Bizarrely, they came from this Preservation Hall Jazz Band album: “Preservation: An album benefitting Preservation Hall and the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program”. It’s a great album, and I had it on my ‘must play’ list for the weekend. I was pretty sure no one else would be DJing from it – and then they did! It’s such a fun album. I love Angelique Kidjo shouting her way through ‘La Vie En Rose’, but ‘Blue Skies’ (featuring Pete Seegar) is my favourite. After Andrew Bird doing ‘Shake It and Break It’, which I overplay here in Sydney.
I actually play quite a bit from this album, but the most-played songs on this album at MLX were ‘I Ain’t Got No Body’ (feat. Buddy Miller) and ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ featuring Paolo Nutini. Nutini is, apparently, a famous pop singer (?). I like him because his vibrato reminds me of Putney Dandridge. I’m pretty sure other songs from the album popped up in other places.
It was really quite nice to hear all these songs in all sorts of sets. It’s actually not a bad thing when the most played songs at an exchange are from a fund-raising album by a living band, and a living band of such high calibre.
Here is a video about the album. If you hunt around you can find some great videos of the recording sessions for this album:
NB: I am a really big fan of the ‘American Legacies’ album they did with the Del McCoury Band (see another promotional video here) because it combines my current passion for string bands and bluegrass with hot jazz.
I AM SO CRAZY FANSQUEE ABOUT THE TWO MAN GENTLEMEN BAND!!! If I could remember who it was who first linked em up on FB for me to see and fall in love with, I would find them and kiss them on the lips.
I love the way they say “leeesher class” in my favourite song ‘The Leisure Class’. I love the way they talk about cream in ‘Chocolate Milk’.
This love will never end. I’m stuck with them. Forever. Pity the dancers at the gigs I’m DJing. Pity them.
I’m thinking about Natalie Merchant and Abigail Washburn and how they negotiate orientalism. Both are American folk music specialists (or fans, really), and are also influenced by Chinese folk music themes.
I haven’t thought much about this beyond a beginning point, but it’s interesting to compare Merchant’s song and video for ‘The King of China’s Daughter’ with Washburn’s music. Merchant’s song is positioned as part of a collection of songs for her small daughter in the album Leave Your Sleep, so the almost dodgy orientalist stuff is kind of mediated or made reflexive. Or is it? Merchant can be a bit naive… or obtuse about this stuff sometimes. Though the concepts and design for her album Ophelia suggest otherwise (the video for ‘Ophelia’ is a good example).
Washburn, however, is a slightly different animal. She speaks Cantonese (I think) and has traveled extensively. Her work often features Chinese instruments… and Mongolian!
I’ve been revisiting the Eurythmics in the last couple of months, particularly their 1983 album Savage. Even though I love it, Sweet Dreams (are made of this) is probably my favourite album.
I really liked the video clips for the songs from Savage, and have just realised that they were directed by Sophie Muller, and that there was a video clip for each song. All the clips join up (sort of) and make a kind of long film or story. I had no idea that these videos had anything more in common than particular characters until looking them up on youtube. I do have a Eurythmics video somewhere, but I haven’t watched it in years as I don’t have a VCR. My favourites are Beethoven and I need a Man.
Annie Lennox is always good for a bit of gender play, and I like the way she used different characters in these videos. I didn’t get into the Eurythmics until I was about 15, but ‘Sisters are Doing It For Themselves’ was released in 1985, and it really made an impression, even though I was only 11. There was something exciting about Aretha’s busty enthusiasm and Lennox in her short, bleached hair, leather trousers and tailored jacket.
I’m not all that interested in Annie Lennox more recently, nor Dave Stewart, but those earlier Eurythmics albums are really fun.
I think, really, I like Annie Lennox for those characters and dressing up in the Savage videos. I like the way they contrast with her usual short hair and jackets. I like this idea of dressing up and occupying characters or identities for performing. Not in a ‘I’m an actor and I’m playing blahblah’ way, but in a ‘today I put on this character, who’ll then go and do the show at blahblah venue and sing ‘Shame”. It’s a useful way of thinking about performance, for singing or for dance, and I think it’s a fun way of exploring gender.
This post isn’t really going anywhere in particular, but I’m putting together some ideas about imitation, copying, impersonation and so on. It’s such an interesting concept, and can work in so many ways, and I just can’t keep away from it. But Annie Lennox is a useful example (for me and my thinking, anyway) of how impersonation and identity/gender play can be subversive and quite powerful in a performance context.
Last night there was a lunar eclipse, and I was up at midnight to see it. It was an amazing thing, but now I am feeling the late night in my bones.
I’m ‘preparing’ for another Speakeasy (10:30pm next Friday night, Crossover studio, 22 Golburn St, Sydney), when I should really be lying on the couch watching Nick Cage rage against the injustice of his severed hand before being ravished by Cher. I should perhaps also be eating a little high-end chocolate.
But no. I’m fucking about with my music.
Last night I went to my second dance christmas party of the year, and it was good. Both dances featured Pugsly Buzzard, which is pretty ok, as he is pretty damn good. Last night he was playing with a drummer and a broken legged tuba player (there’s a joke in there somewhere), which was kind of odd, considering the crowd was mostly rock n rollers (that school teaches rock n roll and lindy hop). But it all turned out ok in the end. Most of us can get behind a bit of dirty Fats Waller or growly early rhythm n blues. I danced my pants off, sweating through three shirts and asploding my poor knees. I was leading an awful lot, more than following, and by the end of the night I had complete brain drain and couldn’t string two moves together. Need. More. Moves.
I think my favourite part of the night was dancing to a particularly awesome mashedup version of ‘Shake That Thing/Shimmy Like My Sister Kate’ with a really fun friend who also likes to dance de solo, and also does dancehall, so she’s packing serious hip isolation. No, wait, the best part of the night was dancing with her near some older rock n rollers. Older rock n rollers can be very conservative about gender stuff, so they were quite disapproving.
Actually, I know my favourite part of last night was after the band had finished, watching Bruce and Sharon dance to a rock and roll song and finally understanding why people dance rock and roll. I really can’t stand that partner stuff where the guy kind of hunches forwards with his elbow glued to his right hip, his arm bent 45 degrees, and kind of bobbing his head up and down, looking at the floor while he spins and spins and spins his partner. Boring Town. But Bruce and Sharon – with their exciting, dynamic amazing dancing of amazingness – made me realise what the big deal is, and I was almost moved to Cross The Floor and take up something a little more modern. Almost.
I liked it that the gig was at the Marrickville Hardcourt Tennis Club, which is also a Portugese social club, and that meant the food was interesting. This is one of the positives of the Australian social club scene. And I liked very much that the band played that Donald Harrison/Dr John version of ‘Big Chief’. The nice thing about a crowd from different dance styles and scenes is that there’s going to be someone out there who will give each song a go.
But today I am feeling very seedy.
Last night followed a busy Friday night where Alice and I taught at Swingpit and I realised that when I’m teaching dance I’m just as ‘on’ as when I’m tutoring or lecturing, except I’m doing the equivalent to aerobics at the same time.
I was so bloody buggered afterwards. It was total fun, though, and it was really nice to talk about Frankie Manning to a bunch of new dancers, and the importance of pretending you’re a 90 year old man on his third hip. I think the best part of teaching is figuring out that the silliest (yet most authentic) jazz steps make other people giggle like fools as well. It’s very, very nice to see people who enter the room shy and uncomfortable at their first dance class transform into exhibitionists, simply through the power of ridiculousness. I’m also kind of fascinated by the fact that I’m talking about pretending to be a man when I’m dancing while I’m standing in front of a crowd of men who then use me as their model for movement. Genderflex to the power of n, to the point where it’s not even really worth bothering trying to figure out whether we’re using ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ movements. And I keep coming across deaf dancers, dancers who really get what’s happening in dance. Oh yeeaaah.
After we finished that, I social danced like a crazy person until I realised I was dying of dehydration and a bit tired and overwhelmed by the noise and had to sit outside for a little bit. Then I danced some more.
I do love dancing. I love it so much. And I’m quite enjoying not DJing as much. More dancing. More. Now I am madly frustrated by my lack of moves for leading. Luckily, there’s a solution for that problem.
Ok, so now I’m sitting on the couch, kind of melting in the humidity, but at the same time still stupidly dehydrated. Trying to get my brain around some music for the Speakeasy, and not doing so well. Everything feels a bit loud and a bit annoying. Really, the only solution is a little Japanese funk.
Or, really, a bit of light weight soul would be a better fit. I really like this particular version of I Need A Dollar by Aloe Blacc:
But, really, the best of all things is a bit of Sharon Jones
All that is the kind of action that goes down well at a Speakeasy (I’ve written about this event lots of times because I love it). I know, the name suggests a sort of 20s vibe, but it has that name because that’s what it was at first. But now it is legit. I like to do this soul/funk stuff, but I find it gets a bit old after a while, and I really tend to lean on people like Big Mama Thornton and then over into the gutsier vocal blues at higher tempos. Last time I did this gig, I really wanted to play the Propellerheads doing ‘History Repeating’ with Shirley Bassey because I remember dancing to it in nightclubs, but it doesn’t actually work that well when you compare it to really good music. I mean, it’s good, but it’s not brilliant. Shirley Bassey is, though.
I really like the way all this stuff is in stereo. It kind of blows my brain.
Really, a successful Speakeasy set ends up being 3 parts NOLA, 1 part Big Mama Thornton. But right now I think I need to watch Olympia Dukakis disapproving of weak-willed men for a couple of hours.
This is the sort of post I don’t do very often because I don’t feel very confident of my understanding of dance and movement. There are plenty of people who have a better grasp of these things than I do. And, at the end of the day, I’m of the opinion that no amount of talking or writing or reading about dancing will make you a better dancer. If you’re not actually dancing, you’re not going to improve or understand movement.
The thing that really shifted my dancing from casual interest to solid addiction was the way it required my switching off my brain. This was important to me because I was busy with an MA and then PhD, and spent most of my time in brain and not in my body. I think it also made me a better tutor for uni students – talk less, listen more. Dancing – particularly following, but also leading – really needs you to just tell your brain to shoosh and to get on with being in your body. Strangely enough, Jerry’s just linked up Ruby’s post ‘To note or not to note’ on FB and she asks some neat questions about the value of taking notes or writing and reading about dance. I think that you learn most about dancing from dancing, and from dancing with as many people as possible. I actually think I learn most about leading from dancing with total one-class beginner follows and from working on my own in front of a mirror, trying out all the movements (try all the movements).
But I did that private lesson the other week, I’ve been doing more partner dance work, I’ve done a spot of dance teaching (that whole talking less thing is pretty bloody useful) and an interesting post at Lindy Hop Variations for Followers has triggered some dance-thinking over here in obcon land. So here’s a big long post where I’m really just floating ideas that I’m mulling over at the moment. I’m probably way off base here, but whatevs. I’m a work in progress, right? Never stop learning and all.
One of the things I find most difficult to write or talk about is a definition of ‘swing’. I mean the musical ‘feel’ of a song. Gunther Schuller has all that stuff about vertical and horizontal distances, but that’s really confusing and not entirely useful when you’re looking for a quick, simple image. I’ve often heard people talk about it in terms of a ‘delay’, and I think about it as being chillaxed, not racing towards the next beat, but hanging back and waiting til the very last moment before moving on to the next beat. But that’s not really all that helpful when you’re explaining how a swinging rhythm really works.
When I’m moving my body – dancing, I guess – to swinging music, the timing feels different to when I’m just listening to it. I feel that the ‘bounce’ (or some people call it pulse these days) is the heart of that swinging rhythm. A good, swinging late 1930s song at about 180bpm really feels as though it’s bouncing along. It’s not a jagged up-down timing, but more an arc through the air. I’ve just been reading through some research notes, looking for an article about black bands in the early days of radio and came across this comment about the work song:
The function of this song is to facilitate the task of chopping wood. As is typical of Afro-American work songs, in this song the process of chopping the wood becomes an intrinsic part of the music. The sound produced by the ax creates a component of the music which is essential to the structure of the song. The music, then, is not simply accompanying the work, the work becomes the music, and the music becomes the work. (Olly Wilson, ‘Black Music as an Art Form’ in The Jazz Cadence of American Culture, ed Robert G. O’Meally, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998:91).
For me, this idea of rhythm as part of movement is really important to how I think about swinging rhythms. I tend to think about the beat in this type of song as being like the swing of an axe or a hammer. The upwards lift is quicker and stronger, but the downwards arc is a longer, slower force, directed by gravity. Each downwards arc moves at the same pace (because that’s how gravity works), but we can control both the upwards and downwards movement (I have just gone and watched a million videos of people chopping wood. I am such a nerd).
I think my thinking about dance is mostly informed by my interest in 1930s and 40s lindy hop, by Frankie Manning and by the Hot Shots. Whether I’ve actually understood the things they’ve been trying to teach me is another matter. When I think about ‘bounce’ (or pulse – whatevs), I think of each step or each bounce as a sink into the ground (ie sinking my hips down, with my knees bending, my ankles bending, and my arse going out and back to allow a deeper bend), and then a pushing up from the floor as I step onto the other foot, always keeping a bit of bend in the knee rather than locking it. This means my knees – my legs – are like coiled springs containing stored energy which I use for each step, or for faster reactions. These days I’m figuring out that my arse is actually the most important part of this ‘stored energy’ thing, and that I need to stop working my calves so hard. In a bounce, the movement starts in my ‘core’ (or my guts, or my hips or that network of muscles and things around the lower part of my torso. or my arse.) The depth of the bounce really depends on how much ‘time’ I have – faster songs mean less time.
So my bounce is kind of the same as an axe rising and falling. My muscles engage as I sink, or as the axe is raised, and then the energy is let out or used as I step or the axe falls.
I’m not sure of the physics of it all. The important part for me is that there’s that inevitable, undeniable delay. You can’t change the way gravity works. You can’t fight the swing in a swinging rhythm. This is why I think you need to have bounce or pulse when you lindy hop. You might crunch that bounce up until it’s like a tiny, power-bounce, right in your core and hard to see. But you need that little compression-and-release to dance.
If you’re not bouncing, you’re just walking. And even walking has bounce, if you’re relaxed, your core’s engaged and you’re bending your knees. You get a greater range of movement in your upper body (eg the swing of your arms, or a rotation at the waist) if you’re bent a little at the hips, you push from the arse/core and you let gravity move your arms about (rather than tightening them up). This bend at the hips (not sticking your arse out, but bending at the hips, so your back stays straight) engages your core muscles (eg your back, abs, sides, etc). Bending your knees engages your core muscles, especially if your weight is on the ball of your foot. It’s hard to do this if you don’t have your weight on the ball of your foot. It’s even harder if you keep your legs really straight and your knees locked. Also: ow.
I also think that if you don’t bounce, your timing is off. It always feels as though you’re rushing. I hate following a lead without bounce, as I always feel as though I have to run to get anywhere, particularly if they take huge steps. And if they’re really tight through the shoulders and I can’t feel where their weight is, or where it’s going. I also find that a natural consequence of bounce is less tension in the upper body. I don’t know why, but I always wonder if it’s because your lower muscles are doing the big job of keeping you upright and balanced, so you upper body can get on with doing crazy shit. Like throwing and catching a basketball. Or swinging an axe. And less unnecessary muscle tension means your body is doing less work and there’s less fatigue. And following or leading you is much nicer.
All that stuff about bounce is nice, because to me that’s how you make the swing in the music visible. But, really, I like that little discussion of work songs for the way it illustrates how rhythmic movement is incorporated into vernacular music and dance. Or the way everyday dance and music is about everyday movements and rhythms.
One of the things I’m most interested in at the moment, as a DJ, is how dancers ‘hear’ the beat, even when there isn’t an instrument banging it out. I’ve always had trouble with the way dancers in class speed up if you get them to do a basic rhythm without music. It’s something to do with the way hoomans in a group work – they speed up basic rhythms. But it drives me nuts. It’s as though they let the rhythm outside inflect the rhythm inside their bodies. Yet this idea of shared, increasing rhythm is partly what makes social dancing so much fun – we ‘catch’ rhythm from other people on the floor, and that shared feeling of rhythm kind of echoes and bounces back and forth, exaggerating the feeling. And that’s fun to work with, as a DJ, increasing and decreasing that shared musical feeling.
But the more experienced a dancer, the more likely they are to be able to feel a consistent beat, no matter what’s happening around them on the dance floor. I’ve noticed that newer dancers tend to have trouble with instrumentally sparse songs. Acapella can be the hardest, but small vocal groups with a guitar (eg Cats and the Fiddle) can be just as hard. And the most accessible and easiest to work with is a large band with a big rhythm section. Conversely, bands with choruses where instruments are doing different rhythms and melodies at once can be really confusing for new dancers.
You can see this when dancers are listening to a song with lots of breaks. Total beginners have real trouble predicting the beats and then coming back in on time. Dancers with some experience but without a real empathy for the music have difficulty doing anything other than standing still during the breaks – they can’t feel the rhythm continuing in the ‘silence’. And more experienced dancers with a sense of the broader structures of a song as well as the basic beat are most capable of adding in rhythms during that break (or of just riding out the break as a quiet point of contrast). Most interesting of all, if a dancer has bounce, then they’re never really standing still, even during breaks, unless they consciously choose to stop bouncing. And isn’t that the point – that we are dancing, not creating a series of tableaus?
So I’m pro-bounce. Because that’s what’s in swinging music. But I’m also for managing bounce to respond to music appropriately. Here, really, it’s not my business to tell other people what to do with their bodies. Dance how you like, how you feel. But for me, it’s fascinating to explore how bounce works in relation to music, and then – even more fascinatingly – how I can manage my bounce when I’m following a lead who doesn’t bounce. Do I abandon it completely? (NO!) Do I moderate it so as not to interrupt the lead? (YES!) The depth and feel of bounce can be a really simple way of responding to the intensity of the music. Big emotional, exciting moment – big bounce.
And, finally, I know I’ve been dancing with a badass, bouncy lindy hopper, because my heart rate is way up and I’m sweating rivers. Bounce simply takes more energy, and turns a low impact slouch-around-the-floor into a serious aerobic workout, engaging all your muscles and kicking your arse. A bouncing lindy hopper simply has a more energised set of muscles, which you can see in their dancing. And that’s the difference between dancing lindy hop and just standing about, right? You’re kicking your own arse and riding the adrenaline to funtown!
Lovely Doris sent me this as a belated birthday present. Doris is the best. She is my no.1 CD supplier, and she always sends the best bands, well before I’ve heard of them. EXCELLENT WORK DORIS.
This is gold. I can’t explain all the levels of humour and piss-taking, because it’s all a bit complicated. But you can just watch this ‘straight’, as though it were a serious documentary. Because it is.
My favourite part: “[that music] was very racey. We called ’em race records”
