The Harlem Shake

"Harlem Shake," the relatively new, stupid (my opinion) dance meme that went viral really fast this past February gets a thumbs down from me.  The 30-45 second videos that depict a bunch of people shaking like idiots (my opinion) are really, well...just idiotic (my opinion).

The real "Harlem Shake" was a dance move created more than 30 years ago in New York City.  During halftime at streetball games held in Rucker Park, a skinny man known in the neighborhood as Al. B. would entertain the crowd with his own brand of moves, a dance that around Harlem became known as “The Al. B.” He created his own style in the park and "The Al. B."  eventually became "The Harlem Shake." Many give credit to one four-man dance crew, Crazy Boyz, for taking Al. B.’s moves to the next level, popularizing them enough for the mainstream and inspiring the now popular albeit, ridiculous onslaught of YouTube "Harlem Shake" videos.

The audio track used in the videos was created by an artist named Harry Bauer Rodrigues (better known by his stage name, Baauer).  Baauer used a mechanical bassline, synth riffs, a dance music drop and samples of a growling lion and the song "Miller Time" (Plastic Little) and more specifically, the vocal "then do the Harlem Shake."  The track also uses another sample in the opening and throughout the song by a Puerto Rican reggaeton artist named Héctor Delgado.  The sample used is the three word Spanish phrase "Con Los Terroristas" which literally translated means ''with the terrorists."   In a statement to the Daily Beast, Baauer said, “I just had the idea of taking a Dutch house squeaky-high synth and putting it over a hip-hop track. And then I tried to just make it the most stand-out, flashy track that would get anyone’s attention, so I put as many sounds and weird shit in there as I could. The dude in the beginning I got somewhere off the Internet, I don’t even know where, and the lion roar just makes no sense. There’s the sound of flames in there, too, it’s just really low.” 

I guess it doesn't much matter the content or the meaning of the content as long as it sounds good and gets enough attention and attention it did get, even mine, unfortunately.