aargh - smiling to a sad song

Sorry for the vent but I have to let off steam.....Was dancing with a lead who danced the whole of Tito Puente's Cuanda Te Vea with an idiotic grin on his face. Now, I don't speak Spanish (..but I understand everything when I'm dancing!), but to me that song is full of a man's pain....and not a happy, clappy, party song. I felt the pain of the song - doubly so!

The guy in question is an advanced dancer and I felt should have known better - or am I expecting too much?

Rant over

salsaverde said:

Sorry for the vent but I have to let off steam.....Was dancing with a lead who danced the whole of Tito Puente's Cuanda Te Vea with an idiotic grin on his face. Now, I don't speak Spanish (..but I understand everything when I'm dancing!), but to me that song is full of a man's pain....and not a happy, clappy, party song. I felt the pain of the song - doubly so!

The guy in question is an advanced dancer and I felt should have known better - or am I expecting too much?

Rant over

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I only recently got round to translating that song... before I knew the words my interpretation of the music was definitely as a party song! More than once, spanish speakers have asked me how the hell anyone can understand salsa if they don't speak spanish, and I think this is what they are talking about! So many of the songs are about painful or mournful themes but if you don't know that, you just hear those cowbells and have a ball!

The song "el costo de la vida" by Juan Luis Guerra is a song about poverty but it sounds like a extremely happy song(a merengue).
I've also heard songs about Christmas being played all year round and songs where the lyrics are a bit strong or just plain stupid.

I suppose if you don't speak Spanish you could assume that all the songs are happy? You should be able to feel the emotion of the singers voice.

I wouldn't expect everyone to speak spanish but at times not understanding the language can make you look stupid when spanish speakers are watching you dance to a christmas song in July or a song about María likeing bananas..tienes dos sentidos.....entiendes?

Until recently (after an intervention by a salsera, who was pretty annoyed, I think she is going to read this), Aventura's "La Nina" has been played quite often.

Though Im a beginner in spanish, I only get half of the meanings of the text. And when the melody is a happy one, its even harder to interpret the song right. Take "El gran Varon" as example - here it is easy to get the meaning only listening to the music. Usually when dancing, I concentrate on dancing and the music and not on listening to the text - I only get and understand it fully, when Im relaxed in my car and have time to think about what just has been said.

So please don't mind when sb. doesnt get a text. When I started dancing, I didn't speak any spanish at all, and it takes some time to do both - understand a new language in lyrics and dance at the same time. Not all people learn spanish at school (in Germany during my schooltime probably at most 2%). But many salseros I know become and are interested in the language of the their favourite dance and try to get to it.

salsaverde said:

Was dancing with a lead who danced the whole of Tito Puente's Cuanda Te Vea with an idiotic grin on his face.

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I'm sure I'm guilty of this very, very often.
I know very little Spanish, and when I dance my focus is on the dance, not what the song says. Dancing makes me happy, and when the music's got a good groove and I'm having a good dance to it, I'm in heaven. I just can't stop smiling. I do realise that a lot of songs played on the dancefloor are about unhappy things, but even when I do know (from my limited Spanish vocabulary and cranky Babelfish rendering) that the song is about something unhappy, I find difficult to muster sad feelings when dancing to salsa music. This probably makes me a cultural barbarian who understands nothing of what salsa is really about, but I'm hoping that the salsa world is big-hearted enough to accept someone like me as well as more culturally educated ones...

If I saw a rapper dance http://www.rapper.org.uk/intro/rapper.php in Hong Kong, I would fully expect them to miss the mark, and I would fully expect to find it a bit funny. But I wouldn't get upset with them for getting it wrong.

/edit: bad example actually, the U2 covers band I saw in HK were perfect despite having a female singer!

He is forgiving her for causing him pain. That moment when you forgive someone and let go of your anger is a happy one for me.

That said, even if I did consider it a sad song I think maybe faulting someone for smiling during it is a bit much . . .

Also what's so wrong about dancing to a Christmas song in July?

Bit of a cheeky first post – just playing devil’s advocate

So I’ve just learnt to keep time, smile at my partner, lead a few moves and interpret the music (music, not lyrics) – now I have to learn another language and quickly translate a song I’ve never heard before to decide what facial expressions to use? What’s more, different expressions mean different things in each Latin country – so I have to learn individual colloquialisms for Puerto Rico, Columbia, New York, Cubaet al. Are they being sarcastic, ironic? I better make sure I’ve got a PhD. in Latin America Studies before I even set foot in a salsa club.

Imagine the scene…

The club is banging, dozens of glistening couples are dropping awesome moves on the dance floor – the music is fantastic, but in the middle of the throng, a man stops dancing, a look of confusion beginning to form on his face.

“Why is my footwork wrong?” he thinks to himself.

But then he realises that the singers contention that the Puerto Rican rebellion of 1868 was mainly caused by economic problems is simply not true!

“Surely the continuing repression of the island’s inhabitants by their Spanish rulers was far more influential?” he thinks.

He apologises and tries to leave the floor; his partner angrily accosts him and demands to know what’s wrong!

“Sorry lady, I can’t convey the correct facial expression for a song that portrays a historical event incorrectly”

Full of respect she calms down and sagely nods in agreement….

“You’re so right,” she gushes,”a shame though, I was really enjoying the dance”

Vin said:

Also what's so wrong about dancing to a Christmas song in July?

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December is enough for me......
But Phil Specters' Christmas Album was recorded in July ( I remember reading it somewhere). I don't know how they got the Christmas spirit in the middle of summer.

I speak a little spanish. I went out with a Spanish girl & spent a few summers in Spain. So when I go out dancing after about 2 songs I'm thinking in Spanish & I can't block out the lyrics.
I don't think it improves your dancing even though when people see you singing along to a song they perceive you as being more hooked into the music. More than anything you know when to sit out a song when it's a poor choice of song or the song reminds you of past adventures.
But having said that , music is an international language, you feel it. Well some of us do

Vibrance said:

Bit of a cheeky first post – just playing devil’s advocate

“Sorry lady, I can’t convey the correct facial expression for a song that portrays a historical event incorrectly”

Full of respect she calms down and sagely nods in agreement….

“You’re so right,” she gushes,”a shame though, I was really enjoying the dance”

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ROFL hahahahaha that's the best thing I've read for some time...

but then I have been reading C++ and XML all day :-/

So I'm not supposed to have fun when I dance to certain songs? That sucks

this is funny. I have never thought to translate the meaning of the songs (me knowing no Spanish) is Salsa songs. They're usually too fast to touch me in a romantic way. But I faced this with boleros/songs which I dance rumba to. So many beautiful songs, but most of them are sad . So I prefer not to know what they mean....sounds just romantic.

We can get kind of picky about this type of thing...

If we are truly in tune to the music, we can pretty much feel the change from emotion to emotion, regardless of language spoken. Bands are able to transmit specific emotion through each song. That we don't perceive it doesn't mean that it isn't there.

So, when a person in tune with the music, dances with someone that can only feel a “monotonic” emotion, regardless of that expressed by the music, I can understand why someone would become annoyed. This type of feel for music goes beyond musicality; it is the step that very few people ever acquire...

It isn't that we must cry, or make sad faces when we feel the music changes (noticed not the mention of spanish lyrics),it is that a skilled and in-tune dancer can capture those changes, creating the necessary bodily and mental adjustments that also tell the story of the song.

It is kind of like being deaf, yet, by watching a dancer know roughly what the song is about. (Sad, happy, seductive, romantic, explosive, etc) To me that is the key of a good dancer, not really a monotone musicality that can only tell the story of high and lows in the music...

To me, if as a dancer, I can't capture the story of the song, I can never be considered an "advanced" dancer... even if I don't particularly hold many people accountable for not being there, or ever getting there... That “advanced” label is solely for those that can engage emotions and skill to a song

To many, dancing isn't more than one emotion...
multiple emotions add to the fun of dance... being able to tell the story of the song…

Kind of like seeing that someone, despite that huge smile, suffers inside because of the loss of a loved one... It is that beyond our actions that tell the true story... we just have to learn to read the message and intentions, rather than the words...

If we just paid attention to our feelings we would understand that we can smile, or not smile, and still express a more “in tune” description of the song through our dancing. But when was the last time that someone really mentioned other feelings besides fun in a class? Pay attention to your emotions and see the song come live within you…

Vibrance, that post was a blast!

Back on topic, in many non salsa dances I focus on the vocals just to get something to distract me while I dance since the beat is so monotonous (back in the day when I used to be able to stant that for more than an hour), but then although the lyrics are in english, it's a foreign language I'm more used to.

When salsa is concerned, I can speak some spannish but in many songs I'm either focusing on something else, ot I just can't make out the words, wich kind of makes it dificult to understand them and follow the story being sung. (hearing loss's a b****!)

But I supose, since we're happy while dancing, even if the song is sad, it's somehow difficuld to be happy and sad at the same time...

I don't think that the guy concentrated on the text of the music when he was dancing with you. The "idiotic grin" in his face definately came from his concentration on you .