In this context, I always wonder how people actually know what dancing was like in the Middle Ages... In historical films, weโre always presented with some kind of medieval dances, but there are no records in the form of moving images or anything like that.
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Given the life expectancy at the time, the high child mortality rate, and the fact that childhood was not recognized as such but rather that children were treated like adults, all of this is consistent and logical.
In this context, I always wonder how people actually know what dancing was like in the Middle Ages... In historical films, weโre always presented with some kind of medieval dances, but there are no records in the form of moving images or anything like that.
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Saltarello is the dance, not the song. There are a number of "saltarellos" i.e. songs that you would dance to with this step, just like there are a number of waltzes that you would dance the waltz to.
From dance manuals and choreographs, which survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltarello#History
That one uses this song
Two more saltarello songs.
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Dances traditionally were something for everyone and for social occasions for all adults, they were not exhibitions of athleticism or skill. Learning some basic dance steps would allow you to dance a saltarello, or a waltz, or whatever the cultural dance was. Everyone learned the same dance and could participate.
I love Strauss waltzes. Other than at weddings, where people are just doing their own thing, most people never get the chance to do social dancing the way everyone used to. That is why some people get into line dancing, or pay a ton of money for ballroom dance lessons. They find it fun to get dressed up and dance a standard dance with a large group as a social activity.
Here is one of the most beautiful waltzes of all, The Blue Danube. Interestingly this is a live performance showing both the orchestra and the dancers. You can find waltz dance scenes in a lot of historical movies but usually they are quite short, which is a shame, because they are very large and expensive scenes.
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I like that a lot. It's one of those songs I feel like I've heard a million times yet I've never heard all the way through. You're right that the drum line is similar.
I like the artist of the one I posted, George Clanton. His stuff seems unique to me. People describe him as vaporwave, but he doesn't describe himself that way.
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That's how I feel about this song lol. I could have sworn it's on the Buffy soundtrack, but it isn't. I can't even remember when/where I became familiar with it. Think I found it while searching for something else on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, Little Star.
Yeah that Macintosh Plus video doesn't sound anything like the George Clanton songs you've posted to me. I will have to look into him further. He has a retro-80's sound that reminds me of Roosevelt.
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I used to like that song quite a bit. I had a couple Mazzy Star songs on my iPod. I remember clearly that that was the first one of hers I heard, which makes me think I heard it on a show or something too, but I have no idea where. Or maybe the Pandora algorithm played it for me because it was popular and I'm making things up.
I like looking at Spotify listen counts. It gives an idea what songs were popular over the last twenty years. That song (Fade Into You) is an order of magnitude more popular than her next most played song at 830 million plays.
Macintosh Plus was a bad example, I was thinking of this song but couldn't remember what it was called:
The heavy use of synths and intentional introduction of tape hiss and lo-fi effects (and doubtlessly other subtle qualities that I'm not equipped to describe) give vaporwave the retro-80's aesthetic you mentioned. An essential quality of vaporwave is that it evokes nostalgia, which that Roosevelt song you shared, though somewhat similar, is missing. For his part, George Clanton experiments with sounds and effects on an electronic keyboard until he find something that evokes memories, then tries to incorporate it as often as possible in his songs. A lot of vaporwave is meme music; electronic instrumentals like Macintosh Plus or Resonance that are popular online, but George Clanton's inclusion of pop elements and vocals is an unusual and, in my opinion, cool genre blend.Note
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Well that Roosevelt song might not be nostalgic for you, but for people who used to go out dancing in the 80's, it is very nostalgic. That song could easily have been played on a dance floor in 1984. Same kind of synths. As soon as I heard it I sent a link to the youtube of it to a woman I know who also lived through and loved 80's music and she agreed, it sounds like it was recorded in 1984. Reminds me of Blancmange, 1984 songs that we danced to.
I don't really care for instrumental synth music like that Home song. It definitely was not an 80's thing. I think it came later with raves and electronic music festivals, I know someone who flies around the country, catching covid and going to electronic music festivals where thousands of people dance outdoors day and night amongst LEDs and lasers while artists play synth songs that last hours, like some weird electronic version of a Grateful Dead concert. Drugs tend to be involved.
I do like music like the Orb, an early 90's phenomenon
but it has a lot more structure to it and feels more organic to me than those pure synth artists do. There were electronic music artists from the beginning like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis etc but I didn't like most of their stuff. I liked Vangelis' Rubycon but it was kind of sinister.
Jean Michelle Jarre was pretty good, in the late 70s and early 80s.
Here is a version of one his songs, played live at a concert in China, which has a great synthesizer solo absent in the studio album. This is very unlike most of his stuff, which is more atmospheric, with an early Pink Floyd kind of feel, like the albums above.
Musical taste is hard to describe. There is just something soulless to me about modern electronic upbeat music. But I never liked a lot of the older electronic music either lol. What I did like was synths used with vocals and bass, like Gary Numan and a lot of other early 80s artists were doing. The Thompson Twins deliberately dropped most of their band to go to an almost pure synthesizer sound (with bass) for the Side Kicks (or Quick Step & Side Kick, different titles in different countries) album.
First heavy one I heard from the 70s using this style was probably this 1975 hit:
But just pure synths? I don't care for most of it, often sounds too generic, like a random algorithm made it.l i t t l es t e p h e r sNote
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