Breaking the limits? Exploring the breaking scene in Havana, Cuba and belonging in a global (imagined) breaking community

Abstract

This article discusses the findings from my initial foray into the Havana breaking scene in February 2020. Inspired by ethnomusicologist and hip hop scholar Joseph ethnographic study of the New York breaking scene, I deploy three central aspects from his work: community as social entanglement, music as a creator of belonging, and movement as the connecting elements between dancers. I explore how these aspects are visible in Havana and suggest that there are various aspects, for example, heterogeneity, internet access and possibilities to travel, connect and exchange within a global dance community, that define the local breaking scene in Havana, which add to the three pillars Schloss develops from breaking itself. In addition, I question breaking’s ‘normed narratives’ – for example, the assumption that b-boys and b-girls always draw inspiration from the United States, breaking’s country of origin – to interrogate US and Eurocentric/western-nation perspectives. I also explore how I was able to dive in and conduct qualitative research with relative ease in a short period of time as a white European b-girl, hip hop, and dance scholar as well as a foreigner to Cuba’s breaking scene. I reflect on the importance of travelling as a means of knowledge acquisition, the idea of belonging to a ‘Global Hip Hop Nation’, an ‘imagined community’ and ‘connective marginalities’ as concepts to help untangle the forms of belonging within the global breaking community as they play out in Cuba. This research is based on a practice-of-theory approach that places the body at the centre of investigation enhanced with the idea of meaningful movement. Data is collected through participant field observation, qualitative interviews as well as my embodied and cultural knowledge as a b-girl, which informs my role as ‘hybrid expert’ in, and between, Havana’s breaking scene.