Last Friday Night I was Providence Ecstatic Dance DJ for the first time and had a great time! I have been there once before and was looking forward to the opportunity to share my rhythm and beats with the Providence Ecstatic Dance Community.
Providence Ecstatic Dance DJ and Ecstatic Dance Guidelines
Ecstatic Dance Guidelines are taken from the Ecstatic Dance Community Page. They are drawn up by the Ecstatic Dance Community as a whole and its origins in Hawaii and the Bay Area. I was first introduced to Ecstatic Dance in Oakland in 2009 and was blown away by the energy and excitement in the community.
1. Move however you wish
2. No talking on the dance floor
3. Respect yourself and one another
Ecstatic Dance is a Drug & Alcohol Free Space
Please also refrain from photos, video, and shoes & scents.
Many people dance in their own space, and others share their space with another.
To engage in a dance with someone, use sensitivity: Are they open to sharing their space with me? Mirror movements, offer a hand, brush by, make eye contact, and see & feel how they respond…
If you’d rather not dance with someone, or are ending a dance with someone,
simply thank them by placing your hands in prayer at your heart.
Namaste… Thank You.
“My Spirit Recognizes Yours”
Ecstatic Dance is
what you make of it…
a freeform movement space where:
dance expands
spirit activates
boundaries melt
boredom ceases
creativity breaks out
hope happens
beauty flows
communities collaborate
ritual is reinvented
harmony resonates
The beat deepens
as an electronic tapestry
of world rhythms
weave us together
as individuals
within a greater family.
For me, Ecstatic Dance reminds me of Barefoot Boogie in NYC where I was DJ and Coordinator of DJs and Teachers for several years till I moved here to Providence. The freestyle dance community is aligned with many incredible dancers and individuals.
Hope to see you there next month!
DJ Mystical Michael Rhode Island DJ & Boston DJ
Ask about my Rhode Island Wedding DJ & Rhode Island Party DJ Guarantee!
Saturday Night we had a fun night of music and dancing at Barefoot Boogie NYC. I do not always get to play music to such a diverse and creative group of dancers. Also, several good, old friends were present as an additional treat for me.
What is The Barefoot Boogie?
The Barefoot Boogie is a freestyle dance which happens twice a month in New York City. We offer a relaxed, smoke- and alcohol-free environment where folks can freely express themselves in movement.
If you’ve enjoyed any kind of conscious dance, ecstatic dance, 5 Rhythms, JourneyDance, contact improvisation, or any other kind of freeform dance, you’ll enjoy the Barefoot Boogie.
People of all ages, families and kids are welcome. Come alone or bring your friends. You’ll find folks at the dance moving solo, with partners, and/or in groups. Dress as you wish, but please leave your street shoes at the door before hitting the dance floor. The Barefoot Boogie is a not-for-profit, cooperative and volunteer-run venture.
What Kinds of Music is Played at The Barefoot Boogie?
From our pool of talented DJs, two spin each dance. Each of our DJs has his or her own distinctive style, but one thing you can rely on is that at every Boogie you’ll hear a wide variety of music: R&B, World, Funk, Tribal, Hip Hop, Ambient, Reggae, House, African, Electronica, Disco, Rock, Techno, Drum & Bass, etc.
All professional DJs enjoy the opportunity to volunteer for such a fantastic community of dancers. Fun night at Barefoot Boogie, so grateful.
Saturday Night I will make my return to DJ at Barefoot Boogie in NYC! Barefoot Boogie is one of my favorite events to volunteer as DJ. I have been fully booked and not available to DJ there and think February was my last set there, too long and I miss it.
What is The Barefoot Boogie?
The Barefoot Boogie is a freestyle dance which happens twice a month in New York City. We offer a relaxed, smoke- and alcohol-free environment where folks can freely express themselves in movement.
If you’ve enjoyed any kind of conscious dance, ecstatic dance, 5 Rhythms, JourneyDance, contact improvisation, or any other kind of freeform dance, you’ll enjoy the Barefoot Boogie.
People of all ages, families and kids are welcome. Come alone or bring your friends. You’ll find folks at the dance moving solo, with partners, and/or in groups. Dress as you wish, but please leave your street shoes at the door before hitting the dance floor. The Barefoot Boogie is a not-for-profit, cooperative and volunteer-run venture.
What Kinds of Music is Played at The Barefoot Boogie?
From our pool of talented DJs, two spin each dance. Each of our DJs has his or her own distinctive style, but one thing you can rely on is that at every Boogie you’ll hear a wide variety of music: R&B, World, Funk, Tribal, Hip Hop, Ambient, Reggae, House, African, Electronica, Disco, Rock, Techno, Drum & Bass, etc.
Our normal schedule is the second and fourth Saturday of each month. We currently have the following format for the dance.
From 8:00 pm – 11:30 pm (possibly extended to 12:00). We start off with warm-up music. On alternate Barefoot Boogies (usually the 4th Saturday), we have a dance-related class that ends at 9:15, followed by DJed music. At 10:00, we’ll have a community/announcement circle where new folks are welcomed, we give an overview of the dance community, and anyone is invited to announce a service they offer, an apartment for rent, or an initiative they want to share. This is followed by our traditional circle dance (holding hands), and the rest of the evening is DJed music where you are free to express yourself in whatever way you like!
Barefoot Boogie is now meeting at Insight Meditation Center: 28 W 27th Street, 10th Floor (Buzzer #27).
Come join us Saturday Night at Barefoot Boogie to dance, move and have some fun!
Psy Gentleman is the latest single from Psy released in The USA. Psy Gentleman has some of the funny and sarcastic social commentary that made Gangnam Style such an international hit. It also has fun and hysterical dance moves that have created the string oif success he has enjoyed in South Korea. I used to live in South Korea and have such great appreciation for the people and culture whenever anything makes its way to American pop culture.
Psy Gentleman Music Video
Psy Gentleman Breaks You Tube Records!
The video for Psy Gentleman — the South Korean pop star’s hotly anticipated follow-up to the internationally ubiquitous “Gangnam Style” — set a new record for most hits on YouTube in a single day on April 14, earning 38 million views, according to Google. The “Kony 2012” short film held the prior record with 30 million. Psy Gentleman also set a day-of-debut record of 18.5 million views when it dropped April 13.
Psy’s “Gangnam Style” is YouTube’s most-watched video of all time at 1.5 billion views.
Psy Gentleman, which features the 35-year-old goofball lothario debuting a new hip-swinging signature dance and playing pranks on women in various locations around Seoul, has been viewed 215 million times in the 10 days since its release. It took Gangnam Style took more than 50 days to reach 100 million views.
Psy’s viral fortunes haven’t been buoyed by mainstream media support back home, though. The video for “Gentleman” was banned by a South Korean broadcaster last week because of its depiction of “the abuse of public property.” In one sequence in the video, Psy is seen kicking a “no parking” sign. The Hollywood Reporter
Psy Gentleman is the 19th K-pop single by South Korean musician Psy released on April 12, 2013 (KST). It is the follow-up to his international hit single “Gangnam Style“, which at the time of Gentleman’s release had been viewed on YouTube over 1.5 billion times. The first public performance of the song, with its associated dance, was unveiled at 6:30 pm on April 13 at Seoul World Cup Stadium in Seoul. A poster and Twitter message was released containing the main line of the song “I’m a mother fxxxxx gentleman”; the word was later revealed to be “father”
The video is described to have a “sexual twist” in comparison to his previous single and features Psy performing a “fast, hip-swinging dance” and wearing an array of jackets in wide-ranging colors and sunglasses that he has become known for wearing. Before the release of the video, he hinted that the choreography will be a unique take on a classic dance by stating that “All Koreans know this dance. But (those in) other countries haven’t seen it”. The dance was later revealed to be the “arrogant dance” from the song “Abracadabra” by South Korean girl group Brown Eyed Girls. Lee Joo Sun, Psy’s choreographer who came up with the ‘horse-riding’ dance for “Gangnam Style,” had said, “We have a great dance. We thought up 50 different dances, everything from a sports dance to an animal dance, but we finally decided that [Brown Eyed Girls’] dance fits the song best.” The music video also features an appearance by the girl group member Ga-In. Psy reportedly paid a royalty to Brown Eyed Girls’ choreographers in order to use the routine in the video.
The video also revealed other dance move along with ‘arrogant dance’. The dance move was called the ‘crab dance’ where one moves sideways with their hands in the shape of a crab’s claw, and created by Lee Job-Sun.
I still get excited every time I am scheduled to DJ at Barefoot Boogie NYC! It surprises me each event, because in my head, one of these days I am not going to be so excited and pumped for the gig. I have been the DJ there so many times now and feel like I am part of what happens. It is such a positive experience for me and the dance community.
What is The Barefoot Boogie?
The Barefoot Boogie is a freestyle dance which happens twice a month in New York City. We offer a relaxed, smoke- and alcohol-free environment where folks can freely express themselves in movement.
People of all ages, families and kids are welcome. Come alone or bring your friends. You’ll find folks at the dance moving solo, with partners, and/or in groups. Dress as you wish, but please leave your street shoes at the door before hitting the dance floor. The Barefoot Boogie is a not-for-profit, cooperative and volunteer-run venture.
From our pool of talented DJs, two spin each dance. Each of our DJs has his or her own distinctive style, but one thing you can rely on is that at every Barefoot Boogie you’ll hear a wide variety of music: R&B, World, Funk, Tribal, Hip Hop, Ambient, Reggae, House, African, Electronica, Disco, Rock, Techno, Drum & Bass, etc.
Where and When is The Barefoot Boogie?
Our normal schedule is the second and fourth Saturday of each month. We currently have the following format for the dance.
From 8:00 pm – 11:30 pm (possibly extended to 12:00). We start off with warm-up music. On alternate Boogies (usually the 4th Saturday), we have a dance-related class that ends at 9:15, followed by DJed music. At 10:00, we’ll have a community/announcement circle where new folks are welcomed, we give an overview of the dance community, and anyone is invited to announce a service they offer, an apartment for rent, or an initiative they want to share. This is followed by our traditional circle dance (holding hands), and the rest of the evening is DJed music where you are free to express yourself in whatever way you like!
It is fun to mix in some of the great Soul and R&B music of the 70’s. How can you not enjoy grooving to artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Bill Withers, Sly & The Family Stone, James Brown and the list goes on. DJ 70’s Soul Mix was a really fun mix to make and as is the case with all of them, still had so many more on the list I wanted to include.
According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is “music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying.” Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the soloist and the chorus, and an especially tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds.
In Detroit, producer Don Davis worked with Stax artists such as Johnnie Taylor and The Dramatics. Early 1970s recordings by The Detroit Emeralds, such as Do Me Right, are a link between soul and the later disco style. Motown Records artists such as Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson contributed to the evolution of soul music, although their recordings were considered more in apop music vein than those of Redding, Franklin and Carr. Although stylistically different from classic soul music, recordings by Chicago-based artists are often considered part of the genre.
Rhode Island Wedding DJ 70’s Soul Mix History
By the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres. The social and political ferment of the times inspired artists like Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to release album-length statements with hard-hitting social commentary. Artists like James Brown led soul towards funk music, which became typified by 1970s bands like Parliament-Funkadelic and The Meters. More versatile groups like War, the Commodores and Earth, Wind and Fire became popular around this time. During the 1970s, some slick and commercial blue-eyed soul acts like Philadelphia’s Hall & Oates and Oakland’s Tower of Power achieved mainstream success, as did a new generation of street-corner harmony or city-soul groups like The Delfonics and Howard University’s Unifics.
The syndicated television series Soul Train, created hosted by Chicago native Don Cornelius, debuted in 1971. The show provided an outlet for soul music for several decades, also spawning a franchise that saw the creation of a record label (Soul Train Records) that distributed music by The Whispers, Carrie Lucas, and an up-and-coming group known as Shalamar. Numerous disputes led to Cornelius spinning off the record label to his talent booker, Dick Griffey, who transformed the label into Solar Records, itself a prominent soul music label throughout the 1980s. The TV series continued to air until 2006, although other predominantly black music genre such as hip hop began overshadowing soul on the show beginning in the 1980s.
Maroon 5 keeps finding a way to blend their unique style into fascinating pop hits. In this age of sound-alike pop stars, it is refreshing to hear a band create their own sound and be successful to a broad range of listeners like Maroon 5 One More Night.
Maroon 5 One More Night Music Video
Maroon 5 One More Night have listed some of their musical influences as Prince, Michael Jackson, The Police, Oasis, Talking Heads and Shabba Ranks, as well as Stevie Wonder. You can here all these influences in their music and style clearly. It is not a surprise that they produce a poppy, dance-oriented version of Modern Rock with a semi-Reggae beat loosely infused. As a funny side note, the Los Angeles band’s previous name was ‘Kara’s Flowers’ due to the band having a “collective crush” on a girl they all knew. This may be part of the reason they write songs predominantly about love.
I really enjoy music from varied cultures and places throughout the world, one of the reasons I appreciate travel as much as I do. However, I find the term, ‘World Music’ annoying and condescending. It speaks to The American mindset that there is the American way and everybody else is one big category called ‘other’. In India alone, there are enough musical genre to make this an obsolete term. The same is true for the continents of Africa, South America and Asia. It is sad to me that we glop them all together as one genre, ‘World Music’. Unfortunately, it is some of my favorite sources of music and I do not have a better name for the DJ World Music Party Mix.
DJ World Music Party Mix
mp3j track= “World-Music-Party-Mix.mp3”]
I am a true fan of music from many places globally, some I have had the opportunity to visit, others I hope to make it there someday soon. This particular mix of music includes music from India, The Middle East, Bulgaria, Northwest Africa, Japan, Latin America, Jamaica and other great sources of music. Let me know what you think of the DJ World Music Party Mix!
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about World Music:
“World music is a musical category encompassing many different styles of music from around the world, including traditional music, quasi-traditional music, and music where more than one cultural tradition intermingle. World music’s inclusive nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally exotic is encapsulated in fRoots magazine’s description of the genre as “local music from out there”. The term originated in the late 20th century as a marketing category and academic classification for non-Western traditional music. Globalization has facilitated the expansion of world music’s audiences and scope. It has grown to include hybrid sub-genres such as world fusion, global fusion, ethnic fusion and worldbeat.”
Disco Music continues to gain popularity among those who enjoyed and danced to it when it was at its peak in the 70’s and 80’s, and also gaining popularity with younger audiences who just like to dance to the clean beats and simple rhythms. Since I get asked for Disco Music more and more, it seemed time to create a DJ Classic Disco Mix. Like some of the other genre that involve older music formats, there is so much to choose from, I had trouble deciding what songs to include in the DJ Classic Disco Mix and know I left out some favorites.
DJ Classic Disco Mix
Classic Disco Mix - DJ Mystical Michael
Disco is a genre of music which was popular from the mid to late 1970s. Its initial audiences were club-goers from the African American, Latino, gay, and psychedelic communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco also was a reaction against both the domination of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Women embraced disco as well, and the music eventually expanded to several other popular groups of the time.
Musical influences include funk, Latin and soul music. The disco sound has soaring, often reverberated vocals over a steady“four-on-the-floor” beat, an eighth note (quaver) or 16th note (semi-quaver) hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a prominent, syncopatedelectric bass line sometimes consisting of octaves. The Fender Jazz Bass is often associated with disco bass lines, because the instrument itself has a very prominent “voice” in the musical mix. In most disco tracks, strings, horns, electric pianos, and electric guitars create a lush background sound. Orchestral instruments such as the flute are often used for solo melodies, and lead guitar is less frequently in disco than in rock. Many disco songs employ the use of electronic instruments such as synthesizers.
I have been an admirer of David Guetta’s work as well as Usher over the years. In recent years there are some that have believed that Usher had lost his edge and was now just another Pop musician. David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You demonstrates he still has it. It was not that long ago that James Brown had announced Usher as ‘The Godson of Soul’ at The Grammys.
His new works, David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You and “Climax”, Usher is showing some of the ‘oomph’ that has not been as evident in recent years. It is good to see and a great song that every professional DJ can include in our performances!
David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You Music Video
David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You Story
David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You is a song by French DJDavid Guetta, featuring vocals from American recording artist Usher. It was released as the third single from Guetta’s fifth studio album, Nothing but the Beat on October 21, 2011. It was written by Usher, Taio Cruz,Rico Love, David Guetta, Giorgio Tuinfort and Frédéric Riesterer while being produced by Guetta, Tuinfort, Riesterer and Black Raw. The song peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Guetta’s third top ten single, following “Club Can’t Handle Me” and “Sexy Bitch“, as well as his highest peaking in the US to date. As of September 2012, David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You has sold 2,684,000 copies in the US. David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You was also covered by Lea Michele in Glee’s episode “Yes/No” and by Olly Murs for BBC Radio 1‘s Live Lounge in November 2011.
The electro–ballad features the anguished vocals of R&B singer Usher. Guetta told Billboard magazine it’s “maybe the biggest song I’ve made in my life.” He added: “We were in bargaining sessions for a while. Usher was saying, ‘I need this record for my album.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, I cannot give it to you.’ After a while he called me back and gave in.” Guetta told MTV News why he chose Usher to guest on this song. “It’s just totally emotional,” he said. “Some of the record is a proper ballad, and then it goes to that crazy dance beat. It’s perfect for him, because he’s famous for his ballads. And he’s also now famous for those big club records that he comes with. He’s an amazing dancer, so I felt like he was the artist that I needed.” Usher told MTV News that this ode to not giving up on love in the face of adversity resonated with him personally. “I think the world wanted a record like that. David Guetta Featuring Usher Without You really spoke to the journey that I’ve actually been on in the last three years,” he said. “Traveling all around the world, music sounds different. There’s many different genres, and when you see R&B and pop and house, as well as electronic, come together, that’s the reality of what music is.”
