Dance in 2010 is in the same position rock was in 1956. The computerization of sound has made a two piece dance band like the very wonderful Afrobeta as big a sound as Giorgio Moroder ever imagined with his banks of computers.
In the confines of International Playground, the East Coast adjunct of a West Coast boutique, Cuci Amador stamps her heart out in the middle of the room, accosting punters wandering to the bar, dancing with a woman, flirting with the cameras, going outside and singing on the street. The lead singer and beta half of Miami based Afrobeta, is the embodiment of dance clubs: “You live in the day time,” she sings on a song dedicated to her parents, “We love in the night time.”
It is a hedonistic call to party at the heart of what Afrobeta propagate as though the past 30 years can disappear like that and we are all back at Studio.
But they can’t go back and it is the Afro portion of the duo, Tony Smurphio who roots them in today, providing sophisticated electronic wizardry. I was standing in front of him and watched in amazement as he worked the keyboard to the M-Audio Axiom Pro 49. This is expensive electronic gaming but to consider it not playing a musical instrument is to consider playing an electric guitar not playing a musical instrument. Tony is, simply, magnificently. He moves from sequencer to keyboard to mac in a blur of sweetening. Is that an acoustic guitar I am listening to? Where is all these echoes coming from? Compatible with Mac and Pro-Tools, this is why Dance duos are blowing shit up. But as Tony proves it is not enough to own a keyboard any more than it is enough to own a Les Paul.
Back in the center of the room, Cuci lives what she says: dance song after dance song extolling the virtues of fun for funs sake. As the New Romantics taught us a long time ago, when you use music to proselytize a lifestyle, you form movements. Cuci’s s the image of youthfulness as she declaims the straight world: “You wanna play house and make babies? You must be crazy. Watcha thinking baby…?”
The night is young and the party goes on forever.