Osso - I thought I couldn't dance for a long time, but then when disco compilation discs made it into my realm of existence I found out I could. Wacky as I might be when i dance, I have rythm.
I have had rhythm dancing sometimes...I know it is possible. Especially with latin rhythm...the meringue in Guadalajara, and dancing to Rene Touzet in LA. Not that I am good, just not horrible. Well, not to put myself down so, I can dance, but I in erratic periods.
When I was in grade school in Chicago, I was at the end of it in the reasonably popular group and we all practiced dancing in various basement rumpus rooms, that was at the start of rock and roll, white version, time of Rock Around the Clock/ 1954, 1955, happy with all the new 45's coming out....
But, dum de dum dum, we moved out to LA and I didn't know anybody and went to a girl's school a few miles away by two buses, and whatever dancing I knew died, and I got shy. Learned to dance again in class and on the dance floor in college, never great but not absolutely horrible at it. I remember dancing on the tables at the Oar House after they closed, and not being embarrassed. Later on, love made a difference too, then we danced beautifully. (I am not speaking of one person here, but some people over the years.)
Fell in love with my husband dancing, but that was sadly the last of it. Not the love, at least then, but the dancing. He was four times worse than I and never wanted to try and we just avoided it for a couple of decades.
So now I am an older table dancing shy wallflower who claps when?
Memory, not that you asked...a bunch of us girlfriends going out on a friday night to some bar on 14th and Pico. Might have been five of us. I barely knew them all then, but they were the stallwarts of the now long lived Smart Ass Group. Remember seeing Bonnie (a nurse, very athletic) dancing with a very very large man of style, she absolutely shimmying from what seemed three feet in the air on down...and then I knew I couldn't really dance...SHE could dance.
Oh, Osso, what a great description. I was a boarding school kid and then thrown into university social demands. Being a klutz, I worked on wit and body-shaping instead of dancing!!
The BEST TIME I EVER HAD DANCING was in London in the '60's when a guy (shy, nerdy, interesting, kind of like me but of the opposite sex) took me to a private drink and dance club with a mostly Kenyan, Rhodesian and other south African (black) members. A guy came over and asked me to dance. I demurred. He urged. I died a thousand deaths but finally agreed and had the best damn dance to the best damn music I could have had in twenty lifetimes. I didn't have to think. Didn't have to plan where my feet would go. Some other creature took over and I just... danced... For hours...
I've always had not just a good but a dominant sense of rhythm complicated by faulty legs (only recently has an orthopedic guy put a label on it -- he's surprised I actually got through life managing to stay upright and moving!). When any kind of music is in the vicinity, however, I'm instantly glued to it, my body responds automatically, can't restrain it (as long as no one is looking).
Quote:kinda thinking i'm a 1-4
was it max roach who was fond of bashing each and every 4?
littlek wrote:Yeah, so, tap on "jingle"?
If you tap on Jin you're a 1-2.
If you tap on gle, you're a 2-4.
2-4. Oh yes Tartarin - isn't the car brilliant for singing and tapping away! No audience. I love my music on a long trip.
Fea!! Jingle Bells (I was teasing you) is a perfect example of anglo-oompah, shy of all influences which now keep us happy (jazz, salsa, etc. etc.). The joyless, barely perceptible 2-4 of Jingle Bells, is symbolic (for me) of the shallow, commercial Christmases we have bound ourselves into. Shrill, sad, without resonance...
Like "Oh Say Can You See"!!
you denigrate oom-pah, which at it's loudest, raunchiest, most drunken, and (crucially) most germanic can be very toothy. just as the downbeat can be the stiff arm of the schoolmarm, so can it be a bootheel on a dusty floor...
I'm definately a downbeat kinda gal.
Ever notice how when you're with a group of people, say at a sporting event, and the people's clapping always get faster and faster. Like it's a race or something.
I don't think alot of people are capable of keeping the beat.
It's kinda sad really.
A downbeat accompanied by a slightly delayed or accelerated upbeat can be wonderful. But three oompahs in a row in a jingle which doesn't even take full advantage of an octave is or harmony... I can't think of a word to convey my cavernous yawn!! Now some serious German or Polish oompah, that's okay with me. My county seat is a major oompah town, Bavarian. But they love jazz too, and cajun, and yr highclass stuff. Crawfish, beer, oompah, fiddle.
course, an integral part of the oompah is the pah, which is the backbeat, which the ska folks picked up on pretty well...
syncopation and flybeating, or fleabiting...Not really something that one can learn. It's either there, or it isn't. When a person has both an ear and a sense of timing from classical studies, then you got a Mozart.
Here we have Mexican Oom-pah. I think it's called banda . I'm not sure though. Someone here must know.
fealola wrote:Here we have Mexican Oom-pah. I think it's called banda . I'm not sure though. Someone here must know.
i don't know what any of it is called, but there be a bar or two i used to frequent down in california where you could just throw some quarters in the box, punch some numbers, and get some great music out of is. banda sounds good. ranchas? does that mean anything?
I think ranchas or rancho music is more accordian oriented, spirited. Mexican oompah definitely uses a tuba. A badly played, off key tuba. With singing. The music is played in slow motion too. Mexican oompah drives me crazy.
Letty -- yer so right. It can't be learned. If you have to think about where you snap your fingers and then, conciously (or, rather, self-conciously) , snap on the downbeat, you ain't hip. You're fakin' it. Either you've got it or you ain't. Or, as someone or other once said, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne c'est quoi.
I think Al was a 1-2, but Tipper was a 3-4.
