Oct 21

Oct 21 Spice Up Your Life, by The Spice Girls

Crazy cool pineapple - make this one of your five a day

Confession time. My guilty secret is that I love a bit of Spice Girls. At the right time and in the right doses, of course, but if you let it, it is music that can fill you with joy. And after the last two songs in the playlist, I felt it was time for some light relief and what better way than to join the sights, sounds and colour of the carnival.

How do they do that?

Had you ever thought of this as carnival music before, or just a piece that made you feel like dancin’? Carnival music combines a variety of different styles including calypso, jazz and Latin American rhythms.

When you hear a carnival parade approaching, it is the rhythm - the drums and whistles - that you hear first. From a distance it sounds a bit mashed up, which is exactly the case with this piece, but as the parade comes into view, the clarity of the rhythm can be heard and the samba whistles no longer sound random, but part of the structure of the music.

Also contributing to the rhythmic drive is the rising and falling, syncopated (played off the strong beats of the bar) bass line. Even with just these elements, I defy you to sit still in your chair without a hint of a shoulder shimmy!

But the thing about a carnival is that it is designed to bring people together and there are elements in ‘Spice Up Your Life’ that illustrate that perfectly. Sporty Spice (aka Mel C) starts up a call and response, inviting ‘us’ to join the ‘spice up your life’ refrain and enter into the spirit of the song and the carnival. (I also wrote about call and response in this blog post: https://www.jenxlovesmusic.com/home-1/2020/shackles-praise-you-by-mary-mary ). The ‘la, la, la’s’ are the main calypso-inspired element (think steel drums) and are incredibly sing-able, again making it easy to participate. So whether you are toe-tapping, full on fruit-turban twirling, or singing along you can feel part of the party atmosphere.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. Later in the song, the names of various types of Latin dance form are listed and I love the musical joke as Scary Spice (aka Mel B) sings ‘hip hop is harder’ and, combining with the traditional carnival sound, is some vinyl, turntable scratching! It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s fab-u-lous (daarling)!!!

Hope you enjoy it or feel inspired to listen to something new today.

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