James Brown & Yellowpants
That funky poppin’ beat brings back memories just two measures in. Those guitar chords slap that rhythm upside its head as the drummer keeps the heartbeat thumping on the 2 and 4. What I hear; what I see. It’s startling, a contradiction. A contradiction of hip-swinging music and eight Asians standing quietly. Respectfully. Heads bowed. Stereotypically.
But only for a moment.
They’ve climbed the mountain of entrenched tradition, reaching their peak with a wild celebration of clothing with patterns drawn from traditional Japanese weaving — one in loose pants and long tunic, one in a modified kimono split like gaucho pants, one in patchwork jumpsuit, oversized zoot suits, baggy jeans and French berets, And what about those old-timey American brogans, clunky black and white. Brogans and berets. They are a fashion revolution on the Eastern front, after having crossed the watery divide of musical oceans to rise up on the Western front.
Before the Godfather of Soul has sung the first line, “We’re gonna have a funky good time,” the group on the screen bursts into action — movin’, groovin’, jumpin’, bumpin’, rotatin’, gyratin’. The leader, known online as “Yellowpants,” forms a deep canyon in the middle of her dancers. Now and then she looks back as if to say, “Where y’all at? Are ya with me?”
These dancers are fierce, which is totally perfect for the Year of the Tiger. From his Do it to Death album, James Brown’s Soul megahit “We’re Gonna Have a Funky Good Time” keeps blasting as they split into a wide second-position plié. Although that wide-legged stance is sometimes found in bold traditional 16th-century Japanese Kabuki dance for men, it is uncommon for women whose clothing once restricted their movement.
But we’re in a new era. In this era, the hip-shaking, booty-popping, head-swiveling, rubber-necking moves are traditional 20th-century Soultrain line in Funkville USA. And that’s as it should be.
Yellowpants, Moga Almeri, lives in the mountains of Honshu, the island home to some of Japan’s most famous cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto. But isolated in the mountains as she was, TV and social media opened a wider choreographic world to her, a world of the 1970s dance trend called “waacking.” Appropriation?
If so, it’s generations and generations. The original dance idea comes from the campy Batman TV show of the Sixties with the fight scenes where cartoon speech balloons erupt onto the screen.
It then moved to gay dance clubs in LA, Grace Jones took the moves to the more mainstream world of Soul Train dance lines and Madonna’s voguing. Now Almeri has taken the moves to a new century from the mountains of Yamashita, Japan back into the world through social media. Who’s zooming who?
They all groove in the same moves, but when the music gets to “Hi-i-i-igher,” everybody goes all improv, doing their own thing, freezing on the last syllable, before busting out all over again.
When comedian Wanda Sykes saw the video, she quipped, “[This is what happens] when Lunar New Year and the first day of Black History Month fall on the same day.” When the rest of Black Twitter saw it, one tweeter borrowed from that Dave Chappelle skit “The Racial Draft” where delegations accept representatives from different racial/ethnic groups. The tweeter, titus_beatmonger said “The Black Delegation would like to welcome Yellow pants as an honorary Soul Sista.”
Let the church say “Amen” or should I say “Arigato.”
