Dark matter in b-boying cyphers: race and global connection in hip hop

Unrestricted This multi-sited, inter-disciplinary project analyzes the ubiquitous practice within breaking (or b-boying) culture of cyphering—improvisational and competitive dance circles. Through oral histories, participant observation, and live performance and archival analysis across the U.S. and parts of Europe from 2005 to 2009, this work focuses on the unseen elements of cyphers, sometimes manifesting as cultural knowledge, the import of history, or cypher “energy”. In exchanges between dancers and in relationship to the surrounding spectators, cyphers cultivate a force that becomes their defining characteristic. While described in a number of ways—such as highs, spiritual connection, or energy—the physics concept of dark matter acts as an umbrella for its unseen, multi-dimensional, and material influences. Dark matter is the non-luminous material glue that holds together galaxies and “appears” only by way of its gravitational influence on surrounding visible matter. This project considers the multiple dimensions of competitive collaborations in relation to other collectivities, including diaspora and notions of the global. As cyphers perform multi-racial and transnational connection though movement, they act as resources to consider ideas of the whole that are attuned to internal differentiation and conflicting interests, particularly with respect to race and national difference.; Chapter One examines the brief history, and the layers of meaning apparent in the unseen qualities of a single cypher. Chapter Two explores the changing cultural context of b-boying such that past historicizations of movement become a part of current struggles over cultural meaning. Battles remind us that the whole of b-boying is constituted through difference, akin to “rhizomatic” relations. Chapter Three compares the multiple depictions of the cypher’s dark matter to similar forces within other African diasporic circles, demonstrating the overlapping cultural influences on b-boying movement and practices. Chapter Four examines the racial discourse on breaking in '80s media and in the contemporary moment among breakers in relationship to ideas of the dance’s “universal appeal.” Chapter Five provide thick descriptions of different field experiences, illustrating dimensions unaddressed in earlier analyses. Chapter Six examines b-boying as a social movement, wherein the virtual expansion of cyphering demands we consider global connection in a different manner.