Playlist Styles - Blues Eclectic

 Music affects dancers in  different ways. Some music is uplifting and inspires celebration and joyful expression. Some music is sensuous and inspires us to feel the music in the movement of our bodies. Some music is contemplative and brings us into the present moment with a zen-like focus. And some music is soulful, and pulls us down into our own sense of being human, of being an individual.

Over the years I have tried to put together playlists that focus each of these different musical styles. The waltz eclectic playlist which I play at brunches, balls and most Thursday nights tend to be uplifting. The latin eclectic (sensual) and tango eclectic (contemplative) playlists are still in their formative stages. I am beginning to slip a fe songs in on Thursday night and at Tango and Tapas dances. The playlist that I feel is the most developed and focused right now is for blues eclectic. It is soulful, it inspires movement that is innovated and individual. After an evening of being pulled down into dancing the varied moods of blues artists, I feel cleansed and, paradoxically, uplifted.

Below is the beginning of the playlist for Saturday night's Blues Eclectic dance. If the mood of the music interests you, come join us. If you have not blues danced before, Marjorie's beginners lesson will show you how to adapt the dancing you know to blues styling. I will also post has much of the playlist as I can on Spotify over the the next day or so.

Name	Artist	Genre
Death Came a Knockin' (Travelin' Shoes)	Ruthie Foster	Blues West Coast
Walk Away	Christina Aguilera	waltz blues
Temptation	Diana Krall	Blues stroll
Blue Prelude	Asylum Street Spankers	Blues slowtwostep
That's How Strong My Love Is	Taj Mahal	waltz blues
I Got the Blues	Brother Yusef	Blues West Coast
Algiers Hoodoo Woman	Dr. Michael White	Blues swing
Addicted	Gina Sicilia	Blues West Coast
Knockin' (edit)	Carolina Chocolate Drops / Luminescent Orchestrii	Blues fasttwostep
Fireman's Lament	Firehouse Five Plus Two	Blues slowtwostep
Please, Mr. Jailer	Rachel Sweet	Blues West Coast
Still	The Jive Aces	Blues stroll
Fallin'	Alicia Keys	Blues sixeight
Wade In the Water	Logan Wells	Blues West Coast
I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl	Nina Simone	Blues slowtwostep
Too Little, Too Late	Karen Lovely	Waltz medium
I'd Rather be a Blind Girl (edit)	Etta James	waltz blues
Nobody's Fault	Rising Appalachia	Blues stroll
Fumblin' With the Blues	Tom Waits	Blues West Coast
Blues 2.0	Fruteland Jackson	Blues stroll
Coffee	Papa Mali	Blues West Coast
St. Gabriel	Janiva Magness	waltz blues

 I will have more to say about this and other playlist styles in future blogs. And as always your feedback is much appreciated.

Nightclub Two Step with a taste of tango

Tango is a great dance and a great way to approach dancing. It allows you to dance expressively to the melody of a song; to sink deeply into the music and the connection with your partner. In my opinion it does not have to be done exclusively to tango music and only at tango milongas. Here is a video from a dance instructor pair from San Diego, who are primarily west coast swing, ballroom dancers, using tango with nightclub twostep to dance to a piece of new age music by Secret Garden. Ordinarily you would feel the music did not have a strong enough rhythm to be danceable. Tools learned from tango allow you to feel the structure of the dance in the melody of the piece.

We will have another “Taste of Tango and Tapas” in November. These dances are focused on music and dancing where tango can be combined with other forms of dancing in ways that are both expressive and playful.

Thanks to Don Harvey for finding the video.

Hugh Laurie, " Let Them Talk": Blues for dancing

A blues record by an English comedic actor?  In his own words “ Let this record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south.” 

After passing over it a couple times in iTunes, I spent some time listening to it and was pleasantly surprised. It is a great tribute to the New Orleans tradition of blues and includes covers of 15 standards. A large part of the success of the album can be attributed to producer, Joe Henry and an excellent band that includes such legendary artists such as Dr John, Irma Thomas and Tom Jones with horn arrangements by Allen Toussaint. Hugh Laurie does vocals and plays piano and guitar. His voice is a little thin on the vocals, yet he has a kind of an English actor's phrasing that gives the songs an “eclectic” flavor and makes you listen to the lyrics from a different perspective. I like that.

And it has some great songs for dancing.

 “Let Them Walk” is a blues waltz that has crossover possibilities. Its one of those waltzes where the tempo (150 bpm) does not match the energy of the song. (In a traditional rotary or Viennese style waltz, the tempo and energy mesh and invite a smooth, flowing style of dancing.) Because of this tension it offers other possibilities of using a variety of rhythms to dance to the emotion in the music. 

Other songs that invite dancing include:

“Battle of Jericho” -  A spiritual that is rousing two step. I love the arrangement on this one.

“St. James Infirmary”  -  The second half is a great blues/ west coast.

“Buddy Bolden’s Blues” and “Six Cold Feet” works nicely as slow blues.

Dancers will be hearing these songs at our dances. Let me know which ones you like. 

Check out the rest of the songs on Amazon:

 Let Them Talk

Dance Eclectic DJ Blog - A new start

The purpose of this blog is to open a dialogue between me as DJ and you the dancers of our community, and in so doing improve the quality of the music, the dancing and the overall experience of our events. In this blog, playlists of dances will be published, music of interest to dancers will be discussed, videos of dancing from places such as YouTube will be shared, and testimonial memoirs of our events will be presented. There will also be occasional musings about dancing, dance etiquette, and the dance culture in general as well as discussions generated from your feedback.

The transition to our new newsletter format is a good opportunity to begin a venture like this. I will attempt to update the blog with new content weekly and introduce the content in the weekly newsletter. Your feedback will be especially helpful in this endeavor.

FM to Spotify- the search for dance music

This has got be the golden age of the musical search. There are so many ways to find new music from small groups or distant cultures.

Over the last 15+ years of DJing for first zydeco/swing dances and then for waltz eclectic, the search for music has been one of my most enjoyable past times. Its something like the stamp collecting I did as a kid, finding the rare piece of music from some exotic culture to which you can actually dance. But when going back and pondering the changes that have occurred in my way of searching for music I am just amazed. No longer does one have to buy numerous CD’s or stick to the tried and true repertoire.

Here’s a timeline of how finding music and DJing as changed over the period.

1996 to 2000:  I would hear a song at dance and find the name of the song and “try” to remember it. Record stores like “Hear music” had booths where you could listen to music with headphones which make even mediocre music dance in your head.  So many CDs were bought this way and then rarely listened to again. Then there were FM radio stations, Rolling Stone’s and other magazines’ music reviews. However, while there were more sources for finding music , it was hit and miss with the music coming through cultural and commercial filters.

2000 to 2004: Then there was Google. The Internet opened up the world of music. Typing a few words in a box allowed one to find music from little known artists, to see what DJs from the East coast or Europe where playing and maybe even hear a 20 second snippet of a song. This explosion of accessibility to different music is what allows me to really be “eclectic” in my playlists.

2005 to 2010: Along came iTunes and YouTube.  Typing words in a box was easy but one still needed to find the words. With iTunes finding music became a purely surfing activity allowing me to ride a rhythm of clicks from one artist to the next, listening to samples of music and discovering artists I had never heard of. With YouTube, one could search for dancers and actually hear what they were dancing to. The music discovered through these venues was available to buy with additional advantage of being able to buy just the songs off a CD that were of interest.

The present:  Music from all around the world is now available to everyone and the unique character of that music has not yet fused into a world blend like a MacDonald’s restaurant but still represents the indigenous values and visions of local cultures.  In addition, Itunes and YouTube have been improved and they have a lot of competition. You can now listen to a whole or at least most of a song before you buy it instead of just a sample.

At present my preferred sources for music are:
1. First and foremost, suggestions from dancers in our community. Keep them coming.
2. I still use Google to search forums, artists and other DJ playlists.
3. Online music distributors. I use iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Calabash (for world music) and Spotify.

My current favorite is Spotify. It’s a music streaming service that was developed in Europe and therefore has a strong representation of European and world music. It allows for the creation of playlists that can be streamed through your computer consisting of any music that is on their service. This means I can listen to whole songs numerous times before I decide to buy that song (elsewhere) and play it at a dance. Playlists can also be published that other subscribers can listen to. If anyone would like to subscribe to my playlists and hear music I am evaluating for possible play at a coming dance. I would like to get your feedback. Subscriptions range from free (you need to be invited) to $5 or $10/mo for paid subscriptions. If you would like an invitation, email me.  I only have a few left, so first emails get them.

Lastly I would like to thank the community of dancers who come to our events for allowing me to turn an activity that could easily be seen as a collector’s addiction, into a craft where the end product is the vision of dancers participating in the joy of music.

Playlist for 2011 Black and White Ball

Title	Artist	Genre
As Much As You Lead	Lex Land	waltz slow
Welcome to Mystery	Plain White T's	Waltz medium
Clear Blue Eyes (Feat. Lucinda Williams)	Amos Lee	Waltz medium
Diddy Wah Diddy	Taj Mahal	Blues West Coast
Call It A Night	KGB	waltz slow
Le festin	Camille	Waltz medium
Hesitation Blues	Asylum Street Spankers	Swing EC slow
Dreaming My Dreams	The Cranberries	waltz slow
Good Man	Raphael Saadiq	Night Club Two Step
Les 'Tites Yeaux Noirs	Jambalaya Cajun Band	waltz cajun
Ring My Bells	Enrique Iglesias	Swing west coast
In Gods Hands	Nelly Furtado	waltz fast
sweet_pea	Amos Lee	Swing EC slow
Moon Waltz	Yesh Gvul	Waltz medium
Siempre Me Quadana	Bebe	Night Club Two Step
One More Ride on the Merry Go Round	Jane Olivor	waltz fast
Summertime Ft. Chick Corea	The Jive Aces	Swing EC slow
Wishful Thinking	Rupa & the April Fishes	waltz slow
Cheek to Cheek	Max Raabe & Palast Orchester	Fox trot
Flightless Bird, American Mouth	Iron & Wine	Waltz medium
Crabbuckit [Canada]	k-os	Swing EC fast
Das schlechte gewissen	Annett Louisan	Waltz medium
Fever	Elvis Presley	Swing EC slow
Yumeji's Theme	Shigeru Umebayashi	waltz slow
In These Shoes?	Bette Midler	Cha cha
Nara	E.S. Posthumus	waltz fast
Fenkoro	Smod	World twostep
Beauty in Walking Away	Marie Digby	Waltz medium
Rolling in the Deep	Adele	Blues West Coast
When You Taught Me How To Dance	Katie Melua	Waltz medium
Up A Lazy River	The Jive Aces	Swing Lindy
La Dispute	Yann Tiersen	waltz slow
When You're Smiling (Bonus Track)	Leftover Cuties	Swing EC fast
Erin Shore	The Corrs	waltz fast
What A Wonderful World (3m 58s)	Jive Aces	Night Club Two Step
Il pleut sous la mer	rene aubry	Waltz medium
Original Charleston	Max Raabe & Palast Orchester	Swing EC fast
Il vecchio e il bambino	Carla Bruni	waltz fast
Moonshine	Fran Healy	Blues West Coast
Angel	Sarah McLachlan	waltz slow
Marvin & Miles	Gare Du Nord	Blues West Coast
I'd Rather be a Blind Girl (edit)	Etta James	waltz blues
Dark Sunshine	Dr. Michael White	Blues swing
Stop (edit)	Sheryl Crow	waltz slow
Sunny Side Of The Street	Rod Stewart	Fox trot
we are all in the dance	Feist	waltz slow
Let's never stop falling in love	Pink Martini	Cha cha
Turning (Instrumental)	Suzanne Ciani	waltz slow
Esperanza	Enrique Iglesias	Night Club Two Step
Nothing Else Matters	Apocalyptica	Waltz medium
La Camisa Negra	Juanes	mambo
Joyeuse espièglerie	Marimuz	waltz slow