Importance of the Break-Beat

Joseph Murphy

Loren Kajikawa

Music 360

15 October 2015

Music 360 Midterm

I-A) Schloss would definitely disagree with this statement. In fact the first thing that Schloss does in his chapter is list off, “the cuts that b-boys favor” (Schloss 17) and none of them were made before 1973, which clearly shows that b-boys do not typically prefer the “newest music available.” Not only does Schloss show how b-boys prefer older tracks over the newest hip-hop music, he also says that they do in fact have a great concern for hip-hop history. Schloss goes as far as referring to music they listen to as, “an honored repertoire of records,” and says that the b-boys are so “culturally conservative that they insist on dancing to the exact records that brought the form to life 35 years ago” (Schloss 18). Schloss’s opinions on b-boys are actually the exact opposite as the ones presented in this question.

I-C) False. Kajikawa did not find the back and forth usage of songs to be sloppy at all. This is evident in Kajikawa’s page long explanation of Grandmaster’s Flash “quick mix theory”. Kajikawa talks about Flash’s ability to, “transition cleanly into a new break,” and how he had “a…reliable rhythmic framework,” (Kajikawa 26). Kajikawa was impressed by how smooth Flash could transition between songs in his live performances, especially at the Audubon Rock On, where Flash performed with 5 live MCs and half an hour, quickly transitioning from break beat to break beat. Kajikawa was impressed with Flash’s style of mixing and how he could, “mix faster and cleaner than other DJs,” (Kajikawa 26) and in no way found the live performances from before 1979 to be sloppy with the way they transitioned between tracks.

I-E) False. Kajikawa would not say that they had nothing to do with the break but instead say that they “revolutionized” it. “Rather than simply providing a canvas for the group’s politically charged lyrics and imagery, the group’s beats conveyed important content of their own,”...