There's been a major shift from the riots of the mid-2010s to the latest explosion. The black riots of the BLM type used to focus on cops and whitey, while the antifa type focused on Trump, GOP offices, "punching Nazis," conservative media, the Republican inauguration, and so on and so forth. In other words, none of their targets were fellow members of the Democrat coalition, either at the elite or popular level.
When antifa was going nuts back in 2016 and '17, I pointed out how closely they resembled the informational wing of the Deep State -- that is, the CIA rather than the Pentagon -- in their choice of targets. What happened to smashing up Starbucks from the early 2000s anti-globalization days? Or the corporate media? Or the banks, on Wall Street or elsewhere? Or mainstream / sell-out / corporate Democrats like Crooked Hillary or Joe Biden? Or the DNC writ large?
Antifa were utterly MIA when it came to protesting the DNC in 2016, for example, whereas the Bernie bros and babes were out in full force, along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Lots of Bernie's delegates were protesting from the convention floor, drowning out the neolib speakers. And yet, not an anti-fascist activist in sight -- then, or throughout that entire primary season.
That's because antifa is not a substantively radical group. Nope: like other brands of liberal, including the DSA and the fanbase of the Chapo Trap House podcast, they were mostly whipped up into a frenzy by Crooked Hillary's loss in November 2016, and the prospect of the Orange Bad Man occupying the White House. They are aesthetically radical, emotionally / socially / psychologically radicalized, etc. But politically they're slaves to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. They are angry, polarized liberals -- not Marxists, communists, revolutionaries, or whatever else they and their right-wing foils want to believe them to be.
However, over the past week the nationwide riots show these two groups -- angry blacks and angry white liberals -- going in a new direction. No longer are they confining their targets to the safe ones for their political coalition -- e.g., Trump supporters, "Nazis," GOP politicians, oil pipelines, police, military, and brands associated with conservative / GOP voters like Walmart, Chick-fil-A, and the like.
Why not? If you wanted to loot a big box retailer, why loot the Walmart for liberals -- AKA Target? Friendly fire! Why burn down a McDonalds, famous for liberal culture warring in their ads, rather than the Christian conservative Chick-fil-A? Why descend upon and vandalize the corporate headquarters of CNN, progressive local newspapers, and indie bookstores, rather than Fox News, conservative local papers, and Christian bookstores? Why destroy an Apple Store rather than a boat dealership? An Amazon truck rather than a supermarket?
It's not as though the rioters are ignoring the safe targets -- they're still punching Trump supporters, running over cops, and looting gas stations. But for the most part, they're turning on their own within the Democrat coalition, whose elites control the sectors of finance, tech, and media / entertainment. They've even set fire to the headquarters of the AFL-CIO, striking at the organized working class in the sub-elite level. So much for this being a Marxist, communist, or economically focused insurrection.
As for unorganized groups, who are not part of the 1%, most of those being terrorized by these riots are fellow liberals, Democrats, and urbanites. That includes professional-class city dwellers, as well as poor urban blacks. None of them feel great seeing their own backyard literally going up in flames. Of course the urban blacks and professional urbanites who are out rioting, or egging them on over the internet, feel great -- I'm talking about the typical slum dweller or yuppie. They may not want to say anything out loud, but they do not want to see wanton destruction of the city they like.
Suburban, exurban, and rural residents may be incensed by what they're seeing going on in the cities, but they don't feel terrorized. They know it's not going to reach their neighborhood, let alone their doorstep. And they're more comfortable than the urbanites in writing off the anarchy and destruction going on in the urban core -- if they gave that much of a damn about such places, they wouldn't choose to live far away from them.
They washed their hands of the ghettos decades ago, but by now they don't even give a shit about the yuppie gentrifiers who moved in to "clean the place up". I don't think professional-class transplants understand just how little respect everyone else has for their crusade of gentrification. We don't care that crime is low in some downtown area that we never went to in the bad old days. And we don't find your new neighborhoods cool and enviable -- a vegan Buddhist cafe instead of a guitar store on St. Mark's? A trannie ball-waxing salon instead of a used bookstore? Borrrinnng.
While we don't like what we're seeing, it doesn't strike fear into our hearts like it does for the urban liberal Democrats whose neighborhoods are being pummeled into oblivion.
So, what this wave of riots shows is that polarization has intensified so much that it's moved past the basic level of left vs. right. They did that back in 2015-'18. Now it's entirely groups within the left half of the spectrum turning on each other -- and the occasional police target, since cops still get in the way of rioting sometimes, but not extending to broader right-wing targets.
This is the IRL version of the collapse of the leftist bubble that had inflated during the previous vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle (2015-'19). Indeed, none of them care about what Bernie is saying or doing -- he's just being ignored in the corner. And none of them are holding up Biden as a leader or savior. Sure, if they turn out to vote, they'll vote Biden over Trump. But when a political coalition is this fragmented and waging open-ended and escalating internecine violence and destruction -- don't count on a large-scale unified assault on Election Day.
If you thought the divisive Dem primary of 2016 portended electoral fragmentation when it counted in November, it'll be even worse this time, as the clients of the various Democrat patronage networks are biting the hand that feeds, and as the representatives of the Democrat machine are forced into punishing their clients, however lightly it may seem to conservatives outside of those networks.
Just imagine having the most recent memory of your party being either fear caused by their inaction -- for non-psychotic blacks / white libs -- or burning resentment over their cracking down on your public outrage -- for psycho blacks / white libs. That is not going to inspire and motivate turn-out for that party in the general election.
As usual, all signs point to this disjunctive phase in the regime cycle lasting more than just the usual one term, and thus like the 1856 election preceding the Civil War. The opposition party -- Whigs then, Dems now -- are too psychotically polarized at the moment to accept a mass wave of defectors from the dominant party (Democrats then, Republicans now). They are so polarized they've devolved lower than intransigence against the other major party, and are hell-bent on splintering their own coalition to maintain the purity of their own narrow little sub-group.
The realignment phase will have to wait until, like the GOP grew out of the ashes of the Whigs, something new grows out of the self-immolation of today's Democrats.
May 30, 2020
Female athletes to make comeback as hot girl type during restless phase, and athletes are butt women not boob women
Out of nowhere YouTube started pressuring me to watch clips of women's track & field events that showcased the ass-and-thighs of the athletes. OK, you got me.
Aside from looking nice physically, they're decently entertaining to watch -- not long and boring, no complicated rules, and minimal equipment. Just a brief burst of display of overall athleticism and coordination. Not so different from watching dancers, just leaning more toward the athletic than the coordination side.
First impression: 100% of athletes are butt women rather than boob women, confirming yet again that corporeal people are ass people rather than boob people (who are cerebral). It has nothing to do with having low body fat -- there are plenty of women who are skinny and busty. Fitness does not melt away breast tissue. And there are plenty of women with a normal or chubby level of body fat who carry more of it in the back than in the front. It's the kinesthetic orientation itself that is tied to being a butt woman rather than a boob woman.
As for above the neck, the relay sprinters have the prettiest faces. Perhaps because this is not a championship sport, it lets in less tomboy-ish women who don't have to make the sport the main focus of their lives.
Then I wondered why YouTube was pushing this type now. Athletes haven't been a hot girl type for awhile in pop culture. In fact, throughout the vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle, from 2015-'19, the most resonant portrayal of them was as sexual assault victims, i.e. the US gymnastic sex abuse scandal. Far from being confined to the sports world, one of those victims (Aly Raisman) was featured in "Me Too: the Music Video," AKA "Girls Like You" by Maroon 5, one of the mega-hits of that emo phase.
It seems like not too long ago, female athletes could become instant sex symbols, like this 2012 viral video of Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke doing her bouncy warm-up dance:
But then that was the manic phase of the excitement cycle, 2010-'14, before energy levels crashed into a refractory phase and everyone went emo. There was nothing incompatible, though, about sexy athletes and a zeitgeist marked by soaring energy levels.
There was even greater popular horniness over athletes during the restless warm-up phase just before, during the late 2000s. Consulting the first list I could find of most attractive female athletes, I narrowed it to only those I have actually heard of. (I'm not a sports fan, so if I don't know them, they were not a pop-culture-wide phenomenon.) From 2005-'09, there was Danica Patrick, Maria Sharapova, and Gina Carano (during the original MMA craze).
Left off of that list because she was only a 17 year-old high schooler at the time, is the most pined-after athlete of the late 2000s, Allison Stokke from California. All those little men trying to pole-vault up into her eyes...
From the vulnerable phase of the early 2000s, there's no one I recognized, although Anna Kournikova was a sex symbol during both the late '90s and early 2000s. But no one who became a hit sensation during 2000-'04. The parallels with 2015-'19 are striking.
There were plenty of them before then, however, beginning in the restless warm-up phase of the early '90s and lasting into the late '90s manic phase (when Kournikova first broke out). The most memorable was beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, who became a model and host of a show on MTV. At the same time, swimmer Summer Sanders during the 1992 Olympics was singled out for her pretty looks, and by the late '90s was the face of VO5 in TV commercials.
And who can forget the 1994 episode of Seinfeld that revolves around lusting after and dating a former Olympic gymnast? Or the fact that in that same year tabloid newspapers and TV shows, as well as Penthouse, made a sex symbol out of figure skater Tonya Harding by publishing images from a sex tape of hers? Gross if you ask me, but it resonated widely enough to be sought after by the media. In 1999, soccer player Brandi Chastain became famous for tearing off her shirt to reveal her sports bra after winning the Women's World Cup.
I can't find any major examples from before the '90s -- women's sports were just not a big thing, and the handful of athletes who were widely known were not also babes, let alone cultural icons of beauty.
Still, that leaves two full cycles' worth of history, and it does look like athletes lose their sex symbol status during the vulnerable phase. People's energy levels are so negative, the guys can't imagine being with a woman who they assume would be too full of energy in bed, and the girls can't imagine wanting to be the type of sex symbol also known for bursts of athletic activity. Everyone just wants to hide under a pile of blankets until their energy levels recover.
When their energy does recover during the restless warm-up phase, the appeal of warm-up exercises leads both guys and girls to naturally look toward athletes as role models of attractiveness. That only continues into the following manic phase, when energy levels are on a sustained spike.
With the restless phase having begun this year, expect to see the return of athlete babes in pop culture over the next 5 to 10 years. Judging from history, it will be one from an individual rather than a team sport. Whoever it turns out to be, we do know in advance that she'll be showing off a great set of buns rather than breasts.
Aside from looking nice physically, they're decently entertaining to watch -- not long and boring, no complicated rules, and minimal equipment. Just a brief burst of display of overall athleticism and coordination. Not so different from watching dancers, just leaning more toward the athletic than the coordination side.
First impression: 100% of athletes are butt women rather than boob women, confirming yet again that corporeal people are ass people rather than boob people (who are cerebral). It has nothing to do with having low body fat -- there are plenty of women who are skinny and busty. Fitness does not melt away breast tissue. And there are plenty of women with a normal or chubby level of body fat who carry more of it in the back than in the front. It's the kinesthetic orientation itself that is tied to being a butt woman rather than a boob woman.
As for above the neck, the relay sprinters have the prettiest faces. Perhaps because this is not a championship sport, it lets in less tomboy-ish women who don't have to make the sport the main focus of their lives.
Then I wondered why YouTube was pushing this type now. Athletes haven't been a hot girl type for awhile in pop culture. In fact, throughout the vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle, from 2015-'19, the most resonant portrayal of them was as sexual assault victims, i.e. the US gymnastic sex abuse scandal. Far from being confined to the sports world, one of those victims (Aly Raisman) was featured in "Me Too: the Music Video," AKA "Girls Like You" by Maroon 5, one of the mega-hits of that emo phase.
It seems like not too long ago, female athletes could become instant sex symbols, like this 2012 viral video of Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke doing her bouncy warm-up dance:
But then that was the manic phase of the excitement cycle, 2010-'14, before energy levels crashed into a refractory phase and everyone went emo. There was nothing incompatible, though, about sexy athletes and a zeitgeist marked by soaring energy levels.
There was even greater popular horniness over athletes during the restless warm-up phase just before, during the late 2000s. Consulting the first list I could find of most attractive female athletes, I narrowed it to only those I have actually heard of. (I'm not a sports fan, so if I don't know them, they were not a pop-culture-wide phenomenon.) From 2005-'09, there was Danica Patrick, Maria Sharapova, and Gina Carano (during the original MMA craze).
Left off of that list because she was only a 17 year-old high schooler at the time, is the most pined-after athlete of the late 2000s, Allison Stokke from California. All those little men trying to pole-vault up into her eyes...
From the vulnerable phase of the early 2000s, there's no one I recognized, although Anna Kournikova was a sex symbol during both the late '90s and early 2000s. But no one who became a hit sensation during 2000-'04. The parallels with 2015-'19 are striking.
There were plenty of them before then, however, beginning in the restless warm-up phase of the early '90s and lasting into the late '90s manic phase (when Kournikova first broke out). The most memorable was beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, who became a model and host of a show on MTV. At the same time, swimmer Summer Sanders during the 1992 Olympics was singled out for her pretty looks, and by the late '90s was the face of VO5 in TV commercials.
And who can forget the 1994 episode of Seinfeld that revolves around lusting after and dating a former Olympic gymnast? Or the fact that in that same year tabloid newspapers and TV shows, as well as Penthouse, made a sex symbol out of figure skater Tonya Harding by publishing images from a sex tape of hers? Gross if you ask me, but it resonated widely enough to be sought after by the media. In 1999, soccer player Brandi Chastain became famous for tearing off her shirt to reveal her sports bra after winning the Women's World Cup.
I can't find any major examples from before the '90s -- women's sports were just not a big thing, and the handful of athletes who were widely known were not also babes, let alone cultural icons of beauty.
Still, that leaves two full cycles' worth of history, and it does look like athletes lose their sex symbol status during the vulnerable phase. People's energy levels are so negative, the guys can't imagine being with a woman who they assume would be too full of energy in bed, and the girls can't imagine wanting to be the type of sex symbol also known for bursts of athletic activity. Everyone just wants to hide under a pile of blankets until their energy levels recover.
When their energy does recover during the restless warm-up phase, the appeal of warm-up exercises leads both guys and girls to naturally look toward athletes as role models of attractiveness. That only continues into the following manic phase, when energy levels are on a sustained spike.
With the restless phase having begun this year, expect to see the return of athlete babes in pop culture over the next 5 to 10 years. Judging from history, it will be one from an individual rather than a team sport. Whoever it turns out to be, we do know in advance that she'll be showing off a great set of buns rather than breasts.
May 26, 2020
Teenagers coming out of their shells in public places, as restless zeitgeist resumes its course
At the end of last year, I wrote two social weather reports (here and here) about signs that the social mood was shifting out of the vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle, and into the restless warm-up phase.
The telltale signs were teenage and 20-something girls starting to openly brush against me in public retail stores, as well as catcalling me from their car. It hadn't happened since the summer of 2015, which is the year the vulnerable phase began. And that had been standard stuff going back to 2005, when the last restless warm-up phase began. It was far less common during the early 2000s when I was in college (probably the lamest and most frustrating time to be there, other than the late 2010s). But it did happen during the '90s when I was in middle and high school.
So it rises and falls according to the excitement cycle -- getting warmed up during the warm-up phase, lasting through the manic phase, then falling off a cliff during the vulnerable phase.
I assumed these behaviors would continue throughout this year, although the initial coronavirus lockdown seemed to put a halt to the cycle's plans. They're less willing to brush against you when the norm is social distancing.
Still, the fact that people are so restless under quarantine only proves that we are in fact in the restless phase, and out of the vulnerable phase. Otherwise we'd be happy to burrow away in our snug little cocoons indefinitely, where no one could socially and emotionally over-stimulate us and cause us pain. We're now craving that social stimulation, and we don't want to stay holed up forever where no one can interact with us.
Young people more than others seem especially eager to get back outside. And I don't mean "back" as in returning to their behavior of last year or the year before, when they were in the emo phase like everyone else. I mean for the first time in five years to really be out and about.
And sure enough, after a few months of lockdown mentality, they're chafing at the social isolation and have resumed their flirtatious behavior in public places. Not in retail stores anymore -- those are mostly closed, and on the few occasions I've gone to a grocery store, there were mainly old people around. But they're making the best of their circumstances, and taking their restless behavior to streets, sidewalks, and parks -- walking, riding bikes, roller-blading, skateboarding, and so on.
To keep from going stir-crazy, I go out for a drive a few times a week, always with the windows down so it doesn't feel like another enclosed space, and to pick up everyone's mood with the music streaming out. Pedestrians react friendly rather than annoyed, confirming my pre-corona report that strangers had begun saying "Hi" in the park again for the first time in five years.
But in the past week or so, perhaps driven by the warm weather, I've noticed the girls giving more forward signs than just a friendly smile. Today as I slowed to a red light -- "Cars" playing on the radio -- a cute teenager walking by turned her head, gave me a nervous double-take look through over-sized sunglasses, and started involuntarily petting her hair.
Omigosh, is that a random hot guy? Finally, a chance to restore my validation reserves!!!
Who am I to harm her self-esteem by denying her? Nothing wrong with some steady confident eye-contact for several moments at a red light. It must've been the first contact she'd had in a long time.
I do take those situations seriously -- she's willing to put herself out there on multiple levels. She's going through adolescence, she's coming out of the vulnerable-phase cocoon, and she's trying to stay normal under the quarantine. She deserves a reward for taking the risk, and if she wants to claim that validation reward from me rather than someone else, that's just the duty I'll have to fulfill in order to help keep society whole rather than fragmented. Especially when she's just indulging in some wholesome flirtation, and not anything slutty or crazy.
The week before, I came to a red light with "Rock and Roll High School" on the CD player. Two high school girls were riding bikes in the other direction, and I noticed the usual look on their faces. I put on my left turn signal while waiting, and they then decided to turn right on red, heading the same direction but making me chase them a little after the light turned green. They'd been at the red light first, and could've turned right before I even got there; only when I put on my left signal did they decide to go down there.
After driving around them, I turned left at the next stop sign, and not long after noticed that they'd made the same turn again to follow me. It's an unusual path in the neighborhood -- I was taking a scenic route while cruising around aimlessly -- and all the other walkers, joggers, bike riders, and dog walkers just move along that first street that we were both on. For them to take two unusual turns is not exactly subtle -- but then their brains are too soaked in hormones to practice less conspicuous tailing behavior.
And besides, their point was not to creepily stalk me -- it was to play "tag, you're it!" After some initial eye-contact to tag me, they made me follow behind and beside them, then once I'd carefully passed them on the narrow street, I had effectively tagged them back, and they began chasing me to tag me back again.
It was cute! But I wasn't going to egg them on too much, so I picked up a little speed and made a few more turns so they wouldn't be so hot on my tail. They'd gotten enough of a reward for taking their pro-social risk in a public place like that.
I get followed around in retail stores by those girls, but this was the first occasion where they had upped the ante to vehicular pursuit. It's probably only a matter of time before the roller-bladers and skater girls pull up to my bumper, grab on, and ask me to please carry them along for a ride...
The telltale signs were teenage and 20-something girls starting to openly brush against me in public retail stores, as well as catcalling me from their car. It hadn't happened since the summer of 2015, which is the year the vulnerable phase began. And that had been standard stuff going back to 2005, when the last restless warm-up phase began. It was far less common during the early 2000s when I was in college (probably the lamest and most frustrating time to be there, other than the late 2010s). But it did happen during the '90s when I was in middle and high school.
So it rises and falls according to the excitement cycle -- getting warmed up during the warm-up phase, lasting through the manic phase, then falling off a cliff during the vulnerable phase.
I assumed these behaviors would continue throughout this year, although the initial coronavirus lockdown seemed to put a halt to the cycle's plans. They're less willing to brush against you when the norm is social distancing.
Still, the fact that people are so restless under quarantine only proves that we are in fact in the restless phase, and out of the vulnerable phase. Otherwise we'd be happy to burrow away in our snug little cocoons indefinitely, where no one could socially and emotionally over-stimulate us and cause us pain. We're now craving that social stimulation, and we don't want to stay holed up forever where no one can interact with us.
Young people more than others seem especially eager to get back outside. And I don't mean "back" as in returning to their behavior of last year or the year before, when they were in the emo phase like everyone else. I mean for the first time in five years to really be out and about.
And sure enough, after a few months of lockdown mentality, they're chafing at the social isolation and have resumed their flirtatious behavior in public places. Not in retail stores anymore -- those are mostly closed, and on the few occasions I've gone to a grocery store, there were mainly old people around. But they're making the best of their circumstances, and taking their restless behavior to streets, sidewalks, and parks -- walking, riding bikes, roller-blading, skateboarding, and so on.
To keep from going stir-crazy, I go out for a drive a few times a week, always with the windows down so it doesn't feel like another enclosed space, and to pick up everyone's mood with the music streaming out. Pedestrians react friendly rather than annoyed, confirming my pre-corona report that strangers had begun saying "Hi" in the park again for the first time in five years.
But in the past week or so, perhaps driven by the warm weather, I've noticed the girls giving more forward signs than just a friendly smile. Today as I slowed to a red light -- "Cars" playing on the radio -- a cute teenager walking by turned her head, gave me a nervous double-take look through over-sized sunglasses, and started involuntarily petting her hair.
Omigosh, is that a random hot guy? Finally, a chance to restore my validation reserves!!!
Who am I to harm her self-esteem by denying her? Nothing wrong with some steady confident eye-contact for several moments at a red light. It must've been the first contact she'd had in a long time.
I do take those situations seriously -- she's willing to put herself out there on multiple levels. She's going through adolescence, she's coming out of the vulnerable-phase cocoon, and she's trying to stay normal under the quarantine. She deserves a reward for taking the risk, and if she wants to claim that validation reward from me rather than someone else, that's just the duty I'll have to fulfill in order to help keep society whole rather than fragmented. Especially when she's just indulging in some wholesome flirtation, and not anything slutty or crazy.
The week before, I came to a red light with "Rock and Roll High School" on the CD player. Two high school girls were riding bikes in the other direction, and I noticed the usual look on their faces. I put on my left turn signal while waiting, and they then decided to turn right on red, heading the same direction but making me chase them a little after the light turned green. They'd been at the red light first, and could've turned right before I even got there; only when I put on my left signal did they decide to go down there.
After driving around them, I turned left at the next stop sign, and not long after noticed that they'd made the same turn again to follow me. It's an unusual path in the neighborhood -- I was taking a scenic route while cruising around aimlessly -- and all the other walkers, joggers, bike riders, and dog walkers just move along that first street that we were both on. For them to take two unusual turns is not exactly subtle -- but then their brains are too soaked in hormones to practice less conspicuous tailing behavior.
And besides, their point was not to creepily stalk me -- it was to play "tag, you're it!" After some initial eye-contact to tag me, they made me follow behind and beside them, then once I'd carefully passed them on the narrow street, I had effectively tagged them back, and they began chasing me to tag me back again.
It was cute! But I wasn't going to egg them on too much, so I picked up a little speed and made a few more turns so they wouldn't be so hot on my tail. They'd gotten enough of a reward for taking their pro-social risk in a public place like that.
I get followed around in retail stores by those girls, but this was the first occasion where they had upped the ante to vehicular pursuit. It's probably only a matter of time before the roller-bladers and skater girls pull up to my bumper, grab on, and ask me to please carry them along for a ride...
May 25, 2020
"Rain on Me" by Lady Gaga: end of backlash against UNH-tss rhythm, return of percussion to dance music
A quick note on the new Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande song "Rain on Me".
In the historical survey of dance fevers during restless warm-up phases of the excitement cycle, I noted that the dance craze from the late 2000s was unusual in one respect. It did accent the offbeat in the rhythm, but it did this almost exclusively through non-percussion instruments -- mainly a synthesizer playing notes rhythmically, not melodically.
This was a backlash against the UNH-tss rhythm typical of the early '90s dance fever, which grew during the late '90s and carried over into the early 2000s. Once the next dance fever erupted, in the late 2000s, they wanted a different approach to avoid the widespread stigma of UNH-tss music.
So they cut out most of the percussion, especially on the offbeat, and replaced it with synth notes. The style is "electropop," as it derived this sparse percussion and rhythmic use of synths from the "electroclash" style of the early 2000s (which was more niche back then, and electro-"pop" brought it into the mainstream).
By far the greatest example of that style was Lady Gaga. None of her numerous #1 Billboard Dance Club hits had percussion devoted only to the offbeat, and it was sparse even on the main beats. That continued with her lesser big hits during the manic phase of the early 2010s, such as "Edge of Glory". And in fact, it seemed to be continuing right up through the nascent dance fever of the current warm-up phase which began in 2020 -- "Stupid Love" has minimal percussion, none on the offbeat, while synth notes establish the rhythm.
But with the release of "Rain on Me," even the foremost example of minimalist percussion in dance music has given in to the drum revival under way. Bass drum on the 1 and 3 main beats, hand claps on the backbeat of 2 and 4, and a tap on the hi-hat during the offbeats in between.
It's a disco rhythm for the neo-neo-neo-disco era. Not too different from the UNH-tss rhythm that began during the dance fever of the early '90s warm-up phase, especially when supported by the rhythmic synth chords. Most commentary on the song has highlighted this early '90s style.
Aside from the music, the lyrics also touch on the common themes of the warm-up phase, now that the vulnerable phase is over and people are no longer in a refractory state. They're restless to get out and interacting again. No more victimhood Olympics, Me Too hysteria, etc.
Now the mood is about getting over it and moving past it. It's impossible not to notice the stark contrast between this song's uplifting tone and energetic feel, and the mellow wallowing of her main hits from the vulnerable phase, "A Million Reasons" and "Shallow".
For my money, "Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa is still the gold standard for club music during the neo-neo-neo-disco era. But "Rain on Me" is still good dance music, and its lyrical tone and theme are a welcome relief from the trauma porn of the now-gone vulnerable phase. I think this one will have a greater impact socially and emotionally than culturally, but that's no less of a role in the shift between phases of the excitement cycle.
BTW, don't look at the Tik Tok compilations for this song just yet -- right now, it's only her mega-fans doing them, i.e. fags and trannies, hardly any girls. Stick with the music video instead.
Incidentally, Ariana Grande looks more wild and mature with her hair down, during the later part. She does have a cute baby doll face that is showcased by clearing away all her hair into a upward ponytail, and she could even pull off a short pixie style. But nothing gets the blood going like long, dark hair flowing down like the hanging gardens of Babylon.
In the historical survey of dance fevers during restless warm-up phases of the excitement cycle, I noted that the dance craze from the late 2000s was unusual in one respect. It did accent the offbeat in the rhythm, but it did this almost exclusively through non-percussion instruments -- mainly a synthesizer playing notes rhythmically, not melodically.
This was a backlash against the UNH-tss rhythm typical of the early '90s dance fever, which grew during the late '90s and carried over into the early 2000s. Once the next dance fever erupted, in the late 2000s, they wanted a different approach to avoid the widespread stigma of UNH-tss music.
So they cut out most of the percussion, especially on the offbeat, and replaced it with synth notes. The style is "electropop," as it derived this sparse percussion and rhythmic use of synths from the "electroclash" style of the early 2000s (which was more niche back then, and electro-"pop" brought it into the mainstream).
By far the greatest example of that style was Lady Gaga. None of her numerous #1 Billboard Dance Club hits had percussion devoted only to the offbeat, and it was sparse even on the main beats. That continued with her lesser big hits during the manic phase of the early 2010s, such as "Edge of Glory". And in fact, it seemed to be continuing right up through the nascent dance fever of the current warm-up phase which began in 2020 -- "Stupid Love" has minimal percussion, none on the offbeat, while synth notes establish the rhythm.
But with the release of "Rain on Me," even the foremost example of minimalist percussion in dance music has given in to the drum revival under way. Bass drum on the 1 and 3 main beats, hand claps on the backbeat of 2 and 4, and a tap on the hi-hat during the offbeats in between.
It's a disco rhythm for the neo-neo-neo-disco era. Not too different from the UNH-tss rhythm that began during the dance fever of the early '90s warm-up phase, especially when supported by the rhythmic synth chords. Most commentary on the song has highlighted this early '90s style.
Aside from the music, the lyrics also touch on the common themes of the warm-up phase, now that the vulnerable phase is over and people are no longer in a refractory state. They're restless to get out and interacting again. No more victimhood Olympics, Me Too hysteria, etc.
Now the mood is about getting over it and moving past it. It's impossible not to notice the stark contrast between this song's uplifting tone and energetic feel, and the mellow wallowing of her main hits from the vulnerable phase, "A Million Reasons" and "Shallow".
For my money, "Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa is still the gold standard for club music during the neo-neo-neo-disco era. But "Rain on Me" is still good dance music, and its lyrical tone and theme are a welcome relief from the trauma porn of the now-gone vulnerable phase. I think this one will have a greater impact socially and emotionally than culturally, but that's no less of a role in the shift between phases of the excitement cycle.
BTW, don't look at the Tik Tok compilations for this song just yet -- right now, it's only her mega-fans doing them, i.e. fags and trannies, hardly any girls. Stick with the music video instead.
Incidentally, Ariana Grande looks more wild and mature with her hair down, during the later part. She does have a cute baby doll face that is showcased by clearing away all her hair into a upward ponytail, and she could even pull off a short pixie style. But nothing gets the blood going like long, dark hair flowing down like the hanging gardens of Babylon.
May 23, 2020
"Complex" rhythms are simple when danced: Balkan pop-folk music with 5 beats per measure
To further underscore the inseparability of music and dance, let's look at meter, or how many beats there are per measure (i.e., before the pattern repeats).
This is the aspect of music that cerebral nerds fixate on and screw around with to produce "weird" time signatures -- prog rock, math rock, etc.
But it turns out that plain old folk music can produce unusual time signatures without a cerebral orientation -- indeed, from a purely corporeal approach, which simplifies the process. Alternating the number of steps within a pass in a dance -- e.g., a 2-step followed by a 3-step, and repeat -- actually provides motivation for an unusual time signature -- rather than pulling it out of your ass to showcase your brainpower.
The fundamental meters have either 2 or 3 beats per measure, with main stress on the first beat and weak beats trailing after: "ONE two, ONE two" or "ONE two three, ONE two three".
The standard is 4 beats per measure, but you actually hear it and move your body to it as though it were two pairs of two beats apiece, each pair having stress on the first beat and a weak beat after, but with the first pair's stress being even stronger than that of the second pair. This yields three degrees of stress -- strong on 1, medium on 3, weak on 2 and 4. "ONE two, THREE four, ONE two, THREE four".
If you don't subdivide the measure into those two pairs, and try to preserve only one degree of stress, that would yield 1 stressed beat and 3 weak beats. For example, "ONE two three four". It's not impossible, but those three consecutive weak beats trail off a little too long. The natural tendency is to break up three weak beats in a row, and give one of them stress -- albeit to a lesser degree than the main stress. Hence grouping them into two pairs, each with its own stress (strong, weak, medium, weak).
Before getting to the unusual meters, let's ground the discussion of 4 beats in a kinesthetic activity. Normally I'd say marching in place to the rhythm, but that won't work if we're using 2 or 3 weak beats in a row. For walking or marching, one foot marks the strong beat, the other marks the weak beat. Two or three weak beats in a row would require putting the same foot forward for 2 or 3 steps -- doesn't work. So instead, try hopping -- hop on one foot for a strong beat, hop on the other foot for a weak beat. There's nothing impossible about hopping on the weak-beat foot for 2 or 3 times in a row.
Now try hopping to a count of "ONE two three four" -- strong foot once, then weak foot three times in a row, and repeat it over again. There's too many weak hops in a row, and only one strong hop to relieve the monotony! It feels like you're going to keel over in the weak-foot direction, or buckle under the pressure, or otherwise shut down your activity level.
But alternate back and forth, so that the 3rd beat gets the strong foot, and it feels totally natural and sustaining of your activity level. If your strong foot hits equally hard on 1 and 3, that's really just a 2-beat meter. So try to give the 3rd beat only medium strength -- more than the weak foot does, but not as forceful as the main 1st beat. Now you've got a 4-beat measure that's subdivided into two pairs, with primary and secondary stress.
We've solved the mystery of why 4-beat measures in music almost always get subdivided into two pairs -- because 3 weak beats in a row, with only 1 strong beat to relieve them, is conceptually imaginable, but corporeally destructive. It shuts down your dancing activity. Solution: subdivide 4 beats into 2 pairs with strong and medium stress, and suddenly you can alternate your feet and thereby preserve your energy level and balance. Musical choices are constrained by the requirements of dancing.
So why allow 3-beat measures, with their 2 weak beats in a row? Don't think, just give it a try -- hop on the strong foot once, then hop on the weak foot twice, and repeat. It's not as awkward as three weak beats in a row. It does throw you slightly off-balance, but not so much that you can't recover. And it does drag your energy down slightly, but not as much as when there are three straight beats worth of low-energy motions.
If we want any departure at all from the simple "ONE two, ONE two" meter, and its "RIGHT left, RIGHT left" motions, let's only depart as minimally as possible, just to keep it grounded. And in fact, you're getting a lot more leeway than you'd think. With "ONE two three..." the number of strong beats is the same, but now you've got twice as many weak beats -- a 100% increase. That's plenty.
This brings us naturally to a meter with 5 beats per measure. We're fine with a 2-beat pair, we're fine with a 3-beat triplet, and we're fine with combining 2 pairs into a 4-beat measure. So why not try another minimal combination? -- two groupings as before, but instead of 2 + 2, it's 2 + 3, which gives us 5 beats total. There's still stress on the first beat of each grouping, and still primary stress on the first grouping, and secondary stress on the second grouping. Then it's, "ONE two THREE four five, ONE two THREE four five".
To dance to this rhythm, hop on your feet: strong weak, strong weak weak. Again, on the 3rd beat, your strong foot should only get medium-level force, not as much as on the 1st beat, but clearly more than on the weak beats. And if that's too difficult at first, just give your strong foot the same force on both 1 and 3. Having medium force on the secondary stress is more important when there's 4 beats per measure, where using the same force on 1 and 3 would make it sound like only 2 beats per measure.
When there's 5 beats, subdivided into 2 + 3, there's no way to confuse the first and second grouping because each has a different number of beats. So distinguishing the first from the second grouping does not depend so much on varying the force delivered on the stressed beat of each one, and differing primary from secondary stress is not necessary. (But it does help emphasize the different groupings.)
In the comments later, I'll add some thoughts on why 2 + 3 is more natural than 3 + 2, the other possible way to combine a pair and a triplet together to make 5 beats. It's not relevant now, though. But it does derive from the mechanics of dancing.
For a more interesting dance, rather than just hopping in place, try moving sideways in a line. Move in the direction of your strong foot, so that you land on a strong beat. For the weak beat, just hop in place on your weak foot. So it goes: "STEP hop, STEP hop hop" and repeat. Maybe it's more of a jump than a step to the side -- something more forceful than the hop.
And that's it -- "unusual" time signatures with 5 beats per measure are not so strange if the music is motivated by dancing, like Mother Nature intended. We could do 7 beats per measure, but it would break down according to the same principles -- e.g., combine a pair, a pair, and a triplet. The sideways dance would go, "STEP hop, STEP hop, STEP hop hop" and repeat.
These asymmetrical meters allow for some pleasant variety in the rhythm, while also keeping us from falling all over ourselves. It mixes things up while still keeping them in a simple, orderly structure.
Now for some actual music with 5 beats per measure, driven entirely by dances that involve a 2-step and then a 3-step movement. The ground zero for their popularity seems to be Thrace, which is today split between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, in Southeastern Europe. From my cursory survey, 5-beat meter seems to be a fairly reliable marker of Indo-European lineage, but that's a topic for another post.
National folk music saw a resurgence after the end of the Communist era in Eastern Europe, and in Bulgaria this was mixed with pop music to produce "pop-folk". It also went under the name "chalga," but that label has rapidly changed in meaning over the past 10-15 years to mean generic international genres that are mixed together (techno, rap, etc.), without a strong Bulgarian folk influence. The songs below are from before that transition, and the instrumental backing band hails from Thrace (Yambol).
The singer in the first one was a Turkish-speaking Gypsy of Bulgarian nationality -- talk about being at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. It may be hard to hear the 2 + 3 rhythm at first, but wait until the clarinet solo when there's just a spare bass rhythm otherwise. The primary stress is on 1, then a rest or silence on 2. There's a little offbeat before 3, the secondary stress on 3 itself, which builds through weak beats 4 and 5, then crashes down again on 1.
Try tapping your fingers in order to the rhythm. If you use only your four fingers, and not your thumb, you'll notice that the main stress falls on a different finger from one measure to the next. Namely, the next one in order from whatever it was previously. If it were a 4-beat measure, it should fall on the same finger each time. Since it's moving over one finger each measure, that means there's 1 more beat than 4 -- 5 beats per measure.
If you start with your pinky, that gets the heavy stress, the ring gets a rest, the middle gets the secondary stress, and the fore and thumb get two weak building-up beats, before cycling back to the heavy stress on the pinky again. Slow it down in YouTube if you need to. That also goes for getting used to dancing to it.
The second song is a little harder to hear, but it's the only other example I could quickly find while browsing a country's music that I'm pretty unfamiliar with. It's also a faster tempo than the first example, so try this one out after you've got the first one down.
The first music video brings back memories of the good ol' days here, where the band was ugly guys who could compose and play instruments well, a cute songbird on the microphone, and random babes moving their bodies to fully integrate dance with music and singing, as Mother Nature intended.
"Kaynana" by Reyhan and Orchestra Kristal (2002):
"Limon" by Toni Dacheva and Orchestra Kristal (1993):
This is the aspect of music that cerebral nerds fixate on and screw around with to produce "weird" time signatures -- prog rock, math rock, etc.
But it turns out that plain old folk music can produce unusual time signatures without a cerebral orientation -- indeed, from a purely corporeal approach, which simplifies the process. Alternating the number of steps within a pass in a dance -- e.g., a 2-step followed by a 3-step, and repeat -- actually provides motivation for an unusual time signature -- rather than pulling it out of your ass to showcase your brainpower.
The fundamental meters have either 2 or 3 beats per measure, with main stress on the first beat and weak beats trailing after: "ONE two, ONE two" or "ONE two three, ONE two three".
The standard is 4 beats per measure, but you actually hear it and move your body to it as though it were two pairs of two beats apiece, each pair having stress on the first beat and a weak beat after, but with the first pair's stress being even stronger than that of the second pair. This yields three degrees of stress -- strong on 1, medium on 3, weak on 2 and 4. "ONE two, THREE four, ONE two, THREE four".
If you don't subdivide the measure into those two pairs, and try to preserve only one degree of stress, that would yield 1 stressed beat and 3 weak beats. For example, "ONE two three four". It's not impossible, but those three consecutive weak beats trail off a little too long. The natural tendency is to break up three weak beats in a row, and give one of them stress -- albeit to a lesser degree than the main stress. Hence grouping them into two pairs, each with its own stress (strong, weak, medium, weak).
Before getting to the unusual meters, let's ground the discussion of 4 beats in a kinesthetic activity. Normally I'd say marching in place to the rhythm, but that won't work if we're using 2 or 3 weak beats in a row. For walking or marching, one foot marks the strong beat, the other marks the weak beat. Two or three weak beats in a row would require putting the same foot forward for 2 or 3 steps -- doesn't work. So instead, try hopping -- hop on one foot for a strong beat, hop on the other foot for a weak beat. There's nothing impossible about hopping on the weak-beat foot for 2 or 3 times in a row.
Now try hopping to a count of "ONE two three four" -- strong foot once, then weak foot three times in a row, and repeat it over again. There's too many weak hops in a row, and only one strong hop to relieve the monotony! It feels like you're going to keel over in the weak-foot direction, or buckle under the pressure, or otherwise shut down your activity level.
But alternate back and forth, so that the 3rd beat gets the strong foot, and it feels totally natural and sustaining of your activity level. If your strong foot hits equally hard on 1 and 3, that's really just a 2-beat meter. So try to give the 3rd beat only medium strength -- more than the weak foot does, but not as forceful as the main 1st beat. Now you've got a 4-beat measure that's subdivided into two pairs, with primary and secondary stress.
We've solved the mystery of why 4-beat measures in music almost always get subdivided into two pairs -- because 3 weak beats in a row, with only 1 strong beat to relieve them, is conceptually imaginable, but corporeally destructive. It shuts down your dancing activity. Solution: subdivide 4 beats into 2 pairs with strong and medium stress, and suddenly you can alternate your feet and thereby preserve your energy level and balance. Musical choices are constrained by the requirements of dancing.
So why allow 3-beat measures, with their 2 weak beats in a row? Don't think, just give it a try -- hop on the strong foot once, then hop on the weak foot twice, and repeat. It's not as awkward as three weak beats in a row. It does throw you slightly off-balance, but not so much that you can't recover. And it does drag your energy down slightly, but not as much as when there are three straight beats worth of low-energy motions.
If we want any departure at all from the simple "ONE two, ONE two" meter, and its "RIGHT left, RIGHT left" motions, let's only depart as minimally as possible, just to keep it grounded. And in fact, you're getting a lot more leeway than you'd think. With "ONE two three..." the number of strong beats is the same, but now you've got twice as many weak beats -- a 100% increase. That's plenty.
* * *
This brings us naturally to a meter with 5 beats per measure. We're fine with a 2-beat pair, we're fine with a 3-beat triplet, and we're fine with combining 2 pairs into a 4-beat measure. So why not try another minimal combination? -- two groupings as before, but instead of 2 + 2, it's 2 + 3, which gives us 5 beats total. There's still stress on the first beat of each grouping, and still primary stress on the first grouping, and secondary stress on the second grouping. Then it's, "ONE two THREE four five, ONE two THREE four five".
To dance to this rhythm, hop on your feet: strong weak, strong weak weak. Again, on the 3rd beat, your strong foot should only get medium-level force, not as much as on the 1st beat, but clearly more than on the weak beats. And if that's too difficult at first, just give your strong foot the same force on both 1 and 3. Having medium force on the secondary stress is more important when there's 4 beats per measure, where using the same force on 1 and 3 would make it sound like only 2 beats per measure.
When there's 5 beats, subdivided into 2 + 3, there's no way to confuse the first and second grouping because each has a different number of beats. So distinguishing the first from the second grouping does not depend so much on varying the force delivered on the stressed beat of each one, and differing primary from secondary stress is not necessary. (But it does help emphasize the different groupings.)
In the comments later, I'll add some thoughts on why 2 + 3 is more natural than 3 + 2, the other possible way to combine a pair and a triplet together to make 5 beats. It's not relevant now, though. But it does derive from the mechanics of dancing.
For a more interesting dance, rather than just hopping in place, try moving sideways in a line. Move in the direction of your strong foot, so that you land on a strong beat. For the weak beat, just hop in place on your weak foot. So it goes: "STEP hop, STEP hop hop" and repeat. Maybe it's more of a jump than a step to the side -- something more forceful than the hop.
And that's it -- "unusual" time signatures with 5 beats per measure are not so strange if the music is motivated by dancing, like Mother Nature intended. We could do 7 beats per measure, but it would break down according to the same principles -- e.g., combine a pair, a pair, and a triplet. The sideways dance would go, "STEP hop, STEP hop, STEP hop hop" and repeat.
These asymmetrical meters allow for some pleasant variety in the rhythm, while also keeping us from falling all over ourselves. It mixes things up while still keeping them in a simple, orderly structure.
* * *
Now for some actual music with 5 beats per measure, driven entirely by dances that involve a 2-step and then a 3-step movement. The ground zero for their popularity seems to be Thrace, which is today split between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, in Southeastern Europe. From my cursory survey, 5-beat meter seems to be a fairly reliable marker of Indo-European lineage, but that's a topic for another post.
National folk music saw a resurgence after the end of the Communist era in Eastern Europe, and in Bulgaria this was mixed with pop music to produce "pop-folk". It also went under the name "chalga," but that label has rapidly changed in meaning over the past 10-15 years to mean generic international genres that are mixed together (techno, rap, etc.), without a strong Bulgarian folk influence. The songs below are from before that transition, and the instrumental backing band hails from Thrace (Yambol).
The singer in the first one was a Turkish-speaking Gypsy of Bulgarian nationality -- talk about being at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. It may be hard to hear the 2 + 3 rhythm at first, but wait until the clarinet solo when there's just a spare bass rhythm otherwise. The primary stress is on 1, then a rest or silence on 2. There's a little offbeat before 3, the secondary stress on 3 itself, which builds through weak beats 4 and 5, then crashes down again on 1.
Try tapping your fingers in order to the rhythm. If you use only your four fingers, and not your thumb, you'll notice that the main stress falls on a different finger from one measure to the next. Namely, the next one in order from whatever it was previously. If it were a 4-beat measure, it should fall on the same finger each time. Since it's moving over one finger each measure, that means there's 1 more beat than 4 -- 5 beats per measure.
If you start with your pinky, that gets the heavy stress, the ring gets a rest, the middle gets the secondary stress, and the fore and thumb get two weak building-up beats, before cycling back to the heavy stress on the pinky again. Slow it down in YouTube if you need to. That also goes for getting used to dancing to it.
The second song is a little harder to hear, but it's the only other example I could quickly find while browsing a country's music that I'm pretty unfamiliar with. It's also a faster tempo than the first example, so try this one out after you've got the first one down.
The first music video brings back memories of the good ol' days here, where the band was ugly guys who could compose and play instruments well, a cute songbird on the microphone, and random babes moving their bodies to fully integrate dance with music and singing, as Mother Nature intended.
"Kaynana" by Reyhan and Orchestra Kristal (2002):
"Limon" by Toni Dacheva and Orchestra Kristal (1993):
May 22, 2020
Preview of power pop's 15-year cycle: "Needles and Pins" in 4 ways
I'm preparing something more in-depth on the cycles of power pop music (including so-called jangle pop). For now, suffice it to say that it emerges during the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, as people come out of their vulnerable-phase shells and are eager to start mingling with the opposite sex again. Power pop is the sensitive-guy form that this trend takes.
In the meantime, a striking finding as I was going through the history. "Needles and Pins" is a staple of the genre, and most pop music fans will only be familiar with the version by the Searchers. But it was originally recorded a year before by a female singer. Later, two separate cover versions were released, also within a year of each other.
These all came out during a restless warm-up phase of the cycle -- early '60s and late '70s. (Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks played it live in '85, a vulnerable phase, but I'm talking about recording it in the studio for an album or single.)
The Ramones version highlights the multifaceted nature of the zeitgeist, in any phase. They're mostly a punk band, and the explosion of stripped-down 'tude indeed takes place during restless phases -- surf rock of the early '60s, punk of the late '70s, pop-punk (and some grunge) of the early '90s, and pop-punk and emo of the late 2000s.
And yet here they are during the heyday of punk, covering an earnest pining-and-yearning sensitive-guy anthem. Well sure, why not? -- they're two different ways of expressing the same underlying theme of restlessness, the urge to return to socializing and having fun after five years in the vulnerable-phase cocoon.
It would be nice to hear this one again during the just-beginning restless warm-up phase, but remember that music doesn't do cover songs anymore, despite TV and movies being entirely remakes, reboots, etc. Maybe there will be another early '60s prestige TV show like Mad Men (from the late 2000s -- matching phases), and they can work the song into the soundtrack somewhere.
The Searchers (1964):
Jackie DeShannon (1963):
Smokie (1977):
The Ramones (1978):
In the meantime, a striking finding as I was going through the history. "Needles and Pins" is a staple of the genre, and most pop music fans will only be familiar with the version by the Searchers. But it was originally recorded a year before by a female singer. Later, two separate cover versions were released, also within a year of each other.
These all came out during a restless warm-up phase of the cycle -- early '60s and late '70s. (Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks played it live in '85, a vulnerable phase, but I'm talking about recording it in the studio for an album or single.)
The Ramones version highlights the multifaceted nature of the zeitgeist, in any phase. They're mostly a punk band, and the explosion of stripped-down 'tude indeed takes place during restless phases -- surf rock of the early '60s, punk of the late '70s, pop-punk (and some grunge) of the early '90s, and pop-punk and emo of the late 2000s.
And yet here they are during the heyday of punk, covering an earnest pining-and-yearning sensitive-guy anthem. Well sure, why not? -- they're two different ways of expressing the same underlying theme of restlessness, the urge to return to socializing and having fun after five years in the vulnerable-phase cocoon.
It would be nice to hear this one again during the just-beginning restless warm-up phase, but remember that music doesn't do cover songs anymore, despite TV and movies being entirely remakes, reboots, etc. Maybe there will be another early '60s prestige TV show like Mad Men (from the late 2000s -- matching phases), and they can work the song into the soundtrack somewhere.
The Searchers (1964):
Jackie DeShannon (1963):
Smokie (1977):
The Ramones (1978):
May 19, 2020
The ancient Indo-European roots of good luck charms in New Year's dessert, from Celtic Christmas pudding to samanu for Nowruz
I've been bitten by the Indo-European bug again, this time after looking into the cultural evolution of food. Years ago -- use google to search the blog for "Indo-European" -- I looked into iconography, dance, wedding rituals, etc., but didn't touch food.
In order to determine that some piece of culture has been inherited over the generations, it's best to study a piece that is not strongly shaped by material concerns -- and food certainly is. Not just the local environment containing different raw materials, but convergent evolution that could make two disparate lineages appear to share a common source.
For example, all pastoralist cultures will include dairy products in some way, even though some of them evolved separately and independently of each other way back when. At this level, you can't tell which ones share a common ancestor. But perhaps there are finer-grained aspects of their dairy culture that do in fact distinguish one from the other. That is true for Indo-Europeans as contrasted with Hamito-Semites, but that's a broad topic for another post.
To ease back into the subject matter, we'll start with a more specific case -- desserts for the New Year's celebration. As far as I can tell, this is an original discovery.
One crucial criterion I set for the earlier analysis was looking at pieces of culture that are highly ritualistic, as these are less susceptible to alteration -- which amounts to sacrilege -- and less influenced by foreign customs. That impedes the two major sources of change (from within and from without).
For mundane culture, you might adopt some other group's street food if it tastes good, but you're not going to adopt their culinary rituals for some holiday that you don't even celebrate yourself, and which might displace your own rituals for the holidays that you do actually celebrate.
And ritualistic pieces of culture are not so strongly influenced by material, utilitarian concerns. Making do with what you've got in order to not starve on a daily basis, could easily shape two distinct food cultures into similar ones, if their environmental pressures were similar. But what you eat, and how you prepare it, for some rare holiday -- that's not going to make or break your health on a quotidian level. You can keep doing it in the inscrutable, not-so-instrumental way without plunging your family into starvation.
That is the approach of genetics in reconstructing who came from where, and who is related to who else by what degree. You look at parts of the genome that are neutral in an adaptive sense. It's like an ID number generated at random, and whose digits do not influence anything about your ability to survive and reproduce. So if you and someone else have the same ID number, you must be closely related. Imagine flipping a million-sided die and getting the same number twice -- that's no coincidence, and both of your numbers must have descended from a single die roll in the past belonging to a shared ancestor.
For the current case, the epiphany came after looking into Armenian food culture. They are Indo-Europeans who have been holed up in the Caucasus highlands and mountains for millennia, and mountains are harder for foreigners to invade. If you can't invade physically, you can't invade culturally. All three branches of the Indo-European language family that have only one surviving member are located in hilly / mountainous terrain -- Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, who have resisted the spread of far more numerous sister branches (Slavic for the first two, Indo-Iranian for the last one).
A staple of Armenian food culture is a large sweet bread called gata. On a special occasion, they put something special in the dough -- a button or a coin (or perhaps some other trinket in some other local variation). Whoever gets the piece with the hidden prize is supposed to have good luck for the rest of the year. This special occasion is Candlemas, which marks the end of the Christmas / Epiphany season, and in that way is timed with the end of the old year and beginning of the new year.
This is a clear counterpart to various traditions throughout Europe, all of which are timed around the New Year, although perhaps Christianized in some way (Christmas, Mardi Gras, etc.). There's the king's cake from Spain and France, the vasilopita in Greece and similar non-Christianized versions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Christmas pudding in Britain, and the Christmas rice pudding in Scandinavia.
In fact, there's an even older pre-Christian version from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, also timed around the end of December. As part of the carnivalesque inversion of the social hierarchy, a King of Saturnalia was chosen from the lower-ranking members, to preside over the merrymaking. He was chosen by lot -- a cake was baked with a bean somewhere inside the dough, and whoever got the piece with the bean had the good fortune of assuming the role. (This good luck is shorter in duration, although higher in intensity and more palpable, compared to the later interpretation that it was generic yearlong good luck.)
We could say that it all began with the Romans and was inherited by former political colonies of the Roman Empire, or by cultures that owed their Christianity to Roman influence. But perhaps the current variety of traditions do not stem from a Roman source, but are descendants of an even older ancestor, such as Indo-European. In that view, the British custom came from a Celtic source, the Scandinavian custom from a Germanic source, the Ukrainian custom from a Slavic source, etc. Only the Western Mediterranean customs would come from an Italic source, in this view.
This is how we analyze the languages spoken by these groups. If the word for "three" appears so similar across all of them, it's not necessarily because they all descend from Latin via the Roman Empire's influence and colonization. It's because each of them has its own older source, which is only Latin for the Romance branch, but those older sources themselves have an even older source in common -- Proto-Indo-European.
Still, if we only restrict our investigation to Europe, it can be hard to conclude decisively one way or another, because there are so few cases that can only be interpreted to support one view rather than the other view. That's why we have to look at the broader Indo-European spectrum.
And the example from Armenia argues strongly in favor of the Indo-European roots of the tradition, since most of Greater Armenia was not politically conquered by the Roman Empire, nor was its primary cultural influence from Rome. In antiquity, it was torn between the Romans and the Persians (who did not practice Saturnalia, and who would never become Christian). If Armenia did not receive these traditions through contact with the Romans, then they must have already been in place due to shared ancestry with an even older Indo-European origin.
The Roman Empire / Christian origin can also be ruled out from the other direction, by looking at cultures that were part of the Roman Empire, some of whom also became Christian, but who are Hamito-Semitic rather than Indo-European. That includes North Africa and the Levant. The obvious test is Lebanon (both a former Roman colony and early Christians). Although their Christmas dessert is a rice pudding, it does not involve the tradition of hiding an item that will bring good luck to whoever receives that portion.
That reflects the wider similarities in food culture between the Levant and non-Indo-European cultures of the region, but we'll get back to that topic when we explore the use of dairy among Indo-European vs. Hamito-Semitic cultures.
But by far the clearest evidence of the Indo-European origin of this tradition is the rituals involved in making and eating samanu in the eastern, Indo-Iranian range of the I-E territory. The special occasion is Nowruz, the New Year, celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, and other areas nearby. Like Saturnalia being pre-Christian, Nowruz is pre-Islamic. Samanu is a sweet pudding made from wheatgrass, cooked in large pots.
From Wikipedia:
In her book Recipes from My Persian Kitchen, Nasreen Zereshki mentions that finding an unshelled nut in your serving of samanu is a "good omen". These are intended to be inedible trinkets or charms, since they are left unshelled, as opposed to shelling nuts when used as raw ingredients for an edible meal.
This exactly parallels the Christmas pudding rituals from the opposite side of the I-E territory, among the Celts (British). From Wikipedia's article on Stir-up Sunday:
The special occasion is the New Year, a sweet pudding is being made in a pot, a group has gathered socially (not just one cook), they take turns stirring, each one makes a wish as they do so, some charms are thrown into the mix, and whoever gets one in their serving will enjoy good luck.
I tried looking for a counterpart in the Indian subcontinent, but could not easily find one -- it's too diverse, and with several potential holidays to sift through. I'm sure there's something there, just not an example I could identify right away. My targets are Pakistani and NW Indian customs for Diwali, Holi, and Lohri, although hopefully their Muslims are similar to European Christians in preserving local pagan traditions for nominally Abrahamic occasions.
I'd also like to find a counterpart in Turkey, which is more Indo-European than Hamito-Semitic (and is Turkic in language only, from known invaders). Ideally from their pre-Islamic celebrations, akin to Nowruz further to the east.
Still, this is mind-blowing stuff for archaeologists of culture. Why hasn't the connection been made before? Because academics are cerebrals and blind to most of material culture. They will notice that languages and mythologies are shared at a deep level among Indo-Europeans, but not their corporeal folkways. Sure, they know about the shared subsistence modes and basic ecosystems, like the I-E people having words for snow and cows. But not what we would call folk culture, customs, rituals, and the like -- especially by investigating those folkways directly, rather than through linguistic hints.
Those rituals are still being performed to this day, for similar purposes as before. So why not investigate their lineages? Not because they're fuzzy rather than sharply defined -- again, academics have no problem positing a shared pantheon, mythological narratives, and other things that are less clearly defined than "the pronunciation of the word for 'cow'". It's because they're too much a part of corporeal activities.
That's why I'm focusing on the topics I've chosen -- iconography, dance, wedding customs, and now food. It's mostly untapped, but no less important to appreciating the deep roots of all these seemingly disparate cultures today.
In order to determine that some piece of culture has been inherited over the generations, it's best to study a piece that is not strongly shaped by material concerns -- and food certainly is. Not just the local environment containing different raw materials, but convergent evolution that could make two disparate lineages appear to share a common source.
For example, all pastoralist cultures will include dairy products in some way, even though some of them evolved separately and independently of each other way back when. At this level, you can't tell which ones share a common ancestor. But perhaps there are finer-grained aspects of their dairy culture that do in fact distinguish one from the other. That is true for Indo-Europeans as contrasted with Hamito-Semites, but that's a broad topic for another post.
To ease back into the subject matter, we'll start with a more specific case -- desserts for the New Year's celebration. As far as I can tell, this is an original discovery.
One crucial criterion I set for the earlier analysis was looking at pieces of culture that are highly ritualistic, as these are less susceptible to alteration -- which amounts to sacrilege -- and less influenced by foreign customs. That impedes the two major sources of change (from within and from without).
For mundane culture, you might adopt some other group's street food if it tastes good, but you're not going to adopt their culinary rituals for some holiday that you don't even celebrate yourself, and which might displace your own rituals for the holidays that you do actually celebrate.
And ritualistic pieces of culture are not so strongly influenced by material, utilitarian concerns. Making do with what you've got in order to not starve on a daily basis, could easily shape two distinct food cultures into similar ones, if their environmental pressures were similar. But what you eat, and how you prepare it, for some rare holiday -- that's not going to make or break your health on a quotidian level. You can keep doing it in the inscrutable, not-so-instrumental way without plunging your family into starvation.
That is the approach of genetics in reconstructing who came from where, and who is related to who else by what degree. You look at parts of the genome that are neutral in an adaptive sense. It's like an ID number generated at random, and whose digits do not influence anything about your ability to survive and reproduce. So if you and someone else have the same ID number, you must be closely related. Imagine flipping a million-sided die and getting the same number twice -- that's no coincidence, and both of your numbers must have descended from a single die roll in the past belonging to a shared ancestor.
For the current case, the epiphany came after looking into Armenian food culture. They are Indo-Europeans who have been holed up in the Caucasus highlands and mountains for millennia, and mountains are harder for foreigners to invade. If you can't invade physically, you can't invade culturally. All three branches of the Indo-European language family that have only one surviving member are located in hilly / mountainous terrain -- Albanian, Greek, and Armenian, who have resisted the spread of far more numerous sister branches (Slavic for the first two, Indo-Iranian for the last one).
A staple of Armenian food culture is a large sweet bread called gata. On a special occasion, they put something special in the dough -- a button or a coin (or perhaps some other trinket in some other local variation). Whoever gets the piece with the hidden prize is supposed to have good luck for the rest of the year. This special occasion is Candlemas, which marks the end of the Christmas / Epiphany season, and in that way is timed with the end of the old year and beginning of the new year.
This is a clear counterpart to various traditions throughout Europe, all of which are timed around the New Year, although perhaps Christianized in some way (Christmas, Mardi Gras, etc.). There's the king's cake from Spain and France, the vasilopita in Greece and similar non-Christianized versions in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, the Christmas pudding in Britain, and the Christmas rice pudding in Scandinavia.
In fact, there's an even older pre-Christian version from the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, also timed around the end of December. As part of the carnivalesque inversion of the social hierarchy, a King of Saturnalia was chosen from the lower-ranking members, to preside over the merrymaking. He was chosen by lot -- a cake was baked with a bean somewhere inside the dough, and whoever got the piece with the bean had the good fortune of assuming the role. (This good luck is shorter in duration, although higher in intensity and more palpable, compared to the later interpretation that it was generic yearlong good luck.)
We could say that it all began with the Romans and was inherited by former political colonies of the Roman Empire, or by cultures that owed their Christianity to Roman influence. But perhaps the current variety of traditions do not stem from a Roman source, but are descendants of an even older ancestor, such as Indo-European. In that view, the British custom came from a Celtic source, the Scandinavian custom from a Germanic source, the Ukrainian custom from a Slavic source, etc. Only the Western Mediterranean customs would come from an Italic source, in this view.
This is how we analyze the languages spoken by these groups. If the word for "three" appears so similar across all of them, it's not necessarily because they all descend from Latin via the Roman Empire's influence and colonization. It's because each of them has its own older source, which is only Latin for the Romance branch, but those older sources themselves have an even older source in common -- Proto-Indo-European.
Still, if we only restrict our investigation to Europe, it can be hard to conclude decisively one way or another, because there are so few cases that can only be interpreted to support one view rather than the other view. That's why we have to look at the broader Indo-European spectrum.
And the example from Armenia argues strongly in favor of the Indo-European roots of the tradition, since most of Greater Armenia was not politically conquered by the Roman Empire, nor was its primary cultural influence from Rome. In antiquity, it was torn between the Romans and the Persians (who did not practice Saturnalia, and who would never become Christian). If Armenia did not receive these traditions through contact with the Romans, then they must have already been in place due to shared ancestry with an even older Indo-European origin.
The Roman Empire / Christian origin can also be ruled out from the other direction, by looking at cultures that were part of the Roman Empire, some of whom also became Christian, but who are Hamito-Semitic rather than Indo-European. That includes North Africa and the Levant. The obvious test is Lebanon (both a former Roman colony and early Christians). Although their Christmas dessert is a rice pudding, it does not involve the tradition of hiding an item that will bring good luck to whoever receives that portion.
That reflects the wider similarities in food culture between the Levant and non-Indo-European cultures of the region, but we'll get back to that topic when we explore the use of dairy among Indo-European vs. Hamito-Semitic cultures.
But by far the clearest evidence of the Indo-European origin of this tradition is the rituals involved in making and eating samanu in the eastern, Indo-Iranian range of the I-E territory. The special occasion is Nowruz, the New Year, celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, and other areas nearby. Like Saturnalia being pre-Christian, Nowruz is pre-Islamic. Samanu is a sweet pudding made from wheatgrass, cooked in large pots.
From Wikipedia:
In Afghanistan and Uzbekistan the whole gathering, mostly women, gather near the huge pot: sit in a circle, sing songs, have fun, each of them waits for their turn to stir the sumalak [AKA samanu]. While stirring the samanak [AKA samanu], wishes can be made. Also, whole walnuts are thrown in near the end of the preparation while making a wish.
In her book Recipes from My Persian Kitchen, Nasreen Zereshki mentions that finding an unshelled nut in your serving of samanu is a "good omen". These are intended to be inedible trinkets or charms, since they are left unshelled, as opposed to shelling nuts when used as raw ingredients for an edible meal.
This exactly parallels the Christmas pudding rituals from the opposite side of the I-E territory, among the Celts (British). From Wikipedia's article on Stir-up Sunday:
Everyone takes a turn to stir the pudding mix for each person involved is able to make a special wish for the year ahead. Practically, stirring the mixture is hard work, therefore as many as possible are involved... In some households, silver coins are added to the pudding mix. It is believed that finding a coin brings good luck.
The special occasion is the New Year, a sweet pudding is being made in a pot, a group has gathered socially (not just one cook), they take turns stirring, each one makes a wish as they do so, some charms are thrown into the mix, and whoever gets one in their serving will enjoy good luck.
I tried looking for a counterpart in the Indian subcontinent, but could not easily find one -- it's too diverse, and with several potential holidays to sift through. I'm sure there's something there, just not an example I could identify right away. My targets are Pakistani and NW Indian customs for Diwali, Holi, and Lohri, although hopefully their Muslims are similar to European Christians in preserving local pagan traditions for nominally Abrahamic occasions.
I'd also like to find a counterpart in Turkey, which is more Indo-European than Hamito-Semitic (and is Turkic in language only, from known invaders). Ideally from their pre-Islamic celebrations, akin to Nowruz further to the east.
Still, this is mind-blowing stuff for archaeologists of culture. Why hasn't the connection been made before? Because academics are cerebrals and blind to most of material culture. They will notice that languages and mythologies are shared at a deep level among Indo-Europeans, but not their corporeal folkways. Sure, they know about the shared subsistence modes and basic ecosystems, like the I-E people having words for snow and cows. But not what we would call folk culture, customs, rituals, and the like -- especially by investigating those folkways directly, rather than through linguistic hints.
Those rituals are still being performed to this day, for similar purposes as before. So why not investigate their lineages? Not because they're fuzzy rather than sharply defined -- again, academics have no problem positing a shared pantheon, mythological narratives, and other things that are less clearly defined than "the pronunciation of the word for 'cow'". It's because they're too much a part of corporeal activities.
That's why I'm focusing on the topics I've chosen -- iconography, dance, wedding customs, and now food. It's mostly untapped, but no less important to appreciating the deep roots of all these seemingly disparate cultures today.
May 16, 2020
Historical survey of offbeat-heavy dance rhythms, from warm-up phases of 15-year excitement cycle
To conclude this series on accenting the offbeat to produce danceable rhythms (previous posts here, here, and here), we'll take a whirlwind tour through the past 60 years for examples.
First, though, we need to understand the role that dance crazes play within the broader social, emotional, and cultural zeitgeist. In the original post on the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, there's a detailed explanation of why dance fever breaks out during this phase. I'm already pressed for space here, so I'll only summarize.
During the preceding vulnerable phase, people had been in a refractory state: their energy levels had collapsed into negative territory after their soaring flight during the manic phase just before that. In this refractory state, most audiences just want to numb themselves to any potential stimulation -- which would feel painful -- and prefer the ethereal, floaty dream pop style of music, whether in an indie form or a mainstream form. Even among the minority who do feel like going out to nightclubs, dance music takes on a spastic rhythm that makes it hard for the average person to move their body to.
As that refractory state ends, energy levels return to baseline -- suddenly, they're capable of stimulation, feeling restless for physical activity and social interaction. But since they're only just waking up, the motions must be simple -- warm-up exercises. They need clear rhythmic markers of when to stop the wind-up motion and begin the delivery-of-force motion in their dancing. Enter the accent on the offbeat: it guides them effortlessly through the motions. It's so easy, anyone can do it -- therefore, everyone will do it, and dance fever breaks out.
One final caveat: not all dance fever songs have an instrument that plays only the offbeat and not the main beat. However, that is the purest form since it makes the offbeat more perceptually salient. It's easier for the dancer to isolate and sync up with the offbeat if there's a dedicated instrumental cue -- a 100% correlation between hearing a certain instrument, and the arrival of the offbeat. At least, something needs to play the offbeat, and whether or not it also plays the main beat depends on just how dance-y the goal is.
1960-'64
This warm-up phase followed the moody, emo late '50s, and led to the manic late '60s.
The early R&B dance beat is only proto-disco, without an pronounced offbeat. But in both songs below, there is a steady cymbal on both the offbeat and main beat, unlike pop music of the '50s. "The Loco-Motion" even has an soft offbeat, although not made by its own instrument -- it's the same snare drum that plays the main beat on 2 and 4 (the "backbeat"), but with softer pressure applied. For that reason, it only plays half of the offbeats (before 2 and 4), not all of them. Still, you can hear the disco beat in a primitive form.
Bossa nova enjoyed its heyday during this period, and it too was keen on percussion accenting offbeats (e.g., Jobim's interpretation of "Agua de Beber" from 1963). It was meant to be danced to. In countries outside Brazil, bossa nova did not lead to future styles, so I'm only mentioning it in passing due to its minor historical interest here. But it was essential to the early '60s zeitgeist here as well.
I'll make a separate post covering super-danceable ska music's 15-year cycle, with peaks during the warm-up phase as well. I'm focusing on R&B now because it has the richest relationships before and after the '60s in modern dance music.
"Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharp (1962):
"The Loco-Motion" by Little Eva (1962):
1975-'79
This warm-up phase followed the moody, schmaltzy early '70s, and led to the manic early '80s.
Now we're in the era of disco proper, and its characteristic beat is easy to hear (and move to). The selections below add further offbeat instruments and voices.
The intro beat of "Let's All Chant" features a triplet of claps that hit two offbeats and the main beat in between -- "and 4 and". They use a voice in the chants of "ooh-ah ooh-ah," which covers "1 and 2 and" in the rhythm. The offbeat syllable "ah" is unstressed, matching musical and linguistic weakness.
The heavy offbeat is from the hi-hat, played as two quick sixteenth notes rather than the usual single eighth note. Expanding the offbeat from just "and" for eighth notes, to "and then it's" for sixteenth notes, the hi-hat hits the "then it's" portion of the offbeat. Since those two offbeats are followed by a main beat, and the mind groups elements that are contiguous, we hear this as "da-da-DA, da-da-DA," in a galloping rhythm. All the more body-moving.
"Bad Girls" shares those features. The hi-hat plays the galloping sixteenth notes during the offbeat. Both the piano and the brass section play a chord rhythmically for the offbeat on either side of 4 (every other measure). And there's an onomatopoetic chant (alternating "toot-TOOT" or "beep-BEEP") that links the end of one measure to the start of the next ("and 1" in the count). The offbeat has the unstressed syllable of the chant, matching musical and linguistic weakness. Not to mention the maracas and whistles -- overall an intricate layering of rhythms, but still simple to move your body to, thanks to the prominent offbeat on the hi-hat.
"Let's All Chant" by Michael Zager Band (1977):
"Bad Girls" by Donna Summer (1979):
1990-'94
This warm-up phase followed the soft-rock, power ballad late '80s, and led to the manic late '90s.
Neo-disco -- Eurodance, house, etc. -- revived the disco rhythm, only now using a drum machine instead of a person playing a drum kit. Otherwise not a whole lot else to say about this period -- probably the most lowkey among the dance fever phases, and the one whose succeeding manic phase was the most kitschy (techno of the late '90s).
Similar to disco, "What Is Love" supplements with a keyboard rhythmically playing a chord during the offbeats on either side of 4. In "Show Me Love," there's a heavy accent on the offbeat before 3, from both the keyboard hook and the maracas.
"What Is Love" by Haddaway (1993):
"Show Me Love" by Robin S. (1993):
2005-'09
This warm-up phase followed the emo early 2000s, and led to the manic early 2010s.
It may be hard to remember for those who were packed into the clubs back then, but upon re-listening to the big dance hits from this period, I was struck by how little percussion there is at all. And if anything, it's on the main beat only -- I had to search high and low to find a pure dance song that had an accented offbeat for percussion. Literally every big dance artist of the day did it that way, it was the approach to rhythm during that dance fever period.
That may have been a backlash against the negative stereotype that had grown around "disco rhythm on a drum machine" -- UNH-tss, UNH-tss, UNH-tss, UNH-tss. It was so derided that people actually referred to it by its percussive rhythm -- "that's just UNH-tss music, boring". That backlash against '90s techno probably began during the early 2000s, although among the less mainstream dance groups. Loosely called electroclash, this style was percussively very sparse, minimalist, and bleak.
So by the late 2000s, the solution was to have the keyboard take over the main rhythm duties -- playing the same note, or perhaps a brief flourish, during the offbeat. This sparse, minimalist approach may be better than no rhythm at all, but it does render this period less infectiously danceable than the other dance fever periods (including the early '60s).
But not to worry -- the late 2000s also saw a fusion of disco / dance music with rock / punk music, and all of those songs played a heavily accented offbeat on the hi-hat, straight out of the original disco era. They avoided the negative association with UNH-tss music because their percussion was a person playing a drum kit, not a drum machine, and the overall sound was clearly rock rather than R&B or dance. I'll devote a whole 'nother post just to surveying that phenomenon. For now, some examples of what pure dance music sounded like back then.
Madonna had decades-old roots in dance music, and was the only one to stick closely to the disco rhythm in percussion. "Sorry" from 2005 has a standard disco beat on the drum machine, but it sounds a little too much like '90s UNH-tss music. The more authentically late 2000s hit of hers was "Hung Up," which does use a hi-hat, but only on half of the offbeats (before 2 and 4). What plays on every offbeat is instead the synth -- two identical sixteenth notes that set up the galloping rhythm before a main beat. The distinctive synth flourish, sampled from ABBA, highlights the offbeats before 4 and 1, linking one measure to the next.
(Edit: I just turned up the volume on "Hung Up," and the hi-hat does play during the offbeats before 1 and 3, but it's two quick taps on a closed hi-hat -- barely audible underneath the synth notes which are playing with the exact same rhythm and at a louder volume. The hi-hat before 2 and 4 is open when struck and rings out, allowing it to be heard over the synth notes. The conclusion is the same: the average person will only hear offbeat percussion on half the offbeats, before 2 and 4, and the synth is given priority over percussion for establishing the rhythm.)
"Just Dance" is a better representative of the time. During the verse, there is no percussion on the offbeat at all, only a bass drum for the main beats, and snare for the backbeat. The offbeats are entirely played by synths, which are not part of a melodic phrase, just rhythmic single notes or brief flourishes. The chorus does use a cymbal crash, but it sounds like it's only on the main beat, then ringing out somewhat into the offbeat (or maybe there's a quiet hi-hat on the offbeat then -- hard to tell). At any rate, no percussion dedicated to the offbeat.
"Hung Up" by Madonna (2005):
"Just Dance" by Lady Gaga (2008):
2020-'24
This warm-up phase follows the most emo phase of all-time, the late 2010s, and will lead to another manic phase in the late 2020s.
So far, not much to say about this very young dance fever phase. But it's worth noting that the sparse percussion of the late 2000s is gone, and we're returning to disco fundamentals, usually a single hit from the hi-hat during the offbeat. By now, dance music is no longer tainted by association with UNH-tss music from over 20 years and several cycles ago. No need for a backlash against it, no need to find alternate rhythmic solutions caused by removing almost all percussion.
"Break My Heart" adds flourishes from a rhythm guitar and string section during the chorus, making it sound even more like original disco. In "Dance Again," the dark, chopped timbre on the bass makes it sound like Justice's Cross album from 2007 (among countless other examples of the time). But that's only a superficial similarity, since the basic approach to rhythm is very different now -- back to hi-hats to accent the offbeat, rather than rhythmic synth notes.
"Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa (2020):
"Dance Again" by Selena Gomez (2020):
First, though, we need to understand the role that dance crazes play within the broader social, emotional, and cultural zeitgeist. In the original post on the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle, there's a detailed explanation of why dance fever breaks out during this phase. I'm already pressed for space here, so I'll only summarize.
During the preceding vulnerable phase, people had been in a refractory state: their energy levels had collapsed into negative territory after their soaring flight during the manic phase just before that. In this refractory state, most audiences just want to numb themselves to any potential stimulation -- which would feel painful -- and prefer the ethereal, floaty dream pop style of music, whether in an indie form or a mainstream form. Even among the minority who do feel like going out to nightclubs, dance music takes on a spastic rhythm that makes it hard for the average person to move their body to.
As that refractory state ends, energy levels return to baseline -- suddenly, they're capable of stimulation, feeling restless for physical activity and social interaction. But since they're only just waking up, the motions must be simple -- warm-up exercises. They need clear rhythmic markers of when to stop the wind-up motion and begin the delivery-of-force motion in their dancing. Enter the accent on the offbeat: it guides them effortlessly through the motions. It's so easy, anyone can do it -- therefore, everyone will do it, and dance fever breaks out.
One final caveat: not all dance fever songs have an instrument that plays only the offbeat and not the main beat. However, that is the purest form since it makes the offbeat more perceptually salient. It's easier for the dancer to isolate and sync up with the offbeat if there's a dedicated instrumental cue -- a 100% correlation between hearing a certain instrument, and the arrival of the offbeat. At least, something needs to play the offbeat, and whether or not it also plays the main beat depends on just how dance-y the goal is.
* * *
1960-'64
This warm-up phase followed the moody, emo late '50s, and led to the manic late '60s.
The early R&B dance beat is only proto-disco, without an pronounced offbeat. But in both songs below, there is a steady cymbal on both the offbeat and main beat, unlike pop music of the '50s. "The Loco-Motion" even has an soft offbeat, although not made by its own instrument -- it's the same snare drum that plays the main beat on 2 and 4 (the "backbeat"), but with softer pressure applied. For that reason, it only plays half of the offbeats (before 2 and 4), not all of them. Still, you can hear the disco beat in a primitive form.
Bossa nova enjoyed its heyday during this period, and it too was keen on percussion accenting offbeats (e.g., Jobim's interpretation of "Agua de Beber" from 1963). It was meant to be danced to. In countries outside Brazil, bossa nova did not lead to future styles, so I'm only mentioning it in passing due to its minor historical interest here. But it was essential to the early '60s zeitgeist here as well.
I'll make a separate post covering super-danceable ska music's 15-year cycle, with peaks during the warm-up phase as well. I'm focusing on R&B now because it has the richest relationships before and after the '60s in modern dance music.
"Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharp (1962):
"The Loco-Motion" by Little Eva (1962):
* * *
1975-'79
This warm-up phase followed the moody, schmaltzy early '70s, and led to the manic early '80s.
Now we're in the era of disco proper, and its characteristic beat is easy to hear (and move to). The selections below add further offbeat instruments and voices.
The intro beat of "Let's All Chant" features a triplet of claps that hit two offbeats and the main beat in between -- "and 4 and". They use a voice in the chants of "ooh-ah ooh-ah," which covers "1 and 2 and" in the rhythm. The offbeat syllable "ah" is unstressed, matching musical and linguistic weakness.
The heavy offbeat is from the hi-hat, played as two quick sixteenth notes rather than the usual single eighth note. Expanding the offbeat from just "and" for eighth notes, to "and then it's" for sixteenth notes, the hi-hat hits the "then it's" portion of the offbeat. Since those two offbeats are followed by a main beat, and the mind groups elements that are contiguous, we hear this as "da-da-DA, da-da-DA," in a galloping rhythm. All the more body-moving.
"Bad Girls" shares those features. The hi-hat plays the galloping sixteenth notes during the offbeat. Both the piano and the brass section play a chord rhythmically for the offbeat on either side of 4 (every other measure). And there's an onomatopoetic chant (alternating "toot-TOOT" or "beep-BEEP") that links the end of one measure to the start of the next ("and 1" in the count). The offbeat has the unstressed syllable of the chant, matching musical and linguistic weakness. Not to mention the maracas and whistles -- overall an intricate layering of rhythms, but still simple to move your body to, thanks to the prominent offbeat on the hi-hat.
"Let's All Chant" by Michael Zager Band (1977):
"Bad Girls" by Donna Summer (1979):
* * *
1990-'94
This warm-up phase followed the soft-rock, power ballad late '80s, and led to the manic late '90s.
Neo-disco -- Eurodance, house, etc. -- revived the disco rhythm, only now using a drum machine instead of a person playing a drum kit. Otherwise not a whole lot else to say about this period -- probably the most lowkey among the dance fever phases, and the one whose succeeding manic phase was the most kitschy (techno of the late '90s).
Similar to disco, "What Is Love" supplements with a keyboard rhythmically playing a chord during the offbeats on either side of 4. In "Show Me Love," there's a heavy accent on the offbeat before 3, from both the keyboard hook and the maracas.
"What Is Love" by Haddaway (1993):
"Show Me Love" by Robin S. (1993):
* * *
2005-'09
This warm-up phase followed the emo early 2000s, and led to the manic early 2010s.
It may be hard to remember for those who were packed into the clubs back then, but upon re-listening to the big dance hits from this period, I was struck by how little percussion there is at all. And if anything, it's on the main beat only -- I had to search high and low to find a pure dance song that had an accented offbeat for percussion. Literally every big dance artist of the day did it that way, it was the approach to rhythm during that dance fever period.
That may have been a backlash against the negative stereotype that had grown around "disco rhythm on a drum machine" -- UNH-tss, UNH-tss, UNH-tss, UNH-tss. It was so derided that people actually referred to it by its percussive rhythm -- "that's just UNH-tss music, boring". That backlash against '90s techno probably began during the early 2000s, although among the less mainstream dance groups. Loosely called electroclash, this style was percussively very sparse, minimalist, and bleak.
So by the late 2000s, the solution was to have the keyboard take over the main rhythm duties -- playing the same note, or perhaps a brief flourish, during the offbeat. This sparse, minimalist approach may be better than no rhythm at all, but it does render this period less infectiously danceable than the other dance fever periods (including the early '60s).
But not to worry -- the late 2000s also saw a fusion of disco / dance music with rock / punk music, and all of those songs played a heavily accented offbeat on the hi-hat, straight out of the original disco era. They avoided the negative association with UNH-tss music because their percussion was a person playing a drum kit, not a drum machine, and the overall sound was clearly rock rather than R&B or dance. I'll devote a whole 'nother post just to surveying that phenomenon. For now, some examples of what pure dance music sounded like back then.
Madonna had decades-old roots in dance music, and was the only one to stick closely to the disco rhythm in percussion. "Sorry" from 2005 has a standard disco beat on the drum machine, but it sounds a little too much like '90s UNH-tss music. The more authentically late 2000s hit of hers was "Hung Up," which does use a hi-hat, but only on half of the offbeats (before 2 and 4). What plays on every offbeat is instead the synth -- two identical sixteenth notes that set up the galloping rhythm before a main beat. The distinctive synth flourish, sampled from ABBA, highlights the offbeats before 4 and 1, linking one measure to the next.
(Edit: I just turned up the volume on "Hung Up," and the hi-hat does play during the offbeats before 1 and 3, but it's two quick taps on a closed hi-hat -- barely audible underneath the synth notes which are playing with the exact same rhythm and at a louder volume. The hi-hat before 2 and 4 is open when struck and rings out, allowing it to be heard over the synth notes. The conclusion is the same: the average person will only hear offbeat percussion on half the offbeats, before 2 and 4, and the synth is given priority over percussion for establishing the rhythm.)
"Just Dance" is a better representative of the time. During the verse, there is no percussion on the offbeat at all, only a bass drum for the main beats, and snare for the backbeat. The offbeats are entirely played by synths, which are not part of a melodic phrase, just rhythmic single notes or brief flourishes. The chorus does use a cymbal crash, but it sounds like it's only on the main beat, then ringing out somewhat into the offbeat (or maybe there's a quiet hi-hat on the offbeat then -- hard to tell). At any rate, no percussion dedicated to the offbeat.
"Hung Up" by Madonna (2005):
"Just Dance" by Lady Gaga (2008):
* * *
2020-'24
This warm-up phase follows the most emo phase of all-time, the late 2010s, and will lead to another manic phase in the late 2020s.
So far, not much to say about this very young dance fever phase. But it's worth noting that the sparse percussion of the late 2000s is gone, and we're returning to disco fundamentals, usually a single hit from the hi-hat during the offbeat. By now, dance music is no longer tainted by association with UNH-tss music from over 20 years and several cycles ago. No need for a backlash against it, no need to find alternate rhythmic solutions caused by removing almost all percussion.
"Break My Heart" adds flourishes from a rhythm guitar and string section during the chorus, making it sound even more like original disco. In "Dance Again," the dark, chopped timbre on the bass makes it sound like Justice's Cross album from 2007 (among countless other examples of the time). But that's only a superficial similarity, since the basic approach to rhythm is very different now -- back to hi-hats to accent the offbeat, rather than rhythmic synth notes.
"Break My Heart" by Dua Lipa (2020):
"Dance Again" by Selena Gomez (2020):
How rhythmic instruments implement dance beats
Now it's time to look at how dance rhythms are made concretely with actual instruments, after a general discussion on the importance of accenting the offbeat, and an overview of music and dance being inseparable from each other. So far, we've only been using human speech to mark time -- saying out loud, "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and..."
Apart from accenting the offbeat, the most important aspect of a dance rhythm when actually played is that the instrument produce a weaker sound on the offbeat, and a stronger sound on the main beat -- to dovetail naturally with the rhythmic weakness vs. strength, as well as the weakness vs. strength of the bodily motion that the dancer is making on the offbeat vs. main beat.
Weak rhythmic beat, and a weak wind-up motion in the dancer -- weak sound from the instrument. Strong rhythmic beat, and a full delivery-of-force motion in the dancer -- strong sound from the instrument. Again, "weak" sound does not mean silence. There has to be some sound, just not as attention-getting as the sound of the main beat.
The primary set of instruments for creating the rhythm is percussion. The main beats, especially in a dance song, will be made by the bass drum -- a strong, booming, low-pitched sound. The "backbeat," or the relatively weaker main beats of 2 and 4 (compared to the more prominent 1 and 3), will get a snare drum -- still pretty forceful and noticeable, but higher pitched and not as booming. Then for the offbeat, that leaves the cymbals, usually but not always the hi-hat in a standard drum kit. They're quieter, less resonant, and higher-pitched than the other instruments the drummer plays.
Secondary rhythmic instruments follow the same principles. For a guitar being strummed rhythmically, rather than to carry out the melody, there are two motions made, just as with a dancer -- a weaker upward strum and a stronger downward strum. Offbeats require an upstrum, main beats a downstrum. When the rhythm guitar is used to accent the offbeat -- that is, to play only those offbeats, making them really stand out by not mixing them in by playing the main beats -- you get the characteristic choppy "skank" guitar rhythm of ska music, which is what makes it so danceable.
(I'll do a separate brief post on ska's 15-year cycle, in which the style emerges during the restless warm-up phase of the excitement cycle, as part of the broader dance fever of that phase: the early '60s, late '70s, and early '90s -- albeit with an absence during the late 2000s, with a potential revival in the early 2020s to be determined.)
The brass instruments can be played only on the offbeat, such as in ska. Weaker sound on the offbeat means a lighter puff of air, rather than a blaring lung-emptying honk.
Keyboard instruments can be played rhythmically -- early R&B music could use a single piano chord to play both the offbeat and main beat, instead of the drummer hitting those beats on the cymbals. The weaker sound on the offbeat comes from simply applying less force to the pressure-sensitive keys.
And as new wave and synth-pop developed, they used the synthesizer to play notes or chords rhythmically rather than, or in addition to, playing them melodically. Their keys are not necessarily pressure-sensitive, so they instead varied the pitch -- high pitch for the offbeat, low pitch for the main beat. To make it clear that these were supposed to be perceived as a pair (with a weaker twin and a stronger twin), they played the same letter-note (say, C) in two different octaves. This "octave bass synth" produces a very bouncy rhythm, perfect for alternating the dancer's body between its wind-up and delivery motions.
Finally we return to where we began -- the human voice. Not singing the lyrics, which is part of the melody, but human speech sounds used to accent the rhythm. Calls, filler words like "oh!", and the like. Weaker sound for the offbeat usually means less phonetic stress.
But while just about any instrument, or voice, can be used rhythmically, the percussion instruments form the backbone, so we'll focus just on them to get the basic idea.
From a recent post on the return of the disco-punk style, here's a brief explanation of the disco drum pattern, which is the template for all modern dance music. Remember there are four main beats per measure, with four weaker offbeats in between: "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and..."
For examples, see the post linked to above, which has several linked and embedded videos.
The next and final post in this series will do a quick historical survey of when these simple-step dance rhythms explode in popularity, and how it relates to the social and emotional changes taking place during the restless warm-up phase of the cultural excitement cycle.
Apart from accenting the offbeat, the most important aspect of a dance rhythm when actually played is that the instrument produce a weaker sound on the offbeat, and a stronger sound on the main beat -- to dovetail naturally with the rhythmic weakness vs. strength, as well as the weakness vs. strength of the bodily motion that the dancer is making on the offbeat vs. main beat.
Weak rhythmic beat, and a weak wind-up motion in the dancer -- weak sound from the instrument. Strong rhythmic beat, and a full delivery-of-force motion in the dancer -- strong sound from the instrument. Again, "weak" sound does not mean silence. There has to be some sound, just not as attention-getting as the sound of the main beat.
The primary set of instruments for creating the rhythm is percussion. The main beats, especially in a dance song, will be made by the bass drum -- a strong, booming, low-pitched sound. The "backbeat," or the relatively weaker main beats of 2 and 4 (compared to the more prominent 1 and 3), will get a snare drum -- still pretty forceful and noticeable, but higher pitched and not as booming. Then for the offbeat, that leaves the cymbals, usually but not always the hi-hat in a standard drum kit. They're quieter, less resonant, and higher-pitched than the other instruments the drummer plays.
Secondary rhythmic instruments follow the same principles. For a guitar being strummed rhythmically, rather than to carry out the melody, there are two motions made, just as with a dancer -- a weaker upward strum and a stronger downward strum. Offbeats require an upstrum, main beats a downstrum. When the rhythm guitar is used to accent the offbeat -- that is, to play only those offbeats, making them really stand out by not mixing them in by playing the main beats -- you get the characteristic choppy "skank" guitar rhythm of ska music, which is what makes it so danceable.
(I'll do a separate brief post on ska's 15-year cycle, in which the style emerges during the restless warm-up phase of the excitement cycle, as part of the broader dance fever of that phase: the early '60s, late '70s, and early '90s -- albeit with an absence during the late 2000s, with a potential revival in the early 2020s to be determined.)
The brass instruments can be played only on the offbeat, such as in ska. Weaker sound on the offbeat means a lighter puff of air, rather than a blaring lung-emptying honk.
Keyboard instruments can be played rhythmically -- early R&B music could use a single piano chord to play both the offbeat and main beat, instead of the drummer hitting those beats on the cymbals. The weaker sound on the offbeat comes from simply applying less force to the pressure-sensitive keys.
And as new wave and synth-pop developed, they used the synthesizer to play notes or chords rhythmically rather than, or in addition to, playing them melodically. Their keys are not necessarily pressure-sensitive, so they instead varied the pitch -- high pitch for the offbeat, low pitch for the main beat. To make it clear that these were supposed to be perceived as a pair (with a weaker twin and a stronger twin), they played the same letter-note (say, C) in two different octaves. This "octave bass synth" produces a very bouncy rhythm, perfect for alternating the dancer's body between its wind-up and delivery motions.
Finally we return to where we began -- the human voice. Not singing the lyrics, which is part of the melody, but human speech sounds used to accent the rhythm. Calls, filler words like "oh!", and the like. Weaker sound for the offbeat usually means less phonetic stress.
But while just about any instrument, or voice, can be used rhythmically, the percussion instruments form the backbone, so we'll focus just on them to get the basic idea.
From a recent post on the return of the disco-punk style, here's a brief explanation of the disco drum pattern, which is the template for all modern dance music. Remember there are four main beats per measure, with four weaker offbeats in between: "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and..."
Typically a dance rhythm will use the hi-hat cymbals on these "and" offbeats -- and usually, only the offbeats, not also the 4 main beats. For a standard disco beat, there is a bass drum on all four main beats (and none of the offbeats), and a snare drum on the 2 and 4 beats (and none of the offbeats). Listen to this brief explanatory video. The disco beat is just one example of a dance rhythm that uses little sounds on the offbeats, which is the most important aspect for our purposes -- whether it has a bass drum on all four main beats is not.
For examples, see the post linked to above, which has several linked and embedded videos.
The next and final post in this series will do a quick historical survey of when these simple-step dance rhythms explode in popularity, and how it relates to the social and emotional changes taking place during the restless warm-up phase of the cultural excitement cycle.
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