Misticrick...Misticrack

The other night, I saw a show at the Kimmel Center called Kadanse by a group named Tamango’s Urban Tap. It was an extremely fun and interesting experience. They mix the sounds and dance of Jazz with that of Afro/Haitian/Caribbean music and dance, and the combination is breath taking.

Sometimes they would do pure Jazz stuff, then they would do pure Caribbean stuff, and sometimes there was a healthy mix of the two. But what I like most is that this guy did some tap moves where he seemed to float around the stage. I’ve never seen that before.

A lot of the music made me want to dance. You couldn’t help but clap your hands and move around in your seat. The coolest thing was this tap challenge. One guy was in tap shoes, and the other guy was dancing on stilts. That is fucking bad ass! Then they had this thing where they would say Misticrick, and we would say Misticrack, and they would say Ye Crick, and we would say Ye Crack. I still have no freaking idea what this means, but audience participation, when done the right way can be so cool. I remember something some Comic said about how he hates it when the bands make them sing the songs. He was like, I paid 100 fucking bucks to hear you sing, asshole.

But I think that this all reminded me of how much Black culture has influenced the Arts, especially Dance, in America. They call Jazz the only true American art form, and it was created by Blacks. I love Bob Fosse, but the isolationist movements that he did were taken directly from Black influences. George Gershwin was so good because he was a Jewish guy with some soul to him. I’ll tell you, there is nothing cooler than white people who grew up around Black people. They are fearless and sometimes act like more of an angry Black person than I do.

Shoot, now I want to see more stuff from other cultures. I would love to see a live showing of Alvin Ailey’s “Revelation”. I’d love to see Ladysmith Black Mambozo. I have great memories of them in the famous Paul Simon “Graceland” concert in Africa. I would kill to see Juan Luis Guerra live, especially if it is in the Dominican Republic. It would be such a fun time. So I guess now is the time to kick ass and expand my artistic horizons even more.