mambo to hip hop...dancing
The Bronx Tale was an REALLY insightful documentary. I looked it up and apparently it was created with the goal in mind of community empowerment and through some tourism and an increased community awareness and pride, the historic landmarks of the South Bronx through this project gained funding for the neighborhood, which (though still stigmatized and run-down), is hoping for a brighter future. Empowerment through music, eh? How surprising a way to go about uniting people! Sarcasm aside, what actually is surprising is how truly powerful the music was and continues to be. Although I'm sure mambo and salsa aren't the most popular music/dance styles out on the streets of the South Bronx today, their presence back post WWII was monumental in shaping the community as well as music history. I could talk a lot more about my interests in the Latin Tinge that affected (took over, rather) the music scene in the South Bronx, but the rise of hip hop and specifically the dancing that came with it really interested me.
Dr. Helene Lawson of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford says in an piece I found (http://1490newsblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/book-on-why-people-dance.html) that "the reasons people dance could be grouped into six categories: keeping fit, seeking stability, seeking a sense of community, seeking to capture life, seeking to free one’s spirit, and seeking a new identity. " The concept of seeking community, I feel I addressed in my Live Review Assignment, but freeing one's spirit is something that people don't take seriously. People make fun of interpretive dance as something hippies and 'losers' do to express feelings (as if that's a bad thing). In Napoleon Dynamite, the main character does this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f39-119tQZk&feature=related , one of the most famous scenes from the movie. It's funny, but honestly, there is something to be said for the fact that mambo dancers look like they're having seizures at times, hip hop dancers took dancing to aggressive, antagonistic, borderline violent new heights. And still today, there are millions of people who come together and bond and, yes, become one as a community over dancing. But it's as if they're becoming one as individuals in the same cathartic act. This may be sort of a flowery description of it, but having taken tap dance lessons for nearly 9 years, I know that separate from the emotional roller coaster of performance, the act of feeling the music, and feeling rhythm (it's not so much an act an overwhelming force) is something that I'm confident nobody can scientifically express or account for. As the beginning of the disco reading describes, there is something about a large group of people dancing and becoming ONE that is extremely consuming. That something differs from person to person—it can be a spiritual thing, a hormonal thing, an expressive thing, but nevertheless, it's a thing and it binds us.