SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/654465
5 0 S X S W o r l d | F I L M / I A M A R C H 2 0 1 6 | S X S W. C O M s rising Chicago superstar Chance the Rapper finished per- forming "Somewhere in Paradise" on Saturday Night Live in December, he busted out quicksilver dance moves. Chance moved through these compli- cated steps with an intuitive flair borne out of heritage. After all, the dance, known as "footwork," and the accompanying electronic genre that shares its name, come from the Windy City. Chance has served as a foot- work ambassador before, having toured with two of the sound's most important producers, Teklife cofounders DJ Spinn and the late DJ Rashad. Footwork enjoyed an international prominence years before that 2013 tour, thanks in part to the work of chic bou- tique labels such as Hyperdub and Planet Mu. But the sound and dance had been burbling around Chicago's west and south sides long before international labels came calling. Footwork itself took form throughout the 1990s, but Frankie Knuckles' residency at Chicago nightclub the Warehouse during the late '70s and early '80s galvanized a scene and gave its sound a name: House music. The genre is a starting point for the electronic dias- pora, and it gave birth to a number of localized sub genres such as ghetto house. Ghetto house emerged in the late '80s, doubling down on the per- cussive rough edges of early house records. Ghetto house's raunchy lyrics augment its crude and rude approach to electronic music. That all but guaranteed the genre's status as a strictly underground phe- nomenon—though not one without a home. Independent Chicago label Dance Mania released influential 12-inches by Paul Johnson, Jammin Gerald, Traxman, DJ Deeon, DJ Milton and Parris Mitchell, whose "Ghetto Shout Out!!" provided the foundation for Daft Punk's "Teachers." Dance Mania documented ghetto house's early transition into juke and footwork, but the real growth occurred in spaces on Chicago's west and south sides where people gathered to get down. Kavain Space, aka producer and Teklife member RP Boo, says west-siders gathered at a place called the Factory to take in DJs such as Jammin' Gerald, Houz'Mon, and Traxman, while south-siders flocked to events led by popular dance group House-O-Matics. Launched in 1985, House-O-Matics continues to specialize in large group rou- tines, but once the performances ended, dancers would square off while Deeon and Miltion spun. Footwork's earliest moves emerged in the early '90s. "Everybody knows that west side is the birth of footwork and where it started changing styles," says Space. But footwork wouldn't be where it is today without Space's contributions, which came out of his time in House-O-Matics: He joined as a dancer in 1993, but became one of the group's DJs (Rashad and Spinn joined the group a few years later). When Space started producing in the mid-1990s, footwork the dance already had a name—Dance Mania released Wax Master Maurice and DJ Rated X's Footwork 12-inch in 1996—but Space gave it a compli- mentary sound, recording tracks onto cassettes and bringing his finished cuts to parties. "As I played the tracks I still see the people groove, so I watched the crowd," says Space. "As long as the crowd is dancing, having a good time, I felt that that was the key." Out of that partnership between dance and music Space solidified footwork's sound—in particular its syncopated per- cussive tapestries that fly by at 160 beats per minute. Space's innovations provided footwork with the fuel to spread further. According to Litebulb, who is a member of footwork dance group the Era and regularly performs with Teklife producers, the dance was inescapable as the '90s bled into the 2000s. "There wasn't a person that didn't know what footwork was 'cause people were doing it in the hallways, classrooms, lunchrooms—people were bat- tling every where," says Litebulb. Era dancer Dempsey spent his high school years battling, approaching strangers to ask if they footwork. "If they said 'yea' I would battle them right there, on the corner of the bus stop—right there, for hours," says Dempsey. Before launching the Era, Litebulb and Dempsey danced in Terra Squad, one of dozens of vaunted battle crews that refashioned footwork's moves in their own image. The symbiotic relationship between footwork's dance and music has been pivotal and inseparable to the culture's identity. "It's all one thing," says Litebulb. "When they play tracks we have [the] visual, and they are the music to what we do. They one in the same." In the 2000s, footwork trickled into the world in fragments—the dance in the video for Missy Elliott's "Lose Control," and at the end of the aughts in EPs and albums released by U.K. labels. Footwork has since found homes in Japan and Poland, and the Chicagoans (or in JLin's case ... Gary, Indianans) leading the inter- national charge are keen to keep its identity intact as they hit the road—Litebulb says he plans to accompany the Teklife producers playing this year's SXSW. Dempsey says anyone keen to see footwork grow just needs to get in a circle and battle. "You gonna feel good once you come up and get better," says Dempsey. "It's gonna feel amazing." T Teklife will be co-presenting a showcase with Mexico City label NAAFI on Tues- day, March 15 at Barcelona. JLin performs on Saturday, March 19 at Valhalla. See schedule.sxsw.com for details. Footwork: Chicago's Homegrown Street Style Goes Global by LeoR GaLiL A W I L L G L A S S P I E G E L JLin