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What Does Dancing in Different Styles Gain?
This article will talk about different dance styles and creativity in dance, understanding their relationship with Afro Cuba, R&B, Jazz and Latin Music and dances to further enrich your dancing. Dancing only in one style can change the development of your dance, but it can also dull your creativity as it shapes you. They showed that they could dance several different styles, which we observed to the Old Harlem scenes. Dancing in multiple styles breaks the mold, eliminates learned mistakes, and expands your perspective.
What is Creativity ?
- Whether they maintain their originality.
- Whether they are a dance that can be done for everyone.
- Whether the dance performed is open enough to creativity or not.
- How strongly they are connected to Africa and its historical fabric.
- If you already know one dance style, it makes it easier to learn another.
- Whether they are common enough.
Rhythms, Dances and Their Brief History
Blues
The term blues is based on mysticism through the “indigo” color used as an “expression of pain” in funeral and mourning ceremonies in West African culture. Blues is a genre of music with a history of 400 years and originating from Africa. Blues, which has its roots in Africa, was born from the songs about sadness, hope, freedom and deep pain sung by slaves brought from Africa while working in the fields since the 17th century. The first published Blues score was Hart Wand‘s 1912 “Dallas Blues”.
Blues began to spread within American society with the abolition of slavery in 1865, and from there it spread all over the world over time. Starting from the 1910s, blues spread to many cities in America. It blends with the culture and music of these cities and new types of Blues emerge, some of which are British Blues, Delta Blues, Memphis Blues, Texas Blues. By the 1930s, Blues was blended with Jazz music by Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lonnie Johnson and Tampa Red.
The form of the Blues is a repetitive cycle of chord progressions with a “call and response” pattern, often found in African and African-American music. The 12-bar Blues is the most commonly used chord march in popular music. Blues notes are often called flat thirds, flat fifths or flat sevenths. Blues draws attention mostly with its rhythm features. However, Electric Blues, which is performed today, requires a good knowledge of harmony along with high instrument mastery and strong rhythm ability. Because Modern Blues, in addition to its African roots, has undergone a very intense interaction and has come to contain remnants of many music.
Jazz
Jazz is a genre of African-American music that first began to develop in the southern states of the United States in the early 1900s. It originated in African-American communities in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jazz music uses blue notes, syncopation, swing, polyrhythm, cavorting, and improvisation techniques; It is a blending of African-American and Western music techniques.
This music was introduced to the world in 1917, when the first records of the Dixieland Jazz Band were released. As its popularity increased in the 1920s and 1930s, the Jazz Age took place all over the world, especially in the USA. Jazz is one of the most popular and increasingly popular music genres, not only in the past but also today. Since the Jazz Age of the 1920s, it has been recognized as an important form of musical expression in traditional music and popular music.
Jazz music is in the process of leaving the USA, where it was discovered in the early twentieth century, and spreading around the world, and until today it has divided into many subgenres (New Orleans, Swing, Kansas, Gypsy jazz, bebop, cool, avant-garde,free jazz, Latin jazz, soul, fusion, jazz). rock, smooth, jazz funk, ethno jazz, acid jazz) and interacted with numerous musical genres and traditions.
Origins
Jazz has its origins in Ancient Africa – spiritual ceremonies, blues and ragtime – and western world traditions – European army bands. After its formation at the beginning of the 19th century, jazz styles began to spread and influence musical movements. It is thought that the origin of the word jazz comes from the slang of that period. Suggested meanings are energetic, spiritual and vibrational.
In the early years of jazz, the movement that was most nourished by was blues. Blues is the folk music of enslaved Africans who came to America. Jazz also originated from traditional music in Africa. Therefore, for many jazz musicians, jazz is a music invented by South Africans.
Jazz music began to develop in New Orleans in the 1880s and took its final form with recordings made in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago in the early 1920s.[1]
The musical instruments of army bands began to become the most important instruments of jazz music: brass, brass, and percussion guitars. Black musicians, generally cynical, began to form their own small groups, and these groups, which traveled and played at funerals, enabled the music to reach a large number of people in a short time.
Private schools and civilian communities opened for blacks after the war enabled the training of more educated musicians. Lorenzo Tio and Scott Crabbe were among the first jazz musicians to receive classical European music training. Trained talents ensured the longevity of their productions and contributed to their improvised music.
Rhythm and Blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated as R&B or R’n’B, is a popular music genre that emerged in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was first used by record companies to describe records marketed predominantly to African Americans. During this period, “rocking, jazz-based music … [with a heavy, insistent rhythm]” was becoming more popular. In commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through 1970s, bands usually consisted of a piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encompass African American history and experience of pain, the search for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of societal racism, oppression, relationships, economics, and aspirations.
The term “rhythm and blues” has undergone a number of changes in meaning. It was frequently applied to blues recordings in the early 1950s. From the mid-1950s, the term “R&B” began to be used in a broader context, after this musical style contributed to the development of rock and roll. He referred to musical styles that developed from and incorporated gospel and soul music, as well as electric blues. From the 1960s to the 70s, some British groups were referred to and promoted as R&B groups. By the 1970s the term “rhythm and blues” had changed once again and was used as a generic term for soul and funk.
In the late 1980s, a newer style of R&B developed and became known as “contemporary R&B“. This contemporary form combines rhythm and blues with various elements of pop, soul, funk, disco, hip hop and electronic music.
Lindy Hop
It is a dance genre that was formed in Harlem, New York, in the 1920s and 1930s, with the jazz music of the time. Lindy Hop is a mixture of many dances that were famous during its development and those that preceded it, but is mainly inspired by Jazz, Tap, Breakaway and Charleston dances. Jive is a pioneer of Boogie-Woogie and acrobatic Rock and Roll. It is often described as a jazz dance and is a member of the Swing dances.
During its development, Lindy Hop combined many specific and improvised movements used in African American solo and partner dances with European-derived, count-8 partner dances. This can be seen most clearly in the swingout movement, which is the basic step of Lindy Hop. In the open position of the movement, the dance couple is tied hand in hand, while in the closed position, they are connected like an embrace.
Lindy Hop, which was revived among American, Swedish and British dancers in the 1980s, is danced among dance groups in many countries today.
It is sometimes defined as street dance to emphasize that Lindy Hop did not develop from a specific center. Today’s Lindy Hop is still developing and is not controlled from a specific center.[1]
Post-war Period (1945 – 1984)
Music culture changed after World War II. Due to new taxes and laws, venues are restricted from hiring musicians and dancers and hosting dances. Smaller orchestras were recruited and dance floors were filled with tables. In this new period, musicians were involved in Cool Jazz and Bebop, and the patrons wanted the guests to listen to the musicians and not dance. The rise of Rock and Roll and Bebop further diminished the popularity of Jazz for dance purposes. Lindy Hop fell out of favor with the public, replaced by dances such as Rock and Roll, East Coast Swing and West Coast Swing.
Salsa
Cuban immigrant Machito (Frank Grillo) made significant contributions to the emergence of this dance music in New York in the 1940s, and another Cuban immigrant Celia Cruz made significant contributions to its development in the 1960s.[1] Regarding Puerto Rican contributions to the development of salsa music, the names of Tito Rodríguez, Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri can be mentioned.[1]
Since gaining partial autonomy in 1952, there has been great migration from Puerto Rico to the east coast of the USA, especially to the Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) neighborhood of Manhattan (New York).[1] With these migrations, Puerto Rican musicians introduced a new music and dance to New York in the 1950s and made Latin rhythms, largely of Cuban origin, widespread in New York. Later, with the Cuban Revolution in 1959, this spread was reinforced with the arrival of Cuban refugees to the USA. On the other hand, due to the embargo imposed on Cuba, Cuba has largely lost its culturally central role in the Caribbean and lost this role to New York. In New York, music of Cuban origin was performed by musicians from all over the Caribbean. Thus, New York has been the scene of the following styles, respectively:
Bu dans müziğinin New York’ta 1940’lı yıllarda ortaya çıkışında Kübalı göçmen Machito’nun (Frank Grillo) ve daha sonra 1960’lı yıllardaki gelişmesinde bir başka Kübalı göçmen Celia Cruz’un önemli katkıları olmuştur.[1] Salsa müziğinin gelişimindeki Porto Riko katkıları konusunda ise Tito Rodríguez, Tito Puente ve Eddie Palmieri’nin isimleri sayılabilir.[1]
- 1928: Cuban Son (or rumba)
- 1949: Mambo (passing through mexico)
- 1954: Cha-cha-cha
- 1964: Pachanga
- 1966: Boogaloo
- Towards 1967, musicians turned to Latin sources again and especially began to prefer the “montuno” ending..
- Starting from 1973, under the influence of Fania, the term salsa began to be used widely to indicate this new movement.
As Latin music and dances became popular in the 1970s, the term salsa began to be widely adopted.[1] The important events of the historical process in which the name Salsa emerged as a term are:
Mambo
Mambo is a Cuban Latin dance that was developed in the 1940s when the musical genre of the same name became popular in Latin America. The original ballroom dance, which originated in Cuba and Mexico, was related to danzón, although it was faster and less rigid. It has replaced rhumba as the most fashionable Latin dance in the United States. Later, with the advent of salsa and its more sophisticated dance, a new type of mambo dance involving breaking steps became popular in New York. This form was called “salsa on 2”, “mambo on 2” or “modern mambo”.
Origins
In the mid-1940s, band leaders devised a dance to a new genre of music known as mambo, named after the 1938 song Mambo, a charanga composed by Orestes Lopez, which popularized a new form of danzon later known as danzon mambo. This style was a syncopated, less rigid form of danzón that allowed dancers to express themselves more freely in the final section, known as the mambo section.
From Havana, Pérez Prado moved to Mexico, where his music and dance were adopted. The original mambo dance was characterized by freedom and complex foot steps. This style was prominent in Rumberas films. Popular dancers of the period include Ninon Sevilla, Maria Antonieta Pons, Tongolele, Meche Barba and Resortes.
Americanization The mambo dance, pioneered by Pérez Prado and popular in Cuba, Mexico, and New York in the 1940s and 1950s, is completely different from the modern dance that New Yorkers now call “mambo” and is also known as salsa “on 2“. The original mambo dance contains no breaking steps or basic steps. Cuban dance has not been accepted by many professional dance teachers. Cuban dancers describe mambo as “feeling the music” in which sound and movement merge in the body.[1] Professional dance teachers in the United States, They viewed this approach to dance as “excessive”, “undisciplined” and therefore felt it was necessary to standardize dance in order to present it as a salable commodity for the social and ballroom market.
In the 1940s, Puerto Rican dancer Pedro Aguilar, known as “Cuban Pete” and his wife, became popular as the best mambo dancers of the period, dancing regularly at The Palladium in New York. “Cuban Pete” was named “the greatest Mambo dancer ever” by Life magazine and the legendary Tito Puente. Pedro Aguilar was also nicknamed el cuchillo (“The Blade”) for his mambo dancing style.
New York’s modern mambo dance was popularized by George Vascones, head of a dance group known as the Latin Symbols from the Bronx, New York, from the late 1960s to the 1970s. George Vascones continued the tradition of mambo dancing that had begun twenty years earlier in the “Palladium period”. This was followed in the 1980s by Eddie Torres, Angel Rodriguez of the RazzM’Tazz Mambo Dance Company, and others, many of whom were 2nd generation New York Puerto Ricans. This style is sometimes danced to mambo music, but more often to salsa dura (old-style salsa). This is called “mambo on 2” because the break or change of direction in the basic step counts as 2. The Eddie Torres and Razz M’Tazz schools each have different basic steps, although they share the same basic feature. Eddie Torres describes his version as a “street” style that he developed from what he saw on the streets of the Bronx. The RazzM’Tazz version is closer to the Palladium Mambo (from the 1950s Palladium ballroom), whose basic pitch derives from the Cuban son and shares its timing (234 – 678, with pauses at 1 and 5). Both styles are derived from American Mambo, with freestyle steps based on jazz and tap steps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(dance)
Cha Cha Cha (Triple Mambo)
Cha-cha-cha (also known as cha-cha) is a dance of Cuban origin. It is danced to the music of the same name, introduced by Cuban composer and violinist Enrique Jorrin in the early 1950s. This rhythm developed from danzón-mambo. The name of the dance is an onomatopoeia derived from the sound made by the dancers’ feet when dancing the two rapid alternating steps that characterize the dance.
In the early 1950s, Enrique Jorrín worked as a violinist and composer in the charanga group Orquesta América. The group performed at dance halls in Havana, where they played danzón, danzonete and danzon-mambo for dance-oriented crowds. Jorrín noticed that many of the dancers in these shows had difficulty with the syncopated rhythms of danzón-mambo. To make his music more attractive to dancers, Jorrín began composing songs in which the melody was strongly emphasized on the first downbeat and the rhythm was less syncopated. When the Orquesta América performed these new compositions at the Silver Star Club in Havana, the dancers were noticed to have improvised a triple step in their footwork, producing the “cha-cha-cha” sound. The new style thus became known as “cha-cha-chá” and was associated with a dance in which dancers took triple steps.
The basic footwork pattern of cha-cha-cha (one, two, three, cha-cha-one, two, three) is also found in many Afro-Cuban dances of the Santería religion. For example, one of the steps used in the dance practiced by the Orisha Ogun religion has the same footwork. These Afro-Cuban dances predate the development of the cha-cha-cha and were known to many Cubans, especially those of African descent, in the 1950s. Therefore, the footwork of the cha-cha-cha was probably inspired by these Afro-Cuban dances.
In 1953, Orquesta América released two compositions by Jorrin, “La Engañadora” and “Silver Star“, on the Cuban record label Panart. These were the first cha-cha-cha compositions ever recorded. They became an immediate hit in Havana, and other Cuban charanga orchestras quickly imitated this new style. Soon a cha-cha-cha craze began in Havana’s dance halls, popularizing both music and dance. This craze soon spread to Mexico City, and by 1955 the music and dance of the cha-cha-cha had become popular throughout Latin America, the United States, and Western Europe, once following in the footsteps of the mambo.
Hip Hop
Hip-hop aktivisti Afrika Bambaataa [ 1 ] ve b-boy Richard ” Crazy Legs ” Colón’a [ 2 ] göre, en saf hip-hop dans stili olan break (genellikle “breakdance” olarak adlandırılır), 1970’lerin başında James Brown’ın ” Get on the Good Foot ” adlı şarkısına dans etmesinin ayrıntıları olarak başladı . [ 3 ] İnsanlar bu hareketleri oturma odalarında, koridorlarda ve partilerde taklit ettiler. Break dansı, genç Clive Campbell’ın yardımıyla bu partilerde gelişip yaygınlaştı. DJ Kool Herc olarak daha iyi bilinen Campbell, Bronx’taki mahalle genç partilerinde sık sık plak çalan Jamaika doğumlu bir DJ’di . [ 4 ] Jeff Chang , Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (2005) adlı kitabında DJ Kool Herc’in eureka anını şu şekilde anlatıyor :
According to hip-hop activist Afrika Bambaataa and b-boy Richard ‘Crazy Legs’ Colón the purest hip-hop dance style, breaking (often called “breakdance”), was invented by James Brown in the early 1970s It started as details of her dancing to ‘Get on the Good Foot’. People imitated these movements in living rooms, hallways, and at parties. Break dancing developed and became widespread at these parties with the help of young Clive Campbell. Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc, was a Jamaican-born DJ who frequently played records at neighborhood teen parties in the Bronx. In his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (2005), Jeff Chang describes DJ Kool Herc’s eureka moment as follows:
Herc carefully studied the dancers. “I was smoking cigarettes and I was waiting for the records to finish. And I noticed people was waiting for certain parts of the record,” he says. It was an insight as profound as Ruddy Redwood’s dub discovery. The moment when the dancers really got wild was in a song’s short instrumental break, when the band would drop out and the rhythm section would get elemental. Forget melody, chorus, songs—it was all about the groove, building it, keeping it going. Like a string theorist, Herc zeroed in on the fundamental vibrating loop at the heart of the record, the break.
In response to this revelation, Herc developed the Merry-Go-Round technique to extend the breaks—the percussion interludes or instrumental solos within a longer work of music.[6] When he played a break on one turntable, he repeated the same break on the second turntable as soon as the first was finished. He then looped these records one after the other in order to extend the break as long as he wanted: “And once they heard that, that was it, wasn’t no turning back,” Herc told Chang. “They always wanted to hear breaks after breaks after breaks after breaks.” It was during these times that the dancers, later known as break-boys or b-boys, would perform what is known as breaking.[5]
Breaking started out strictly as toprock, footwork-oriented dance moves performed while standing up.[7] Toprock usually serves as the opening to a breaker’s performance before transitioning into other dance moves performed on the floor. A separate dance style that influenced toprock is uprock, also called rocking or Brooklyn uprock, because it comes from Brooklyn, New York.[8] The uprock dance style has its roots in gangs.[2][9] Although it looks similar to toprock, uprock is danced with a partner[10] and is more aggressive, involving fancy footwork, shuffles, hitting motions, and movements that mimic fighting.[7] When there was an issue over turf, the two warlords of the feuding gangs would uprock, and whoever won this preliminary dance battle decided where the real fight would be.[1][2] Because uprock’s purpose was to moderate gang violence, it never crossed over into mainstream breaking as seen today, except for some specific moves adopted by breakers who use it as a variation for their toprock.[11]
Aside from James Brown and uprock, hip-hop historian Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon writes that toprock was also influenced by “tap dance, Lindy hop, salsa, Afro-Cuban, and various African and Native American dances.”[12] From toprock, breaking progressed to being more floor-oriented, involving freezes, downrock, head spins, and windmills.[13][note 1] These additions occurred due to influences from 1970s martial arts films,[15] influences from gymnastics, and the formation of dance crews[16]—teams of street dancers who get together to develop new moves, create dance routines, and battle other crews. One b-boy move taken from gymnastics is called the flare, which was made famous by gymnast Kurt Thomas and is called the “Thomas flair” in gymnastics.[17]
B-boys Jamie “Jimmy D” White and Santiago “Jo Jo” Torres founded Rock Steady Crew (RSC) in 1977 in the Bronx.[18] Along with Dynamic Rockers and Afrika Bambaataa‘s Mighty Zulu Kings, they are one of the oldest continually active breaking crews.[note 2] For others to get into the crew, they had to battle one of the Rock Steady b-boys—that was their audition, so to speak.[20] The crew flourished once it came under the leadership of b-boy Richard “Crazy Legs” Colón. Crazy Legs opened a Manhattan chapter of the crew and made his friends and fellow b-boys Wayne “Frosty Freeze” Frost[note 3] and Kenneth “Ken Swift” Gabbert co-vice presidents.[20] RSC was instrumental in the spread of breaking’s popularity beyond New York City. They appeared in Wild Style and Beat Street—1980s films about hip-hop culture—as well as in the movie Flashdance.[note 4] They also performed at the Ritz, at the Kennedy Center, and on the Jerry Lewis Telethon.[20] In 1981, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts hosted a breaking battle between Dynamic Rockers and Rock Steady Crew.[23] The Daily News and National Geographic covered this event.[24] In 1982, their manager Ruza “Kool Lady” Blue organized the New York City Rap Tour, which featured Rock Steady Crew, Afrika Bambaataa, Cold Crush Brothers, the Double Dutch Girls, and Fab 5 Freddy.[25] This tour traveled to England and France, which spread hip-hop culture to those countries.[23][25] In 1983, they performed for Queen Elizabeth II at the Royal Variety Performance.[20] The following year, they recorded a song titled “(Hey You) The Rock Steady Crew“, which was commercially released.[26] RSC now has satellite crews based in Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy.[20]
Boogaloo (Funk)
Boogaloo or bugalú (also: shing-a-ling, Latin boogaloo, Latin R&B) is a genre of Latin music and dance which was popular in the United States in the 1960s. Boogaloo originated in New York City mainly by stateside Puerto Ricans with African American music influences. The style was a fusion of popular African American rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul music with mambo and son montuno, with songs in both English and Spanish. The American Bandstand television program introduced the dance and the music to the mainstream American audience. Pete Rodríguez‘s “I Like It like That“[1] was a famous boogaloo song.
Except for the name, the dance is unrelated to the Boogaloo street dance from Oakland, California and the electric boogaloo, a style of dance which developed decades later under the influence of funk music and hip-hop dance.
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