Forum for the “Scratch-activist”: Beat4Battle Belgium
Beat4Battle has its roots in France. In five years it has become a successful format as a “Scratch-activist Forum” in the Hip Hop and turntablism scene.
“The evolution is very fast” says Tom Paeschuyzen, the animator of Beat4Battle Belgium.
The Hip Hop culture is known for its strong “Do It Yourself” spirit and open source tradition, strategies common in the actual music scene. Beat4Battle shares this vision and offers an international stage to turntablism, scratching, beat mixing, beat creating and other aspects of Hip Hop culture. At present Beat4Battle is active in more than 10 countries, with official “chapters” in France, Ireland, UK, Canada, USA, Russia, Japan, Korea, Belgium,.. and members all over the world . “ Imposing a format” is not the policy of France- the founding country- but the actual format is so strong, that most countries share it”, Tom explains. “International networking and organizing turntable events is our core activity but we also do jam sessions; showcases, battles: national and international, workshops . Our objective is to initiate and guide local talent in the Beat4Battle turntable lifestyle.”
Turntable Café @ Kavka (Antwerp)
Every last Thursday of the month B4B Belgium organizes a Turntable Café in the Antwerp Youth Centre Kavka. “ Promotion for this kind of events goes online by means of the B4B network. We started as a small event, but the digital “grapevine” spread the news quickly. It even resulted in an interview in an online radio program in Houston. The format of the evening is clear: 4 turntables, doors at 8 pm and the internet does the rest. Local talent gets the opportunity to measure themselves with international expertise that found its way to Antwerp by internet. In the last edition even a saxophonist and a contrabass were part of the action: a real boost for musical creativity.” Paeschuyzen continues. The whole event is set on film and audio and spread on specialized fora and websites such as B4B tv and turntableradio.com, reaching as far as Japan and China. It's really great when we realize what kind of talent is spinning the decks and the effort they do to come over and play all together.
DIY spirit
“B4B has a strong DIY spirit; during the last B4B the managers of DDF -the world leading Double Dutch Rope skipping team- came to talk about their major international project and the collaboration with B4B”: says Tom. The result can be seen in the weekend of 3&4 July 2010 the Double Dutch-team try to break their personal record of 10 hours Rope skipping with the musical guardians of the B4B Crew. It takes place in one of the most historical places of Antwerp. The Central Station Main hall is the place to be. 24 hours live B4B-DJ’s are spinning the decks, life streams all over the globe with the assistance of Eurosport, Belgian national television (villa van Tilt, Sporza) and Total Sport Asia (the biggest sport channel of Asia), etc. At the same time there will be teams jumping in Singapore (shopping center), Hongkong, USA, South Africa, Portugal, Austria… “This is what we understand by think Local work Global”: says Tom Paeschuyzen, animator B4B-Belgium and smiles.
Antwerp European Youth Capital 2011
This year the B4B EC takes place in Paris, but Tom Paeschuyzen mentioned concrete plans for the WC to take place in Antwerp 2011:” Next year is very important year for the City of Antwerp, our hometown; Antwerp is selected to be Youth Capital of Europe. With our main-organization Imagine-a-City Concepts there are some wild plans, stay tuned.”
More information on the activities of Beat4Battle Belgium and upcoming events can be found on www.myspace.com/b4bbelgium. If you fancy to stretch your legs, join us every last Thursday evening of the month in Youth Center Kavka Antwerp(Belgium). We start at 8 pm.
http://picasaweb.google.be/JimmyAerts78/Beat4Battle#
http://picasaweb.google.com/JimmyAerts78/Beat4Battle29042010#5468278974414845346
http://picasaweb.google.be/JimmyAerts78/Beat4Battle250310#
http://www.myspace.com/b4bbelgium
http://www.pjr.be/worldrecord/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPDjMhbFlPY (teaser last edition)
our view in the central station.
http://static.zoom.nl/B7BF77F9C03ABA0CA7E9FB801E2B825D-centraal-station-antwerpen-2.jpg
This is a translation of an original article by Marcus Deblaere from StampMedia, a youth press agency located in Antwerp. Please put the proper credits: (c) 2010 - StampMedia - Marcus Deblaere
ReplyDeleteNow it looks like it is stolen...
Calm down Calm down - consider yourself credited... As for being stolen - this is a blog and no-one has claimed authorship for it. When someone else puts their name to it, then you can throw accusations like that around. Fair point on the credit, but this came into our hands without knowing where it came from, and we just used it to help inform our readers about the event itself... Your comment was fair enough right up until you got dramatic and began invoking theft
ReplyDeleteSo many dicks on the internet.
ReplyDelete