{"id":5738,"date":"2011-06-10T09:47:15","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T13:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5738"},"modified":"2018-02-07T11:20:26","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:20:26","slug":"crashing-two-bumpy-dances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5738","title":{"rendered":"Crashing Two Bumpy Dances"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/Bump_DanceM.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/Bump_DanceM.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday <em>Cluster Mag<\/em> posted my second contribution to what we&#8217;re calling a &#8220;multimedia mash-up series.&#8221; (The first was my <a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5492\">Lambada mega-mix<\/a>.) As with my &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5019\">Gasodoble<\/a>&#8221; remix, this mashy montage sources related clips from YouTube &#8212; in this case drawing from Colombian (and a Dominican) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/results?search_query=choque&#038;aq=f\">choque vids<\/a> and a variety of folk (mostly US-based) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/results?search_query=bump+dance&#038;aq=f\">doing the bump<\/a> &#8212; and collides them together (artfully, I hope) to pose some fun questions about symmetries, genealogies, and notable departures. <\/p>\n<p>If you liked my lengthy <a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=4905\">post on choque<\/a> from a couple months back, or if you&#8217;re a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/BumpIsBack\">longtime devotee<\/a> to the bump, I hope you&#8217;ll <3 \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theclustermag.com\/blog\/?p=743\">Bump con Choque<\/a>.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/wp\/images\/smiley-bump.gif\"><\/p>\n<p>Here is the text from the <em>Cluster Mag<\/em> piece, which is no longer online (though also <a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20110905050823\/http:\/\/www.theclustermag.com:80\/blog\/?p=743\">archived here<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/23987775\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s almost perfect in its simplicity: bump against your dance partner, once every beat or so, repeating as desired. In the 70s, they called it \u201cthe bump.\u201d More recently, in Colombia, it goes by \u201cel choque\u201d (alt. \u201cshoke\u201d or \u201cchoke\u201d) \u2014 the Spanish word not for \u201cbump\u201d but its more severe cousin, \u201ccrash.\u201d Looking at the dances side-by-side or, if you will, transposed together as I\u2019ve done in <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/23987775\">the video<\/a> above, you get an immediate sense of resemblance, perhaps even genealogy.<\/p>\n<p>But despite a few stray correctives on YouTube comment threads, I\u2019ve yet to see any evidence linking the moves Colombian kids are doing with the disco fad from three decades prior. When I tried to get <a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=4905\">to the bottom<\/a> of the bottom-bashing dance from Buenaventura, its obvious antecedents were reggaeton\u2019s perreo and dancehall\u2019s daggering \u2014 both serving as clear but muted points of departure for the choque\u2019s nimble-hipped rhythmic thrust. Seems more plausible, despite that plenty kids in choque videos could have parents who remember \u201cel bump,\u201d that we\u2019re talking instead about a case of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Convergent_evolution\">convergent evolution<\/a>, two kindred dances springing from the same age-old seed. I mean, it\u2019s a pretty obvious move.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the dance seems so universal that all manner of folk claim it for themselves, declaring the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ls3IyeTo8tE\">most popular choque video<\/a> to be everything from East African to West Indian. [Alas, the video is no longer online, but see <a href=\"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=4905\">my post<\/a> for some screenshots of comments.] And yet these spectacular collisions can divide as much as they conjoin, especially when conveying different modes of masculinity and sexuality. Superficial as it may seem, the choque has served as a transnational site of debate, which might be more than can be said for three decades of the bump.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, while one might argue that the choque is an interestingly \u201cequal opportunity\u201d dance \u2014 especially given how strictly macho the perreo and daggering tend to be \u2014 any such leveling of the dirty-dance playing-field applies to the bump as well: butt to butt, side to side, hip to hip, it can be silly, deflective. Even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/01\/22\/obama-booty-bumps-at-neig_n_160098.html\">the president can do it<\/a>, and with a teenage girl no less! Most choque videos possess a nonchalant playfulness, showing the dance to be, among other things, a fun way to hang out and goof around with friends and family. As I think this mashup shows, the bump has long served that purpose too \u2014 even, or maybe especially, thirty years removed from actual dancefloor drama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday Cluster Mag posted my second contribution to what we&#8217;re calling a &#8220;multimedia mash-up series.&#8221; (The first was my Lambada mega-mix.) As with my &#8220;Gasodoble&#8221; remix, this mashy montage sources related clips from YouTube &#8212; in this case drawing from Colombian (and a Dominican) choque vids and a variety of folk (mostly US-based) doing the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,406,92,10,23,405,421],"class_list":["post-5738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colombia","tag-dance","tag-disco","tag-latin","tag-mashup","tag-reggaeton","tag-remix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5738"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9169,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5738\/revisions\/9169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}