boys of Beaumont by Linden Dalecki [prologue to Kid B and winner of the 12th annual
Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest]
The business ward had lots of tall buildings but they were all kind of old and crumbling. And
before we could even make it to the spot downtown a hard rain was hitting the city. Rain was
a good thing that summer since it helped to keep things cool. It was me and Trick T leading
and Big Vance following behind, like he usually does. Vance is big like his name says and not
too fast, but he’s got power and always got a fewcrazy moves up his sleeve. Trick is a natural
b-boy, straight up, no two ways about it. Breaking didn’t come natural to me like it did to Trick.
I had to work hard for every move except maybe backspinning and the worm, but they’re so
old school and simple nobody can really count them as moves these days.
When we passed by Kyle’s Five and Dime the rain was still coming but the sky was starting to
look like the sun might peek out. On one side of Kyle’s you could still see the Krush Krew tag
put up by Ruina like two years back when we ?rst crewed up. ‘‘Krush Krew for Life’’ is what
the yellow tag read, but Ruina’s style was so his that even heads couldn’t hardly read it,
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let alone the regular people in the city. But even if the tag said what it did, Ruina was out in
Cali on a trick-bike sponsorship. Couldn’t hardly even get him on the phone anymore.
So instead of the old four-man Krush Krew it was down to me, Trick, and Vance. The plan was
to get set up outside the Jefferson Theater and put on a show. Most everybody would stop
and sneak a look, even the old business guys. If some people felt like putting some change
on the sidewalk we never stopped them, but that’s not how the police saw things. And if it
wasn’t panhandling, they could get us for disturbing the peace, even if Vance never pushed
the box past ?ve on the volume dial. The rain had come to a drizzle so Vance took the
garbage bag off and set the box on the ground.
Vance always talked too loud, even when he was being nice. Vance looked at me and Trick
and was like, ‘‘Are y’all down?’’
Trick was all, ‘‘Why you gotta ask?’’
That was just like the two of them, since Vance was Mr. Polite unless you pushed him to the
wall – then you had to watch out because you couldn’t guess what Vance might do if things
got hyped. With Trick it was almost just the opposite. When things were chill, Trick would try
and speed things up. But when things got hyped he’d keep cool under the stress. I guess it
all kind of balanced out somewhere.
Vance pressed play on the box. A screwed-up beat kicked in and Trick hit the ground. Right
away everyone who was walking by came to a stop. Me, I like to uprock a little before I hit the
ground, but not Trick. He always gets right into it. He threaded around like a pretzel, then
busted out a vertical pushup and you could hear the people in the crowd breathe in together
all at once.
Trick’s legs slashed around and almost hit some gray-haired guy wearing a suit, but Trick
never hit anything or anyone unless he meant to. Most of the crowd sort of laughed and the
old guy walked away quick, like he was mad about it, even though Trick was just having a
good time and not trying to make anyone feel bad.
Trick got up and was like, ‘‘Hit it, Kid.’’ But I ?gured Vance was the one who’d brought the box
so I motioned for himto go next. Big V got into some crazy locking and popping. What Vance
didn’t have in style and timing he always made up for in power and letting it all hang loose.
And when it came down to it, going all out and acting the fool was almost as good as being in
full control. Plus it always cracked people up. Vance did some of his jelly belly rolls and had
me and everybody laughing so hard that by the time he was done and I was up, I was almost
out of breath.
But I did my best to concentrate and get my head clear so I could put my focus on what I was
doing. As soon as I got into some uprock I could feel that good feeling take over and pretty
soon it was only moves and colors and the beat. I dropped and busted out a coffee grinder,
then ?ipped over for a few crickets. The crowd was eating it up like it was peach ice cream,
which it really wasn’t. But the happiness and adrenaline kicked in even more and made me
try for a windmill.
I tried, but didn’t get much past my left shoulder before I landed ?at on my back. Not even
one rotation, let alone a windmill that really spins. I threwout a freeze to make the crowd think
I had tried to land ?at on my back like that, but I probably only fooled maybe half the people
watching, if that.
Before I could even stand I saw Vance reach for the box and shout ‘‘Police.’’ I don’t even
remember getting up, just me and Trick and Vance running down Fannin Street and ducking
into a tiny little alley. The police car couldn’t even squeeze into it. The cop riding shotgun
rolled down his window and shouted, ‘‘Go back where you came from.’’ Nobody got out of
the car, so about halfway down the alley we stopped running. I ?gured most police don’t like
it when they see us kind of kids having a better time than they probably ever had.
We knew how things were. And whenever we went to break downtown, we never parked our
bikes near the dance spot. Walking back past Kyle’s Five and Dime the sun was looking
about ready to set. It made the yellow ‘‘Krush Krew for Life’’ tag glow orange. ‘‘For Life’’ . . .
yeah, right – then where was Ruina? It hit me just then that words and names don’t always
mean what they say they do, even if people meant them when they used them. And how just
like me and Trick and Big Vance had nicknames, so did the area around Beaumont. They
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started calling it Spindletop like a hundred years ago when they went digging for oil and it
came shooting up so high and strong out of the ground they couldn’t stop it.
By the time we got rolling on our bikes the sun was hitting the water. And even all the oil
re?neries, broken down mills, and rusted out factories had a natural glow to them. Times like
that made Beaumont seem pretty. And I remembered some substitute teacher who told the
class that Beaumont stood for ‘‘pretty’’ in Cajun. My guess was that whoever the Cajun was
that named Beaumont must have been looking at a sunset, about like the one me and Trick
and Vance were looking at. And I tried to imagine how things might have looked like if they
never dug so deep into the ground that it changed the name of the place.
About the author
Linden Dalecki has research interests that include management and marketing issues
related to Hollywood, hip-hop, and the publishing industry. He is an Assistant Professor at
the Kelce College of Business where he teaches entertainment marketing, international
marketing and digital content marketing. He established a study abroad program in France
at the La Rochelle Business School/Groupe Supe´ rieur de Commerce de La Rochelle which
he leads each summer on behalf of Pittsburg State University. He pursues an interest in
creative writing and is currently in negotiation with Eminem’s Interscope/Shady/
Aftermath-Films regarding Y-Town – a screenplay which he and Ed O’Neill adapted from
the novel by Lenny O’Neill. Linden Dalecki can be contacted at: [email protected]
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doc_500584424.pdf
This paper is a companion piece to the short documentary Breakin’ Away. The paper aims to
touch on Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry at large, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood film industry and related aspects of pop culture
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Mining the cypher: branding and breakdance
Linden Dalecki
Article information:
To cite this document:
Linden Dalecki, (2011),"Mining the cypher: branding and breakdance", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research,
Vol. 5 Iss 4 pp. 364 - 375
Permanent link to this document:http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506181111174646
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Mining the cypher: branding and
breakdance
Linden Dalecki
Abstract
Purpose – This paper is a companion piece to the short documentary Breakin’ Away. The paper aims to
touch on Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry at large, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood ?lm industry and related aspects of pop culture.
Design/methodology/approach – Part ethnographic memoir, part confessional, part anecdotal
how-to, the article is written in the ?rst person and ?ts within the tradition of autoethnography.
Findings – Given its autoethnographic focus, the paper follows several unique cases rather than
attempting to abstract generalizable principles.
Originality/value – The paper provides an inside view of Texas b-boy subculture and reveals speci?c
aspects of the hip-hop industry.
Keywords B-boys, Hip-hop culture, Book publishing, Media-synergy, Hollywood, Popular culture,
Young adults, Narratives
Paper type Viewpoint
cypher
1
(Soanes and Stevenson, 2004)
noun
1. a secret or disguised way of writing; a code: he wrote cryptic notes in a cypher j [mass noun]
the information may be given in cypher.
B something written in a code. B a key to a code.
2. (dated) a zero; a ?gure 0.
cypher
2
(Urbandictionary.com, 2009a)
noun
1. two or more b-boys or b-girls breakdancing in a circle together in an informal freestyle manner
– they could be battling or simply playing off of each other.
Breakbeat 1: intro
The Oxford Dictionary of English de?nitions of cypher include ‘‘a code,’’ ‘‘a key to a code,’’
and ‘‘a ?gure zero.’’ As the b-boy (breakdance) movement emerged in the Bronx in the
1970s, dancers from competing crews (basically, dance-gangs) cleared a circle on the
dance ?oor before battling at hip-hop parties, and it is likely that this zero-shaped
competition space inspired the term cypher as urbandictionary.com de?nes it above. The
idea that hip-hop culture is coded and requires decoding before the mainstream can
understand and consume it is also relevant. Given the atypical section headings in this
paper, note the leading Urbandictionary.com (2009b) de?nition of breakbeat is:
A drum part, usually sampled from old funk records used in hip-hop tracks. Breakbeats are also
sliced and manipulated in drum-n-bass and other forms of electronic music.
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VOL. 5 NO. 4 2011, pp. 364-375, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181111174646
Linden Dalecki is an
Assistant Professor in the
Department of
Management and
Marketing, Kelce College of
Business, Pittsburg State
University, Pittsburg,
Kansas, USA.
Revised May 2009
Revision October 2009
Accepted February 2010
Please ?nd the video that
accompanies this article at:http://www.emeraldinsight.
com/promo/hospitality_
research.htm
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This article acts as a companion piece to Breakin’ Away (Dalecki, 2010), a short
documentary I directed and which the International Journal of Culture, Tourism and
Hospitality Research (IJCTHR) has included with this special edition. This paper touches on
Texas b-boy culture and tourism, the hip-hop industry, book publishing, intra-industry
media-synergy, the Hollywood ?lm industry and related aspects of pop culture. Part
ethnographic memoir, part confessional, part anecdotal how-to, the article is written in the
?rst person and ?ts within the academic tradition of autoethnography (Heider, 1975; Hayano,
1979; Jackson, 1989; Tedlock, 1991; Reed-Danahay, 1997; Ellis, 2004; Miller, 2008). Given
its autoethnographic bent, the paper follows several unique cases rather than attempting to
abstract generalizable principles (Ellis, 2008).
Breakbeat 2: enter the cypher
Two weeks prior to 9/11, I moved from Washington DC to Austin, Texas. As a hip-hop fan and
amateur b-boy from back in the day (the late 1970s early 1980s), my ears were immediately
struck by the screwed-and-chopped sound blasting from passing SLABs – SLAB is a
Houston hip-hop acronym for a slow, loud and banging [car]. Screwed-and-chopped
hip-hop music is a slowed-down-and-cut-up[1] post-production innovation that Bastrop,
Texas-born DJ Screw developed and made popular in Houston’s hip-hop underground from
the early 1990s onwards. DJ Screw died on 16 November 2000, less than a year before my
move to Texas. Although I never met him, I learned fromfolks who knewhimthat we shared a
love for the 1984 movie Breakin’ (Silberg, 1984). The ?lm is the furthest thing from an
authentic representation of popping or breakdancing – ‘‘b-boying’’ as it is known in the
subculture – but it offered several magic moments to teen viewers at the time of its release.
Particularly impressive then – and still – is the so-called broom-scene in which the character
Turbo (played by Michael Chambers, AKA Boogaloo Shrimp) slacks off at work, dancing on
a deserted urban sidewalk at night with a broom, rather than using it to sweep.
A year or so after moving to Austin I became aware of another Texas hip-hop innovation –
b-boy competition full of gravity-defying gymnastic power moves. Texas b-boy talent is
concentrated in Austin (AKA ATX, short for Austin, Texas) and Houston (AKA H-town). I
decided to direct a short video-ethnography about the Austin b-boy scene and went in
search of a central character. A month or two into the search I discovered 17-year-old Josh
Ayers – AKA B-Boy Josh, Josh Youngblood, Milkman, Milky, and Leche Gringo – training to
compete in B-Boy City, the Southwest’s premiere b-boy competition. Josh planned to
compete in two-on-two and in crew-on-crew battles. Several months into the production
process I had over 15 hours of day-in-the-life and competition footage of Josh – shot by
masterful cinematographer John Fiege – which I edited to a broadcast-half-hour 22-minute
?lm. The cut included here is roughly 16 minutes and has no two-on-two competition footage.
I named the project Breakin’ Away as a play on both Breakin’ (Silberg, 1984) and the
coming-of-age ?lm Breaking Away (Yates, 1979), which I will touch on in the Outro of this
paper.
In developing the abridged version of Breakin’ Away included in this special edition of the
IJCTHR, there are many people to thank for their time, assistance, and insight. Early in the
process, the esteemed documentary ?lmmaker Paul Stekler encouraged me to use him as a
reference wherever needed. Dropping Paul’s name when I ?rst contacted Chale Nafus –
chief programmer at the Austin Film Society, and trusted advisor to leading Texas b-boy
Romeo Navarro – was of great value. Soon after Chale introduced me to Romeo – who was
and remains the godfather of the contemporary Texas b-boy scene – Romeo led me to Josh,
the main subject of the ?lm. Cinematographer John Fiege went far beyond the call of duty
and captured inspiring action-dance footage in the cypher. And during interviews with Josh,
John helped cover important narrative gaps time and again. Javier Bonafont was available
for technical advice at all stages of postproduction. IJCTHR special issue editor Marylouise
Caldwell – and one anonymous reviewer in particular – provided perspective and feedback
for the abridged version of the ?lm.
Before you download and screen Breakin’ Away, a few housekeeping notes are in order. In
one scene Josh says:
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Breaking’s expanded, like everyone’s got their own set of tricks and their own unique style that
somebody would notice. Like if they’re all just dressed in a suit, like a black suit, and everybody
looks exactly the same, just by going out and dancing they can tell by their own style who that
person is.
Josh’s comment is deeply revealing and it moved me. I think it gets at why he dances – to
express his uniqueness and be noticed. Josh’s comment may also hint that he believes
America tends to overvalue men-in-suits, regardless of what sort of character is dressed
within. Given the limitations of my footage, it is hard to show that a girl who once teasingly
referred to Josh as Eminem is the same person who proudly proclaims that Josh lives in her
neighborhood. The otherwise confusing sequence is worth describing in some detail here:
an African American schoolgirl walks down the school hallway with a girlfriend and Josh
(who is white), and she proudly says to the camera, ‘‘He lives in my neighborhood.’’ Josh
responds, ‘‘They know me all of a sudden.’’ The schoolgirl continues, ‘‘Since we was little.’’
Josh responds, ‘‘Somebody follows me with a camera and all of a sudden y’all know me.’’
Josh to camera, regarding the schoolgirl: ‘‘She called me Eminem.’’ The exchange
demonstrates that Josh is highly aware the camera is affecting others’ perception of him.
And Josh’s last comment reveals at least one fellow student outside the b-boy subculture
teases him for being a white person pursuing a dance form which is widely perceived as
being non-white. And it bothers him.
Later in the piece Josh states:
Breaking did start on the East Coast, moved to the West Coast, then Texas just kind of popped up
out of nowhere. There’s always the foundation that everybody has to have, but from that they
expand with their own stuff. Texas has pretty much been known for power moves. We expanded it
the most and took it to a max – took it to a higher level than most other regions did.
Josh obviously feels a connection with b-boy history, as well as with what is distinct and
innovative about Texas b-boy culture. In terms of wider b-boy culture and history, the notion
of battling should be explained. One of the more remarkable historical aspects of b-boy
culture is that of a street-generated quasi-martial activity which channeled aggressive male
energy into an art form. B-boying started in the Bronx in the 1970s, largely as a substitute for
gang violence, vaguely akin to West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961) Sharks and Jets
dancing it out rather than duking it out. Gang violence was at an all-time high in the Bronx
and so-called break-boys – young men who would bust power dance moves at hip-hop
dance parties during the manually-looped breakbeats laid down by hip-hop DJs on two
decks and a mixer – were often from opposing neighborhoods. However, rather than
resorting to violence, they would simply get in one another’s faces on the dance ?oor. Thus, it
was fairly common for males from neighborhood ‘‘A’’ to belong to a violent gang opposed to
males from neighborhood ‘‘B.’’ Whereas, younger brothers coming from the same families
would often belong to a dance-crew from neighborhood ‘‘A’’ opposed to a dance-crew from
neighborhood ‘‘B.’’ This notion of crew-on-crew battling as a substitute for gang-on-gang
rumbles remains at the heart of b-boy culture. Individual dance ?ourishes and skills are
lauded, but those individual skills are usually rendered at the service of a collective
art/battle.
The ?nal crew-on-crew battle in Breakin’ Away features Masterz of Mayhem (Josh’s crew)
versus The Jive Turkeys (Omar Davila’s crew) battling in B-Boy City, an Austin-based
competition every April that attracts competitors and spectators from far and wide. Omar is
the b-boy who repeatedly gets in Josh’s face and at one point pulls Josh’s ball cap from his
head during battle. Usually physical contact between opposing crews is not permitted, and
many battle judges (themselves active or former b-boys) will disqualify teams for initiating
contact, though not all judges strictly enforce the tenet. Years prior to my B-Boy City footage
of Josh’s crew’s battle against Omar’s crew, Josh and Omar competed together on the same
crew. Thus, there is a deeply personal aspect to this battle that Breakin’ Away does not show
directly, though Josh provides limited voice-over which alludes to this history.
In terms of international-tourism related themes, there are three strands associated with
B-Boy City:
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B the Austin-based competition draws crews and spectators from abroad.
B individual b-boy establish international reputations at the event which they leverage in
competitions abroad; and
B select B-Boy City participants have toured internationally as an ensemble.
The following promo copy from the www.bboycity.com site touches on these ?rst two
strands:
B-Boy City: Texas International B-boy/B-girl Hip-Hop Festival, representing the b-boy/b-girl
movement in Texas worldwide [authors emphasis]. B-BOY CITY 16 ‘‘THE REUNION’ ’
INTERNATIONAL HIPHOP FESTIVAL: B-Boy City is one of the biggest b-boy/hiphop events in
the southern United States. Every April in Austin, TX, b-boys from all over Texas, the surrounding
states, states across nation, and on occasion a few international locations, come to compete and
spectate [authors emphasis – crews have come from Mexico, Japan, Korea, Germany, and
Finland]. B-Boy City keeps the true competitive spirit of hip-hop alive by holding battles for
dancers, b-girls, poppers and dance crews. B-Boy City’s uniqueness has increasingly pulled in
spectators/performers from the other elements of hip-hop, such as emceeing, djing and graf
writing. Competitors from B-Boy City are now internationally renowned and scattered all over the
globe [authors emphasis]. So this year’s B-Boy City is The Reunion (Bboycity.com, 2009a).
Ten minutes of footage from the Breakin’ Away archive appear in a feature-length
documentary Marcy Garriott directed which is titled Inside the Circle (Garriott, 2008). The
?lm follows Josh’s story where Breakin’ Away leaves off and intertwines his story with that of
his best-friend-turned-arch-competitor, Omar Davila. In terms of the third internal-tourism
strand mentioned above – where select B-Boy City participants tour as an ensemble –
Inside the Circle played a central role. As something of an international rolling-road-show,
during an eighteen-month period Inside the Circle screened in ten countries and in many
cities across the US. The ?lm-tour involved the participation of the three main b-boys
presented in the documentary; Josh, Omar and Romeo. The foreign countries toured include
Canada, Germany, Norway, Holland, England, Scotland, Spain, and Finland. The ?lm
screened in cities across the Philippine Islands, including Zamboaga, Bohol, Siquijor,
Dumaguete, Bacolod, Iloilo, Roxas, Bacoor Cavite, San Fernando Pampanga and Manila.
The Inside the Circle Philippine Islands Tour also offered b-boy workshops, cypher battles
and tours of several of the listed cites and the Mambucal Mountain Resort (Bboycity.com,
2009b).
Readers are encouraged to watch Breakin’ Away at this point.
Breakbeat 3: retro?tting the cypher
While immersed in the ethnographic process of directing Breakin’ Away, I was inspired to
write a screenplay set in Texas’ b-boy subculture (see Appendix 1). To provide an evocative
backdrop I chose oil boom-town-gone-bust Beaumont, Texas – AKA Spindletop – as the
setting. The Kid B (Dalecki, 2006) screenplay had character and story elements I believed
would make for a good teen novel, so I novelized the script. I sent the resulting novel to Marc
Gerald, a Los Angeles based literary agent who encouraged me to develop a prologue,
which I did. I titled it ‘‘The b-boys of Beaumont’’ (Dalecki, 2004) and submitted it to the Austin
Chronicle’s annual short story contest – the prologue won ?rst place and is reprinted in
Appendix 2.
Houghton Mif?in’s young adult imprint Graphia published the Kid B novel in October, 2006.
From the outset my vision was – and remains – a Kid B media franchise with Breakin’ Away
serving both as a research project and an authenticating text. I saw the documentary as a
double means to an end. First, to gain access to and knowledge of a closed scene that is
hard to break into. Second, to make a ?lm which could serve as material evidence to
otherwise skeptical culture industry insiders that the scene exists and I had access. Thus,
directing Breakin’ Away helped both to educate me before and during the creative-writing
process, and to convince gatekeepers such as lit agent Marc Gerald and young adult book
editor Eden Edwards at Houghton Mif?in that the albeit ?ctional material was a more or less
authentic and well-grounded representation of the Texas b-boy scene.
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This second bene?t might be termed intra-industry media-synergy since Breakin’ Away
served to promote Kid B to culture industry insiders, versus traditional media-synergy
where one media text promotes another to retail consumers. If and when Kid B is
greenlit as a ?lm, it is likely that the Kid B novel will act as a legitimizing element along
with the documentary and thus the intra-industry media-synergy dynamic will be
ampli?ed. At this writing Kid B has sold slightly over 5,000 copies – decent for a ?rst
book, but hardly the sort of numbers which constitute a legitimate presold audience.
Thus, the intra-industry media-synergy value of the novel would be far higher than the
traditional media-synergy value. As something of a side note, many underground and/or
foreign graphic novels have high intra-industry media-synergy value in Hollywood
despite having low traditional media-synergy value. For a discussion of traditional
media-synergy see Dalecki (2008).
Breakbeat 3: publicizing the cypher
This section traces the PR-strategy, timeline, and collateral PR-text developed for the novel
Kid B and is also relevant to readers interested in book publicity in general, providing
something of a brief how-to for any budding book author. After learning that Houghton Mif?in
wanted to publish Kid B, I began to wonder what, if any, strategic support I might be able to
lend in the PR process. Houghton Mif?in has as PR department, though most book
publishers label their equivalent department the Publicity Department – for the purposes of
this paper, I use PR and publicity interchangeably. I discovered that the best information on
book-publicity is from books practitioners wrote. Two fairly recent books in the category are
Publicize Your Book! An Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves
(Deval, 2004), by Jacqueline Deval, and The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity
(Warren, 2004/2008), by Lissa Warren. Both authors worked for years at major publishing
houses in book publicity. Warren’s book was more relevant to Kid B, in part because she
worked in the PR department at Houghton Mif?in. Both books address ?rst-time authors
signed to major publishing houses and discuss ways to optimize publicity and generate
maximum sales for a title. The issues the books cover are not of much value to established
authors or self-published authors.
In terms of sales and publicity competition, Kid B plays in a broad ?eld. Lissa Warren states:
A wide variety of books become bestsellers – everything from Chicken Soup for the Soul, to hefty
biographies, to literary novels. What most have in common is strong publicity. It’s the main thing
that drives consumers into the bookstores and appears more trustworthy than advertising
because it contains the judgment of an independent third party (Warren, 2004, p. 2).
Given the imposing number of books competing in the young adult ?eld, it was imperative
that the publicity behind Kid B be well thought out and well executed. As Warren notes:
The days of publishing a book because it deserves to be published are over. Houghton Mif?in, the
publisher of Henry David Thoreau, was until just recently owed by Vivendi. More than ever before
and more than they should be, books are seen merely as a vehicle for pro?t (Warren, 2004,
pp. 7-8).
Before outlining the publicity strategy and timeline Warren suggests, I brie?y address two
points Warren does not, but which I believed would be key in generating publicity for Kid B.
Namely, determining target audiences and positioning-statements for the title:
1. Target audiences:
B reluctant junior high and high school readers;
B junior high and high school readers interested in hip-hop;
B junior high and high school teachers;
B junior high and high school librarians;
B university lecturers in YA literature; and
B university lecturers in hip-hop studies.
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2. Positioning statements:
B A bittersweet young adult novel about a multiethnic crew of breakdancers from a
tough East Texas high school.
B The ?rst hip-hop themed young adult novels from a major publisher, and the only
novel to focus on the breakdancing subculture.
B An S.E. Hinton type story for teenagers who are into hip-hop.
Although the end-readers of choice are teens, the opinion-leader in?uence of adult
reading-mentors such as schoolteachers and school librarians was not overlooked. In terms
of positioning, the ?rst sentence deals with the novel’s story/genre/tone/milieu. The second
addresses the uniqueness/sexiness/?rst-in-the-?eld aspect. The third is a useful framing
device, particularly when discussing the book with older readers and book reviewers.
Though brief and simple, these two exercises helped generate the title’s strategic publicity
timeline, discussed below. The ?rst order of business was to work with an in-house PR
representative. I thought Megan Wilson would be the ideal choice as in-house PR rep for Kid
B. Her experience included working as an assistant to Houghton Mif?in President, Wendy
Strothman, and she led the PR campaign for the movie tie-in release of the Lord of the Rings
book trilogy re-release. Megan also handled Houghton Mif?in’s Lord of the Rings
movie-related making-of book titles. And she did PR on teen-related titles such as Why
Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four Got Out by Dave Marcus. Finally, by coincidence,
Megan was the girlfriend of Todd Poudrier, an indie-?lmactor and friend of mine fromBoston!
Unfortunately, I had no choice in selecting my in-house publicist. I started working with
publicist Karen Walsh about six months prior to publication of Kid B (October 2006). As
Warren states:
Most publicists make contact four to six months before a book pubs – in advance of when galleys
go out to the media. Bound galleys are down-and-dirty versions of your book that look like cheap
paperbacks. There’s often no art on the cover, just the text. They’re for the media’s eyes only; they
help the media plan ahead (Warren, 2004, p. 10).
Warren suggests that authors make initial contact with their publicist via e-mail, which she
considers less intrusive than establishing contact by phone. She says authors should not
mention their desired publicity strategy upfront to avoid seeming too aggressive and
controlling – advice which I could have paid closer attention to. She contends that ?rst
contact with the publicist should be limited to simply putting the author and their work on the
publicist’s radar. Deval on the other hand says an author should develop a marketing plan for
their book early on and should ‘‘present the plan about six to seven months before your
book’s publication. You can present it closer to publication than that, but take advantage of
the time you have to build support. You want to deliver the plan to your editor before he or she
participates in any key launch or strategy meetings’’ (Deval, 2004, p. 19).
The ?rst task Karen Walsh assigned me was to complete Houghton Mif?in’s standard author
questionnaire. As Warren states:
An author questionnaire is a form you ?ll out, often several pages, that provides your publisher
with basic background information as well as your ideas about promotional opportunities for your
book – everything from who might be willing to blurb it, to stores or catalogues that should
de?nitely carry it, to organizations that might want to purchase large quantities of it (Warren, 2004,
pp. 10-11).
Though not explicitly stated, these recommendations suggest that growing one’s list of
relevant media contacts is a good strategy. In the case of Kid B, I created a database of
relevant media contacts and e-mailed them an elevator-pitch regarding the novel’s pending
release. Following initial contact with the in-house publicist, and having independently
cultivated relevant media contacts, the next step is to meet the editor and publicist
face-to-face. Warren mentions that this meeting is the point at which the author is transferred
from the editor’s care to the publicist’s. She recommends an informal environment and
stresses that this is more a getting to know one another meeting than a formalized strategy
session:
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It’s always a good idea for authors to meet with their publicist and the rest of the publishing team.
This is an instance where I recommend you push to get a date set. The meeting doesn’t have to
be a formal strategy session in the conference room. Sometimes, lunch at a nice restaurant works
just as well – or even better. The main thing is for you to get to know them and for them to get to
knowyou. It lays a good foundation on which to build a strong relationship, and it allows you to get
an idea of the amount of time, effort, and money they’ll spend on your book so that you can make
supplemental plans, if necessary (Warren, 2004, p. 11).
Warren recommends that the author ask the publicist which review publications and shows
have requested a copy of their title.
I thought it best to discuss several logline positioning options vis-a` -vis the title with the
publicist several months before the seasonal catalogue containing the title was sent out –
why leave such positioning exclusively to the PR staff? I believed the brief logline describing
the title would have a great impact on whether or not various media outlets would request a
copy of the book –the sparse language describing the book in this seasonal media-bound
catalogue is of utmost importance. My intuition was that initially positioning Kid B as one of
the ?rst hip-hop themed young adult novels from a major publisher – and the only novel to
focus on b-boy subculture –was more important than foregrounding structural, character or
language elements. MainstreamAmerican media is more interested in ?rst-mover status and
outre´ uniqueness than in the quality, character, or classicism of a piece. Once such
positioning had piqued media interest, story-oriented positioning of the novel as a
bitter-sweet tale about a multiethnic crew of breakdancers from a tough East Texas rustbelt
high school could be deployed. If only things had played out this way!
I anticipated the generic hip-hop themed nature of the material would interest both teen
readers and culture-reporters running the gamut from radio reporters at NPR and Arts and
Leisure-section reporters at the New York Times to MTV veejays. I expected that coverage
was as likely to come from general-culture writers as from book-speci?c writers thus did not
believe that potential Kid B reviewers should be restricted to book reviewers – I strongly felt
we should also target culture-writers covering lifestyle and leisure sectors of the media. I also
thought coverage in teen-oriented magazines with a hip-hop edge (such as Vibe) should
have been sought out, although this did not happen with Kid B. Far from it. Rather than
targeting individual reviewers and publications, the actual in-house PR approach was to
hope the Houghton Mif?in seasonal catalogue – which the in-house PR staff sends quarterly
to media outlets far and wide – would do all the work. An extremely long lead-time is required
for coverage in such glossies and for high-circulation newspaper inserts such as Parade
and USA Weekend. Fortunately, Tameka Hicks – a writer for USA Weekend in summer 2006
–spotted Kid B in Houghton Mif?in’s seasonal catalogue and requested a copy and an
interview with me. She did the interview. Unfortunately, it never ran because a new editor at
USA Weekend was averse to the idea of covering a hip-hop themed novel.
Breakbeat 4: outro
As mentioned previously, Marcy Garriott integrated extensive archival footage from Breakin’
Away into her feature-length documentary, titled Inside the Circle, which picks up Josh’s
story where Breakin’ Away leaves off. Marcy’s ?lm is excellent, and readers are encouraged
to see it. I also sel?shly urge you to read Kid B. FYI, the book must sell over 20,000 copies
before I clear my advance and see any royalties! For a free preview, go to:http://books.
google.com/books?id¼6I03Cn4ANpEC&printsec ¼ frontcover&dq ¼ %22kid þ b%22
In addition to my confessed self-interest, a goal shared by Breakin’ Away, The B-Boys of
Beaumont, and Kid B – is to bolster a cultural form which has gotten short shrift in terms of
mainstream respect and commercialization. Just as the father character Raymond Stoller in
Breaking Away (Yates, 1979) wonders what his son Dave Stoller will do after he gives up his
‘‘Italian’’ pro-bicycling pipe-dreamand grows up[2], so have many viewers of Breakin’ Away
asked what Josh will do once he gives up b-boying and grows up. In the past decade, ATX’s
own Lance Armstrong has done more than anyone to establish professional bicycling as an
eminently viable pursuit for athletes of any nation. Readers will be heartened to know that
Josh has gone on to great success as a b-boy, winning individual and crew-on-crew
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competitions in Asia, Europe, and the US before signing on as an internationally touring
background-dancer with hip-hop diva Fergie. And he is a featured dancer in what is sure to
be the most commercial – if not the most authentic – iteration of Hollywood b-boy
representation, Step Up 3-D (Chu, 2010)[3].
Notes
1. Somewhat ironically in the current context, screwed-and-chopped hip-hop music is far too slow and
choppy for dancers to break or pop to.
2. The character Raymond Stoller – played by Paul Dooley – says to his wife, ‘‘I’m just tired of it,
Evelyn. I’mtired of worrying about him[Dave]. Who’d ever hire a guy like that? He’s going to wind up
a bum . . . An Italian bum.
3. Step Up (Fletcher, 2006) generated $114,194,847 in worldwide box-of?ce. The ?rst sequel in the
franchise, Step Up: 2 The Streets (Chu, 2008), generated $148,424,320.
References
Bboycity.com (2009a), available at: www.bboycity.com (accessed 19 July 2009).
Bboycity.com (2009b), available at: www.bboycity.com (accessed 5 October 2009).
Chu, J. (director) (2008), Step up: 2 The Streets, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Chu, J. (director) (2010), Step up 3-D, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Dalecki, L. (2004), ‘‘The b-boys of Beaumont’’, The Austin Chronicle, pp. 40-1, 13 February.
Dalecki, L. (2006), Kid B, Houghton Mif?in – Graphia, Boston, MA.
Dalecki, L. (2008), ‘ ‘Hollywood media synergy as IMC’ ’, Journal of Integrated Marketing
Communications, Vol. 47 No. 52, pp. 47-52.
Dalecki, L. (director) (2010), ‘‘Breakin’ away’’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality
Research, Vol. 5 No. 4.
Deval, J. (20042008), Publicize Your Book: An Insider’s Guide to Getting your Book the Attention it
Deserves, Perigee Trade, New York, NY.
Ellis, C. (2004), The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography, AltaMira Press,
Walnut Creek, CA.
Ellis, C. (2008), ‘‘Autoethnography’’, in Given, L.M. (Ed.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative
Research Methods, Sage, Newbury Park, CA.
Fletcher, A. (director) (2006), Step Up, Disney, Burbank, CA.
Garriott, M. (director) (2008), Inside the Circle, Cinema Libre, Canoga Park, CA.
Hayano, D. (1979), ‘‘Auto-ethnography: paradigms, problems, and prospects’’, Human Organization,
Vol. 38, pp. 113-31.
Heider, K.G. (1975), ‘‘What do people do? dani auto-ethnography’’, Journal of Anthropological
Research, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 3-17.
Jackson, M. (1989), Paths Toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, IN.
Miller, D.S. (2008), ‘‘Disaster tourism and disaster landscape attractions after hurricane Katrina: an
autoethnography’’, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 2 No. 2,
pp. 115-31.
Reed-Danahay, D. (1997), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, Berg, Oxford and New
York, NY.
Robbins, J. and Wise, R. (directors) (1961), West Side Story, United Artists, Los Angeles, CA.
Silberg, J. (director) (1984), Breakin’, Cannon Films.
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Soanes, C. and Stevenson, A. (2004), Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press,
New York, NY.
Tedlock, B. (1991), ‘‘From participant observation to the observation of participation: the emergence of
narrative ethnography’’, Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 69-94.
Urbandictionary.com (2009a), available at: www.urbandictionary.com/de?ne.php?term ¼ cipher
(accessed 19 July 2009).
Urbandictionary.com (2009b), available at: www.urbandictionary.com/de?ne.php?term ¼ breakbeat
(accessed 5 October 2009).
Warren, L. (2004), The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity, Da Capo Press, New York, NY.
Yates, P. (director) (1979), Breaking Away, 20th Century Fox, Los Angeles, CA.
Further reading
Brown, K.G. (2009), ‘‘Island tourism marketing: music and culture’’, International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 25-32.
Dalecki, L. (2007), ‘‘You hip, you hop, you don’t stop being white’’, The Austin American-Statesman,
p. J-05, 4 February.
Firstenberg, S. (director) (2003), Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo, Cannon Films.
Hanson, C. (director) (2002), 8 Mile, Universal Studios, Los Angeles, CA.
Appendix 1
Below is the Q&A developed as part of the Kid B press kit and passed along to Houghton
Mif?in’s PR department six months before the novel was published [October 9, 2006].
Q1. What prompted you to write Kid B?
I’m from the east coast and was very surprised to ?nd out that Texas has an amazing
breakdancing scene when I moved here. I started directing a short documentary ?lm called
Breakin’ Away about the ‘‘Masterz of Mayhem,’’ a crew of breakdancers from Austin and the
Texas valley. I ended up focusing most of the ?lmon the one white kid on the crew, Josh. I got
to thinking, what if a white kid with a passion for breakdancing was from a racially divided
place like East Texas instead of Austin? I ?gured there was a good story there.
Q2. What’s the deal with the Breakin’ Away documentary?
The cinematographer on it was John Fiege, a very talented guy who’s been winning a lot of
awards lately including the Kodak award and the Princess Grace award. The ?lm got
screened in Cannes as part of their Short Film Corner. What’s even cooler is that Marcy
Garriot – a professional documentary ?lmmaker – saw a rough cut of my short and decided
she wanted to make a feature length doc about Texas breakdancing. She’s been following
Josh Ayers and the Masterz of Mayhem, Omar Davila, Romeo Navarro and a few of the other
top Texas crews and individual breakers. There was no money involved, but it was a big
honor for me when she asked if she could access the tapes frommy archive to use as part of
her ?lm. Her ?lm, Inside the Circle, will be coming out in mid-2008, about a year and a half
after the pub date for Kid B.
Q3. Where does your interest in hip-hop come from?
Musically it’s what I grew up with. I was born on the Jersey shore but grew up inside the
beltway in Silver Spring, Maryland. Around D.C. in the early 80s, Hip-Hop and Go Go were
the most popular musical genres, at least in my junior high and high school. Go Go is a DC
thing that never really broke out. Pretty much all the early hip-hop was from New York and
New Jersey – which I call the sixth borough since those areas of Jersey producing hip-hop
back in the day were pretty much an extension of NewYork. But DCradio played all the good
stuff from New York a week or two after New York was playing it. Plus those were the days
when boxes were cool and you’d hear Go Go and Hip-Hop mix tapes that way.
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Q4. What does Kid B stand for?
It’s the main character’s name but I wanted it to mean a lot of things. I always liked how
certain American subcultures pretty much mandate a nickname – like the gunslingers in the
old west, or jazz musicians, or gangsters, and of course hip-hop MCs, breakdancers, graf?ti
artists, and DJs. The protagonist’s birth name is Breslin but he doesn’t go by that name on
the street. The B stands for Breslin, but also for Beaumont and for break-boy, since the ?rst
wave a breakdancers were called b-boys and most of the hardcore breakers still prefer the
term b-boy to breakdancer.
Q5. Were you a breakdancer back in the day?
I did my best, which isn’t saying too much. I think my locking and popping was better than
my breakdancing. And my beat-boxing was probably better than my locking and popping.
Again, I’d stress that this isn’t saying too much. The extent of competition was basically at the
same level as guys from the neighborhood playing a game of touch football.
Q6. What’s your take on the use of breakdancing in movies?
I think it’s interesting that the ?rst hip-hop ?lms tended to privilege breakdancers. It makes
sense in a way because I think the mainstream entertainment industry saw hip-hop as a fad
and wanted to cash in on it quick and get out. And even though hip-hop was on the top 40
music charts from1979, breakdancing is way more visual than MCing, at least in my opinion.
It’s pretty funny to watch Ice T in Breakin’ (1984) and listen to him toasting only the
breakdancers, with no bragging about himself.
Q7. Why did you decide to set the novel in Beaumont, Texas?
I went through Beaumont on my way out from DC to Austin. It’s one of those rustbelt places
where you can tell things used to be buzzing along but now everything’s falling apart. Plus
racial tension is really high in East Texas. I don’t think I need to get in to a big discussion of
that aspect, but it de?nitely is an important part of what I was trying to get across with the
book.
Q8. What’s the current state of breakdancing, and hip-hop overall, in Texas?
Surprising as it might sound, Austin is where it’s at in terms of breakdancing. A lot of credit
has to go to Romeo Navarro who runs the biggest b-boy competition in the entire Southwest.
It’s called B-Boy City and goes down twice a year [note that it is currently an annual event
happening in April]. I have to thank himfor giving me all kinds of access when I was shooting
my documentary. No access and there would have been no doc. No doc, and there wouldn’t
have been any good research or basis for writing Kid B. In terms of Texas and hip-hop music
right now, Houston’s the place and always has been. Although he’s been gone for a few
years, DJ Screw, who came from Smithville, innovated the whole screwed-and-chopped
sound. There are a fewHouston names like SlimThug, Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones,
Lil’ Flip, Big Moe and Scarface who’ve broken out big, but most of it stays local.
Appendix 2
The B-Boys of Beaumont by Linden Dalecki [prologue to Kid B and winner of the 12th annual
Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest]
The business ward had lots of tall buildings but they were all kind of old and crumbling. And
before we could even make it to the spot downtown a hard rain was hitting the city. Rain was
a good thing that summer since it helped to keep things cool. It was me and Trick T leading
and Big Vance following behind, like he usually does. Vance is big like his name says and not
too fast, but he’s got power and always got a fewcrazy moves up his sleeve. Trick is a natural
b-boy, straight up, no two ways about it. Breaking didn’t come natural to me like it did to Trick.
I had to work hard for every move except maybe backspinning and the worm, but they’re so
old school and simple nobody can really count them as moves these days.
When we passed by Kyle’s Five and Dime the rain was still coming but the sky was starting to
look like the sun might peek out. On one side of Kyle’s you could still see the Krush Krew tag
put up by Ruina like two years back when we ?rst crewed up. ‘‘Krush Krew for Life’’ is what
the yellow tag read, but Ruina’s style was so his that even heads couldn’t hardly read it,
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let alone the regular people in the city. But even if the tag said what it did, Ruina was out in
Cali on a trick-bike sponsorship. Couldn’t hardly even get him on the phone anymore.
So instead of the old four-man Krush Krew it was down to me, Trick, and Vance. The plan was
to get set up outside the Jefferson Theater and put on a show. Most everybody would stop
and sneak a look, even the old business guys. If some people felt like putting some change
on the sidewalk we never stopped them, but that’s not how the police saw things. And if it
wasn’t panhandling, they could get us for disturbing the peace, even if Vance never pushed
the box past ?ve on the volume dial. The rain had come to a drizzle so Vance took the
garbage bag off and set the box on the ground.
Vance always talked too loud, even when he was being nice. Vance looked at me and Trick
and was like, ‘‘Are y’all down?’’
Trick was all, ‘‘Why you gotta ask?’’
That was just like the two of them, since Vance was Mr. Polite unless you pushed him to the
wall – then you had to watch out because you couldn’t guess what Vance might do if things
got hyped. With Trick it was almost just the opposite. When things were chill, Trick would try
and speed things up. But when things got hyped he’d keep cool under the stress. I guess it
all kind of balanced out somewhere.
Vance pressed play on the box. A screwed-up beat kicked in and Trick hit the ground. Right
away everyone who was walking by came to a stop. Me, I like to uprock a little before I hit the
ground, but not Trick. He always gets right into it. He threaded around like a pretzel, then
busted out a vertical pushup and you could hear the people in the crowd breathe in together
all at once.
Trick’s legs slashed around and almost hit some gray-haired guy wearing a suit, but Trick
never hit anything or anyone unless he meant to. Most of the crowd sort of laughed and the
old guy walked away quick, like he was mad about it, even though Trick was just having a
good time and not trying to make anyone feel bad.
Trick got up and was like, ‘‘Hit it, Kid.’’ But I ?gured Vance was the one who’d brought the box
so I motioned for himto go next. Big V got into some crazy locking and popping. What Vance
didn’t have in style and timing he always made up for in power and letting it all hang loose.
And when it came down to it, going all out and acting the fool was almost as good as being in
full control. Plus it always cracked people up. Vance did some of his jelly belly rolls and had
me and everybody laughing so hard that by the time he was done and I was up, I was almost
out of breath.
But I did my best to concentrate and get my head clear so I could put my focus on what I was
doing. As soon as I got into some uprock I could feel that good feeling take over and pretty
soon it was only moves and colors and the beat. I dropped and busted out a coffee grinder,
then ?ipped over for a few crickets. The crowd was eating it up like it was peach ice cream,
which it really wasn’t. But the happiness and adrenaline kicked in even more and made me
try for a windmill.
I tried, but didn’t get much past my left shoulder before I landed ?at on my back. Not even
one rotation, let alone a windmill that really spins. I threwout a freeze to make the crowd think
I had tried to land ?at on my back like that, but I probably only fooled maybe half the people
watching, if that.
Before I could even stand I saw Vance reach for the box and shout ‘‘Police.’’ I don’t even
remember getting up, just me and Trick and Vance running down Fannin Street and ducking
into a tiny little alley. The police car couldn’t even squeeze into it. The cop riding shotgun
rolled down his window and shouted, ‘‘Go back where you came from.’’ Nobody got out of
the car, so about halfway down the alley we stopped running. I ?gured most police don’t like
it when they see us kind of kids having a better time than they probably ever had.
We knew how things were. And whenever we went to break downtown, we never parked our
bikes near the dance spot. Walking back past Kyle’s Five and Dime the sun was looking
about ready to set. It made the yellow ‘‘Krush Krew for Life’’ tag glow orange. ‘‘For Life’’ . . .
yeah, right – then where was Ruina? It hit me just then that words and names don’t always
mean what they say they do, even if people meant them when they used them. And how just
like me and Trick and Big Vance had nicknames, so did the area around Beaumont. They
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started calling it Spindletop like a hundred years ago when they went digging for oil and it
came shooting up so high and strong out of the ground they couldn’t stop it.
By the time we got rolling on our bikes the sun was hitting the water. And even all the oil
re?neries, broken down mills, and rusted out factories had a natural glow to them. Times like
that made Beaumont seem pretty. And I remembered some substitute teacher who told the
class that Beaumont stood for ‘‘pretty’’ in Cajun. My guess was that whoever the Cajun was
that named Beaumont must have been looking at a sunset, about like the one me and Trick
and Vance were looking at. And I tried to imagine how things might have looked like if they
never dug so deep into the ground that it changed the name of the place.
About the author
Linden Dalecki has research interests that include management and marketing issues
related to Hollywood, hip-hop, and the publishing industry. He is an Assistant Professor at
the Kelce College of Business where he teaches entertainment marketing, international
marketing and digital content marketing. He established a study abroad program in France
at the La Rochelle Business School/Groupe Supe´ rieur de Commerce de La Rochelle which
he leads each summer on behalf of Pittsburg State University. He pursues an interest in
creative writing and is currently in negotiation with Eminem’s Interscope/Shady/
Aftermath-Films regarding Y-Town – a screenplay which he and Ed O’Neill adapted from
the novel by Lenny O’Neill. Linden Dalecki can be contacted at: [email protected]
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