The Cross-Frontier Spread and the Economic Beneficiaries of Capoeira, Breaking, and Hip Hop: From Chattel Slavery to Sports Drinks to the Olympics

Abstract

Hybridization and glocalization are two types of cross-frontier movements that encompass the interflow of ideas and commodities. Hybridization in hip-hop and capoeira is a result of their African roots and transatlantic spread. Hip-hop and capoeira have two similar appearances in marginalized African diasporic communities in North and South America. First, historically, both dance styles had been condemned by Old World colonial rulers and have recently been misappropriated by colonial-like neoliberal authorities and corporations. Second, these arts have been overhauled and have spread globally throughout majority non-African or non-black nations by large corporations in contemporary times. Glocalization (also known as global cultural homogenization and global cultural uniformity) as mentioned by Pieterse can be critically viewed as a cultural genocide, where the originating culture’s arts have been spread either voluntarily or involuntarily across ethnic, racial, and national borders so extensively that it has been completely transformed (and sometimes renamed) and separated from its roots (2015). Consumerism, driven by the neoliberal ideal of a free market economy, allows culture and arts to be disseminated globally and consumed by anyone who wants to buy them. As a consequence, the fundamental roots and soul of hip-hop and capoeira have become lost and forgotten. The past, present, and future of one of hip-hop culture’s pillars, breaking (break dancing), have been dominated by the neoliberalist search for increased economic profits which employs cultural misappropriation tactics under the guise of global cultural homogenization and global cultural uniformity

            Keywords: globalization, hybridization, glocalization, breaking, hip hop, capoeira