The Riddle of the Booty – Dancing and the Black Atlantic
Astrid Kusser

Whether it is Juke, Kuduro, Baile Funk, Coupé Decalé, Reggaeton or Dancehall – butts shaken with virtuosity to hard beats are always an essential part of the picture. Be it on your own or together, on the dancefloor or in Youtube videos, the spectacle of a swinging behind is ever present on all sides of the Atlantic. The dynamics have been the same since the beginning of the last century, when the first black dance trend, the Cakewalk, was created. A certain move takes on a life of its own and forms a new dance trend. The new move polemically questions how bodies can be carried in the eye of the public and challenges the limits of shame and embarrassment. As opposed to a celebration of the natural body, it is the artificiality of the movement which is at the center of attention here. The history of dance within the Black Atlantic has been accompanied by an unceremonious laughter, which turned the natural body into something mundane during colonial modernity. What has been created in the dancehalls of the twentieth century therefore was - and still is - not only entertaining but also disturbing. Dancing within the Black Atlantic – be it back in the day or up to present times - still gives us something to think about that has meaning far beyond the limitations of the dancefloor.

“CoupÉ DÉcalÉ – the Music of a New Generation
between Luxury and Lies”
Georg Milz

Coupé Décalé is pure hedonism. For Ivorians ‘couper’, which means ‘cutting’ in French, is a synonym for grifting money off other people, preferably Europeans. ‘Decaler’, French for ‘shifting’, means to run off with the loot, preferably to Abidjan, to apply oneself to ‘travailler’, which means spending the money at parties or for expensive designer clothes by Gucci, Armani or Versace. In 2002, a group of Ivorian expats called the Jet Set created Coupé Decalé in the African night clubs of Paris. It became the soundtrack of a generation which had enough of poverty and civil wars. The African party hybrid, which is strongly influenced by Congolese rhythms, has developed into one of the most popular music styles in French-speaking Africa. The Ivorian music scene does not revolve around showing off with stolen money anymore - instead they want to show off their music in clubs all over the world.

Global Ghetto Tech, Tropical Bass And WoRLD musiC 2.0
Uh-Young Kim