Jacking: Difference between revisions
Shortened one quotation, added one weblink. Also overdone information box. |
added "house dance" to "other topics" |
||
| Line 10: | Line 10: | ||
| local_scenes = |
| local_scenes = |
||
| regional_scenes = |
| regional_scenes = |
||
| other_topics = {{hlist|[[House music]]|[[Chicago house]]}} |
| other_topics = {{hlist|[[House dance]]|[[House music]]|[[Chicago house]]}} |
||
}} |
}} |
||
Revision as of 11:17, 31 October 2019
| Jacking | |
|---|---|
| Cultural origins | Early to mid 1980s, underground club culture, Chicago, United States |
| Other topics | |
Jacking, Jackin’ or the jack, is a freestyle dance move in which the dancer ripples his or her torso back and forth in an undulating motion. It was created within the context of Chicago house music in the 1980s.
Origins and interpretations
The style is said to have developed in Chicago nightclubs like the Warehouse and the Power Plant, where house pioneer Frankie Knuckles was resident DJ, and Ron Hardy’s Music Box, during the early 1980s.[1]
Music journalist Simon Reynolds has argued that just as house music evolved from disco music (among other influences – see House music), jacking evolved from the expressiveness of disco dancing.[2] Even more than disco, house music endorsed an “abandonment of subjectivity and self-will”, promoting the “ecstasy of being enthralled by the beat”.[2] He sees jacking as a reflection of this abandonment of subjectivity:
“In disco, dance had gradually shed its role as courtship ritual and opened up into unpaired freestyle self-expression. Jacking took this to the next stage, replacing pelvic thrust and booty shake with a whole-body frenzy of polymorphously perverse tics and convulsive pogo-ing.” — Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy, 1999, p. 29[2]
A similiar account on the sexual content of jacking was suggested by Barry Walters in his 1986 article on house music in SPIN magazine:
“House lyrical content consists of dancing and sex. ‘Jacking your body’ (moving up and down on a dance floor) can easily slide into sex. [...] Like the incessantly booming beat, house sexuality is reduced to absurdly aggressive basics, but not without a self-mocking playfulness and an underlying message of liberation.” — Barry Walters: Burning Down the House, 1986[3]
DJ and record producer Chip E. also explains the body movements in jacking with a reference to sexuality:
“Some of the music is explicitly sexual because some of the individuals are explicitly sexual. House is suited for the way people dance now, which is like being in bed but standing up. ‘Jacking’ is to house as ‘boogying’ was to disco.” — Chip E., quoted by Walters, Burning Down the House, 1986[3]
“Jackin’ house” as a style of music
The terms “jacking”, “jackin’” or “jack” also found their way into numerous titles of early house music records, such as the “Jack Trax” EP by Chip E. (1985), “Jack’n the House” (1985) by Farley “Jackmaster” Funk (1985) or “Jack Your Body” by Steve “Silk” Hurley (1986). By this, the term was not only associated with a certain dance style, but also with a certain, particularly percussive style of Chicago and acid house music that can be referred to as “jackin’ house”.[4] The term is also transferred to newer styles of house music.[5]
References
- ^ Tim Lawrence: Acid ⎯ Can You Jack? (2005).
- ^ a b c Reynolds, Simon (1999). Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of House Music and Rave Culture. Routledge. pp. 27–31.
- ^ a b Barry Walters: Burning Down the House. SPIN magazine, November 1986.
- ^ What the funk is Jackin' House music?, Sonaris Music (2014).
- ^ What is Jackin House? History and meaning of Jackin House, Pressure Radio.
External links
- Czarina Mirani: Spin Slide and Jack: A History of House Dancing on 5 Magazine, 2005.
- Tim Lawrence: Acid ⎯ Can You Jack?. Liner Notes to an acid house compilation, 2005
- Makkada B. Selah: Powder Burns – Essay on house dance in Village Voice, 2007
