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Zouk Musicality: The Lifelong Training (S05 Ep59) · ZoukNerds • Learn | Build | Belong

0:00
How can you teach musicality in one hour workshop?
0:03
That's not possible. I was training musicality,
0:06
really focused on moving to melody, so it's like learning to
0:11
listen and start noticing when it's going to be repetitive and
0:16
you can become really good at this.
0:18
Initially, I want to really make sure that I and my students
0:23
understand the structure of music.
0:25
Sometimes the person that doesn't know music at all has a
0:28
easier time than those who understand it really well.
0:31
Rhythm is not the sounds, but rhythm is the space between
0:34
sounds. You are chasing the song.
0:37
You have to make the song chase you.
0:39
They're. Very, very, very important songs
0:42
that have these moments that if anybody continues their
0:45
villaging, I just walk away and I go like, no, I did not see
0:48
that. What is musicality?
0:53
How do you learn it? How do you train it and how do
0:56
you know that you have fully embodied with the music?
1:01
Well, let's find out. Hello.
1:03
Hello everyone and welcome back to Zook Nerds.
1:07
In this episode we are going to be breaking down the step by
1:10
step process on how to learn and train musicality so You Can
1:15
Dance and feel fully embodied with your partner.
1:18
If you have taken lots of classes, workshops, intensives,
1:22
private lessons on this topic and he's still unsure about it,
1:26
this episode will be perfect for you.
1:28
So let's go. Hello, hello everyone and
1:40
welcome back to another Zook Nerds.
1:43
My name is Alison Sanji. And once again let's welcome
1:47
back our beautiful Co host Gibrada.
1:50
Hello, Gee. Hello, Alison.
1:52
Hello, everybody. Welcome back.
1:54
Let's get going because in this episode we're going to try,
1:59
we're going to attend, we're going to do our best.
2:03
And to describe new musicality. Oh boy.
2:07
And home. Oh dear.
2:10
Even when I see musicality in the schedule of an event of a
2:16
workshop or a Weekender, it already gives me the chills and
2:20
give me the things because I'm like, how can you teach
2:22
musicality in one hour workshop? That's not possible, but we'll
2:29
do our best to explain how we see musicality, how we train
2:34
musicality for ourselves and also for the people who learn
2:40
from us. Sounds good.
2:42
Please don't think that this is going to be like the master
2:45
class of musicality, because if anybody tries to sell that, I
2:50
wouldn't pay for it. Because to me, musicality is a
2:53
lifelong learning thing, something that forever and ever
3:00
I learn. Every time I watch something, I
3:03
learn every lesson that I take. I learn every time a teacher
3:08
tells me, hey, listen to this in the music.
3:10
And I'm like, Oh my God, it's been 20 years and I did not
3:15
think about that. How the hell?
3:19
So that's right, and let's start with a very simple question
3:23
because here we have Ghee, one of the masters in musicality and
3:28
breaking down how to do this kind of things.
3:31
In case you guys have not been following Ghee in his beautiful
3:35
Instagram, he has done lots of very cool videos showing how to
3:41
dance to the lyrics, how to dance to the instrumental, how
3:44
to dance to different parts of the music.
3:47
So key how do you train musicality and what do you focus
3:52
on when you are emboding musicality for yourself or
3:58
trying to explain it to another person?
4:01
Yeah, to respond to this question, I think we would need
4:03
the whole episode. So I maybe.
4:07
Part 1. Part 2.
4:08
Yes, I will try to keep you short starting from the
4:12
beginning. I think my training musicality
4:14
was big, big influence to the way that I see and I feel the
4:20
music these days, and I think I've talked about this in
4:24
previous episodes, I was training musicality really
4:29
focused on moving to the melody. Like for the longest time, the
4:34
musicality training was the voice.
4:36
You step to the lyrics by the movements to the lyrics, then
4:40
don't listen to the lyrics. Find an instrument.
4:43
A lot of my musicality training was trying to do something
4:48
really specific in a specific part of the music.
4:51
So the teacher would select like a chunk of the song, a very
4:56
quick one like the leading up to the course or the beginning of
4:59
the course or the moment right before the pause that we will
5:04
need to do something that specific part of the music.
5:06
So a lot of my training was listen to the melody, listen to
5:11
the elements in the melody and move to them.
5:14
And then another part of my training musicality was a lot
5:17
about the vibe. So you would hear the song and
5:20
we would ask to imagine where are you in that song or what
5:25
comes up when listening to that song and then letting the
5:27
movements be inspired by what you're noticing when you listen
5:31
to the song. And there was another one that
5:34
was super fun because we would hear a lot of songs in English,
5:37
in Spanish, in French, and we don't we wouldn't speak.
5:40
I wasn't able to speak any of those languages and we needed to
5:44
na, na, na to the music. So we wouldn't even be able to
5:49
actually sing the lyrics. There was one time that I was
5:53
with my brother in class and he started sitting.
5:55
I remember this song, it was Fields of Gold from Stink and we
6:00
were in a bolero class and with Fields of Gold and the song
6:04
started and we were doing the no, no, no exercise.
6:06
And my brother started singing You Remember Me when the La La
6:10
and this teacher stopped him and then no, no, no, no.
6:14
He wanted to do the no, no, no, because he wanted us to feel the
6:19
cadence, the flow of the singing unnecessarily.
6:23
The lyrics, you know, So the meaning, the words, the meaning
6:27
of the words is not the point. So guys, I had all the strains
6:31
and that to this day informs how I perceive musicality by
6:36
default. Like when a music start playing,
6:39
I go immediately to the melody aspect of it and try to let the
6:45
melody move me and move to the melody and what does it mean?
6:49
Select one element of the melody and to it, body movement to it,
6:55
move to it. And there is one interesting
6:58
part about this is when I don't know the song.
7:00
So when I don't know the song, I don't know the melody.
7:04
So it comes through this other part of my learning process
7:06
which was to identify the patterns in the music when they
7:10
start to repeat itself. So it's like learning to listen
7:15
and start noticing when it's going to start to be repetitive.
7:21
And guys, you can become really good at this in the sense that
7:25
you listen to, I know, the first third of the song and, you know,
7:30
the other 2/3 or it's not that, you know, but you have an
7:33
intuition about the other 2/3. And then you find yourself be
7:38
able to move to the melody. Yeah.
7:41
And then the last thing, and then I'm going to stop here.
7:43
I'll just let you speak. Was musicality related to the
7:48
rhythm to what we're calling Portuguese batch?
7:52
Either or pusu, which is the beat or the pulse.
7:57
But I think we would refer in a way maybe different, which is
8:01
the cadence that the beat gives and the rhythm gives.
8:06
So a lot of Brazilian dances, we would count the steps as temple,
8:13
Contra, temple, Contra temple. I don't know how that is in
8:17
English. I think it's similar in English,
8:19
right? Yeah, I've heard the literal
8:22
translation like temple Contra temple, but I don't know if it's
8:26
kind of like a port English translation.
8:29
Yeah, it might be, but we would train like, all right, so we
8:34
have the basic step is team Contra temp, Contra temp.
8:39
And then we would train for a long time.
8:42
Damn, damn, damn contract, contract, contract, damn
8:46
contract, damn and start, mix and match all of these things.
8:52
And it was straining to expand the rhythm, expand the use of
8:58
the beats and the rhythm beyond the basic step use of the
9:03
rhythm. I don't know if that makes
9:04
sense, but in Brazilian Zook, for example, we have the classic
9:08
tung chick chick or as we say here, tung ta chik.
9:12
And that's like the classic way that you use.
9:16
That's the rhythm of the dance. And then was basically getting
9:20
out of the tung ta chik and just doing tung, tung, tung ta, tung
9:25
ta chik chik chik. And that was also a great part
9:30
of training. So I would align that gemology,
9:34
so using that dexterity that you develop with your feet and with
9:38
your body to move at different dynamics, using the beats and
9:42
the rhythm as a reference point. And then from there, moving
9:46
gemology, and then from there feeling the vibe.
9:50
So it was like this progression. And to this day, that's how I
9:55
approach physicality. Yeah.
9:57
So there is this base anchoring in the rhythm, in the beat, even
10:03
if it's silent, even it's like what some people call the
10:06
phantom beat. Every song has a beat, but some
10:09
are silent. So you find that and then that's
10:14
sort of your anchor, your baseline.
10:16
And from there you keep moving up.
10:18
So that's how I see musicality. Addison, 10 minutes answer.
10:23
So maybe you should talk now like how do you see it?
10:29
How do you build it? Once again, if you were here in
10:32
our last episode, you know where I'm going to go about this.
10:36
I'm going to take a step back and go before what Gabe said,
10:42
because I think what Gabe mentioned is something that is
10:46
about listening and understanding and seeing the
10:51
patterns, which is all the things that I teach and I do at
10:54
the same time. But I'm a stickler for structure
11:00
and systems because that's how my brain works.
11:04
So initially I want to really make sure that I and my students
11:09
understand the structure of music very, very simply,
11:15
starting from that, understanding the beat,
11:19
understanding the counts, understanding the parts of the
11:24
music, the intro, the verse, the bridges, the outro, and all of
11:31
those things. So when you have that first
11:35
structure that you can listen to a song and realize, yes, OK,
11:39
this is the part that it grows, OK, this is the part that we
11:43
have the most energy, the most voice, the most instrument, OK.
11:49
This is the part where it feels like something is changing.
11:54
So maybe it's a bridge to go to a lower part or less energy part
12:00
of the music. So when I teach and when I
12:03
learn, this is the first thing that I try to do.
12:06
The numbers, the structures, the squares, all of those things
12:10
like that. And then I move into pattern
12:13
recognition, melody, and separating different layers of
12:19
the music. Because when learning
12:22
musicality, I think whatever you had growing up really effects
12:28
and influences your experience in musicality.
12:31
For example, I grew up in a household with a lot of
12:35
classical music and a lot of instrumental music, but I had a
12:39
lot more instrumental music than classical music.
12:43
So I'm very, very connected to the instruments in the music.
12:48
I'm talking about percussion. I'm talking about things that
12:51
are a little bit more on the lower part of the music instead
12:55
of the higher part of the music. Other people, either from Brazil
13:00
or from other areas in the world, they are more connected
13:03
to the vocals, to the harmony of the music.
13:06
And that's something that I've experienced a lot in Europe.
13:11
For example, a lot of the students say we grew up
13:14
listening to a lot of classical music, a lot of chords, a lot of
13:20
brass and a lot of vocals, but not as much with the percussion,
13:27
the drums, which in Brazil is something that we have in every
13:32
corner. I mean, like if you ever been to
13:35
Brazil, Brazil is noisy. Honestly, sometimes I'm calling
13:39
my mom in Brazil and I have to ask my mom to go from the living
13:44
room to the back of the house because there's like cars
13:48
passing all the time with like, don't, don't, don't.
13:52
Whatever they're playing. There's a lot of strong bass and
13:55
a lot of strong instrumental in Brazil.
13:59
So when you understand the structure of the music, the
14:04
structure of what makes a song, and the layers of whatever song
14:10
is made of, then you can focus on what is more natural to you.
14:15
Like, I see that some students are very naturally connected to
14:18
the voice, but then sometimes we're telling them no step and
14:26
they're like struggling. But then in the class where
14:30
we're focusing on The Voice and in the melody, they're crushing
14:34
it. And then the students who were
14:37
doing better in the instrumental class, now they're having a hard
14:41
time. And here's something that I'm
14:44
going to share with you guys. And it's not going to be very
14:49
welcomed by a lot of people, but there is a myth.
14:54
And I'm going to call it a myth because I have 20 years of
14:57
seeing this everyday. There's a myth that musicians
15:01
understand musicality and dance so easy.
15:04
Oh yeah, that person, you know, they're musician, or they played
15:07
piano or they played. My dear Lord, my experience in
15:13
this planet has shown me the opposite.
15:18
I don't know if I'm in the wrong planet, but in the planet that I
15:22
live, most of the times when people come to class and they
15:26
were musicians or they are musicians, the struggle is real.
15:32
I have no idea what's the blessing or the curse, but the
15:36
struggle is real, I'll tell you that.
15:39
Man, can I tell like a quick anecdote about this because this
15:42
was the most intense case I've seen.
15:45
It was at a long event that I was and there was this one
15:51
person who was a pianist and they were apparently really
15:56
experienced pianist having playing piano for basically
15:59
their whole life. That person could not Step 2
16:04
hour basics in the rhythm in our 12134 and five could not could
16:10
not. And their main question was very
16:13
technical like is this the 116th of the count?
16:17
This seems like it was a very technical musical question to
16:22
know where this step should be. And there was people who are
16:27
also musicians in the room and explain to that person
16:31
technically and still couldn't. And then when talking with this
16:35
person, they could not place the rhythm in the structure of music
16:42
as they understand. And it was really fascinating
16:45
because like what Allison is saying, and it has been my
16:48
experience too, is kind of intuitive, someone who
16:51
understand music so well in their core, in their building
16:55
components, he's having a hard time.
16:58
And I think the reason why that is happening, it is because it's
17:02
not anymore a matter of embodiment and it's a lot of
17:05
matter of head, you know, like trying to mentally make sense of
17:10
the rhythm that we are trying to express the rhythm with
17:14
movement. But it's going first to like,
17:18
how can I place it in my understanding of music, in the
17:21
way that I know music and then I'll move to it.
17:24
So I think this process, he's screwing everything up, you
17:28
know, And it's almost like sometimes the person that
17:31
doesn't know music at all, he comes in that blissful ignorance
17:34
of music has like a easier time getting the rhythm into their
17:39
bodies than those who understand it really well.
17:42
Yeah, and simple exercise that I do a lot of the times with
17:47
students, he's just playing any kind of music.
17:51
Most of the times just music that you can hear on the radio,
17:55
not necessarily Brazilian Zook music or traditional or lambada
17:59
or anything like that. And I just asked them to step to
18:02
it. Step, like if you're in a bar or
18:05
in a club, step and bop, you know, just feel the beat, feel
18:09
the music, however you do. And most of the times, like 99%
18:16
of the people do the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they feel it.
18:23
And then when you try to put that into Brazil and Zook
18:27
becomes a lot easier because I go like, OK, everybody, you're
18:31
doing the step, step, step, step.
18:35
OK, now we're going to do a step, step, step, step, step,
18:39
step, step. So instead of stepping once,
18:42
you're going to step twice. Yes, there's a little bit of
18:45
struggle, a little bit of, you know, some glitches, but taking
18:51
it all the way back and just asking them to step to a strong
18:57
something in the music. Sometimes it's the voice,
19:01
sometimes the instrument, the percussion in the music is not
19:04
that strong, but the voice has a cadence that keeps going like
19:08
this. I know that was terrible, Sorry,
19:11
don't fire me. But the lyrics sometimes has a
19:15
cadence of hitting the perceived 1234 with some parts of the
19:23
word, some vocal accents, and people can feel it.
19:29
So instead of really going back to like trying to get people to
19:34
count, trying to get people to understand all of that when
19:40
they're really struggling, they've already been through the
19:42
technical class, the theory class, all the structures, and
19:46
they're still struggling with timing.
19:48
Then I pulled it all back and I go like, OK, now let's feel this
19:51
in your body because I know you understand it.
19:54
I know you understand it. You can explain to me exactly
19:57
how the entire class went and you can even like write a
20:01
report, but you're still not feeling it.
20:04
That's when we put in the body. And a disclaimer here too, we
20:08
don't teach this kind of things in our beginner's course.
20:11
No, in our beginner's course, we actually go into the feeling
20:14
first. Absolutely.
20:16
They learn through sounds, they learn through feelings, They
20:19
learn through mimicking, not through studying the structure
20:24
of music and counts and all of those things.
20:28
Now this is more something to do with like a private lesson or a
20:32
boot camp where we're teaching music candidate.
20:36
But I think musicality is a big umbrella word.
20:40
Just like just like connection, floor, craft, frame, frame,
20:45
elasticity. Those are all umbrella words to
20:49
a whole group and multiple subgroups of things that we
20:56
learn throughout our dance journey.
20:59
So when we're talking about musicality, staying time, just
21:03
basically staying time is having good musicality and then having
21:09
good interpretation. Of.
21:11
The music, that's a different style of musicality.
21:15
Having a good sense of predicting what's going to
21:19
happen, even if you don't know what kind of music is playing
21:22
and what the song is playing, that's another skill in
21:25
musicality. Even sensing how your partner is
21:30
feeling the music, that's a skill in musicality because
21:35
often musicality comes from the leaders.
21:38
But that's not the only way. To be honest, that's not my
21:42
preferred way. I love when the musicality is
21:45
exchanged between the follower and myself, or if I'm following
21:50
between the leader and myself as a follower, I love when there's
21:53
that conversation of like, do you hear what I hear?
21:57
And I'm like, yes, I hear what you hear.
21:59
Oh, OK, let's go there then. You know, Yeah.
22:01
It's so much fun. Think musicality is what the
22:04
music asks us to do. Well, like what the music
22:08
invites us to do. And that is inviting both of us.
22:11
It's inviting leader and follower.
22:13
As you were saying, Allison, were describing the process.
22:17
It's like the first thing we do is to understand the basic ways
22:21
in which the music can speak to us or that we can move our
22:25
bodies to the music. We're basically learning the
22:27
technique. We're learning the tool of
22:30
dancing to a song. It's almost, there's a
22:34
philosopher called Alan Watts and he has a speech about
22:39
technique, which I really like. And there was one thing that he
22:42
says that we can all close our eyes and imagine a beautiful
22:46
painting, but who can actually draw the painting that you
22:50
imagined, You know, so, so it's like that technique.
22:54
Technique is what you use between imagining the painting
22:58
and actually putting the painting in the external world
23:01
is expressing what you thought. So when we listen to music, I
23:05
sometimes close my eyes and imagine myself moving to that
23:08
song, what I would like to do with that song.
23:12
And that's when I encounter my limitations.
23:15
I realized I cannot move that fast or I cannot move that
23:18
circularly or that smoothly or that slowly.
23:23
So the musicality for me is we are teaching the tools so people
23:27
can move to music in the way that they are imagining.
23:31
We start with their feet stepping to rhythm, step into
23:35
the beat. What you're saying, Allison,
23:37
this tune, tune, tune. This is what my teachers would
23:41
call the pulse. And later on, I learned it is
23:44
the beat and then the transition from the pulse to the rhythm.
23:47
Know when we go from the beat to the rhythm, that's where it gets
23:51
more difficult, you know, And these days guys, unfortunately,
23:56
I think Allison, I see these very often because I teach a
24:01
beginner class every single Monday every week and we have a
24:05
beginner cycle every two months and people really have a hard
24:11
time even with the pulse, even finding the pulse like their
24:15
feet doesn't step, you know, at the same time.
24:20
And it was really interesting to do in one event that I
24:24
participated a drums class and I think I started thinking, Oh my
24:28
God, every event should have a drums class because we were just
24:33
like percussioning. And I heard the most beautiful
24:41
thing that rhythm is not the sounds, but rhythm is the space
24:45
between sounds. So rhythm is how you stay in
24:48
silence between 1 sound and the other.
24:52
So what we normally see is that either people rush to step or
24:55
the people are too slow to step. So developing that space between
24:59
one step and the other is actually the hardest thing, you
25:02
know? And then picking back from the
25:05
idea of musicality as a tool for expression, when I was learning,
25:11
like I was mentioning before, we had melody, vibe, using the
25:16
pulse and the rhythm in all these different ways.
25:19
We didn't have counts. And when I started teaching
25:22
2017, I was realizing that I could not kill people properly.
25:27
You know, 7-8 in. And then Ashley, you guys don't
25:32
know Ashley. She's the head of District Zook.
25:33
And she talked with me my first years here.
25:36
She like, oh, that was the three, that was the seven.
25:40
I was like, I didn't know, I didn't know.
25:43
So I spent a bunch of time listening to music and counting
25:46
my head. And there was one more thing
25:48
that was really cool. In 2018, I went to Paris to
25:52
train with Alex Dicavale. So I trained with him for 20
25:56
hours. And one of the first things that
25:59
he he told me as he watched me dance, I think he played a song
26:02
that I didn't know. And I went to my default
26:05
training, find the melody. And then Alex said something
26:09
that I never forgot and really inspired me to study the
26:13
structure. Like Alison was saying, he said
26:15
you are chasing the song, you have to make the song chase you.
26:20
And I was like Boo wow, how do I do that?
26:23
Teach me. He said count, you know, because
26:26
when I don't know the song, at least I know where the five is,
26:29
where the 1 is, where the 8 is. He said most songs are
26:33
predictable in the sense of they have 8 counts like the dancers
26:37
minds. Then sometimes this song changes
26:40
from verse to chorus in the fourth count, sometimes it
26:42
changes the second count. Sometimes the bridge has this
26:46
many counts, sometimes it doesn't.
26:48
And then I learned that, oh, there is a, there's a bridge,
26:50
you know, there is verse one, there's verse 2, there's pre
26:53
chorus, there's chorus, there is all these things that I was not
26:57
aware of and they took my musicality to this next level.
27:02
So I think regardless of the order in what you learn, if you
27:06
learn first all the melody components, all the feeding
27:09
components and then you learn the structure, which was my
27:11
case, I learned the structure first.
27:13
Then you go to Nana, I think, regardless all this game,
27:17
because in the end, to fully express yourself to music, you
27:21
might need this much. Because I was indeed chasing the
27:25
song and I was truly chasing the song.
27:28
And that helped me a lot, especially when playing songs
27:34
that are completely myelogical, totally lyrical, that I couldn't
27:39
find the pattern, I couldn't find the repetitive pattern.
27:42
The song kept changing all the time, but being aware at least
27:47
of the counts in my head of finding the pulse of the song,
27:51
that was like, Oh my gosh, that was the missing piece there for
27:56
my musicality. So all things are helpful.
27:59
I like to say that some musicians probably don't like
28:02
dancers, so they play around with the counts and they don't
28:07
build the music in a very predictable way.
28:11
But that's the exception. Honestly.
28:14
That's the exception because pretty much every music that you
28:17
hear on the radio or every music that we hear in the socials and
28:21
in classes, they are what I call boring because they are a little
28:26
square or sometimes just a corner, which means they have a,
28:31
a, a, a, a start again, a, a, a, a, or sometimes they have a 8
28:37
start again 88. So once you understand that
28:41
small structure in the music, then you can attach that to
28:45
like, OK, so every 30 twos, something's going to happen.
28:50
Or this song started with like a 32, went to 16 and then went
28:55
back to 32. OK, maybe when there's something
28:57
calling the music again, maybe a rise or maybe a fall, I'm going
29:01
to pay attention because it could be a high, it could be a
29:04
low. So I'm just going to, you know,
29:07
be here as a leader. I like to say that when I don't
29:11
know the music, but I understand the structure, what I do is I
29:14
put myself and my partner in a position where I could go up in
29:19
energy or down in energy or stay.
29:22
So I'll use a movement or a position or a structure that in
29:28
that point, whatever happens to the music, I will be OK.
29:32
Because if you know that the music is about to change and
29:36
then you start doing this movement that is almost
29:41
impossible or very awkward to change the energy in the middle
29:46
of the movement. Then you put yourself into a
29:49
very troubled situation. Very simple example, you start a
29:53
bonus on 7 and the music is about to change on one.
29:57
In the middle of the turn of the bonus, the music goes boom and
30:01
there's a pause and you're in the middle of the turn zone
30:03
bonus. So if the music is about to
30:06
change, don't start that bonus on seven Man.
30:10
That was a simple example. That was exactly the point of
30:15
that exercise that we used to do back in the day where the
30:18
teacher would give in this section of the song, you do this
30:22
thing here. That was exactly the point
30:24
because we needed to be aware that when you get that point of
30:27
the song, we need to be prepared for that thing.
30:30
So for example, if the song has a tunnel and you need to hit a
30:33
tunnel now with your feet, for example, but you start a bonus
30:37
and the music is about to turn on, you know, you lost that
30:41
moment, you know, and, and that was that was exactly the point
30:45
of that exercise. I really, I really liked it
30:48
because for example, with me, it took me several tries to hit the
30:54
thing. Because using the example, I was
30:56
always preparing for a bonus or a bonus like movements that in
31:00
the middle of this movement you would be the points of the song
31:04
that I needed to hit. Either a pause or an
31:06
acceleration or something like that.
31:08
Yes. It's something that when we are
31:11
in a musicality class, I have no mercy.
31:15
When I'm in a class that is meant to be about musical
31:19
interpretation, musical structure, I just, I stopped the
31:23
music and I'd go like everybody. Did you listen to the music?
31:29
Because I think we're listening to different songs right now.
31:31
This song is going, you know something is going to happen and
31:39
then you start a bonus or you come out of a movement and you
31:45
start another movement that is going to take 4 bits or six bits
31:48
or 8 bits. And it's going to be really hard
31:51
for you to actually hate an accent or take a pause in the
31:56
middle of the movement. No, that's just not it.
31:59
That's not it. OK, You need to understand if
32:03
the music is about to go somewhere and do something,
32:06
prepare for a place or a part of the movement where you can take
32:13
a pause. A part of the movement that
32:15
you're not going to be tangled up and arms are going to be
32:19
crossed and legs are going to be tangled.
32:21
And there's nothing you can do other than continue the movement
32:25
and completely ignore that special moment in the music.
32:31
And let me tell you, we're not talking about you should hit
32:34
every accent in the music. No, no, no, no.
32:37
Yeah, I'm just talking about moments where the music pretty
32:41
much touches your heart, touches your soul and says this is
32:46
important and please recognize this moment.
32:50
They're very, very, very important songs that have these
32:54
moments that if anybody continues their Villa Genia, I
32:58
just walk away and I go like, no, I did not see that.
33:02
I honestly did not see that person just walking through the
33:05
red light into incoming traffic when there was like such an
33:11
obvious moment to if nothing just stop and count until 4:00
33:18
and then continue walking. I don't need you to be the crazy
33:22
master of understanding how to hit that accent, but at least
33:26
recognize. I say in class when you know the
33:29
accent is coming, when you can count or you know the song, say
33:35
hi to the accent. Recognize and bow to the accent
33:39
in the music. Go like, OK, I see you.
33:42
OK, I hear you. Sometimes it's just a Little
33:45
Rock step. Sometimes it's a little body
33:48
roll. Sometimes it could just be like
33:51
a little head thing. That's OK.
33:54
No, it doesn't need to be big, doesn't need to.
33:56
No. Dramatic.
33:58
Yeah. Doesn't need to be Chicotis,
34:00
Cambres and all of the accent things.
34:04
It just needs to be a recognition.
34:06
You know, you can do a villa ginga and then in the middle of
34:09
the villa ginga you just do a slow step that takes like 4
34:15
bits. So you're going Tak chick, Tak
34:23
chick. Like just understanding that a
34:25
recognition is such an important thing and actually such AI would
34:32
say a high level skill in dance because those soft recognitions
34:37
are the ones that I would say are the hardest ones to do.
34:43
Because she coaches cumbres. Yes, PPPP all the time, anywhere
34:49
easy. But you know when you're
34:51
watching a teacher or a dancer and then in the middle of the
34:55
movement they just catch something super soft in the
34:59
music or super strong in the music.
35:01
But the way they catch it is so seamless and gentle or
35:07
surprising that it go like, holy wow, I did not see that coming.
35:14
Everybody knows when a company and I should catch.
35:16
It's going to happen. It's obvious, but those special
35:20
musicality things that you see, oh amazing, amazing.
35:25
It's called trust there, guys. I have like 2 very important
35:29
things I think that came up as we were talking about this.
35:32
And the first one is if you put all of your training, I think
35:38
you can just put all of your training under the pretense of
35:43
musicality and you're going to be developing all the skills,
35:47
all the technical skills. Because to fully go there,
35:52
explore, for example, texture. To explore texture, you need to
35:56
be able to slow down your movement, speed up your
35:58
movements. You need to be able to do the
36:02
movements with more muscle tension, do the movement with
36:05
less muscle tension. Like this thing that I just
36:08
don't say in the village, you do boom TA cheek, boom.
36:12
You do this boom, clearly you need to be on your standing leg
36:18
longer. You need to communicate to your
36:21
partner, we are slowing down. So we need a lot of confidence
36:25
and assertiveness, right? You need your free leg to be
36:29
moving at a slower pace forward. So these are all hard skills.
36:34
You know, whenever as a person with more experience, especially
36:38
the leaders come to me and say, I don't know what else to learn.
36:41
I've done everything, but I've been doing something really
36:43
simple. Say I'm going to play three
36:45
different kinds of music. Let me see how you dance to
36:47
them. So I play old school R and BI,
36:50
play a traditional 1, and I play a hippie ass song, like jungle
36:55
vibes, whale music. And I watch how they go about
36:58
it. And that's when we start to
37:00
realize, Oh my God, there's so much more to study.
37:04
And then we go, how does the R&B make you feel?
37:07
How did the wish music make you feel?
37:09
The wish music's the hippie stuff or jungle vibes, you know,
37:13
or way of music. Like how did they make you feel?
37:16
How did the traditional make you feel?
37:18
And then we go from there, like, let's do the same movement here.
37:22
So we build like a little sequence.
37:24
I play the R and BI play the traditional.
37:26
I play the jungle vibes. And when he tries to do the
37:30
traditional way in, the R&B simply doesn't work.
37:34
Doesn't work because his body rejects it.
37:37
But why does your body reject it?
37:38
Because of the experience, You know, there's more awareness.
37:42
And they're like, no, it feels strange for some reason.
37:45
Like, yeah, it does. Because you are now at the point
37:49
that if you just go there, if you just go into the layer of
37:54
like, let me feel the music, you know, your artistic self is
37:58
going to come out and say, it doesn't make sense to move this
38:01
way to this music, you know? And then you go, cool.
38:05
And that comes to the second point that I wanted to make.
38:08
I've been doing these exercises for a project that I'm putting
38:13
together called Master Social Dancing.
38:15
And in the first part is you connect with the attributes,
38:18
with the traits of a social dancer.
38:20
A musicality is one of them. So I ask people, go dance, bring
38:24
a musicality, but your partner doesn't know which one.
38:28
You are bringing guys many, many times the person say, oh, I
38:33
think they were being more musical.
38:35
And that's a person who is dancing for six months.
38:38
None doesn't necessarily someone have been dancing for years.
38:40
So I think if you just step into let me be musical, whatever that
38:45
means to you, because somebody asked, oh, but what do you mean
38:49
stepping to the beach? What do you mean by being a
38:52
musical? And I said whatever that means
38:54
to you, you know, And so just like giving people the prompt,
38:58
the permission, it's already powerful.
39:02
And then my third and last point, which is the state of
39:05
Brazilian Zook musicality. And here's where I think, you
39:08
know, we might get a whole other episode.
39:11
It's a lot about hitting stuff. You hit the one, you know, like
39:15
I just say, everybody know that our company is coming, but the
39:18
problem is not everybody know that our company is coming.
39:20
Everybody's expecting that company to come, you know, Hey,
39:25
hey, hey, hey, you know, like when people start to build up
39:29
this thing, they are wanting the company to come.
39:33
At the same time, when you watch a competition, for example, you
39:37
see people cheering a lot when someone gets like a subtle note
39:41
of musicality. People are like.
39:43
Wow. So people have the expectation
39:46
for the strong stuff, but when something's done that they don't
39:49
expect, they also like, Oh my God, that was awesome.
39:52
It was so simple, you know, just watch falter dance fall from Val
39:57
Vanessa dancing. They do this very often, you
40:00
know. So in the end of the day, you
40:02
guys like the state of residence with musicality based on the
40:06
musicality class that I have watched ends up being and at
40:11
least in a mainstream level, focus on the like, where is the
40:15
one? Let's find this one, and let's
40:17
hit it with something. You know, with a Shequatch, with
40:19
a Cambria, with something powerful.
40:22
And based on the classes that I've taught in privates and
40:26
trainings that I have observed, people got really good at that.
40:30
But then you play an R&B song, you know, or you play a jungle
40:34
vibe song. The one is not as strong in the
40:38
R&B song. In the R&B song, the strong is
40:40
the 2 and the four and the six. So the clap is the strong one,
40:44
but they have the 22 hitting the downbeat strong, not the upbeat
40:48
strong. And in their wish music, there's
40:50
no strong that skips go, you know, So like just getting these
40:55
tools out and and noticing when you are.
40:59
I was like that for a long time when I was training.
41:02
I would only play music that I like to dance, you know, So I
41:06
would be in the musical echo chamber.
41:08
I just listen to the stuff I like, you know, So the challenge
41:11
is like bring stuff that I don't know.
41:12
And that's when I started to get really, really challenged,
41:16
especially when I was there in Taiwan and I asked people to
41:19
bring me their music. And it was like, oh, my God, I
41:22
have no idea how to dance to this.
41:26
Yeah, I know. And that's something that I love
41:28
to do at the end of classes where I teach music structure or
41:33
music interpretation, Umbrella music.
41:36
Anthony, I usually ask the students, can you all please
41:41
just find one song that you 100% knows that I will not know if
41:47
I'm in a country that is a non-english speaking country,
41:50
that's the easiest. If I'm in the US or in
41:53
Australia, it's a little harder, or Brazil.
41:56
But usually if I'm in a non-english speaking country,
41:59
they play something like very local and then I dance to it.
42:04
As long as it's a 4/4, I can dance to it.
42:07
If it's a 3, four, it's a little struggle, but I'll try.
42:11
Simply because music in the last decades is very, very much
42:17
structured the same way. Doesn't matter where it's from,
42:20
doesn't matter the language, doesn't matter the background.
42:24
If you go to some temple and religious music, yes, sometimes
42:28
the counts are crazy. But just regular music, it's all
42:31
the same. And one thing that I do ask the
42:34
students to do whenever they are asking me about musicality or
42:39
becoming a better musical dancer is listen to music as much as
42:45
possible. And I, I couldn't repeat this
42:47
enough. Listen to music.
42:49
Waking up, making food, in the shower, walking to the whatever.
42:56
Like listen to music if you don't know what music to listen
42:59
to. Today we are in the glorious
43:04
year of 2025 where there is so much online that you can just go
43:10
and listen to on Mixcloud, on SoundCloud that are like pre
43:16
recorded sets from DJs. I know a lot of people when they
43:21
start Zook, they go like, oh, I don't know what music to listen
43:23
to. I don't know what to search on
43:25
Spotify and I'm like drop Spotify, forget about Spotify,
43:29
just go to Mixcloud, go to SoundCloud and find me.
43:33
If you find me on Mixcloud, I don't use SoundCloud so much.
43:38
You can go to my profile, Alison Sanji, and I have a bunch of
43:42
things that I listen there. I have playlists that I have
43:47
organized there, so you guys can just go to my Mixcloud and steal
43:50
it. I listen to Mixcloud pretty much
43:52
on a daily basis because I'm editing, I'm working, I'm doing
43:56
a bunch of things. I'm in the public transport, so
44:00
you can see everything that I listen every day there.
44:02
You can stalk me and just follow because that to me is music
44:07
college training as well. Sometimes you're not listening
44:10
attentively, sometimes you're not listening me intentionally,
44:15
but your brain is registering the patterns.
44:18
Your brain is recognizing how music works, and then when you
44:25
go to dance, it will be another process of your body and your
44:28
brain agreeing on doing the same thing.
44:31
But that that's a process. That's a process that is going
44:35
to take a little bit of time. For example, I can imagine a bit
44:40
in my head and like, but I cannot replicate it with my
44:45
hands because I don't have that coordination.
44:48
I'm not a drummer, but I can understand.
44:50
And if I grab my iPad here, I can create it on GarageBand
44:54
exactly how I want it, but I wouldn't be able to do it with
44:57
my hands. And that's kind of like allow
44:59
the time for your body to express it the way you want it
45:04
with some intentional training as well.
45:06
I think it's good to have music playing and actually trying to
45:08
dance by yourself and hit the music how you want it, but not
45:13
be upset about it. Just try.
45:15
Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not.
45:17
But keep dancing, keep having fun, and then maybe have a
45:21
partner that you can try it with and then your musicality will
45:24
slowly, slowly get better. And don't be attached to
45:28
anything. Musicality changes over time.
45:32
It just changes over time. As well as music in Brazilian
45:36
Zook changes over time. Bro. 15 years ago, what we were
45:41
dancing the socials 10 years ago, five years ago, completely
45:44
different. So don't be too attached to
45:47
anything because everything is changing all the time.
45:50
Just understand how to listen to the music and how to put that in
45:55
your body and get to a point where I have to apologize to
46:00
fathers or to people that I'm dancing with and then go like,
46:04
I'm so sorry. That was not me.
46:06
That was the music. The music made me do it and I
46:10
had no control over my body. I'm very sorry in a funny way
46:14
because maybe I was being a little too crazy and I wasn't
46:18
the most adaptable or attentive leader.
46:21
I was just going with the music. But yes, you know, that's when
46:24
the music takes over your body. But it feels good, it feels
46:28
good. Just don't do it all night and
46:30
with every partner. Have a balance.
46:33
Yeah, I would say lastly, I think this thing that is saying
46:36
to people listen to music mix clause and SoundCloud.
46:40
I agree 1000%. You have everything curated for
46:43
you already. The teachers already did that
46:46
amazing. One thing that you can do, for
46:49
example, is listen to music as your subconscious training.
46:53
Then you're listening and you know BIOS most identifying the
46:56
parents or you're actually very, very conscious training.
47:00
Like I said before, I didn't know how to count, so I needed
47:03
to listen to music and I would be counting in my head the whole
47:06
time, first at loud, then silently in my head.
47:10
But then there is this other exercise which, for example, you
47:13
can listen to the music and try to find elements underneath.
47:17
What Alison was saying is the things that are more superficial
47:21
aspects of the music, what you can hear more clearly and what
47:26
is behind. My teachers used to call it the
47:28
bed of the songs, where everything else lies down on.
47:32
And then, like the mattress of the music.
47:35
Yeah, we needed sometimes listen to that mattress, sometimes the
47:38
bass. Sometimes it's just like
47:40
somebody hits the piano or the keyboard and, you know, like
47:45
this longer sounds. And then there was something
47:49
that was really amazing to me. There is this songs that I've
47:51
been listening for decades, but only on a speaker in a social.
47:55
And then I got to hear the song on a good quality headphones.
47:59
You know, I was like, Oh my God, there's all these things.
48:03
And then you start to sort of like decode the song in the
48:08
sense of, OK, the rhythm's right here, the lyrics is right here,
48:13
OK, these are the boys right there.
48:15
But there's this little piano thing, there's this violin
48:17
stuff, there's this little bass here.
48:20
And then you go 1 by 1 and over time when you listen to music,
48:26
it doesn't come like this BLOB of sounds in your ear.
48:30
When they come, they come like separated already.
48:33
And you can rather we move to one, move to other, moves on.
48:36
But this is training guys. And this is like consciously
48:39
listening to the music, which is like, I just saw the same.
48:43
The most amazing training we can do is listen to music.
48:46
Just listen to it. And at this layer of listening,
48:51
just listening and listening, listening, you know, show the
48:56
elements of it, this might be, in my opinion, one of the most
49:01
powerful, effective ones that you have.
49:04
And if you don't know how to do that, I'll tell you a little
49:08
secret. There's a website called the
49:10
YouTube that you can learn anything from.
49:14
Honestly. I have multiple times just gone
49:18
on YouTube and look up like how to count music to send to a
49:22
student or how to listen to different layers in the music
49:27
and there's like 20 videos and I just send it to the student.
49:30
You guys can just do that. How to listen to the vocal in
49:34
the music? How to differentiate the lower,
49:37
the middle, the higher part in the music?
49:39
Everything is possible to be learned on YouTube and like you
49:46
said, get yourself a pair of good headphones.
49:51
I would recommend over ear headphones or in ear but like
49:56
with a ear tip that blocks the sound outside and maybe has also
50:03
noise cancelling even better. Boom, top tier because it wasn't
50:09
until I got a noise cancelling headphones that I truly heard
50:13
music. Honestly, all of the headphones
50:17
that I had before without noise cancelling and without like
50:20
being either over my ear or in my ear, they were only giving me
50:25
50% of what is in the music. So yes, for those of you who
50:32
really, really, really appreciate musicality and want
50:35
to get there, that's another tip.
50:37
Please get a real good pair of headphones because that's going
50:41
to change your life. And every now and then I listen
50:44
to songs by chance that I haven't heard in 10 years or
50:50
something like that. And I listen on my good pair of
50:53
headphones that I didn't have 10 years ago.
50:56
And I'm like, well, this is a whole new song.
50:59
Honestly, this is a whole new song.
51:02
I have been ignoring so many things for so long.
51:07
Man, I fall in love with this song again.
51:09
And there is this last thing I think that I want to mention
51:12
about this is see somebody else dance to that song and then
51:17
you're going to hear another. You're going to hear through
51:19
their body, their ears. And it was really cool because
51:22
my brother, again, there was a song from old school Cabo Zuk
51:27
singer called Philip Montiro. He hears the studio, I think the
51:30
name of the song. And there are several, like,
51:33
little musical biological things, playful stuff.
51:38
And I did a video to that song and my brother said, man, you
51:41
missed the ha ha of the song. I was like, ha ha.
51:46
Like, yeah, you got all the little things.
51:48
But the ha ha, I was like, oh, my God, where is it?
51:51
And then he's like, right here. Never heard the ha ha before,
51:57
even after I had listened to the song over earphones, like high
52:00
quality that I missed that element, you know.
52:03
So it's very fun to see what elements of the song call the
52:06
attention. So it's super, super amazing
52:09
actually how much we can learn from just like listening to
52:12
watching, how much we can learn about musicality by listening,
52:16
watching and seeing how other people interpret or listen to
52:20
the same song that you're listening to.
52:22
Yeah, and I not only love to watch other Brazilian Zook
52:26
dances, but I love to watch other dances of any style, how
52:30
they interpret music. So sometimes I'm watching salsa,
52:34
West Coast Wing, tango, anything, and I'm like, Oh my
52:37
God, they're using this part of the music that we don't normally
52:40
use in Brazilian Zook. That is so cool.
52:43
I want to learn how to do that with Brazilian Zook as well, so
52:46
it adds another layer and another flavor that I can use.
52:50
So yeah, guys, we tried to condense all of our thoughts in
52:55
one hour and we barely made it. But honestly, we want to come
53:00
back to this sometime soon to continue.
53:03
Because I think the hardest thing of this episode was to
53:07
stay in a certain track and not go too far and wild into the
53:13
cosmos and into something else that would not allow us to come
53:16
back. So how to train musicality, how
53:19
we see musicality, how we understand and how we teach
53:24
musicality in the, I would say the simplest to the medium form
53:29
because there's so much more. So.
53:32
Hopefully this was a helpful and useful guide for you in any
53:37
level of your personal dancing or in your teaching.
53:41
And if you have any other ideas, please let us know.
53:45
Please make sure that you follow, subscribe, share this
53:48
with your friends, and let us know if you have any other
53:51
questions or topics that you would like us to cover here, and
53:55
we'll be more than happy to do it for you.
53:59
Guji. Guji.
54:01
So thank you once again for being here.
54:03
Pages, pages, everybody. Abrasos and Ciao.
54:08
Everyone go listen to some music.