B-Boy Park is a Japanese hip hop festival that takes place every year in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. It is free admission and open to the public. A prominent player on the

Japanese hip hop Japanese hip hop is hip hop music from Japan. It is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, ...

scene, Crazy-A, organized the annual hip hop festival in

Yoyogi Park is a park in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It is located adjacent to Harajuku Station and Meiji Shrine in Yoyogikamizonochō. The park is a popular Tokyo destination, especially on Sundays when it is used as a gathering place for Japanese rock music ...

in 1999. It is a celebration of hip hop music, dance, fashion and culture. At its inaugural event, American break dancer, Crazy Legs, judged the dance competition. However, he was not completely satisfied with the overall performance of Japanese break dancers. He commented that they needed to focus more on footwork, and less on "power moves". Author Ian Condry notes that the festival is extremely important to a hip hop scene that many doubted could even exist: “Up until the mid-nineties, people who worked in the entertainment world pointed to hip hop’s rootedness in African American communities as a reason to doubt its possible takeoff in Japan, where different understandings of race, language, and social class prevail.” Today, the festival continues to draw rappers, b-boys and girls, and hip hop fans from all corners of Japan, representing a plethora of styles that reflect the richness and diversity of the Japanese hip hop scene.BBOYPARK.com
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References

Music festivals in Japan Festivals in Tokyo 1999 establishments in Japan Japanese hip hop Hip hop music festivals Music festivals established in 1999 Hip hop dance festivals {{hip-hop-stub

See also

References