Broke Boys

Hip hop pioneer Kool Herc, explains how "break" or "broke" was a New York street term for a person who reaches their breaking point (as sampled in this video from the DVD extras of the documentary "The Freshest Kids"). In other words, a person, especially a poor person, can be pushed down so far that they don't care anymore and just snap. This came to describe the way dancers at the first hip hop parties reacted to certain records, or more specifically parts of records. The music and the beat excited them so much, that they just didn't care and reacted openly to it. From this freespirited dance came the form known today as breaking, and the breakers were called break boys or bboys for short. In my opinion, this original "I don't give a f$%k!" attitude and individual character is largely missing from the dance form today (mostly because it is impossible to commercialize), along with the knowledge and experience passed on by earlier practitioners and pioneers of the dance and its surrounding Bronx-based culture. However, this isn't the case for the street boys in Kigali, Rwanda, who are most definitely at their own breaking points, so when I show them movements passed onto me by some of the pioneers, without so much as a second thought, they express their own individual characters through it, not caring what anyone thinks. They are true bboys, by the very definition of the word. Hopefully this short video will prove my point.


Broke Boys from Bret Syfert on Vimeo.