Residual Cultures in Our Lives Part I

Hello readers! N-Dure is here again to share some more thoughts with you all! This time, an interesting thought came across my mind as I was studying for my Gen Ed exam. One of the many terms that I have to know and recognize is the term "residual culture". My TAs in the class related this concept to the term Hip Hop during the review session Monday night. This caused a chain reaction in my framework of intelligibility and ultimately caused me to want to share this petite random thought of mine with you ^_^

So first, let's define the term. what is "residual culture"? To simply put, residual cultures simply refer to the remnant of the past that can still be seeing in the present and dominant culture, or mainstream.

So you may ask? What does that have to do with bboying? o.O

To answer this question, let's go ahead and define another term that I mentioned earlier: The framework of Intelligibility. The framework of Intelligibility is what differentiate you from me aside from the obvious difference in genetic composition. In short, the framework of intelligibility is one's personal experience. But how does these two concepts relate to bboying?

I urge you to think about of the time when you repped on the floor. Did you plan out your set and carried it out exactly as you thought you would? Or did you grab a few main ideas and wing it on instinct? I better hope the answer is the latter, because that's how it's suppose to be!

But how can a bboy do that? How can a bboy just dance on instinct and still manage to dance to the beat? The answer is obvious: Through practice practice and practice! Through practice, a bboy can accumulate enough experience that can accommodate almost every single possible scenario. That is, if a bboy practice the "right way".

As any bboy, beginners and veterans alike, should have notice by now, crashing is simply inevitable. When you are doing your thing on the floor, sometimes things are just not going to workout exactly the way you want it to be. Maybe your hand slipped, maybe your footing wasn't at the right angle or timing, or maybe your mind went blank and you did something else that you didn't mean to do...all these things will ultimately lead to one thing: crashing.

However, one should not be discouraged by that. Do not lose that confidence! Even if you crash, one can easily recover or cover it up by doing some other motions! But it is HOW a bboy know what to do to recover from his mistake that is worth investigating.

When a bboy crashes in practice, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT just get up and repeat until you pull off your set or combo successfully. This is NOT how you can accumulate experience to recover from crash. If you crash once, chances are, you will encounter the same situation in the future when you attempt that same thing again. Instead, stay in that position, if possible, and think for a second how you can recover from the crash. This is very important! This is how you accumulate your experience, and this is how you get better!

This conclude part one of today's thought! Part two will come soon enough!

Peace out for now!

N-Dure