Jacking

Jacking or Jackin', the term by which the form is more commonly known, is a dance technique and music form that first became popular in the late 1980s^[1] as one of the myriad music forms which arose from the last days of disco. Though there continues to be some dispute as to a single absolute stylistic origin, "Jacking" music and dance most likely came from the multicultural roots in the early underground Chicago house and London music scenes. Both concepts of Jacking have their origins in European and American urban dance culture.

Originally Jacking's two most prominent divergent forms, the Chicago Jacking scene was often linked to the Detroit Techno scence in its earliest forms while the European Jacking form trended slightly towards a tribal "hard house" underground, punk and house scenes. The dancing and music forms of jacking itself were sexually charged in its earliest forms, with couples (often two men or two women) grinding their pelvises together. Jackin's style merged with many dance styles popular during the early UK acid house scene and American House scenes.

When referring to house dancing this word has taken on a slightly more specific and somewhat less sexual meaning. Jacking is a dance technique that comes from moving the torso forward and backward in a rippling motion, as if a wave were passing through it. When this movement is repeated and sped up to match the beat of a song it is called jacking, or "the jack." This technique is arguably the most important movement in house dance because it is the foundation that initiates more complex movements and footwork. Jacking has also permeated many other divergent forms of house and freestylebroken beatmusic and dance. Just as house music itself grew from the disco tradition, so too, did jacking's dance develop from the self expressive styling of disco dancing^[1]. Unlike partner ballroom type dance forms such as the waltz and foxtrot, Jacking is considered a freestyle dance.

Jacking's Influence on Freestyle Forms

In contemporary times, Jacking's dance form is easily confused with-and is somewhat stylisticaly related to-the West Coast American "jerking" ^[2] phenomenon as a dance form. Stylistically, both freestyle dance forms come from a soulful house background. Jacking is commonly associated with uptempo classic house and hip house,acid jazz,and broken beat music genres, and usually works best with a 130-140 beat per minute pace. Jerking is a much more recent hip hop dance style that originated on the West Coast and descends more directly from hip hop; it usually is accompanied by some sort of hyphy beat, which usually hovers around a danceable 90-100 beats per minute.

Because of jacking's association with early house music, many early house tracks used the word in their titles. Examples include Raze's "Jack the Groove" and Steve "Silk" Hurley's "Jack Your Body". More recent forays into the jacking music scene have come from the Electronica realm, with many transplants from hip-house, Techno, Alternative Punk, Funk and other influences experimenting with the form.

Pop Culture

Jacking's early exportation from the U.S. to Europe spawned a repatriation of sorts in the early 1990's, along with the spread of house. Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation" and Madonna's "Vogue" are two quintessential jackin beats that had massive crossover pop appeal, the main difference between these pop songs and jackin' beat being a slight, "popped up" slowing down of both meter and lyrics to make them more palatable to a mainstream audience. Like most jackin' moves, however, both singers' corresponding videos featured highly stylized, "hard" motion choreography which characterized both singers' careers in the '90s.

More recently, some well known House artists like Stacy Kidd and Jamiroquai have made use of Jack beats, often incorporating them into house tracks. Jacking tracks like hip-house artist Peven Everett's dance-friendly hit "Stuck" are soulful, housed-up lyrics and rhythms over a relatively straightforward Jack beat. Much growth of the current underground Jack beat scene has occurred in the Acid and Souful house veins, where jack rhythms, like DJ Spen's remix of Jazztronik's "Dentro Mi Alma", are often fused with the deeper, polyrhythmic melodies from Afro-Cuban Jazz and Worldbeat genres. Many of these jacking-influenced tracks and jack hybrid rhythms are often listed under Soulful House, Deep House, or in cases where disco or even neo-soul melodies are used, Rare Grooves.

American, European and other worldwide mainstream audiences have the most contact with jack music and dance forms in contemporary prime time productions of the myriad dance shows like ^[3]America's Best Dance Crew. Other more highly stylized forms of the dance have found their way into house and break sessions of all kinds all over the world, with many performing dance performing art magnets incorporating both jack music into more traditional styles of modern dance.

External links

• The House Dance Project
• Lawrence Liner Notes
• A History of House Dancing
• "Time to Jack"
• [1]

1.*[2] 2.*[3]

References