Ёжик — Who is who

DJing is music art, ability to mix and distort music in some ways and get a piece of music that is different from initial material. DJs are Disc Jokeys. They usually work at the discos and in night clubs. They lay effects on musical compositions and sometimes combine several of them to get bright product. Most successful DJs produce disks with their own compositions. They make remixes, club mixes, and other reformations of the most popular songs. DJs say that the most important qualities for DJ are the sense of rhythm and the ability to combine different styles of music.

Rap is one of the main directions in modern music. It sprang up in America’s “black regions”. And even now many people suppose that no one from “whites” can sing real rap, although rap music disseminated all over the world. In its early ages rap was a way for “black guys” to express their thoughts and feelings about the world. And their world was awfully criminalized, they were discriminated, they were guys from dirty streets. Rap was also a way to show that you are really cool and it was a way of battles between single persons or between groups. “Dozen” style is an example of such rap battles. It turned up in 1930-s in Garleme and South Bronks. Youngsters competed in world battles. They summoned a crowd and recited improvisations, which included 3 quatrains (dozen lines). The aim of this improvisation was to insult your opponent and his relatives as hard as you can. The person who indistincted earlier than his opponent lost the battle. When it was impossible to determinate the winner, fight were started between compertors’ support and it often finished with fighting with knives.

Nowadays rap singers who forced to the world’s scene, earn big money, have rich houses, cars, wear “golds” — clumsy golden neck jeweler — and continue to sing about their world. But when disks and concerts don’t give enough money, rap singers start to sell texts of their songs to big corporations. They don’t show such selling to public but they start to advertise their production in the songs. Famous companies ask artists to write song, which includes advertisement of their production. Sometimes they do it without commercial company asking. Their managers just hope that companies will hear the text of song and pay them money. All these commercial acts started after one event, when in 1986 RunDMC have sung the song “My Adidas” just because were fond of these boots. And auditory put their shoes off and started to wave them in time with the music. It produced great effect.

Today rap singers create new recording companies and support young rap artists. They also earn money by advertising somebody else’s and their own production.

But many rap singers haven’t forgotten their criminal past and combine fame and criminality. The brightest example of their deeds is the fight of rap singers’ clans. They fight, even sometimes kill each other. They have real fight with exchanges of fire and make little base things to each other. And sometime these wars calm down, but they never stop, they just become “cold wars”. Then rap singers just insult each other in their songs and make quarrels, when the come across their enemies.

Graffiti is the art for brave and creative people. Many people call it vandalism, but drawings made on old and damaged buildings mostly cause positive feelings and can even attract public’s attention to the most important social problems. Graffiti had become so popular that there are organized many graffiti festivals. Every graffiti artist has his tag, which is very important for every artist. Tags are specially created, developed and moved to the public. Every artist wants his tag to be famous, so sometimes tags even distract from the drawing. The tag is artist’s pride.

Graffiti is not only drawing on the walls. It includes some interesting styles of bombing. For example scratching or scrubbing turned up in Europe when some guy started to scratch his sings on the glass. Another one put his tags on the glass with a wax candle. These writings can’t be erased. People scratch with grinder stones, pieces of cut on the windows of metro trains, electric trains, sometimes in trains and almost never in buses. Artists do it just in transport full of people and passengers usually say nothing. They spent one or two minutes to make writing. This work produces awful sound and smell of the tooth, which is treated at dentists’. Scratchier spend very little money for their hobby because they use one stone nearly for a year. At the same time nothing can be done with the writing on the glass, and changing glass in expensive, so writing will have long life. The worst thing is when beginners are scratching, because they just spoil the glass and nothing can be corrected then. Graffiti is the art. And like any art it is good if it is well done, if it is just vandalism there is nothing good in it.

Break dance’s mother is kapoaira. It is not only kind of martial arts. It sprang up in Brazil. A lot of people met in one place and started singing all together. They pushed pair of fighters out in the centre of the field. Fighters were to beat each other using acrobatic techniques. The aim was to make fighting as beautiful as it was possible. They sang during that fighting dance and one fighter came after another. Fun continued all the day long.

Now break dance is very popular. Street heroes dance on the dusty asphalt. And every body forgets about his business and stops to watch this amazing dancing.

Break dance in Russia is closest to world’s class from all hip hop culture events. Foreigners appreciate Russian break dance. But in Soviet Union time break dance was on very low level because bi-boys haven’t possibility to train and they had very little information about world’s development of break dance.

Russian break dance appeared in 1980-s like Russian rap. That was times when foreign films with strange dances turned up in Soviet Union. First bi-boys learned to dance from such video films and tried to create something new. Then they started to dance on the streets in warm weather. Many people argued if break dance has more choreography or sport. But bi-boys say that most important is music and persistence with working hard. If bi-boy won’t train continuously he can have bad problem with the health.

Bi-boys usually don’t earn a lot of money. Most of bi-boys finally leave their hobby. But some of them organize festivals, open break dance school and dance with other artists as background.

The main problem for many bi-boys is choice between perfect technique of dance or a little bit dirty but personal new style. What is better — learning to do well what created other people or create something new.

All kinds of hip-hop culture are connected and people, who moves hip-hop culture: graffiti artists, bi-boys, rap singers and DJ are all together.