The Essentials of Throwing a Breaking Jam

Hello and welcome to the first blog post of "Break Jam Insight." My hope is to create resources and document helpful insights into one of the core parts of Breaking culture, Jams.

With that being said, I thought it would be fitting if my first blog post would be about the essentials necessary to throw a jam (1, see footnotes). These may sound basic to most bboys and bgirls, but that's my aim, to break down the basic structure of throwing a jam and include helpful tips along the way. I could include one hundred different aspects on jams, but for now I plan on briefly covering the components that are essential to throwing a jam (meaning the jam would run very poorly without these things, or wouldn't run at all). The essentials to a breaking jam can be broken down into 7 components: Funding, DJ, Judges, MC, Format, Venue, Promotion.

Funding 💰

First, let's talk about the most practical component to jams. Unless you plan on hiring your friends to do you favors as DJ & judges or unless you pull the forbidden "I'll pay you in exposure" move, you're going to need money to fund your jam. These days, this can come from many different places: University funding (alongside a breaking club), Company sponsors (Monster Energy, Vans, Snipes), Local fundraising, etc. However, for the average jam promoter, funding will mostly come from your own pocket. Be prepared to lose money if you are planning on throwing a jam, since the primary purpose should be to throw a good event for the community, and not to make a profit. Crowdfunding (i.e. crew anniversary jam) can help to mitigate this a bit, as you may have funding from your whole crew vs. yourself.

All that being said, I have a simple budget breakdown I have used:

$300 for DJ

$600 for three judges ($200 each)

$200 for MC

These are baselines for payment, however you can definitely scale up from here and occasionally go lower. I feel for most local jams, this payment structure will be fine. MC is a special case, because sometimes the organizer can MC for free or find a volunteer, and usually it'll be alright.

The other two things that you typically need to pay for are Venue and Prize, but these will vary widely.

• Venues can vary from free (if you have a connection, maybe they have a promotion) to very expensive ($100s/hour).
• Prize can also vary on the scale of your jam, but I would typically advise at least $100/person for the prize (i.e. $300 for the winners of a 3v3).

The one tip I will say about the Prize is that a bigger prize will not necessarily bring in more people to your jam. The pool of people who think they have a good chance of winning is probably small. Though adding more money to the prize could potentially draw more of those people, at a certain point you start to see diminishing returns; that money could potentially be better funneled into more worthwhile aspects of your jam. Now that you've got money figured out, you've got to figure out a place to actually host your jam...

Venue 🏠

The Venue is arguably one of the hardest factors of a jam to get right. This is because finding a good venue in your area could be extremely rare, expensive, or a combination of both. In terms of finding a venue, you can get as imaginative as you desire. You can have your jam at a school basketball gym, dance studio, university event room, night club, brewery, etc.

However, the baseline that we should set for jam venues is that it has a danceable floor: smooth with no harsh cracks with sufficient space for competition and cyphers. Having a nice floor is an absolute must-have for jams, and will only hurt the ability of the dancers if you have gross carpet, slippery floors, or tough concrete that will tear out their hair during headspins. Aside from the flooring, the venue has a lot of potential to affect the vibe of your jam. For example, a school basketball gym vs. a brewery will inevitably have different vibes. Speaking of setting the vibes of your jam, a key player in that is:

DJ 🎵

The DJ is the heartbeat of the jam. This is a dance that came from "breaks" after all, and the music you have at your jam is key to setting the vibe and getting bboys and bgirls to dance. The DJ is tasked with song selection, reading the room, and feeding the energy.

As important as the DJ is, how does one go about finding a DJ?

If you're plugged into your local scene, you most likely know at least one local DJ, or have a mutual connection to that DJ. Besides your local talent, with social media and YouTube, it's easy to watch a few battles to get a feel for an out-of-state DJ before you contact them. Better yet, make friends with the DJ when you hear him/her at a jam and get their contact info so you could possibly work together in the future. Music is vital to the battles, but so are the...

Judges 🙅‍♂️

Since Jams are typically battle focused, you're gonna need some judges to make the calls. The typical format is to have 3 judges. You can have more, but that's usually reserved for bigger jams with bigger budgets. I would hesitate to hire less unless your jam is extremely small; 3 is a good number and can bring a good balance of opinions to your judging panel. You will want to make sure your judges are reputable, and known to be fair, well-thought-out judges. The judges should be people who you believe would judge a battle with as little bias as possible. Picking judges can be a daunting task, which we will explore more in a future blog post. For now, here is a simple format you can follow:

• 1 active, competitive local breaker
• 1 local OG
• 1 active, competitive Out of State breaker

Also, keep in mind that judges establish the skill ceiling of your jam (the talent you will get at your jam if you have Roxrite judging vs. your local B-tier bboy judging will be vastly different). Now that you've got your DJ and Judges figured out, the next person you'd want to think about hiring is…

MC 🎤

The MC/Host will double as a hype man for your jam and communicator for the crowd. He/she is a key part in bringing hype and energy to the crowd, even corny sayings like "Crowd, are you seeing what I'm seeing?!!" can bring energy to tired dancers. The MC is also a communicator to the crowd and dancers, and controls the flow of the event. He/she should be making announcements about brackets, cypher breaks, vendors, etc: making sure people know what they need to know.

By those descriptions, you should make sure the MC has a good head on his/her shoulders, is good with logistics, and can hype up a crowd when needed. That being said, the MC technically has the lowest bar of entry, as the main "skill" required is being able to talk into a mic. You can still run a fine jam by MCing yourself or having your crewmate MC, so long as they make the right announcements and don't say weird stuff on the mic. I'm not necessarily advocating getting just anyone to MC, as a good MC can bring that extra bit of spice and flavor to your jam. Said MC should be able to explain important aspects such as the...

Format 📃

Since jams (1, see footnotes) are centered around the battles, it makes sense that the "format" of the jam would get its own section. The jam format can be simple (1v1, 2v2, etc), or can be that stand-out part of the jam that makes people want to come (Pokemon style/Capture the breaker, 7-to-smoke). There are lots of different formats to choose from, and I hope to write a future post about all the different well known jam formats that have been used.

Although there's an abundance of formats, one of my biggest opinions when it comes to throwing your first jam is to stick to the basics and throw a normal format battle with no crazy bells and whistles (1v1, 2v2) since those formats are tried and true. That being said, the format won't really matter unless you have breakers and an audience who know your event is happening.

Promotion 🗣️

Last, but not certainly not least, promoting a jam. By promoting, I essentially mean advertising, marketing, spreading the word. These days, promotion is easier and more accessible than ever. At the very least, make an Instagram post and Facebook event and get your friends to re-share it. A step above that, post about it in some bboy discords or group chats that you're in. Another step above that, make sure to tell all the local bboys and bgirls when you go to practice and spread the word when you go to other jams.

The basic point, make sure people know about your jam and sell it as something that people will want to come to.

Give people a reason to want to come to your jam, whether it's the DJ, concept, invitees, reputation of your crew, etc. The final thing I will say about promotion is that the earlier you start, the better (try to give at least a month or two notice). Don't be surprised if nobody comes to your jam when you make a post about it a week before and don't talk about it at all.

Conclusion

So that's it. Those are the 7 essential components to a jam. There are so many unexpected and uncontrollable aspects to jams that can make jams memorable, and that's honestly one of my favorite parts about going to jams. You don't know what might happen, sometimes that's bad and sometimes it's great. Jams (and how fun/memorable they are) are not an exact science, but I think starting with the foundation and putting it out there will only help everyone.

If you've made it this far, then thank you, it really means a lot to me. Whether you are a breaker looking to throw your first jam, or a seasoned jam promoter and organizer, I hope you found this blog post both informative and interesting. I haven't been able to find much public information on the internet about throwing jams, so this blog post is my first attempt at filling that gap.

I've thrown a dozen small/mid-sized jams of my own and hope to share my learnings so that others will benefit and that the scene will continue to elevate.

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Peace and blessings,

Nick Kim

Footnotes:

1. Caveat that I am talking about a "battle focused jam". These days, this is the de facto jam, however I know that a jam can also be focused on cyphers, exhibitions, or essentially just be a big party for breaking. For the purposes of this blog post, I am talking about a "competition focused jam" or a "jam with brackets".