Here are some of Bboy Diehard’s answers from our last interview with him. Enjoy the read and let’s discuss this.
What do you think are the reasons that are stopping the breaking scene in Tunisia from making it to the international scene or evolving to a better place? In addition, how can we fix this?
Unity is missing and the idea of becoming a skilled famous Bboy consumes every mind. What I am about to say is very important: The point of breaking or doing any form of hip hop culture activity is to get to know each other to connect and make it spread even wider! Through these connections, you can get further than just being a very strong and skilled Bboy who will be known only locally. This culture comes with the quote ”Peace, love, unity and having fun.” notice that it said it by itself.
– Peace means u have to do it for the reason of finding yourself and finding what you want.
– Love is to love everyone and whoever likes this culture. Not based on skills and other materialistic things just pure respect and love.
– Unity, which is how our culture breaking and hip-hop stayed until today and will evolve to the next generations. If there was no unity and sharing, we would have never learned from our older generation teachers and they would always have been practicing to win first place battles. The battles helped the level grow up but the unity (each one know one / each one teach one) helped keeping this culture ALIVE.
– Having fun! Having fun alone or with everyone! as long as you have fun and do it for the sake of it, things will become more natural and will get into the process of all the other words before it ”Peace, love and unity”.
Therefore, to make it to the bigger scene and to evolve past boundaries first thing we should communicate and not ignore the existence of each other as we see in most events that everyone just pretends that the other does not exist. This will teach us how to become better at building connections with people from different cultures and countries and finally get invited to represent our culture and identity to the bigger wider area of events (internationally and nationally) but of course everything starts from the roots which are your locals and the Bboys of your country. So instead of going to jams to improve your battling skills or cyphering skills try to improve your social skills which will bring you to a bigger place since you will know how to represent yourself efficiently as a person and an artist.
Some advices to the rising Bboys generation in Tunisia?
Art (breaking) should get your character out and make you a better human being! Developing skills for battling showcase is great. However, is your character evolving as well? Are you able to blend in different social atmospheres or are you only able to blend with people from your art? It is very important to know that if you do breaking or any artistic activity it should affect your personal life (lifestyle) as you become more flexible towards all situation in life and free styling into them without being stuck! Which reflects also in your dance (the freedom of mind). You should be able to communicate with a normal person, a person from another field, a businessman, a seller, a lawyer, administrators etc, and to be able to communicate with them and be dynamic…
Don’t close on yourself so many doors, lose so many opportunities and just practice in a room like everyone and wait for a different outcome or to speak only with the people that understand what you do which are the least majority. If your Art is leading you closing up and narrowing your mindset than it’s the wrong way which most of us get into it especially if the last generation doesn’t spread the word or lacks the information. Open mindset is key to dealing and understanding many perspectives.