Dear Internet,
I said
yesterday that today would be a mix day.
Whenever I draw a music album, I try to do something else with the
excess amount of time on my hands.
Albums have a tendency to be only about a half hour to fifty
minutes. There is also very little that
can be said unless you are trying to sell the album as a public relations
agent. It would be cheap of me to listen
to a short music selection and pump out a review in about the same amount of
time and then sit around all day. So to
try and not appear as the lazy bum I am, this is the first of three reviews for
today, all being music albums on vinyl.
Arthur
Murray was a dancer, dance instructor, and clever businessman. Even today, his name is synonymous with dance
to the point that even the high-art culture of dance must acknowledge his
influence in the world. There are still
some 200 or so studios that bears his name.
If you were to go through your grandparent's things, you might find
dance instruction sheets that could be laid out on the floor to teach you the
steps. If you could not find those
sheets, you might find the albums that were made to teach you to dance to a
specific music type. "Music for
Dancing: Cha Cha" is one such album.
If you were to have only the vinyl record and not the packaging, you
would be missing the whole experience.
On the back of the jacket is a step-by-step instruction detailing how to
do the cha cha. Even as a usually
passive listener, I attempted to learn the dance. I will spare you any embarrassing
understandings of my ineptitude for upright shuffling.
The
album has got twelve songs, each having nearly the same tempo and rhythm. The songs are slow but the melodies are
not. As a teaching aid, this works very
well. The student can learn how to move
their feet to the beat at a leisurely pace without being discouraged by facing
a rapid pace. Having the songs move too
quickly would cause the student to make mistakes because it would be placing
emphasis on the speed rather than the technique. Learning to do the cha cha is more important
than the listening selection. That being
said, listening to this album without the intention of learning how to dance
can produce a somewhat opposite effect.
The
songs are fun, but they can get repetitive since they are supposed to have the
same beat. The only break out song would
have to be "Arruverderci, Roma" which has more to do with the fact
that it is one of the few tracks that has vocals tied to it. All of the songs are similar Latin American
dance songs that have since been replaced with pseudo-Jamaican pop now-a-days. Jazz sneaks in every now and again, but the
band plays on. I cannot help but
describe the sound as being a slightly faster paced muzak. If I was not such a fan of both elevator music
and Latin flair, I would say that this album makes me want to push all the
buttons on the lift. The whole thing
tries little to reach beyond the scope of ballroom dancing, but it is not meant
to. The album is meant to help people
dance.
Overall,
I liked "Music for Dancing: Cha Cha" but that does not allow me to
think it is anything spectacular. As a
training aid, it does a good job of selecting a collection of songs to learn to
dance to. As a standalone album, it
would be nothing extraordinary or even notable.
While the songs are fun and airy, they are a reflection of their genre
rather than a unique track.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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