Akemi Ishii – Lambada (ランバダ)
November 4, 2022 9:46 PM   Subscribe

[Quick link to the music video] Years before the Macarena enraptured the planet for a short while, we witnessed another dance phenomenon that had swept Earth (including Japan) – Lambada. There was no way to escape it from 1989 to 1990.

Akemi Ishii(石井明美)was the one singer who decided to do a cover version of "Lambada" as her 8th single released in March 1990. Originally called "Llorando se fue", (in Japan, it is known as "Nakinagara"...泣きながら/While Crying), it was released back in 1981 by the Bolivian folk band Los Kjarkas. The true original version was quite a bit more laid back in delivery, unlike its peppy incarnation as "Lambada". Ever since the French-Brazilian pop unit Kaoma made an unauthorized interpretation of the song, the result was a worldwide phenomenon. One lawsuit later, the latter started paying the licensing fees to the former.

"Llorando se fue" was written and composed by Ulises and Gonzalo Hermosa. As for the Ishii cover, Kaoru Asagi (麻木かおる) took care of the Japanese lyrics.
posted by Roverlaw (20 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow! I didn't know the history of this song and have heard it many times, thanks for the post.
posted by freethefeet at 10:33 PM on November 4, 2022 [2 favorites]


Oh! On listening, I realise I know where I know the Akemi version from - Chifa Lai Lai - a Chinese Restaurant in Cochabamba, Bolivia. There were at one time three Lai Lais, I preferred Lai Lai 1 but I think it might have closed. Where I was old enough to know where the Macarena came from, this one was just there in the background of my childhood, swinging my feet as I sat on the padded and intricately carved dining room chairs, watching the fish in the fish tank while we waited for our takeaway order.
posted by freethefeet at 12:34 AM on November 5, 2022


Of the two dances that plagued the family weddings of my youth, I definitely preferred watching my aunts and uncles trying to do the Macarena over the Lambada.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:01 AM on November 5, 2022 [4 favorites]


Jacquilynne: a few years ago I went to a production of The Rocky Horror Show directed by a friend of mine. My family was sitting just behind his, and so I got to see his septuagenarian mother, sitting directly in front of me, doing the pelvic thrust that really drives you ins-a-a-a-a-ane. That was.... sufficient.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:11 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


We can’t talk about that here! It is… forbidden.
posted by Servo5678 at 6:54 AM on November 5, 2022 [9 favorites]


You forgot there was a movie! (imdb)

Kevin Laird is a Beverly Hills school teacher by day and a mystery man by night. Using his lambada dance moves to first earn the kid's respect and acceptance, Kevin then teaches them academics. But when a jealous student exposes Kevin's double life, his two worlds collide, threatening his job and reputation.


The trailer is skin-crawling. Strongly implies a sexual relationship between a teacher and a schoolgirl. Probably best forgotten.
posted by adept256 at 7:25 AM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


There's a German version - Wir tanzen Lambada · Andrea Jürgens
posted by adept256 at 7:32 AM on November 5, 2022


Thank you for posting this; I never actually heard the Japanese song.

Lambada! There's something I haven't thought of in a dog's age. Probably even less than the Macarena. I was maybe nine, and I remember being confused as to what the Lambada actually involved. There was a lot of swirling your skirt around? And then the guy picked you up? It was somewhere in there, and other kids said it had to do with rubbing your underwear on the guy, but this was also pretty vague. I never did watch the movie or anything to find out; I wasn't all that interested in dancing, just forbidden knowledge.

adept256: another fine product from Cannon Films, I see.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:38 AM on November 5, 2022


Oh yeah, there was a moral panic. There was a fear that if kids learnt this sexy dance it would be the end of civilization. It seems to happen every generation, remember the outrage over Miley Cyrus twerking? Last I checked civilization is doing just - well okay, there are problems but it's not because of dancing.
posted by adept256 at 7:59 AM on November 5, 2022


I forgot, and then remembered, there were two movies.
posted by box at 8:14 AM on November 5, 2022


There was a fear that if kids learnt this sexy dance it would be the end of civilization.

This makes some sense of something funny that happened to me. Bonus anecdote: I was around that age when a chaperone busted me for "dirty dancing" at a boy-girl summer camp mixer. I did not know this was what I was doing -- I had a pleated skirt that I was raising up over my knees and swishing back and forth while I did something like the twist. This seemed to be what was on TV, where you saw a lot of pseudo-Lambada at the time.

I didn't get in actual trouble, and in fact I was pretty proud of myself. Since I was teased about it later, I could tell it was the only thing I'd ever done that anyone at camp had liked about me. (This made sense at the time. Being a preteen has many rules that we forget about later in life.)

I had a niggling sense that something wasn't right about this, which is the reason I remember it, but I wouldn't realize till later that it was a weird thing to tell a little girl. As weird as having a boy-girl mixer for kids that age. But I guess no age is too young for compulsory heterosexuality, and being told a dance is "dirty" is a part of that.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:25 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


METAFILTER: there are problems but it's not because of dancing.
posted by philip-random at 8:57 AM on November 5, 2022 [2 favorites]


I was in Tony n' Tina's Wedding a few years ago, a show that normally takes place in the 80's (apparently 1989 now!) but we didn't do the 80's ness. However, it's in the script that two characters do the lambada. I note that the two people doing this are the most "I can't dance, I have two left feet" people, by their own definition. They will complain at great length if forced to dance, and one of them used to do "I Can't Dance" at karaoke to make the point.

They did it, and they were totally technically fine, albeit the most bored-looking people you ever saw doing the lambada in your life. She has gone on to avoid all dance numbers since, while he has since been forced to do sexy dancing in other shows because he's a dude in theater.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:19 AM on November 5, 2022


Random lambada fact: when trucks in Syria are reversing, they don’t go beep beep beep like they do in most places. They play the lambada. I have no idea why.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 12:51 PM on November 5, 2022 [6 favorites]


Lambada truck Ho Chi Minh Vietnam

Maybe it's the make of truck?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 2:09 PM on November 5, 2022 [3 favorites]


That would make sense. Weird that I heard it all over Syria and have never encountered it elsewhere though.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 4:32 PM on November 5, 2022


You can get them as aftermarket parts: Lambada Back Car Alarm • £15.00
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:38 PM on November 5, 2022 [1 favorite]


English Language version - for those who might otherwise be perplexed by the true meaning of a truck reversing in their direction.

I was in Chile at the height of the lambada craze there. Unfortunately I was in a bit of the country where the climate demanded heavy woollen ponchos and waterproofs. Better for the dancing to the Bolivian version then.
posted by rongorongo at 2:37 AM on November 6, 2022


Because of the craze and the movie, when I hear the word Lambada, I can't help doing a Hank Azaria Simpsons Character accent:
"dee Forbidden danz!"
posted by bartleby at 3:21 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


Sometime back in the early 2000s I was in Val de Resia, in northern Italy, recording the amazing fiddle music of the local Resiani people, who are a an isolated alpine minority group speaking an archaic dialect of Slovene Language. The fiddle tradition is still very strong, and so when the main fiddler of one village wound up getting too drunk to play for the Frico festival (everybody loves fried cheese!) I was drafted to fill in as second fiddler. We would play a set of these exquisite, archaic dances - which everybody knew and danced to - and then... lambada, followed by the Macarena. Then a set of trad dances, and then again... lambada! It went on all night long like that.
posted by zaelic at 4:16 PM on November 6, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older "Our radical ideas are now the conventional...   |   the move to onshoring is hypocritical Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments