The latest analysis of Social Media Trends 2022 says that even in our country the rise of TikTok “is indisputable”: every month, almost 15 million Italians access the platform, that is, over a third of all those who connect to the Internet in Italy. Not that numbers were needed to understand it, to confirm that everything that passes through the app controlled by ByteDance becomes a phenomenon, that she is the Prof of Cörsivœ (here our interview with her)and piece from the Neapolitan neomelodic school of the late nineties (yes, we mean Poor seagull) or even Colombian cumbia.
More or less since the beginning of June, it is practically impossible scroll through the Per Te feed without bumping into anyone (a single person, a couple, a group of three or four people) performing this traditional Colombian dance. But almost without taking a step.
Come si balla la cumbia your TikTok
Let’s explain: that of cumbia is one of the Effects proposed by TikTok to customize your video before uploading. On the contrary, is the first that is proposed in the Trends section, almost as if it were by default, which undoubtedly contributes to explaining its success and spread. To date, videos with the hashtag #cumbiabuena have collected about 8 million views and in general those based on cumbia (all, regardless of the effect), are close to 7.5 billion.
Using the filter (which is called Waves) is not complicated: obviously it only works with the camera inside the app of TikTok, you select it at the bottom left, precisely from the Effects space, and then you record the clip. You can also stand still or move only a part of the body: the cumbia will do the rest, simulating the movement of everything that is framed to the rhythm of the music. Advise of experience: by positioning the body in profile with respect to the lens, the effect seems even more realistic.
A rhythm that is part of Africa
Beyond the fun, however, we like to note that for once a TikTok trend hides interesting cultural references. Not so much and not only in the music that is usually associated with the Waves Effect, precisely the cumbia. Music that has a lot in common with the sea, since in the traditional version the skirts of the women who dance it move just like waves. And there is still the sea (or rather, the ocean) to separate the land of origin of this music, which is Africa, from Colombia, the place where it is most widespread today. In between, centuries of exploitation stories and slave trafficking, collective rituals and seduction of couples.
Of all this there is nothing in the TikTok filter, but perhaps some of the many who have seen the clips will be intrigued and will have listened to a few seconds of cumbia for the first time in my life. Maybe he will want to learn more, and so what a few decades ago was called world music and was a phenomenon of the intellectual elite, today is trending on the most popular entertainment platform in the world.
Digging into the visual part of the Waves effect, one cannot fail to notice the reference to a video that some years was quite widespread on social media: produced by the English PonyStep Magazineshowed Gilbert & George in a reissue of their famous one Bend It. The video is from 2018, in black and white: the two artists wear impeccable tailoring clothes, and then actually dance and are not still, but to see the video today, the Similarity to TikTok’s Waves effect is undeniable.
In the video made by Yvan Yvan Fabing, photographer and videomakerGilbert & George reprise one of their most popular works, of which there are several versions on YouTube: one from the nineties, and another, probably the first, taken from a documentary about their career artistic. Between the two run 25 years, so actually from the first idea of Bend It almost half a century passes until the Waves effect.
And there is a radical distortion of the idea of art: that was a kind of dancing sculpture, which amplified and stigmatized the distance between pop and high culture, while the most recent trend of TikTok shows that digital can transform anyone into a performer avant-garde. And maybe Gilbert & George will appreciate it.