16th July, 2011
When I wrote this blog's entry on the 1990 #1 "Lambada", I was still in many ways blindly groping in the dark when it came to hearing and describing music from a non-rock tradtition. But I'm grateful to the younger version of myself for not getting into the song's background (was I too rushed to look at Wikipedia that week?), because it gives me a chance to do it for this revival.
"Taboo" follows directly in the pattern of Don Omar's enormous crossover success with "Danza Kuduro", another turbo-slick rewrite of a big splashy hook from the Lusophone world that was itself raiding from another, slightly older tradition. This time he's pilfering from French producers Kaoma's bandwagon-jumping "Lambada," a reinterpretation of the Brazilian Maria Ferreira's 1986 lambada hit "Chorando Se Foi" which was itself based on Bolivian folkloric group Los Kjarkas' "Llorando Se Fue", first recorded in 1981.
Each subsequent version keeps the swooning melody, but ups the party-anthem quality, and Don Omar's "Taboo," coming twenty-two years after Kaoma had their moment in the sun, has none of Los Kjarkas' quality of lamentation, even as he keeps several of their original lyrics intact; but he switches from Spanish to Portuguese from verse to verse, as the music video switches locations from Puerto Rico to Rio de Janeiro -- and also inserts shots from the then-current fifth movie in the Fast & the Furious franchise, which happened to also include setpieces in those locations, and in which Omar himself appeared.
Music as an extruded byproduct of international corporate entertainment synergy is more or less representative of where things stood in the early 2010s. The recording won "Urban Song of the Year" at the ASCAP awards, a traditional recognition of revenue generated; but despite drawing from a rich history, it was a terminus, a dead end that led to nothing more; even the later return to reggaetón that raided Latin music history left it alone.
And why is it called "Taboo"? Because of the "forbidden dance" press legend around the lambada, presumably. Everything else about it is shiny and ersatz; of course you print the legend.
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