Jersey Club Dance Style at Bounce Ballroom, Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2014, in Brooklyn, NY, USA, on 1 May, 2014.
As we continue to celebrate African dance, dancing in the diaspora has to be acknowledged as well. And unless you live in New Jersey, a state located on the East Coast of the United States, then you are likely not familiar with an ongoing dance craze that takes its soundtrack from what is most commonly known as “Jersey Club Music.” So here goes…and we hope you enjoy!
SEE ALSO: East African Youths Do What We Love To Do: Dance!
Keep Up With Face2Face Africa On Facebook!
With DJs Mike V, Black Mic, Tameil, and Tim Dolla at the helm, Jersey Club Music originated in the 1990’s club scene in the city of Newark, bringing the sound of 1980’s Baltimore, Maryland, clubs to the Garden State.
But it wasn’t until 2006 that the club sound reignited a dance scene for a new generation that one DJ Sliink described by 2013 as “…a bunch of popular dance groups out in Jersey, so they’ll come and make a dance at a small party when a DJ plays a song and maybe runs it back a few times…. Then you go to the next party, and everybody’s doing that dance. At the next party, it’s even bigger. Then, they’ll make a video and that’s how the kids learn it.”
DJ Sliink added, “It’s kind of a crazy scene. But it’s cool because it keeps the kids out of trouble. If I was younger, I’d probably be doing that too.”
And according to RuntheTrap, Jersey Club and Baltimore club music is “very similar; both are based on a 4/4 time signature and tend to fall in the 130-140 BPM range, making gratuitous use of short sample loops and shuffled triplet kick patterns to create a ‘bouncy’ groove.”
Today, there are a number of dance groups that have emerged, such as #TeamB-Out, #UpNowBoyz, #Jcb; they battle one another as well as dance together.
Below, you can enjoy dance groups #TeamLilMan, #Team609, and #SluttyBoys show their skills to the sounds of DJ Telly Teliz and Kamoni Sincere.
Get ready!
SEE ALSO: Kpanlogo, the Dance of Enjoyment
