B-Boy Park

B-Boy Park is a Japanese hip hop festival that takes place every year in Tokyo. It is free admission and open to public participation [http://www.bboypark.com/i/ B-Boy Park Website (Japanese)] A prominent player on the Japanese Hip Hop scene, Crazy-A, organized the annual hip hop festival in Yoyogi Park in 1999. It is a celebration of hip hop music, dance, fashion and culture. At the first event, an American break dancer, Crazy Legs, judged the dance competition. However, he was not completely satisfied with the overall performance of Japanese break dancers. He commented that they needed to focus more on footwork, and less on "power moves". [Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006, pp66-67.] Author Ian Condry notes that the festival is extremely important to a hip hop scene that many doubted could even exist: “Up until the mid-nineties, people who worked in the entertainment world pointed to hip hop’s rootedness in African American communities as a reason to doubt its possible takeoff in Japan, where different understandings of race, language, and social class prevail.” [Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.] Today, the festival continues to draw rappers, b-boys and girls, and hip hop fans from all corners of Japan, representing a plethora of styles that reflect the richness and diversity of the Japanese hip hop scene. [ [http://www.bboypark.com/ BBOYPARK.com ] ]

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