Comments (0) Best Place to Learn About Hip-Hop Culture - 2012
Cyphers: The Center for Urban Arts
Hip-hop culture is nothing if not chameleonic, having constantly evolved and reinvented itself over the past 40 years. But no matter how much it's changed, hip-hop essentially boils down to four basic elements: MCing, b-boy dancing, turntablism, and graffiti artistry. And at Cyphers, you can get schooled in each and every one of 'em. Since opening in January, proprietors Danny "Scooby" Morales and Edson "House" Magaña (both are veterans of the dance collective Furious Styles Crew) have instructed Valley youths in the aforementioned urban art forms, as well as providing studio space in which to practice their burgeoning talents. While Morales and Magaña oversee most of the dance workshops — ranging from b-boy basics to the fancier footwork of krumping and jerkin' — various local turntablists, MCs, and graf crews are brought in to teach classes. But in addition to learning can control and spray technique from Mario "Durok" Alvarez or how to scratch a record from DJ Reflekshin, students are taught respect for each other and their art form, as well as the history involved. After all, there's more to becoming an MC than just learning how to spit fresh rhymes. It's like the godhead KRS-One once said, "Rap is something that you do, hip-hop is something that you live."
