INCIHUSA   20883
INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS, SOCIALES Y AMBIENTALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
How to make a Global Dance Hit: Balancing the Exotic with the Familiar in ‘Danza Kuduro’
Autor/es:
MARTIN, ANDREW ; EID, FÉLIX ; GRECO, MARÍA EMILIA; MUJKANOVIC, EDIN ; KASPERSKI, JAKUB
Libro:
Analysis of popular music
Editorial:
How to make a Global Dance Hit: Balancing the Exotic with the Familiar in ‘Danza Kuduro’
Referencias:
Lugar: Osnabrück; Año: 2012;
Resumen:
‘Danza Kuduro’ features collaboration between French pop singer and producer Lucenzo (Philippe Louis De Oliveira) and Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Don Omar (William Landrón). This particular version of ‘Danza Kuduro’ was a remake of an earlier version by Lucenzo — without the collaboration of Don Omar — titled ‘Vem Dançar Kuduro’ that was released in June of 2010 to little fanfare. After a slow start, the new version of the song slowly grabbed the world’s attention and jumped to the top of popular music charts in Europe and Latin America. By summer 2011 ‘Danza Kuduro’ had ascended to the status of global phenomenon, following in the path forged by past global dance hits the likes of the ‘Macarena’ in 1995-1996  and the ‘Lambada’ in 1989-1990.However popular ‘Danza Kuduro’ was, is, and will be, the ability of the song to resonate with a massive number of people from diverse socio-economic, language, and cultural backgrounds is a testament to its communicative power and/or that of the media industries. Furthermore, establishing any one specific identity for the song is problematic and several factors of the ‘Danza Kuduro’’s construction displays an evasiveness when applied to questions of musical style, lyrical meaning, and intertext meaning. To this end, we argue that ‘Danza Kuduro’ by Lucenzo featuring Don Omar is a dance song created in a global pop song style, not out of any one specific musical tradition or style, but out of design to reach the widest possible audience across the globe. It is our contention that the song’s wide-reaching success was achieved, in part, by appropriating several Latin American and European musical styles and elements (both traditional and modern) in order to create a product that displays a sense of familiarity and exoticness without becoming too regionally identifiable to any one culture or region. In his landmark study of postcolonial attitudes in Europe, Edward Said (1987) redefined the term “orientalism” to mean the prejudices, false assumptions, and stereotypes that define Eurocentric attitudes toward the Far and Middle East. In the case of ‘Danza Kuduro’, a type of exoticism is at work which adjusts this perspective to reflect the prejudices, false assumptions, and stereotypes that define Western attitudes toward Latin American music and culture. We intend to show this modified brand of exoticism through an analysis of the musical components and styles used to create ‘Danza Kuduro’ and through an analysis of the contemporary and traditional cultural components that historically are represented by these musical identifiers. On nearly every level of construction, the sound design of ‘Danza Kuduro’ elicits a musical balance between the familiar and the exotic, allowing the listener the maximum amount of levity for applying and imprinting meaning. The appropriation of Latin American  musical elements by major record labels, the manipulation and conversion of these elements into identifiable and simplified stereotypes, and their presentation to a worldwide audience as being “traditional” Latin American  music, are also important aspects germane to the discussion of ‘Danza Kuduro’. However, the dense musical and cultural palette used to construct the song is vast and therefore this analysis will focus on issues regarding lyrics, rhythm, harmony, form, hooks, and recording production techniques. Finally, this essay is not interested in isolating, defining, or presenting a replicable formula for the future creation of the global popular song hit as audiences are fickle and such a formula cannot exist. Rather, we are interested in the mode in which ‘Danza Kuduro’ captured a success similar to the ‘Lambada’ and ‘Macarena,’ and this essay is content to explore the musical factors that propelled the song into the fore of the global imagination in a genre of music (dance club pop) that is known for its musical ambiguity.