In 1981, a Bolivian folk group called Los Kjarkas wrote “ Llorando Se Fue” based on an ancient Andean melody. Portuguese colonizers added European influences to carimbó and centuries later, adopted cumbia and merengue movements to it, becoming lambada. It’s the only form of dance that the three ethnic groups of Indigenous people of the region practiced and contributed to. Aspects of it can be traced back to carimbó, a Pre-Columbian dance style that takes its name from a drum. One of the only true Brazilian aspects of “Lambada” is the dance itself. Sociological pondering aside, the more you look into it, the more convinced this was all orchestrated to maximum effect. In the video, Chico and Roberta are Black and white, respectively while there’s no record of it, one can imagine that it caused some racist comments from pundits arguing against its “perverted” nature. Latinx expressing themselves through dance that has not been approved by mainstream white and white-aspiring guardians of decency in Latin American countries has remained a hot button issue. Perreo comes from reggaeton as danced in poor barrios, while “Lambada” can’t be divorced from the image of the favelas of Brazil, even if the video depicts the beaches of Bahía as its scenery. Both are considered sexually provocative dances that should not be performed in public. It’s hard not to draw parallels between the comments made about the lambada dance and perreo. Soon enough, talk shows and news casts debated the moral weight of “Lambada.” The dance in question involved squeezing bodies tighly, swinging hips in unison, and only separating for the women to perform spins to have their short skirts fly around because of its sexual connotations, it was nicknamed (or marketed as) “the forbidden dance.” Most people came to know the dance through the video, starring two young teens, Washington Oliveira and Roberta de Brito (known professionally as Chico & Roberta) that helped fan the flames of controversy. Like many modern chart-toppers, “Lambada” became a worldwide hit thanks in part to its accompanied dance, long before the internet–let alone Tik Tok–were part of our everyday routine. “Lambada” is a catchy enough tune to propel it to number one, but it’s everything around it that pushed it to ubiquity. Quite the feat for a tune sung entirely in Portuguese. It also peaked at number 46 on the Hot 100 in 1990 and ended selling 5 million copies worldwide. Soon enough, it was topping the charts in Europe, followed by Latin America, and finally, the United States when “Lambada” hit number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Chart and spent seven weeks in that position. Kaoma dropped the song of the summer in July 1989, a catchy Brazilian track accompanied by a racy video that made an instant impression. The story at first seems pretty straight. To put it in context, picture the conservative media reaction to “WAP,” then imagine major motion picture studios releasing multiple films based on the song only to find out nothing about the song was real. Looking back, it’s far from a product of its time, since the discourse then echoes in cultural products of our time. While “Lambada” might be a dated artifact of the dawn of the ‘90s, at the time it was a cultural watershed moment, a global Latinx music hit when those were not as common as they are today, a bastion of public moral decency that reeked of classist and racist connotations, and an example of when a fad could be taken too far. In 2020, “Lambada” seems like little more than a bleep in pop culture history it’s hard to picture the massive worldwide phenomenon it was. Welcome to Ponlo En Repeat where we revisit Latinx music history’s biggest hits, misses, and unbelievable moments and how they impact our world today.
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