YRAC SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW- Hardcore Detroit: Bringing a Street Dance to a Professional Atmosphere
By: Nadirah Angail
YRAC Editor/Journalist
Detroit Michigan, home of Ford Motor Company, Motown Records and… B-boying? That’s right, B-Boying. It may not have started there, but it’s definitely found a home in this northern city, thanks to Hardcore Detroit.
Don’t know what Hardcore Detroit is? Picture this: a crew of 25, highly-skilled men and women performing some of the hardest and most entertaining break dancing moves you’ve ever seen. And behind it all is a beautiful, Muslim Couple.
Meet Haleem Rasul, the captain of this dynamic dance crew. He’s a passionate young B-Boy who took his love for Hip Hop and turned it into a thriving business. Inspired by the Detroit-based dance show The Scene and a close family member, Haleem (aka Stringz) began to dance as a teen. He had fun as a recreational dancer for some years, and finally began to take it seriously his junior year of high school. Throughout the 1990’s, he danced and networked with other local and national B-Boys, unknowingly preparing himself for the great task he’d later accomplish. “Growing up, I never saw myself as a leader. I see this all as a blessing. I assumed I’d graduate and work for a company, but the Most High put me in certain positions where I found myself tackling certain things,” said Stringz of his accomplishments.
Fast forward to 2001. Haleem used his technical dancing skills, network of dancers, and business knowledge to officially create Hardcore Detroit. With a set of worthy dancers (there’s no getting in this crew unless you battle your way in) he set out to “balance a street type dance with a professional atmosphere.” He traveled to near and far places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and even Sweden, exchanging moves and knowledge with some of the best.
Within a few short years, they had managed to put Detroit on the map and establish themselves as the premiere dance crew in the city. Now, Hardcore Detroit is well known in the Hip Hop world. “We’ve made such a presence that nobody in the world can take our name,” Stringz explained about their reputation. And it’s a good thing he’s done this, because others have tried to take the name “Hardcore Detroit” and use it as their own. Luckily, Haleem was smart and popular enough to stop their efforts. While his supports kindly informed the other Hardcore Detroit that the name was already taken, he trademarked the name for his business and shut down the possibility of ever being robbed again.
Hardcore Detroit is more than just a name. It is a description of who they are and what they’re about. “I wanted to change the idea of the word “hardcore.” Make people think positively about it. It’s Edgy. It’s serious. It’s hard…This is what makes us stand out from the rest, because we know the true essence of B-Boying,” said Stringz, who is just as knowledgeable about B-Boy history as he is the dance moves.
With a solid reputation and list of accomplishments under his belt (including performing for the Detroit Institute of the Arts) Stringz was sitting on top of the world. He was the king of Detroit B-Boying. All he needed was a queen…
Enter Mary Mar (aka B-Girl Ma Ma), the First Lady of Hardcore Detroit. They met on the dance floor and have been together ever since. Ma Ma is a born dancer. Even at the early age of 5, she had already found her love for movement; but it wasn’t until she was older that she entered the world of B-Girling.
It started with a simple question: “Is this your break dancing gang?” a naïve Mary asked a group of intriguing breakers.
“It’s not called a gang. It’s a crew,” they informed her. That was her first lesson 8 years ago. She went on to learn many more important lessons about the beautiful culture of Hip Hop, which she feels has been misrepresented by main stream media. “MTV is brainwashing us. Hip Hop is not about booty popping! It’s about bringing people together,” she exclaimed. And that’s what she and her husband strive to do, bring people together in an effort to spread and preserve true Hip Hop.
“A lot of people call themselves B-Boys, but aren’t representing for real Hip Hop, not true to the culture… How are you gonna say you’re a B-Boy and you don’t like Hip Hop music?” This is the problem that Ma Ma has with some B-Boys and B-Girls who want to do the moves without knowing the true technique or the 4 elements of Hip Hop, which are graffiti, djaying, emceeing, and breaking.
It is hard enough being a B-Girl in a world full of B-boys (Ma Ma is 1 of only 2 B-Girls in Detroit) but being a Muslim B-Girl puts her in a special rank all her own. She faces criticism from those who disapprove of a Muslim woman dancing in mixed company. She admits that she tried to stop dancing when she reverted to Islam in 2006, but couldn’t keep herself away from something she loves so much.
“It’s something I still struggle with, but there is a double standard for men and women. No one says anything about men dancing in front of women…Allah (swt) knows my intentions. I’m not dancing to be sexy or to attract men,” she clarified. And this is evident in her style of dress. Though other B-Girls have been known to wear tight-fitting, revealing clothes, Ma Ma breaks in pants, long sleeve shirts, and scarves. “My dress is pretty much the same. I’ve always been modest… I like it better this way, because I used to have a problem with strange men touching my hair.”
It wasn’t just her husband that attracted her to Islam. It was the message of Allah’s oneness. Raised as a Buddhist, she was already familiar with this concept. “Traditionally, Buddhism is about following the teachings of Buddha, not about worshipping many deities.” Now, she’s more patient and feels she owes that to Islam. She advises anyone who is considering Islam to “study and do you. If you feel Islam in your heart, then He’s telling you something.” Be sure to listen.
Some relationship experts consider working with your spouse a bad idea, but Haleem and Mary prove them wrong every day. In marriage, spirituality and business, they are partners, and its working out perfectly. “I consider the fact that we work together a benefit. We’re a dynamic duo. He’s my best friend.”
Copyright© 2009
</aEnlightening the Clothes Minded
by Selena Robert
How does she do it? In the face of triple teams, with defenders all but linking their arms like paper dolls, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir is able to exploit the limited daylight she gets and average 42 points a game.
How does she do it? Passing Rebecca Lobo’s 17-year-old Massachusetts high school mark of 2,710 career points is about as easy as bumping Julie Andrews off the hilltop, and yet Bilqis graciously eclipsed the legend in January on her way to becoming the first player in state history — male or female — to score 3,000 points.
How does she do it? For the last four seasons –beginning one year after her 43-point varsity debut as, yes, an eighth-grader — the 5-foot-3 1/2 Bilqis has played for New Leadership Charter School in Springfield in full Muslim dress, arms and legs covered beneath her uniform, wearing a head scarf, or Hijab.
Bilqis doesn’t mind remarks rooted in curiosity; it’s the questions out of ignorance that she meets with a confident rejection. “When some people come at me with, ‘Oh, is that a tablecloth on your head?’ — it’s like, really, don’t,” Bilqis (pronounced Bill-KEACE) said last Thursday, the day she ended her high school career with 51 of the Wildcats’ 57 points in a regional Division III quarterfinals playoff loss. “If you’re going to have that kind of question, don’t ask me. But some people are truly honest in asking a question, like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be rude, but why do you wear that?’ That’s the kind of question I’d rather answer.”
So let’s get the obvious out of the way: No, the perpetual motion point guard doesn’t melt under her extra apparel. She ditched cotton a couple of years ago after discovering the blissful wicking power of Under Armour. “Saved my life,” she says with a laugh. Since her freshman season Bilqis, the youngest of eight children in a bustling Muslim household in Springfield — birthplace of basketball, site of her first Nerf hoop dunk at age three — has not revealed a bare leg or biceps on the court. “In eighth grade, I wasn’t covered,” she says. “I looked like everybody else.” The wardrobe transformation was by rule more than choice: Upon reaching puberty, an Islamic woman cover herself in public, requiring Bilqis to endure the last thing next to acne an adolescent wants. The dreaded square peg.
“It really wasn’t a decision. I had to,” she says. “I had to get used to it, no matter how hard it was for me. I know the first few weeks in school kind of tested me.”
It was still post-9/11. It was still preenlightenment. Some nights on the floor in visiting gyms, she would hear the catcalls derived from the fear of the unknown, shouted in stupidity: “Terrorist!” But slowly, the more heads she turned with her step-back threes and her sleights of hand, the more minds Bilqis opened. This wasn’t grudging tolerance but joyous acceptance of an exceptional player and student. Not only does she possess a cashmere-soft touch and flinty defensive skills, but she’s also on the honor roll, with an interest in premed and the stomach for the Discovery Health Channel. (“I’m good with the scalpel scenes,” she says.) Bilqis has been embraced for all she is. With 1:23 to go before halftime on Feb. 17, the Wildcats’ game was stopped for 10 minutes as the home crowd cheered her 3,000th point.
But such acceptance is hardly universal. It didn’t go unnoticed to Bilqis last month when Shahar Peer, a Jewish tennis player from Israel, was denied a visa at the last minute for a WTA tournament in Dubai. In an instant that city, which is so Westernized it can seem like a gilded Disney of the desert, took a major step backward by entwining religion and sports.
“I really feel it shouldn’t be that way,” Bilqis says. “It shouldn’t matter what god they believe in … or what they do religiously during the day … or what they have on their head. The question is, Can you play?”
Yes, she can. Bilqis is expected to become the first Islamic player in NCAA Division I history to take the basketball court in full dress when she starts her college career next fall on scholarship at Memphis. That’s a long three from Springfield, far from the siblings and schoolmates who support her. “[My family] tells me, ‘If you have to cry, cry and let it out,’ ” she says. “They say, ‘Call home, talk it out.’ ” Bilqis has already found a little bit of home in Memphis, locating a mosque five minutes from campus. Still, she is about to enter the big time, in arenas packed with thousands instead of gyms with four-row risers. She’ll be unmistakable.
That’s Bilqis, in the Hijab. It’s the blur you see on her head fake to the basket. How does she do it? That’s how.
POSTED BY THELEGACYMAKER AT 1:35 PM
