Saturday, July 12, 2008

Beat Street- Popular Culture In Fiji.





The culture of youth is ever changing like fashion. It is also a reflection of the society transitions which they live. Fiji is no exception and recently the emergence of hip-hop inspired dance called "krumping" among the youth has become mainstream, even to the extent of corporate sponsored competitions, as featured in a Fiji TV article.


Fiji's older generation, like their international counterparts are undoubtedly perplexed with the gyrating and head turning movements and might not understand that this particular change in behavior of todays youth, is a global phenomenon influenced by the media. The questions that do arise, is whether these cultural shift is a good thing or is it a destructive element?

Fiji TV Video segment(posted below) covers the local competition.



While these local participants of this new wave of dancing, are hardly in the same league as Rock Steady Crew, these krumpers may argue that this is just a new form of creativity; despite the fact that this dance form is a derivative of Breakdancing established in the late 70s.

Below is a Youtube video of "old school" battles featured in classic movie Beat Street.



Other dramatic changes is the increase of local hip-hop talent, some of whom have readily embraced the technology shift of Youtube and in directly influencing popular culture in Fiji's urban areas.
A relatively new blog "Local Music in Fiji" outlines the lineup of rappers, including a selection of music videos.

Other Youtube videos of Fiji Hip-hop artists are posted below.








Social Bookmarking



Add to: Digg
Add to: Del.icio.us
Add to: Reddit
Add to: StumbleUpon
Add to: Furl
Add to: Yahoo
Add to: Spurl
Add to: Google
Add to: Technorati
Add to: Newsvine




No comments:

Post a Comment