main_stem wrote:This was the original question to which I gave my opinionated response. It was not meant to bate anyone. It was my OPIONATED RESPONCE to the question posed. If my OPIONATED RESPONCE enflamed you then I apologize. However you could have asked why I felt this way thus keeping with the intent of the thread and encouraging open discourse amongst the community instead of spinning it into some dogmatic diatribe.
Cheers,
Kevin
PS I need a spell checker on this thing.
I did respond to your substantive comments in a way that elicited a response. I pointed out that your comments that we would end up on the wrong foot if we didn't syncopate the triple steps indicated that I had not conveyed my points clearly enough. But... o.k... spell checker be damned.... Why du yu fel thise waie?
Also, please understand that even though I have stated and defended a position, I really do not know the answer, myself. I have a theory that I'm trying to test. I want to hear what everyone has to say without fearing that I will be shot the next time I play Motown and without being wrongly accused
ad hominum of disliking or undermining swing music.
Finally, as Julius aptly surmised, I'm not advocating playing exclusively Motown, just trying to loosen dogmatic insistence to not play it at all. As Kalman noted, phrasing the question "is it o.k. to play
excessive Motown?" is not that enlightening and doesn't produce an interesting conversation because the answer is obvious. Of course any excess is bad; especially if you judge "excessiveness" by whether the crowd is responding. That's why I changed the discussion to a conversation of whether Motown is "Lindy Hop music" and whether Lindy Hop can adapt to other forms of music than Swinging Jazz despite the absence of what I refer to as syncopated triplets in the rhythm.
Is it still "Lindy Hop" if you step the triple steps out evenly (without a stutter/ball-change) so as to manifest the non-syncopated, 4-beat rhythm in a lot of Motown music? I'm still not sure if we can have this discussion in writing, alone.