Friday Créu, Dabke and Maraca

Dance-based fads get dismissed, like much dance music does, as silly and superficial. That was part of the "disco sucks" rockist argument, and the reason genres like freestyle, reggaetón and merengue de la calle are considered "lesser."

I didn't learn to respectably merengue and salsa till after college, and still can't bachata to save my life. Though I still have coordination issues, I've come around to the value of dance, and partake whenever I can. But I still constantly argue with "rocker" friends who bitch about dance songs' lack of lyrical depth or production sophistication. Sometimes having a groove that moves you is enough.

In the Juan Flores book I'm using in one of my classes this semester, he cites Johannes Fabian's idea about popular cultural practices consisting of "moments of freedom," that the exchange that happens between people in real time is just as important as the record those moments leave behind.

And though it's a simple idea, it hit me hard. The difficulty sometimes in thinking about popular culture is that considering artifacts like an album isn't enough — sometimes you'll miss a lot of what's important in a musical culture if you don't go to the show to see all the Chicano Morrissey fans, or hit Youssou N'Dour's annual Great African Ball. The earliest forms of music were indelibly connected to dances, and remain so in many traditions. It's a way for everyone to participate.

So, back to our regular program. Check the videos below of popular dances in three parts of the Afro-verse: Brazil's baile funk hit, "Créu" (via Beat Diaspora) -- simple, in five hypnotic speeds; Lebanese dabke (there are also other versions around the Levant) and the Dominican "baile de la maraca" (which equally fascinated me and drove me nuts).

Comments

[Kiko Jones]

I may have stated this before, but I've often thought that the most subversive thing a "dance" act could do was pair up their grooves to hefty lyrical content. People are very free when they dance and "sneaking in" words of protest or social content in these songs--if done right--can organically bring about a bit of enlightenment in an otherwise care-free situation. I don't think it's a coincidence that some of the most popular merengues of all time ("El Tabaco", "Señor Pulpero", "Chepe", among many others) fall into that category.

Of course, sometimes you just wanna dance...