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If it’s Tuesday night, you can expect to find funk lovers and dance junkies in Joe Squared swaying to the sounds of Kool & The Gang, Walter Murphy, and Aurra. Inside Joe Squared the fashion choices are a medley of the 60s (plaid pants, afros, and stylishly worn sweater vests) and 2011 (North Face jackets, Justin Bieber hairstyles, and sunglasses worn specifically at night time). There is definitely an older crowd still around from earlier on, probably getting a drink after work with friends or co-workers, maybe going to the Charles to catch a movie, but a lot of young poppers came in around 11:00. The event is advertised as a Funk-Soul-Breakdance Party, but the venue has had more poppers than breakdancers turn out in recent weeks. What’s the difference? Both these dance styles originated out of funk and coexist within the Baltimore area’s booming urban dance scene. Stylistically, however, they differ; in popping one interprets a song using jerk-like muscle twitches to accentuate and interpret the beat whereas in breakdancing jerky movements aren’t as integrated. Instead, a breakdancer will toprock (dance freely) while standing up and lower himself to floor to perform body movements and freezes to accentuate and interpret the beat.
Popping at Joe Squared
DJ Napspace and Landis Expandis were pumping out the funk beats all night and held true to the funk tradition of vinyl records and turntables.
DJ Napspace and Landis Expandis
Though we live in an age where the contemporary DJ can get by with just a laptop and no external hardware, without the traditional elements we tend to lose some of that artistic virtuosity. Not to say DJ Napspace and Landis Expandis were absent of laptops; they were definitely flossing their Macbooks, but didn’t seem to use them for about half of the night. Classical music inspired funk tunes like Walter Murphy’s A Fifth of Beethoven and David Shire’s Night on Disco Mountain really stood out and put a nice dark twist on the night’s playlist. Around 11:30 more Poppers started flocking in and DJ Napspace and Landis Explandis got to work playing high-energy funk battle tunes like Kool and the Gang’s hit Jungle Jazz.
This friday is the Windup Space’s Four Hours of Funk and, from what Johns Hopkins breakdancing co-captain Rhul Marasigan (aka B-Boy Dumpling) says, this is where all of Baltimore’s best breakdancers bring it. Look for the review next week!
[...] experiencing Joe Squared’s Funky Tuesday Nights last Tuesday (the story), I decided to attend the Windup Space’s 4 Hours of Funk to experience another side of [...]
March 1, 2011 12:34 pm