Three Encounters With Popping Chuck

Going over my early encounters with Popping Chuck, the man who would become my first forreal dance teacher.

Transcript available on poplockparables.buzzsprout.com

Contact:
Twitter: @poplockparables
Instagram: @poplockparables
Email: poplockparables@gmail.com

BGM:
Imagine (Prod. by Lukrembo)
🍪 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/lukrembo​
⭐️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/LuKremBo​
😀 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lukrembo​
✉️ Email: Lukrembo@gmail.com

Transcript

Nicholas Sapp  0:00  
What's going on with y'all good people, man. Welcome back to Poplock Parables, you know, where I tell stories about my adventures, tales, lessons, so on and so forth in street dance. This is episode number three. Yes, sir. Thank you for making it this far. I appreciate all the support man. All the people have been hitting me up saying oh, you know, I listened to the podcast, man. I know I like this, I love that. I appreciate y'all man. Appreciate your support. So this episode is transcribed on Poplockparables.buzzsprout.com. Also available now on most listening platforms such as Apple, Spotify, Google, and the like. There is a break this time, however, I'm not previewing any music, so I'll just play some music and just vibe out. The break was suggested to me as a means of literally breaking up the monologue of me speaking. But it also happens to coincide with a lesson from one of my dance mentors, Tea-Buggz. Tea-Buggz said, you have to stop at some point so people can process what you say. Be it verbally, physically or via some other expression. In this episode, I'll be talking about three early encounters with the man who would become my first teacher, Poppin Chuck. Hope y'all enjoy.

[INTRO BREAK]

Okay, so if y'all remember last episode, just to recap, you know, I had the battle, lost pretty badly. And then towards the end, I met two dudes I lost to. They said they was part of this crew called Electric Funketeers; their names were Sid and Critical. They said they invited me out to they session of Sunday Funkday and I say, okay, let's do it. So this is Encounter Number One with Poppin Chuck. So I go to Sunday Funkday. Where Sunday Funkday was located, if you ever been in Chicago, you can go all the way to the west side, Ashland, Green Line stop, you walk all the way down. It was a street called Latin Street studios, right? Basically, a lot of, not abandoned, but you know, old warehouses refurbished and turned into studios, things like that. And so this was one of those locations. 

So I walk up in to Sunday Funkday, I don't remember if this was the very first time I went, but this is basically how the sessions happened to be set up. So it was two hour sessions minimum, you had about eight to 10 people generally like the people in the group. And then sometimes you have even more like 15 to 20 depending on what they were doing, a competition or special guest teacher that was so popular or something like that, you know, they would have a lot of people. And this was, you know, in the studio. So generally it was solo practice, or working on things in groups, i.e., someone would say, okay, you know, "let's all practice this concept. Let's work on this concept list, map out this map out that." Okay, and so that would usually happen for an hour and then after that one of the more skilled crew members would generally teach for about half an hour. And then we will have cyphers at the end. So, you know, the dance circles, and the goal of the cypher generally, was to use what you had happened to learn earlier. Right. 

Now, the Electric Funketeers crew is a reboot of the original crew in the 1980s, which is a Chicago based popping crew. It wasn't founded by Tea-Buggz. And there's another guy in Chicago whose name is Mr. Kobra. I'll just call him Kobra for short because everybody calls him. So Tea-Buggz and Kobra didn't found it, but they were part of the group in the 80s, right. And so it was everybody in their generation.Then the rebooted crew, the Electric Funketeers I knew, I was practicing with, they were rebooted in the early 2010s, and that was consisting of Tea-Buggz's and Kobra's students mainly ranging from ages 21 - 35 or so. Now, this particular Sunday Funkday I was practicing locking. 

Locking, for those who don't know, Locking is a dance style that was created by a guy named Don Campbell. IT came out of him trying to do the Funky Chicken and he couldn't do it very well, and people would laugh at him. And so he would point at people when they laughed. And so his style became known as the Campbellock and Campbellocking was the dance and then it got shortened to Locking. Right. So if you've ever watched Soul Train, you probably seen lockers on Soul Train right? In the 80s in particular, if not The Lockers themselves, and if you just watch footage of Soul Train, you'll see people in the background and they'll just be Locking, locking it up, right? But then there's also you know, certain really famous Lockers like Shabba Doo, rest in peace. Toni Basil, Don Campbell, rest in peace, right. Greg Campbell. Campbellock, you know, so on so forth. 

So I'm sitting there practicing locking, right? I see the judge, or I'm sitting there practicing locking and a dude, this dude walks in. And I'm like, hey, that's the dude from the jam. Right? So I remember his name was Poppin Chuck. Now Chuck looks like, to put it simply, Chuck looks like Prince, the musician Prince. Chuck could be his cousin. It's kind of uncanny. That's, that's what they look like, same height, you know, lightskin, wavy hair. Right? They look real similar dawg. Mustache, they look real similar. So I go up to him like "aye man I remember you from the jam. You know, you was the judge." And he was like, "oh, man, wassup man. Nice to see you man." All that good stuff. And then I go back to practicing my locking and I'm just, you know, practicing, do-do-do-do-do-do. Then Chuck comes up to me. And he says, "Hey, man, you look bad." And I'm like, Oh, okay. Oh, all right. And you know that's something that's real risky. Some people be taking some serious offense to that. Some people like, "man who is you!? I don't know who you are, man. Talmbout I look bad! I ain't never seen you dance!" You know what I'm saying? But not me. He was just like, "Yeah, man, you look bad." Okay. He's like, "Yeah, but let me help you out." I'm like, Okay, cool. All right. 

So he starts teaching me locking foundation. All right, I didn't know that he could lock as well. He started teaching me Locking foundation. So he was all "you know, Locking was my first style and then I learned Popping stuff. But this is what I used to do back in the day", so he started teaching me Uncle Sam points. Scooby Doo, scoobot hop, which-a-way, you know. Once you study Locking, you start to piece these things together. So I don't remember the lesson that we learned that particular day. In the cypher, and like who taught, I don't know who taught that day, it might have been Sid. Usually it was Sid. But I don't remember, I don't remember. I don't remember what happened. I just remember. Chuck said I look bad. And then he started teaching me how to Lock. And that was that was that. 

So, this is Encounter Number Two, which, so before I get into this, I need to explain what I mean when I say foundation, because I mentioned it but I didn't explain it. So foundation is, to put it simply, you think about how all of these art forms have their own histories, their own schools of thought, techniques, so on and so forth. So that's the same with ballet, same with modern, contemporary, jazz. If you paint, right? Depending on the medium or mode or type of painting, you are, you're learning those histories, all these different contexts to them, right. It's like that with many art forms with anything in general, with a lot of art forms. Right? So I think about it too, like, African, right, African dance. So in my experience with good teachers, they don't just teach you, okay, this is these are just generalized African movements, you move like this, and then you move like that, and then boom, right? They say, okay, for example, they will say, "this dance comes from the Fulani tribe in what is now known as Guinea, in West Africa. It was performed primarily by women, and it was used to celebrate the fishing harvest season," or something along those lines, right. And so, it's like, oh okay, there's a background to this, okay, these these movements don't just exist in isolation. 

So similarly, street dances have all these contexts to them that are included in foundation that extend past the movement. So you have foundation as far as the technical movements themselves, techniques: this is a hit, this is a wrist roll. This is a six step. This is whatever, right. And then you have all this, I don't want to say extraneous because that makes it sound like it's not important. Which it is right? But you have a lot of additional content that goes way beyond movements. So for example, some elders will say, okay, "y'all are dancing to this song. Nowadays. The dance style that we're teaching you, y'all are using it to dance to this song. But back then this this wasn't a song that you pop to. This is actually a song you dance to with a girl right? This was actually a slower song. It's just the way that it sounds, y'all don't know. So y'all hear it and think 'this is a popping song.' Not quite." Or, for example, "okay, y'all doing the Cabbage Patch, cause you hear the music, and you think of a certain genre of dances, but actually that particular dance hadn't come out by then, right? And so when the song, when this song that you're listening to was popular, that dance, the Cabbage Patch, didn't exist, so we actually did something different." And so it's all these little things that add up ultimately, and that end up comprising what we know as foundation. So the technical movements, history, personal context, backgrounds, music, whatever political and cultural events are going on in the world at the time, all these little things add up to make foundation. 

So Encounter Number Two. Chuck. My college dance group hosts a workshop, right, about a couple months after Sunday Funkday. And so they bring him to campus and he teaches a Popping workshop, right? Okay, so we're learning Popping foundation. You know, how to hit. If y'all remember, I said hitting is just a contraction of the muscles. You do that to particular rhythms. So he's teaching us how to hit. He's teaching us timing. Aall that. Now Chuck's specialty is in robot. Right? So Chuck robots really...he is a master at that. Right? He's a master at robotics. And he's a master at another style known as Bopping, right. Bopping can be complicated to explain. To put it simply, it is a pantomime robot style. I will leave it at that. 

So Chuck's teaching us how to robot. He teaches us, you know, some simple hitting patterns. And then he has us get together. He's like, okay, "y'all have to come up with routines, you know, you're doing for four counts, eight counts, and 16 counts, Okay, come up with 16 counts worth of a routine by yourselves." So it'd be like three or four of us and we all link up. We try to hit at the same time and then boom, come up with something, then do it for 16 counts. So I'm like okay, cool. So we do that. And then at the end, Chuck is like, "okay, let's start up a cypher. And try to demonstrate what you have learned today. It's okay, if you haven't gotten it all the way down. That's cool. Everybody starts at that point." 

So you know, anybody's going in. Some people start waving and start–not waving, I'm sorry. Some people, you know, hit some robot, some people try to hit. Some people just hit some poses. And Chuck does this thing that was real interesting, where he's watching people. And he says, like,  the first inclination that they go with, right, gives an idea as to what particular style they might be proficient in. So what they naturally gravitate towards is something that they might be proficient in. So he says, somebody goes up, and he's like, "okay, go" and they start, like bending their body side to side. And he's like, "Oh, you would be great at Boogaloo because your natural inclination is to bend and twist your body, all these different types of ways." And that's what Boogaloo does. Boogaloo, they bend and twist all the time. That's what they do. All the time, they bend and twist and misdirect people. And that's what they do when they dance. Right? Somebody else comes out, and he's like, "okay, you know, you're real stiff. But that's not a bad thing. Because you being naturally stiff, means it's easier for you to stop. Or it's easy, easier for you to have more controlled movements. So you might be better at robot, right?"

So he's doing these things and I'm sitting there like, it's pretty cool. I go, okay. I've never seen somebody teach like this. This is wassup. So I pick it up, I pick it up fairly quickly. Right. And then, at the end, I started trying to show some waves off. I'm like, "okay, you know, y'all, y'all gotta forget, I'm advanced." I'm not at the time. But I say "y'all got to remember, I'm better than other people here, man. You can't treat me like no amateur, Chuck." So I start showing off some waves and Chuck is like, "okay, that's cool, but you need to chill out cause waves have a different timing than hitting, and you need to learn how to use timing with waves.You have to learn the different timing with waves so that you don't throw yourself off from music." Okay, all right, I didn't know that. 

So I didn't explain waves. So waves are essentially, the transfer of energy from one point to another, that's their most common representation in dance, with this maintenance of a wave-like illusion. So if I were sitting down, I'm sitting presently, so let's say I'm sitting presently. If I was to shoot a wave through my body, it would be fingertip from from, let's say, starting from my left fingertips. Left fingertips, you know, have to roll up through the elbow, up through up fingertip up to the forearm up to the elbow, up to the shoulder. I can go in front of my neck, behind the neck, roll my head with it. Just keep it simple, up to the shoulder, behind the neck, and roll to the other shoulder and then you reverse, so from the shoulder, down through the elbow, down to the forearm, out to the hand, out to the fingertips. So that's, that would just be a wave, right? So okay, okay. He's like, he's like, yeah, you know, your waves is cool but you got to learn the timing for them. Okay, cool. 

So then I asked Chuck, "aye man, what would you think about Nonstop and Les Twins man?" Cause as you know, I'm a fanatic. So I'm like, Okay, this is an older person. He's been around for a minute. He's seen a lot of dance stuff. You know, let me ask him what his opinions are of my idols. So he's like, "They aight." And I'm like what you mean, they aight? Man, they GREAT. What you talmbout? So he's like, "well, Nonstop. He's like, I don't know if what Nonstop does is something I would consider Popping. But he's unique, right?" He was like, "Nontop. It's kinda–he was like–his style is experimental. So he's kind of drawn away from what we would traditionally consider Popping. Which is why he's not my personal preference, but you know, he's unique, not mine." Okay, I guess. "Aight, what about Les Twins?" He's like "Les Twins is cool, man. They have really, really high execution." And then that's kind of that's kind all of what he says. And I was expecting him to be, you know, praising and like, Man, you know, so I was kind of miffed, because I'm like," man, Nonstop and Les Twins, they the greatest dancers. You can't tell me nothing, man." So I wasn't mad at him. I was just like, okay, whatever, we got different opinions. So, so that was that. So that was the second time I met Chuck. Imma introduce a little break. And then after the break, we gone have Encounter Number Three. This is the most significant encounter. First, at least, out of the early encounters, to say the least. So Imma hit yall with the little break, and Imma be right back in a second.

[MUSIC BREAK]

Welcome back. Yes, sir. So this is Encounter Number Three with Poppin Chuck. This is the most, like I said, the most significant encounter, it's the one that that started it all! Well, you know, the dance battle started it all, but this is the one that, you know, really put me on my journey. So this is April 2015. Right. I learned that Chuck teaches a class at this studio, well it's a building, really. It's an establishment, but it has studios in it. It's this place called the American Rhythm Center, downtown Chicago. And he's teaching like a Popping 101 class. So I go, it's in the nighttime, it's like six o'clock, seven o'clock, evening rather. So six o'clock, seven o'clock. So I go to the Popping 101 class. I get there. I'm the only one in the class. I'm like, Okay, cool. So he's like, Yeah, man, you know, you're the only one here so we can just do a personal lesson. So we do a little warm up and whatnot. And the he starts explaining a short rundown history. 

So he's like, Popping, as we know it,  it comes out of the Bay Area. It comes out of this collection of local dances, so you have Oakland Boogaloo ,San Francisco Struttin', Richmond Robottin, etc. So you have a collection of local dances that were popularized by various groups, such as the Oakland Boogaloos, Demons Of The Mind, Medea Sirkus, The Black Messengers, Black Resurgents, Playboyz, Gentlemen of Production, Granny & Robotroid, Close Encounters of the Funkiest Kind, I could, I could go on. A lot of groups. Right. So then you have an offshoot of these dances that comes to be known as Popping by the way of Los Angeles, right. So you had some dancers from Fresno, Boogaloo Sam, his cousin Poppin Pete. Poppin Pete's either his cousin or his brother, I don't remember. But they formed a group called the Electronic Boogaloo Lockers. It eventually comes to be known as Electric Boogaloo, or the EB's for short. They perform on Soul Train in 1979, and then the dance pretty much blows up from there.

So their particular style, the EB style. There's a series of movements that fall under the umbrella of Electric Boogaloo. But their style is what is considered the dominant expression of Popping today, particularly outside the United States. So if you if you look at anybody popping outside the US, you go to any international competition, it's almost guaranteed, nine times out of 10, The the vast majority of the people there is going to be Electric Boogaloo Popping, right? Which is, you know, that has its own political ramifications, and whatnot, but that's another discussion in and of itself. 

So I'm like, Okay, cool. So we warm up, he explains the history. And then he starts playing these old funk songs. I'm like, Oh, man. Oh, hold on. I heard this growing up. Wait a minute. So the two songs I distinctly remember he plays Patrice Rushen. He plays Forget Me Nots by Patrice Rushen, and then he plays Ladies Night by Kool N The Gang, he plays the two songs, and he just puts them on loop. So I'm like, okay, hold up, this is stuff I heard growing up, oh snap. Now, I didn't know that people did this dance to these songs. I didn't know that, at the time, the dance was born out of the funk and soul movements. So it makes sense, but at the time I was like, I didn't know that. This is stuff my parents listened to but I didn't know that people would pop to these songs. Okay. That's cool. 

So the first song, well really I won't say the first song. But the focus, the highlight that he wants me to focus on is Ladies Night. So he plays Ladies Night. A bunch of times. He's trying to help me get the timing of the dance down, right, you know. Hitting on beat. And then he teaches as well, some specific Los Angeles variations. So he's like, "okay, you know, if you snap your leg back, as you move, that's a LA thing," right. And what I mean by that is, different cities, and different areas all have different ways of moving. So they might all be doing the same dance. Or they all might be doing things that fall under the umbrella of the dance. But they all move differently. Right. So Compton, California, is known for a certain way of hitting, right? Pomona, they are known for another way of hitting, and they really known for their waves, right? Pomona waves. That's a certain thing. Carson is known for certain things, so on and so forth. So all these different cities and regions are part of, you know, in Cali, in Los Angeles, particularly. Same with the Bay, they are all known for different things, although that all generally tends to fall under the same umbrella of this dance.

So he's like, okay, and he's planning Ladies Night, over and over and over and over again. And I'm like, Okay, cool. This is fine. And I don't get tired of it because this is so exciting. It's fun. All right. And the song is, you know, a four minute song, right? Approximately, and that's just that's just the radio edit. The extended cuts, you know, be way longer. So he's playing it and he's trying to teach me this concept that a lot of people now know as musicality. Right. Musicality, to try to put it simply, musicality is like when you highlight elements of a song that people might not necessarily hear at first glance, right. It can really show that you have connection with the music. Well it's not so much that you're intentionally trying to target the elements in the music that people might not necessarily hear. It's just more so it tends to be the case that you are trying to fully express the beauty in the song in your dance. The song has all these different elements to it, and you're trying to portray these different elements of the song, right. As opposed to just sticking with one, right, which ends up being kind of rote, and boring, honestly. 

So yeah, so musicality, so he's like Ladies Night. If you've ever heard Ladies Night, I can't play it because copyright, but if you ever heard Ladies Night by Kool N The Gang there's a part that goes "Ladies Night. And it feels Alright." So there's a certain there's a certain part in Ladies Night where there's a horn section, right? So Chuck is like, "Okay, I need you to listen to this horn section and focus on it, it's not enough to simply be on beat, you know, with the with the snare, right? And the bass or the snare and the kick drum. It's not enough to be on beat with that. You also pay attention to the elements of the song and the parts of the song where musicians really start getting down." Right. So there's a section in Ladies Night as a horn section. And it goes down to "do tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu [ascending intonation] clack clack? Tu," right. That's how it goes. horns, horns, horns, horns, horns, clack clack. Yeah. So he's like, "Okay, you got to do something to it, you know, you don't have a lot of vocabulary. So you're gonna struggle. But this will get you in the, in the pattern of listening to music and thinking, Okay, what could I do to this part? What can I do to this part, right. And then eventually, when you get good enough, you can start predicting it. So even songs you've never heard before, you, you kind of know the structure of already based on similar things you've heard, you can just kind of predict stuff without even hearing it."

Okay, I'm like, Cool, so I stick with it. Right? Great first time. I stick with it, I start coming back for more classes. Keep coming back. Sometimes it's me and a couple other people. Sometimes it's just me. I keep learning, learning how to pop, learning how to pop, learning how to pop. We don't do any more locking because it's just, it's just a Popping class. Right? So, I keep learning how to pop, learning how to pop. And then one day, I go home. And I say I'm gonna write him an email, right? So I write him an email. And I asked him, I asked to be his student, basically. So and when I say student, I mean, like an apprenticeship, you know, basically, like a lot of a lot of things in the street dance world operate in like martial arts context, basically. So it's stuff where, you know, people will say, Okay, I will teach you my style, or I will teach you this particular style. And you know, I can I can get kind of wild like, oh, man, you know, "he teaching you the so-and-so styles guy, he's teaching you the secret, Hidden Dragon Lotus dun-dun-dun-dun," whatever, right? And it's like, "oh, man, it's only so many people in the world that know the Hidden Dragon Lotus style!" So it's a similar thing with street dance, with Popping in particular. Where "he's teaching you that style? Oh, man, I tried to get him to teach me that style and he would never teach it to me, man! Oh, man!" Like it gets it gets kind of ridiculous. But there's a there's a large martial arts influence in street dance. So I write him an email asking to be his student. And I'm gonna reach y'all the email. I pulled it up on my phon. I can't believe that I still had this. So I pulled it up. 

So this is this is Friday, April 13th 2015. April, I'm sorry, Friday, April 3 2015. At 7:13pm. I said, "Hey, Chuck, I got an email from Toby Kang," Toby Kang was one of my crew members at the college. I was like, you know, "since I, all I had was your email for Artisan Notions" and Artisan Notions is Chuck, Chuck makes hats, and stuff, right, and graffiti, and other arts things. So I said "I got your email from Toby Kang. Since all I had was email from Artisan Notions. I remember you saying that you used to train some people. And I was wondering if you'd be open to taking me as a student. I am willing to pay, of course, and you live only 15 or so blocks south, so traveling would not be an issue. I enjoy your classes on Mondays, and even when going over fundamentals and hearing you speak your opinion on any number of things. I always feel like I come off having learned something interesting, if not also new. I must note that I wouldn't have much of a reason for not coming save running low on funds, or being out of town. Let me know what you think." So I send this and I'm like Okay, I'm nervous. I don't know why. Cuz it's like, what's he gonna say? "Nah bro I'm good" But it's also like, "you come to my class and you pay money to go to my class though." I was nervous, but, you know, just little nervous stuff at this. I was 19. I think so. Yeah. 

So Chuck responds back. He responds back, and he's like, "sounds great!!!!!!" With like, six exclamation points. "Sounds great!!!!!! Yeah, just see if you can get me some other students and help promote. I'll take you on. You got flavor!!!!!!!" with seven exclamation points. So at that point I'm like oh snap. I'm the student and the master. I got my first forreal dance teacher. Right. And that that is what, that that third and it wasn't a final encounter. But you know that that third situation really helped set off my genesis in street dance forreal forreal. Really getting training and learning a whole bunch of stuff. And again really getting ingratiated into the community, all that, that's where it all started. At that one, one night I went home, I said, "hey man, Chuck, I want to be your student" hit him an email, sent him an email. He said, "yeah man, come on, let's do it! You got flavor!" So that's what started it, man. That's what started it. So yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you for listening. And I appreciate it. Oh, man, just remind you, just to remind you, I will play some music after this. But just remind you there is an outro so make sure you do listen to the outro please and thank you appreciate you listening, making it this far. I hope y'all have a great day.

[OUTRO BREAK]

Thank you all again for listening to Poplock Parables. You can find me, Nicholas on Instagram and Twitter at @PoplockParables. You can also email me at Poplockparables@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening. I appreciate y'all that's been regularly tuning in, hitting me up with feedback. If you got any feedback for this episode or anything you just want to hear me talk about in the future, any questions, things you want me to explain, things like that? Just let me know man. You know, hit me up at them previously stated options. So again, Instagram, Twitter at @PoplockParables, email Poplockparables@gmail.com. Thank you again. Hope y'all have a good day. Peace, peace, peace.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai