Brick City Rock

BCR (Brick City Rock)

Focus	Hybrid
Country of origin	United States
Parenthood	Jailhouse rock (fighting style)
Olympic sport	No

BCR (Brick City Rock) is one of the many martial arts related to the Jailhouse rock (fighting style). It was found in Newark, New Jersey during the late-1960s and early-1970s. It is a form of ADMA (African Diaspora Martial Arts), a form of martial arts developed by the slaves brought to the Americas from places like the Congo, Nigeria, Angola, Ghana and Senegal.

The people who were brought west as slaves were generally the losers of tribal wars and therefore were well versed in warfare and personal combat. ADMA are arts that are a western regional synthesis of the martial arts in those countries of West-Africa. All of them (Capoeira, Kalinda, Tire Machete, Juego del Garrote, Knocking-n-kicking and Damye-ladja to name a few.) are basically local variations on what one might call “Capoeira” and/or ”Caribbean Stick Fighting” or at least follow the same general concepts.

In the United States those concepts merged with Western Boxing and created a kind of “Africanized” street boxing that utilized many of the hand positions and defenses one would use to protect oneself from kicks and/or sticks…, and like Caribbean stick fighting/Capoeira: rhythmic, dance like motion is encouraged.

BCR, as practiced by inner-city youth/men in Newark N.J. and the surrounding areas during the 1960s and 1970s, was often trained in communal "cliques" of mostly Afro-Caribbean and African-American youths during daily “Rock Parties” (hours long, round robin sparring sessions set to music.), impromptu Slap-Boxing matches and the playing of martial games.

In this way Brick City Rock is in line with other forms of ADMA in that it is trained through a communal sport/game "play" structure set to music. BCR rejects kata and other forms of learned structure and instead prefers to have the objective of the game shape the technique's presence in the art.

BCR is typified by its Ginga like footwork and movements that resembled improvised dance moves.

External links

• Watch The History of 52 Blocks Documentary (2009)
• Douglas Century, Street Kingdom: Five Years Inside the Franklin Avenue Posse, Warner Books, 2000, ISBN 0-446-67563-6
• Douglas Century, "Ghetto Blasters: Born in prison, raised in the 'hood, the deadly art of 52 Blocks is Brooklyn's baddest secret", Details magazine 19:9, pp 77–79, August 2001.
• Dennis Newsome, Jailhouse Rock (A.k.a) 52 blocks system.
• http://malandros-touro.com/jailhouserock.html
• Green, Thomas "Freeing the Afrikan Mind: the Role of Martial Arts in Contemporary African American Cultural Nationalism", essay featured in "Martial Arts in the Modern World", Praeger Publishers, 2003, ISBN 0-275-98153-3
• Justin Porter (June 17, 2009). "In Tight, a New (Old) Martial Art Gains Followers". The New York Times.
• J.S. Soet, 'Martial Arts Around the World, Unique Publications, 1991