Motown

[main_stem]

Is playing excessive, mo-town, modern R&B, or funk acceptable at swing dance events?

No. Anyone who does and calls themselves a lindy hop DJ should be taken out in the back and shot.

Ugchh!! Isn't that the EXACT sort of baiting comment that you claim you hate to hear from me? And I NEVER make it that blatantly.

Is playing excessive, mo-town, modern R&B, or funk acceptable at swing dance events?

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.

[julius]

I think we can reframe the question. How far from jazz can you stray in playing music for lindy hop before it is too far? Some people here have said waltz and 5/4 works. That's one extreme. The other extreme are purists who insist only on 30s and 40s era music. OK, people are quick to point out that nobody wants to play waltzes/motown etc. ROUTINELY for lindy hop.

So, maybe we have:

classic swing -> new testament swing -> jump blues -> rock and roll -> soul -> hip hop -> waltzes and 5/4

I pretty much stop at jump blues personally. I don't feel like I'm doing lindy hop when I'm dancing to any genre beyond that, even for one or two songs. I find myself THINKING a lot more when trying to bash the dance to fit the music. I really, really don't like thinking while dancing.

[yedancer]

Who cares how similar motown is to swing? You can come up with similiarities between just about anything and anything else. As Julius pointed out, you can draw similarities between punk and swing. What about ska and swing? For that matter, why not reggae?

You can lindy hop on top of pretty much anything that has a beat--this is evidenced in lindy clubs on a regular basis. The real question is why are you a swing DJ? If all you care about is making the crowd "have fun," then play whatever you want. But if you have even the slightest desire to preserve even SOME of the roots of lindy hop, then you should have a predominance of swing in your sets.

Motown is a music of the past. Just look back in time and see what sort of dances were being done to this type of music originally. Were the kids lindy hopping to it? Not that I am aware of. Therefore, it should not be featured to a great extent at lindy hop dances. Added as flavor, sure. But as a main course, no.

Jeez. I just can't get away from those food references, can I.

[julius]

I think almost every DJ here plays predominantly swing in their sets. We're basically niggling over whether any of us should ever play any Motown or not. If someone plays one or two songs, I'm ok with that, really. But the problem is, sometimes a DJ gets into the "it's only a few songs" mindset and plays one or two songs of Motown, one or two songs of hip hop, one or two songs of rock and roll, one or two songs of jump blues ... To make room for all this "other music", swing music gets sacrificed. That makes me unhappy.

I have no doubt someday I will be DJing and will play a non-swing song. My greatest hope is that someone will run up to me and demand what the hell am I thinking? And that will remind me to keep the non-swing to a minimum for the rest of the evening.

[mousethief]

Maybe you could play some Manhattan Transfer.

Kalman

[gatorgal]

Maybe you could play some Manhattan Transfer.

Kalman

*smacks in arm*

You know, you're not helping....

BTW, that smack also goes for your post in the JOB thread!

Tina

[Nate Dogg]

I pretty much stop at jump blues personally. I don't feel like I'm doing lindy hop when I'm dancing to any genre beyond that, even for one or two songs. I find myself THINKING a lot more when trying to bash the dance to fit the music. I really, really don't like thinking while dancing.

This makes me wonder how one's dance style relates to their viewpoint towards dancing so-called lindy style to other music genres.

When some of the motown songs in question are played (omitting the latin flavored songs, etc...), I don't feel like I am trying to bash the dance to fit the music. It often feels pretty natural.

[mousethief]

Even Gianmarco can tell the difference between the dance and the music, which is why we don't see him no more.

Easy does not equal natural.

Kalman

[mousethief]

Maybe you could play some Manhattan Transfer.

Kalman

*smacks in arm*

You know, you're not helping....

BTW, that smack also goes for your post in the JOB thread!

Tina

*waaa*

Pick on Lindyholic!!!

Kalman

[julius]

I think it is very closely related. LA being the provincial backwater that it is, people here learned how to dance to jump blues (and how), swing, and hot jazz. A little western swing. No soul, no motown, no funk, no hiphop, no pop, not until 2001 or so anyway.

[Nate Dogg]

Even Gianmarco can tell the difference between the dance and the music, which is why we don't see him no more.

Easy does not equal natural.

Kalman

If you take away all the indoctrination that each of us got when we learned the various dances.

Who is to say that people are not being natural? True, they are not being historically accurate to the form as it was done years ago. But, if it feels good to you and your partner, why is that such a bad thing?

Evolution is natural, right?

Nathan

[mousethief]

Even Gianmarco can tell the difference between the dance and the music, which is why we don't see him no more.

Easy does not equal natural.

Kalman

If you take away all the indoctrination that each of us got when we learned the various dances.

Who is to say that people are not being natural? True, they are not being historically accurate to the form as it was done years ago. But, if it feels good to you and your partner, why is that such a bad thing?

Evolution is natural, right?

Nathan

I don't know. Dogs are bred after all. Slavery was hardly natural selection either.

And since we spend an inordinate amount of time teaching swing and/or lindy at our dances - not bop, not swingout, not steppin, not hand dancing - maybe we should play music that they can dance to, eh?

When a DJ plays a song (or several songs) that make dancers struggle - not challenge them - because they're doing exactly what we taught them to do then we've got a problem.

The only people who dance naturally and without *indoctrination* are children.

Kalman

[Lawrence]

The Motown music about which we are speaking shares every relevant musical similarity to Swing music except the syncopated triplets. The music progresses and regresses in 4-count increments: often four counts upwards, four counts downwards. It has 8, 10, 12, and 16 bar "paragraph" patterns, just like vintage Swing music. It even has call and response patterns.

This description of music is so generic as to be unusable. What if a piece of music had all these qualities, but had a Latin beat?

The Latin rhythm would make it "unLindyable;" that's why you have Latin dances. Moreover, what you selectively quoted just contained some of the rhythmic similarities. There are many others. Point out some that are not similar, AND why they are absolutely essential to Lindy Hop. That's what I'm trying to elicit.

Not only that, but it describes a tremendous amount of music since the swing era. Rock and roll, punk, hip hop, blues, soul, funk, disco ...

YES!! That is the ultimate progression/evolution! It just came up in the context of Motown. Why does Lindy Hop need to stay in the past danced only to music of the past? (Note, I'm still not saying "why can't we dance to only modern music," but "why ONLY old music?" I also don't expect this suggestion to be accepted overnight so as to change the face of Lindy Hop events immediately; only to open the door to allow it without rebuke.)

You are trying to seek the essential nature of Lindy Hop by pointing to one thing and asking "is this it?" What would Mumon say?

Au contraire, I'm pointing to one rhythmic thing (the syncopated rhythm) missing from what we're referring to as "Motown music" and asking why it's considered more "essential" than SEVERAL other essential things that DO carry over. The "one thing missing" problem is the argument with which I am disagreeing.

[Lawrence]

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.

[mousethief]

YES!! That is the ultimate progression/evolution! It just came up in the context of Motown. Why does Lindy Hop need to stay in the past danced only to music of the past? (Note, I'm still not saying "why can't we dance to only modern music," but "why ONLY old music?"

Because most of it swings? Because it was designed for dancers in mind?

Mind you, I'm not advocating all classic music, but it's closer to the dance. The day we get so far from the history of the dance that it no longer is Lindy - well, I'm hoping this day never comes.\

Kalman