“B-Girls run the world” says Adyanna Odom ‘23, who studied the culture of breakdancing women (B-Girls) in Houston over the summer with a grant from the Center for Urban and Global Studies. Through her coursework as an International Studies major with a concentration in Global Hip Hop, Odom discovered a gap in the literature about B-Girls. She wants to add to the academic literature on B-Girls by sharing their voices in circles that have not been open to them before.
Odom does a lot on campus, including working with the Office of Multicultural Affairs and with Recreation, but what inspired her research the most is her role as the co-lead for the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, which she has been involved with since her first year. Odom wanted to conduct research in Houston about B-Girls, where she grew up as a child embedded in the local Hip Hop scene. However, without her involvement freshman year in the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, Odom says she does not think she would have discovered the academic study of Hip Hop.
Odom took an ethnographic approach to her research by conducting fifteen formal interviews with people involved in the breakdancing scene of Houston. She also studied Hip Hop as cultural way of life by going to jams and dance battles where she was better able to see how these dancers created a community with one another.
The jams and dance battles involved in breakdancing rely on the crowd to encourage the dancer, which creates community between all participants. Odom describes the dancers involved in her research, saying they “understand the freeing element of what it means to dance” and “are so open arms, they just want everyone to dance”. The encouragement and welcoming atmosphere are hallmarks of the breakdancing culture that Odom documented throughout her research. The community welcomed her in and was encouraging of her research on B-Girls.
One challenge Odom found was the oppressive silence regarding B-Girls in literature. There is information about men in Hip Hop culture in Houston, but extraordinarily little about the women. Odom explains, “So many great people come out of Houston: Travis Scott, Megan thee Stallion, Beyonce. Yet they’re getting no major attention when it comes to education and literature.” When Odom was conducting her research she found, “nothing about B-Girl culture in Houston written down”. The lack of documentation about these women’s experience is driving Odom to finish her thesis.
Odom’s thesis research is a comparative analysis of breakdancing culture in Houston and Paris. Her experience researching over the summer in Houston is motivating Odom to write about the experiences of B-Girls. The B-Girls stories touched Odom and she feels it is a disservice to them to silence their voices.
Odom never could have imagined that she would be conducting research about breakdancing culture when she first came to Trinity, but through the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival and community encouragement, she is continuing to work on spreading awareness and giving voice to those silenced. Odom hopes that through the festival this coming semester that she can, “further work to empower these marginalized groups in Hip Hop”.
