goodbye, shanghai.
so i made my first big move. bye bye shanghai baby! it treated me well, but it wasn't everything i imagined it to be.. or wanted it to be for that matter, but i'll get into that later. these past three months have gone by quickly, which makes me a bit nervous because before i know it i'll be back in the states and going off to medical school!
so a wrap-up of shanghai. the dancers there were good, generally i have found that the dance element of the hip-hop culture in china is the most advanced out of the "four elements" (emcee, b-boy, dj, graffiti) of hip-hop. the dancers here aren't very far behind as far as skill level goes, and they even manage to pick up the new dances that are being developed in the united states (i.e. the chickenhead, krumping, etc.).. the wonders of the internet! in fact, tommy the clown and the krumpers will be in hong kong on nov. 14th (hopefully i make it out. as there will be one of the best beatboxer/"multivocalists" from england there too - killa kela). anyway so there were three studios in shanghai: dragon dance studio, carsten, and new idol. i only went to dragon dance studio, why? carsten well the dancers from carsten would usually find work through dragon dance studio anyway so i'd run into them and the new idol dance studio is one of those places that work to make superstars. yep they have superstar training schools here. it seems lots of asian-americans come back to their homelands looking to get big, so they train their voice, train to dance, and train to act and stuff (superstars in asia do everything, even if they suck at it - maybe its because the old opera stars had to be proficient in everything: singing, acrobatics, dance... maybe its a stretch but whatever). so the closest to hip-hop they got was hip-pop, and that consisted of a bunch of guys with crazy ridiculous haircuts doing mtv asia choreography. not my scene. dragon dance studio was good, i took locking, popping, and house classes there- for some reason i never got to the breakin' class, not sure why i never had the desire to go. so yes, i think i've improved as a dancer and if i'm disciplined enough to practice a lot, i'll be quite the dancer by the end of the year - which i hope is the case!
as i said, i did manage to conduct two interviews with two of the most prominient people running the show in shanghai. dj v-nutz and stanley (the founder/owner of dragon dance studio). both are native shanghainese, both have been into hip-hop for quite sometime, but they both have very different stories. one comes from a military family the common theme of the conversations i've been having with people is that they do hip-hop because it gives them freedom. freedom to choose what they want to do, freedom from their daily realities - whether it be the constant pressure from family and school or the pressure of being poor and in a rough neighborhood. i think maybe for me, it gave me the freedom to be myself. but that's another whole essay that i haven't even thought about yet. so i'll just leave it at that and continue. so what is so attractive about the music to these people? it seems like the only music that taps into that seemingly natural reflex in your neck. it's got that rhythm that'll make you bob your head. its the rhythm that moves the soul. stanley even said in a club once, you can tell if someone's a hip-hop person or not in a hip-hop club by seeing if they are bobbing their head or not. and it's true for the most part. i even wrote about this head bobbing thing in my watson proposal because it really seems to be a natural reflex, with hip-hop music being one of those little reflex-testing hammers. they also got into how hip-hop is great because if you really get into it it is a gateway into so much music if you let it take you there... funk, soul, r&b, disco, jazz, house, reggae, everything that shaped hip-hop into what it is now. and the cool thing is, that you can come at it from different angles- like dj v-nutz is into funk from a djing aspect and is hoping to start producing some new funk... i'm getting into funk from a dance perspective- since i'm really into the funk styles of dance (locking and popping) and maybe from a producing perspective (a lot a lot alot of the beats today are constructed from samples of old funk/jazz music).
so yeah. the hip-hop scene in shanghai is getting off its feet. there's virtually no graffiti though it seems. apparently there is some on the outskirts of shanghai, but i never ventured out there to see it for myself- so that's just hearsay. the mc's.... well, i covered that in a previous email of mine. it's kind of funny though, like there's a crew called the "poom poom crew" - i'm not sure if poom poom means anything in chinese or where they got this name from.. but its quite a funny name if you know what a poom poom is. at least underneath all the bling they latched onto one positive aspect of hip-hop, teamwork. NONE of the mc's are solo artists, they are all part of a crew of somesort and all perform together. this is also seen in the dancing circle- i did not see anyone really do their own thing. i was talking to this guy, adam (mr. stokes, a dj from the states) about this teamwork thing and told me he interviewed a bunch of students from the top schools in china for some research or something- they all basically told him they work on everything in groups, they all help each other and work together on their homework (aww sounds like swat), so maybe this is a cultural thing (although most of the people i knew there doing hip-hop dropped out of school). but yeah, you know the doing everything for the team ideology is pretty strong here. anyway, since i left, another club is pushing a thursday hip-hop night with mc battles - they used to do that in pegasus but they stopped doing that. so it really boils down to the dancers and the djs. v-nutz is working hard on the scene, working to bring big names to shanghai to try to expand people's understanding of hip-hop, he tries to slip in some good underground/old school tunes during his weekly commercial gig, and he has a crew of djs called aminosoul- which is a few shanghainese djs and a few japanese djs. stanley is working to get more people into dancing and planning more events for the dancers.
oh, another random observation i've made is that china seems to separate music culture from all other cultures. for example in the US skateboarding culture is often associated with punk music and hip-hop music, basketball culture is often associated with hip-hop/rap music, but in china this is not the case. music is on its own, it doesn't seem to be associated with any subcultures... so it's interesting to find that some of the skaters here listen to all the cheesey chinese pop music or metal. (metal is reallllly big here in china. i remember walking into cd stores in beijing and there would be walls of obscure metal bands). i did read in some magazine that a us basketball camp was trying to push a bit of the hip-hop/rap culture while promoting/holding their camp in china (basketball is really big here now, especially now with yao ming) - but i don't think it worked as in the minds of the people here, these cultures are separate and totally unrelated.
before i left shanghai, i had the pleasure to see one of the legendary great dj's... the grand wizard roc raida. yes his title is actually "grand wizard" - this title is given to only the greatest of the great- for example, the guy that invented scratching (grand wizard theodore) is one of the grand wizards. this kind of proves the fact that hip-hop heads are actually big nerds. i mean they probably got this grand wizard thing from dungeons and dragons... and how many people are named after comic book characters in hip-hop? yeah that's right, they're all nerds too. haha. anyhow, in high school i used to watch this guy doing crazy beat juggles with body tricks (beat juggling is when a dj takes two copies of (usually) the same record and switches back and forth between them - either creating a loop by replaying the same section over again, doubling up the beat, or creating an entirely new beat - example of dj klever beat juggling @ 2:00 and 3:30. body tricks are just tricks you do with your body while beat juggling- for example stopping the record with your elbow, spinning around, juggling with your back turned, reaching under your leg to move the fader- basically its like basketball tricks, only for djs). i got to hang out for a bit with him afterwards and he was a chill guy, filling me in on a bit of what's going on in new york and some djs that seemed to have fell off the face of the earth. oh, the aforementioned mr. stokes from the states opened up for him and did a crazy set of old school, baile funk, jiggy rap, and some random things like metro area. wish he did a regular party gig like that. that night i also met an australian guy that is currently in tokyo. i met him through a forum about b-boying- he has traveled throughout asia and basically met up with hip-hop heads wherever he went. he's interested in starting a street label in china for hip-hop heads and skaters, so he was in shanghai for that night checking to see if he was ready to move to china. sooo i've got a good hook up in tokyo now :).
so yes shanghai shanghai. it treated me pretty well, but it was kinda impersonal. the people there seem to be in general very distant and not very open - and there seems to be an air of "if i'm not going to get anything out of talking to you then you're not worth my time" attitude. granted there were exceptions and there were people that were down-to-earth. but i got the feeling that people seemed to be caught up in their daily routine and don't like to be bothered. the stereotype of shanghainese people are that they are extremely concerned with money matters and the women are stereotyped to be fussy gold diggers. so i experienced a little of that. even when i would talk to random people- like people that sell food or dvds that aren't from the shanghai area- the would always ask me what i thought about shanghai people- and then they would launch into a rant about how they don't really like them. so at least i felt like i wasn't the only one- not that i hated shanghainese people or anything.
i left shanghai at the end of october and flew to shenzhen, the city right across the border from hong kong. i was lucky enough to find an airplane ticket from shanghai straight there for around $50, since it costs about the same to take a sleeper train to guangzhou which is an hour away from shenzhen. the train would've taken 24 hours and i've already had that experience before so i decided to pass on it :).
to be continued...
so a wrap-up of shanghai. the dancers there were good, generally i have found that the dance element of the hip-hop culture in china is the most advanced out of the "four elements" (emcee, b-boy, dj, graffiti) of hip-hop. the dancers here aren't very far behind as far as skill level goes, and they even manage to pick up the new dances that are being developed in the united states (i.e. the chickenhead, krumping, etc.).. the wonders of the internet! in fact, tommy the clown and the krumpers will be in hong kong on nov. 14th (hopefully i make it out. as there will be one of the best beatboxer/"multivocalists" from england there too - killa kela). anyway so there were three studios in shanghai: dragon dance studio, carsten, and new idol. i only went to dragon dance studio, why? carsten well the dancers from carsten would usually find work through dragon dance studio anyway so i'd run into them and the new idol dance studio is one of those places that work to make superstars. yep they have superstar training schools here. it seems lots of asian-americans come back to their homelands looking to get big, so they train their voice, train to dance, and train to act and stuff (superstars in asia do everything, even if they suck at it - maybe its because the old opera stars had to be proficient in everything: singing, acrobatics, dance... maybe its a stretch but whatever). so the closest to hip-hop they got was hip-pop, and that consisted of a bunch of guys with crazy ridiculous haircuts doing mtv asia choreography. not my scene. dragon dance studio was good, i took locking, popping, and house classes there- for some reason i never got to the breakin' class, not sure why i never had the desire to go. so yes, i think i've improved as a dancer and if i'm disciplined enough to practice a lot, i'll be quite the dancer by the end of the year - which i hope is the case!
as i said, i did manage to conduct two interviews with two of the most prominient people running the show in shanghai. dj v-nutz and stanley (the founder/owner of dragon dance studio). both are native shanghainese, both have been into hip-hop for quite sometime, but they both have very different stories. one comes from a military family the common theme of the conversations i've been having with people is that they do hip-hop because it gives them freedom. freedom to choose what they want to do, freedom from their daily realities - whether it be the constant pressure from family and school or the pressure of being poor and in a rough neighborhood. i think maybe for me, it gave me the freedom to be myself. but that's another whole essay that i haven't even thought about yet. so i'll just leave it at that and continue. so what is so attractive about the music to these people? it seems like the only music that taps into that seemingly natural reflex in your neck. it's got that rhythm that'll make you bob your head. its the rhythm that moves the soul. stanley even said in a club once, you can tell if someone's a hip-hop person or not in a hip-hop club by seeing if they are bobbing their head or not. and it's true for the most part. i even wrote about this head bobbing thing in my watson proposal because it really seems to be a natural reflex, with hip-hop music being one of those little reflex-testing hammers. they also got into how hip-hop is great because if you really get into it it is a gateway into so much music if you let it take you there... funk, soul, r&b, disco, jazz, house, reggae, everything that shaped hip-hop into what it is now. and the cool thing is, that you can come at it from different angles- like dj v-nutz is into funk from a djing aspect and is hoping to start producing some new funk... i'm getting into funk from a dance perspective- since i'm really into the funk styles of dance (locking and popping) and maybe from a producing perspective (a lot a lot alot of the beats today are constructed from samples of old funk/jazz music).
so yeah. the hip-hop scene in shanghai is getting off its feet. there's virtually no graffiti though it seems. apparently there is some on the outskirts of shanghai, but i never ventured out there to see it for myself- so that's just hearsay. the mc's.... well, i covered that in a previous email of mine. it's kind of funny though, like there's a crew called the "poom poom crew" - i'm not sure if poom poom means anything in chinese or where they got this name from.. but its quite a funny name if you know what a poom poom is. at least underneath all the bling they latched onto one positive aspect of hip-hop, teamwork. NONE of the mc's are solo artists, they are all part of a crew of somesort and all perform together. this is also seen in the dancing circle- i did not see anyone really do their own thing. i was talking to this guy, adam (mr. stokes, a dj from the states) about this teamwork thing and told me he interviewed a bunch of students from the top schools in china for some research or something- they all basically told him they work on everything in groups, they all help each other and work together on their homework (aww sounds like swat), so maybe this is a cultural thing (although most of the people i knew there doing hip-hop dropped out of school). but yeah, you know the doing everything for the team ideology is pretty strong here. anyway, since i left, another club is pushing a thursday hip-hop night with mc battles - they used to do that in pegasus but they stopped doing that. so it really boils down to the dancers and the djs. v-nutz is working hard on the scene, working to bring big names to shanghai to try to expand people's understanding of hip-hop, he tries to slip in some good underground/old school tunes during his weekly commercial gig, and he has a crew of djs called aminosoul- which is a few shanghainese djs and a few japanese djs. stanley is working to get more people into dancing and planning more events for the dancers.
oh, another random observation i've made is that china seems to separate music culture from all other cultures. for example in the US skateboarding culture is often associated with punk music and hip-hop music, basketball culture is often associated with hip-hop/rap music, but in china this is not the case. music is on its own, it doesn't seem to be associated with any subcultures... so it's interesting to find that some of the skaters here listen to all the cheesey chinese pop music or metal. (metal is reallllly big here in china. i remember walking into cd stores in beijing and there would be walls of obscure metal bands). i did read in some magazine that a us basketball camp was trying to push a bit of the hip-hop/rap culture while promoting/holding their camp in china (basketball is really big here now, especially now with yao ming) - but i don't think it worked as in the minds of the people here, these cultures are separate and totally unrelated.
before i left shanghai, i had the pleasure to see one of the legendary great dj's... the grand wizard roc raida. yes his title is actually "grand wizard" - this title is given to only the greatest of the great- for example, the guy that invented scratching (grand wizard theodore) is one of the grand wizards. this kind of proves the fact that hip-hop heads are actually big nerds. i mean they probably got this grand wizard thing from dungeons and dragons... and how many people are named after comic book characters in hip-hop? yeah that's right, they're all nerds too. haha. anyhow, in high school i used to watch this guy doing crazy beat juggles with body tricks (beat juggling is when a dj takes two copies of (usually) the same record and switches back and forth between them - either creating a loop by replaying the same section over again, doubling up the beat, or creating an entirely new beat - example of dj klever beat juggling @ 2:00 and 3:30. body tricks are just tricks you do with your body while beat juggling- for example stopping the record with your elbow, spinning around, juggling with your back turned, reaching under your leg to move the fader- basically its like basketball tricks, only for djs). i got to hang out for a bit with him afterwards and he was a chill guy, filling me in on a bit of what's going on in new york and some djs that seemed to have fell off the face of the earth. oh, the aforementioned mr. stokes from the states opened up for him and did a crazy set of old school, baile funk, jiggy rap, and some random things like metro area. wish he did a regular party gig like that. that night i also met an australian guy that is currently in tokyo. i met him through a forum about b-boying- he has traveled throughout asia and basically met up with hip-hop heads wherever he went. he's interested in starting a street label in china for hip-hop heads and skaters, so he was in shanghai for that night checking to see if he was ready to move to china. sooo i've got a good hook up in tokyo now :).
so yes shanghai shanghai. it treated me pretty well, but it was kinda impersonal. the people there seem to be in general very distant and not very open - and there seems to be an air of "if i'm not going to get anything out of talking to you then you're not worth my time" attitude. granted there were exceptions and there were people that were down-to-earth. but i got the feeling that people seemed to be caught up in their daily routine and don't like to be bothered. the stereotype of shanghainese people are that they are extremely concerned with money matters and the women are stereotyped to be fussy gold diggers. so i experienced a little of that. even when i would talk to random people- like people that sell food or dvds that aren't from the shanghai area- the would always ask me what i thought about shanghai people- and then they would launch into a rant about how they don't really like them. so at least i felt like i wasn't the only one- not that i hated shanghainese people or anything.
i left shanghai at the end of october and flew to shenzhen, the city right across the border from hong kong. i was lucky enough to find an airplane ticket from shanghai straight there for around $50, since it costs about the same to take a sleeper train to guangzhou which is an hour away from shenzhen. the train would've taken 24 hours and i've already had that experience before so i decided to pass on it :).
to be continued...
posted by Derrick at 1:09 PM
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