Dancing Influence the Direction of Blues Music? New videos at end of videos stuff

David suggests that we all do a six-month tour of learning the drums, guitar, and base, just so we know how to communicate with the band. I say, we should all do a six-month tour of what good blues dancing is, even if it's lecture and demonstration.

I've been thinking about this topic for some time. I've danced most of my life, but, during the past decade or so I've been swing and blues dancing. I've been frustrated going to dances and finding dancers and some DJs who don't understand blues music, and, then I go to hear great bands and get frustrated because everyone is just sitting and listening--like I'm in church and the preacher is going on and on, and I'm fidgeting sitting on my hands, thinking, "Yeah. I get it. Don't do anything we like to do. Can we go now? (and do something we like to do?:-)

But that's not the way it's always been. In Jacqui Malone's book, Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American dance, Malone puts it this way, "Most European conceptions of art would separate music from dance and both music and dance from the social situations that produced them. Most traditional African conceptions, on the other hand, couple music with one or more other art forms, including dance. And most Africans experience music as part of a multidimensional social event that may take place in a village square, a town plaza, a courtyard...." For them, it's not about the performers being up on a stage and the queen sitting quietly to the side in her royal box seat observing. It's about participation.

Then I listen to Rod Piazza talk about the development of West Coast Swing, and I wonder how much of the faster tempo is influenced by audiences demanding faster music because all they know is West Coast or East Coast swing dancing, which is done to faster music. Most American musicians I meet don't know what the dances are that can be danced to blues music, and what each of them is: West Coast Swing, East Coast Swing, Lindy Hop (bent knees, the root dance to West and East Coast swing), and Blues dancing (real blues dancing, in my book, based on Chicago blues music and dancing and the African aesthetic of dancing--bent knees, with the body tilted forward in an athletic stance--like in basketball--danced in a grounded way--into the ground. You literally "get down." It also has a clear physical representation of the beat--referred to as the "pulse"). Good Chicago blues just makes you want to do this if you dance. It has a way of grounding you and making your dancing earthy.

The West Coast Swing has its origins in country western dancing. It is done to swing rhythms, but the knees are straight and the back is even tilted backwards, not forward. It has an up feeling, away from the earth. It is done in a very formalized straight slot, like a little runway to which the dancers are constrained. In short, it's very Europeanized, like our music listening venues. In the same book, Malone says, "Africans sang a slave song that urged dancers to "gimme de kneebone bent." To many western and central Africans, flexed joints represented life and energy, while straightened hips, elbows, and knees epitomized rigidity and death. The bent kneebone symbolized the ability to 'get down'."

But! If the music isn't doing that you will want to stand upright with straight knees and something's gone. Something's lost in the music. If you try to appeal to that kind of audience will your music also lose this magic?Count Basie knew his dancers at the Savoy Ballroom. And he knew who the good dancers were. He engaged them and had musical conversations with them.

If you study African dance long enough, you will eventually start learning to drum. If you study African drumming long enough, you will eventually start learning to dance. Know, learn to feel what the music does to your body. Learn and understand and recognize and encourage the good dancers by playing to them when you see them in the audience.

Amen.

P.S. (Don't tell anyone, but if I do say so myself, I've been known to do a pretty mean West Coast Swing, and, if the music calls for it, I'll crack bubble gum and do an East Coast Swing (6 count jitterbug), or even the abomination of a dance, the ballroom jive (but then again, I can have fun doing the polka if you get me drunk enough).