Hip Hop Night 2.0: An unusual blend of hip hop and Bangla music

Knight Sisters. Photos: Noor-A-Alam

When I entered the EMK Centre at Dhanmondi 27 for Hip Hop Night 2.0, I was not overly excited about what was to come. I powered through two hours of 'hip hop' dancing in observance of World Hip Hop Day on 24 August, and I must admit that I was not blown away by what I saw, at this hip hop celebratory event organised by EMK Centre. 

"Why am I here?" I kept asking myself. 

It wasn't until I got to speak to some of the performers that I realised I was asking myself the wrong question all along.

What I should have asked was why they were there. It did not really matter whether I enjoyed my time there or not. Maybe the culture just wasn't my cup of tea. But what mattered was what drove the performers to pick up this art form as a means of expression. 

I wanted to know how a foreign culture, a lifestyle if you will, inspired them to take up dancing. 

It was just quite endearing to discover how and why people not very unlike you and me, have been touched by the art and lifestyle of the hip hop genre — a culture still alien to most.

This piece is not going to be a comprehensive 'review' of my experience of Hip Hop Night 2.0, though. This is more of a montage of the conversations I had on the night with the dancers from the two different 'dancing groups' performing at the event — Syndicate and Knight Sisters — the latter being an all-girl dance group. 

Syndicate

For Sabil from Syndicate, it was when he started listening to rap music in the fifth grade that he got his first taste of hip hop. 

"I used to listen to a lot of Eminem, Tupac and 50 Cent but I did not know what I was listening to was called hip hop,"reminisced Sabil.

It wasn't until a workshop on hip hop and 'B-Boying' (an energetic style of dance typically performed to hip hop music) in 2019 at the very same EMK Center that Sabil, along with his crewmate Plato, got to "really" know about the culture.

"Through that workshop, we got to know about the whole culture. From there, we started our crew. We looked for and gathered dance enthusiasts and started performing at various events," shared Sabil.

Their tight knit community is one where everybody knows each other and this very unity is the foundation upon which the hip hop scene in the city is growing, albeit slowly.

"Our goal is to focus on Bangla hip hop, Bangla music. Hip hop is a global thing but we want our displays and dance routines to showcase what Bangla hip hop is. That is how we design our choreography and dance routines," revealed Plato when asked about how they select their playlist for shows.

True to what Plato said, a lot of the backing tracks that were played on the night were of some extremely popular Bangla songs. Realising the presence of female vocalists on some of the songs Knight Sisters performed to, such as 'Gaibona' and 'Bapuram Shapure', I asked Rupom of the Knight Sisters whether the tracks were intentionally selected for the all-girl group to dance to.

A member of the Knight Sisters.

"No, it wasn't anything like that. We basically wanted to perform on a few evergreen Bangla songs and that's it. Everyone in the audience is well versed when it comes to these songs, therefore it is fun for the audience to experience and also fun for us to perform," answered Rupom.

Hip hop dancing is not something the average person would associate with some of the Bangla songs the Knight Sisters danced to that evening. However, it is the very idea of 'fusion' that drove them to choreograph their steps in accordance with the hip hop genre on some traditional Bangla music.

"Not many in our country have experimented with the concept of fusing hip hop with Bangla songs. Most are used to seeing a handful of English hip hop songs and that's about it. We have always tried to do something different and fresh when we perform. When designing the choreography, we work hard on incorporating hip hop moves and routines with Bangla music," concluded Rupom.