Confession: I love to dance. Ever since I was a wee tiny tot, put the right music on and I will move to it. At times in my life I’ve studied ballet and tap (alas, my enthusiasm probably exceeds my talent there) and dabbled with other forms (Zumba’s taught me the basics of all kinds of dance) but the most fun is still to just put on the music and dance like there’s no-one watching!

And that brings me to this week’s Summer Fun entry. It’s not uncontroversial: the track I’ve picked was plagiarised by a French entrepreneur, from a Bolivian melody, played by Senegalese musicians and sung in Portuguese (got that? Good…) while the style of dance the Lambada dance evolved from, carimbó, was also known as the forbidden dance for its sensual movements! It’s possibly not quite what your eleven year old daughter perhaps should be dancing along to…

But I was, and did, at a dance summer school. (The same summer school also taught me how to ride a unicycle and various diablo tricks [can’t do the former any more; haven’t tried the latter in a long time!])

As a child it represented fun and the one dance where having a rear end was not actually a hinderance (!) and I adored it just for that. As an adult, it reminds me of one of my most enjoyable summer activities. I may not have been destined for the Royal Ballet or Broadway but good grief, dancing was fun!

On a final note, given the plagiarism (a case which the original Bolivian musicians won), it’s perhaps amusing to note that things have come full-circle. There’s a local panpipe player of Bolivian descent who plays this track as part of their repertoire.

The summer fun playlist can be found on Spotify here.

That’s all for now. Happy reading and listening!