DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS A SHOWCASE OF CUBAN MUSIC AND DANCE
Set against the decadent glamour and rising menace of revolution-eve Cuba, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights re-imagines the 1987 film experience from a thrilling new viewpoint. The original Dirty Dancing was a surprise hit, grossing more than $150 million worldwide on a budget of only $6 million, which makes it one of the most profitable films ever made.
Havana Nights is set in 1958 Cuba, and it tells the ageless story of a young woman’s discovery of love, sensuality and freedom – but with a searing style and tempo all its own. It is the tale of a lonesome 17-year-old girl, Katie, who moves to Cuba in the days right before the revolution with her parents, where she soon meets a fascinating and gifted local dancer, Javier, who persuades her to discover her natural dancing talent.
Determined to move and dance like Javier, Katie convinces him to partner with her in a prestigious national dance competition at one of Havana’s glitzy nightclub/casinos. Meeting at a local dance spot where the dancing is hotter than the temperature outside, they polish their dance moves and fall in love. Most of the dancing in the movie is salsa, and the Cuban band Orisha played most of the music.
The Cubans have brought 25 genres of music to the world, some of which are listed here. Cuban music has Spanish and African roots, a mix that has added to a distinctive sound in both conventional and popular music. The Cuban rumba, son, guaracha, habanera, bolero, danzón, conga and cha-cha, as well as salsa and Nueva Trova (New Song) movement have influenced much of the hemisphere.
Cuban music has an exclusive mixture of features. The major qualities are:
· Cuban music has an overt or implied two-bar rhythmical cell
· It has tumbao; it uses tres, in a original way
· It uses montuno, and is usually more imaginative than in the more rhythmic arpeggiations of other Antillean or diverse African music
· The trend of anticipation by the bass or soloist is a stylish answer to the bore of nailing down the drumbeat
· The time placement of soloists is also very syncopated: a vocalist or an instrumentalist can easily “surf” several bars in the counter-beats, or, in jazz parlance, “outside” (in rumba)
Salsa
Salsa includes numerous styles and variants: the word can be used to describe almost any variety of popular Cuban derived genres.......
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Mozambique
Faster paced than dengue and pachanga, Mozambique is an energetic style.....
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Rumba
Rumba is a ballroom dance of Afro-Cuban folk-dance origin that became internationally popular......
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Boogalu
The sound of Latin youth in and around New York during the mid- to late-60’s, Boogalu was ....
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Timba
Cuban music has played a practical and fundamental part of the history of music in the twentieth century......
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Latin Pop
Different styles of Latin American music and dance have combined with each other and then merged with North American pop and jazz styles for many years. Slaves remembered the rhythms, dances and percussion instruments from Africa and applied them to Spanish songs. African music and dance mixed with Catholic music and religious practices. The outcome is a globally accepted compilation of music and dance styles called Latin pop.
Sin Palabras
The uneven encounter between Europeans and Africans shaped hybrid artistic forms in New World cultures, distinguished by a pioneering ability to recombine a diversity of aesthetic influences in surprising and forceful ways. Proof positive: Sin Palabras, which melds Cuban bass beat and repertoire with keyboard and turntable technology to make a unique house mix, leavened with the Santería drumming and chanting of Tambor de Fermin, and Proyecto F’s Rap Cubano Antiphony.
Ballet Folklórico Cutumba
The Ballet Folklórico Cutumba is unquestionably one of Cuba’s most animated folkloric dance companies. Rich, vocal music infuses Cutumba’s wide repertoire, which includes the fascinating Orisha dances in veneration of the divine beings of the Yoruba pantheon, in addition to jubilant Haitian dances such as the sensual gagá and masún, which now form a part of the cultural heritage of eastern Cuba.
Mysterious Beginnings of Caribbean Music
The Argentinean tango made an elaborate journey, for it began among the black people of Havana, Cuba. It then went to Cadiz, Spain, and from there, back to Buenos Aires where it became the music we all know. Another Cuban dance, the habanera, went halfway around the world and became the Carmen de Bizet, a popular dance aria and orchestral tune.
Cuba is home of salsa, cha-cha, danzon, and now the rocking sounds of timba music. There are “son” bands playing on street corners all over old Havana and young hip-hop groups are playing in the discos. The National School of Art, Cuba’s premier school for the performing arts, offers visitors a two-week dance program where they can learn old Cuban dance forms such as chachachá, mambo and son, in addition to newer styles like casino, Salsa Suelta and Rueda.
