Motown

[djstarr]

rayned will inevitably IM me and claim yet again that he wants to lindy hop like george lloyd, clean, elegant, and upright. that's because he's afraid of falling and breaking a hip. hee hee.

you'll soon be there babe I'm looking forward to learning WCS in the future - along with sailing and driving a Lincoln town car, these are good hobbies to enjoy my 50's with.

And to get back to the point, we have very little soul or motown or funk blues played at lindy events here. We have a couple of DJ's who play early rock and roll and rockabilly for the newbie crowd; we do have an informal weekly dance where motown is ok to play, and we have a monthly blues dance where soul/motown would probably go over well [although this is still a fairly new venue].

[CafeSavoy]

when i think 'motown' i think of a very smooth, polished sound. that's how it makes me want to dance. i personally don't think lindy hop is polished or smooth. motown just isn't 'on the edge' enough. i don't feel as much on the spot spontaneity. maybe i'm close minded.

rayned will inevitably IM me and claim yet again that he wants to lindy hop like george lloyd, clean, elegant, and upright. that's because he's afraid of falling and breaking a hip. hee hee.

we all project our prejudices on the world and see what we want to see.
falling is no problem for me, i spent years doing aikido and falling off
chairs, over tables, and on questionable surfaces of all types. the only
difference is that i know i'm not a young black teenager who can spend
6 hours a day practicing.

as for the motown sound, it depends on how literal you're using the term.
if you're using it generically for soul music, it means one thing, but if
you're using it for that sound characterized by smokey robinson and
the miracles, then it is indeed a polished sound. but such is the evolution
of everything, even lindy in the 40's was much more polished then lindy
in the 30's.

[Roy]

I think I'm going to need to take west coast swing lessons for I can properly dance to this stuff.

there are millions of black people who have no idea what wcs is and enjoy dancing to motown.

Including steppers in Chicago.

The point being with more and more of it is included in the past year. I see begginng dancers getting more excited, it has become very popular with newer dancers at Lindy events. Are we doing what WCS did many times including the musical change of a few years ago. Will our Lindy Hop music in 5 years change to mostly soul? With it's growth in popularity at events I would say we are heading down that road. Or maybe it is just a fad that will go away. or be limited to a certain area of the counrty. Or maybe just to the younger dancers.

Are we changing the dance to a point where we no longer need to dance to even jazz music or no longer music that swings? Let alone swinging jazz and blues of any kind. We have dj's on this board who say yes. They are influential dj's in their own scene. and they say soul is good for the dance. I say when the dance changes to a soul dance I move onto another dance. I dance this dance for the music; jazz and blues from any era.

Another thing that really bothers me is when people substitute soul for blues in a designated blues room. There is so much good blues out there of many different flavors and tempos, why would someone play something significantly different then blues in a blues room?

[Nate Dogg]

I think I'm going to need to take west coast swing lessons for I can properly dance to this stuff.

there are millions of black people who have no idea what wcs is and enjoy dancing to motown.

Another thing that really bothers me is when people substitute soul for blues in a designated blues room. There is so much good blues out there of many different flavors and tempos, why would someone play something significantly different then blues in a blues room?

Were blues rooms ever really about the blues music to begin with? From my experience, they were mostly about slow dancing with a very close connection. The dance that most Lindy Hoppers know as "blues dancing" can be applied to slow, sensual music of many genres.

I live in a big blues city, as you do. We go out dancing to live blues music all the time. There is a lot of variety in what is considered blues. Only a fraction of it would go over well in a blues room at an Exchange.

When I have DJed blues rooms, I played music that people would enjoy "blues dancing" to, sometimes the music is overtly not blues.

[CafeSavoy]

I think I'm going to need to take west coast swing lessons for I can properly dance to this stuff.

there are millions of black people who have no idea what wcs is and enjoy dancing to motown.

Including steppers in Chicago.

The point being with more and more of it is included in the past year. I see begginng dancers getting more excited, it has become very popular with newer dancers at Lindy events.

i think you're muddying your question by trying to project that music onto specific dance forms. The basic question is good, but when it gets mixed with making assumptions about the appropriate dance forms it loses its thrust. Especially when you paint with such a broad brush. For example, some of that music uses rhythm that is probably more suited to cha cha.

Similarly with the blues tirade, are blues rooms for blues music or blues dancing or a mix of both? i think the variety you have encountered is because there are varying visions of those rooms and not everyone is the blues music purist you seem to be. For good or bad, i think most people at dance events focus first on dancing and then the music. We as djs are more sensitized to the music, but our perspective probably isn't the norm.

Since you mentioned Chicago Stepping, why not study that if you want appropriate music for Motown. It would seem that Stepping or Hand Dancing would be better fits since that is their core music.

[mousethief]

You mean like Sam Cooke's "Everybody Likes To Cha Cha Cha?"

Kalman

[Roy]

Learning stepping is an objective for me. The dance looks so smooth and cool and looks great with the smooth tones of soul. I would love to do it and when the soul music comes on at eventsI would rather dance that instead of a hybrid form of Lindy Hop, but,,, I can't find any other Lnidy Hopper who is serious about learning it, let alone the likliehood of a random person at any Lindy event that knows stepping.

[Swifty]

Let me preface by saying that I LOVELOVELOVE Motown, Soul, R&B, what-have-you. I was brought up on this music, it was all that my mother listened to while I was growing up, and I listen to it frequently. I've also been known to throw some on once in a while while I'm DJing if the feeling is right. However...

When I was in San Fran last October, I went out to the 9:20 Special and discovered that there was considerably more Motown/Soul/R&B played than jazz (of any era). I have to admit to being underwhelmed with the night. Not that the music was bad, and maybe Sharon was just getting ready for the move to Carolina (heh), but it definitely was not what I was expecting/hoping for in a night out for Lindy Hop.

[BryanC]

Are we changing the dance to a point where we no longer need to dance to even jazz music or no longer music that swings? Let alone swinging jazz and blues of any kind. We have dj's on this board who say yes. They are influential dj's in their own scene. and they say soul is good for the dance. I say when the dance changes to a soul dance I move onto another dance. I dance this dance for the music; jazz and blues from any era.

"Need" is a tricky term. Are we changing the dance to a point where we don't _necessarily_ need to dance to jazz music (I would argue that some motown does swing, but that's neither here nor there)? Perhaps, but I'm not sure that we're changing the steps or the rhythm of the dance anymore than dancers who use the step-step-hold-step-step-hold to accomodate fast tempos. Does the playing a few motown tunes mean we're changing lindy hop into a soul dance? I think that's a bit of an extreme statement. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that they prefer to dance to soul music over jazz or blues (of any era), but rather that soul/motown can be something fun and interesting to throw into a mix over the course of a night. Is it a slippery slope? Who knows? Somehow, I doubt it.

Heck, if you can tap dance to motown, and still call it tap dancing, I really don't see why you can't lindy hop to motown.

[main_stem]

No

The only rhythmic thing missing in what we're referring to as "Motown" is the syncopation: the syncopated triplets.

Okay lets get something straight here, it's not a syncopated triplet. It a swung 8th note that give swing it's swing.

Compare a triplet is three notes in one beat tri-p-let. A swung 8th note is 1-uh, two notes in the place of one beat with the first having a longer duration.

Now apply this to the beginning 4 beats of the dance; rock-step- triple-step (left-right-left-right-left. Using the swung 8th note this numerically is
1-2-3-uh-4 or left-right-left-right-left)

If you use a triplet as so many peoepl like to say it would be 1-2-tri-p-let-4 (left-right-left-right-left-right) you will now be starting on the wrong foot and adding an extra step.

This is not to say that musicians didn't or don't use triplets in swingusic, because they do. It was just done rather infrequently. The triplet really came pervasive in bop, at which point most of jazz stoped swinging.

[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. I was at an even where a DJ played exclusively Motown with swing jazz being the novelty. It was horrible.

What made it worse is that the floor would be packed when the token swing song came on and when the motown came back on two thirds of the dancers would leave the floor.

-Kevin

[mousethief]

If you have to use the term "excessive" then it is. And if you have to build an argument about a genre's swing feeling, then it doesn't swing much at all.

Kalman

[Lawrence]

No

The only rhythmic thing missing in what we're referring to as "Motown" is the syncopation: the syncopated triplets.

Okay lets get something straight here, it's not a syncopated triplet. It a swung 8th note that give swing it's swing. * * * *

If you use a triplet as so many peoepl like to say it would be 1-2-tri-p-let-4 (left-right-left-right-left-right) you will now be starting on the wrong foot and adding an extra step.

This is what I was afraid of: we're getting bogged down in different terms and not making sense to each other. (I might be using musical terms too loosely, as well.) It might be something we need to discuss in person because I think we're saying the same thing, but I'm not clearly conveying the adaptation.

Eliminating the syncopation in the triple step does not place you on the wrong foot: you still step out the triple steps with three steps. Eliminating the syncopation merely changes the rhythmic emphasis you step out when doing the triple step. In swing, you stutter step the last two steps of the triple step with a quick ball-change. When it is not syncopated, you just step them out in even tempo.

[Lawrence]

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.

I was at an even where a DJ played exclusively Motown with swing jazz being the novelty. It was horrible. What made it worse is that the floor would be packed when the token swing song came on and when the motown came back on two thirds of the dancers would leave the floor.

Thus getting back to my original post:

I submit it is TOTALLY appropriate to play Motown at a Lindy event so long as you have enough dancers in your crowd who are able to adjust to it.

(emphasis in original) If that is what happened, then the problem is simply that the DJ was trying to force an agenda instead of playing to the crowd. That's a problem no matter what music is played. (Ahem. ) No offense intended, but only a fool would advocate playing music that consistently clears the floor. The question pertains to playing Motown when it pleases the crowd: whether or not doing so violates the "Lindy Hop" prime objectives at "Lindy Hop" events.

[julius]

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? 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 ...

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?