Confessions of a Blogger: What Zumba taught me.
It definitely did NOT teach me how to dance better. Ha! But it has taught me to cool it when it comes to music. I’ve become so judgmental about it over the past few years. I’ve come to hate certain genres of music so much that I forgot how fun some songs can be. Toward the end of high school I got tired of listening to what everyone else was listening to. I got tired of song about being in the club. I got tired of music videos of half naked girls grinding some guy by the pool. I got tired of all the sexual innuendos…”I’ll take you to the candy shop. I’ll let you lick my lollipop.” SERIOUSLY?! COME ON!
I took matters into my own hand once I started college. I felt so free back then. Social pressures be damned! I was free to just be me, and follow my own interests. I started looking for music on my own. But…along the way I realized that I’ve built up this judgmental wall between what was trending, why it was trending versus what wasn’t. I grew to despise what was popular. I even hated it when a band I liked started to get popular, or when the radio played their ONE song too much. I liked the lesser known bands. I liked the being one of a small handful of fans. And I will admit that I liked it when I was listening to a band that my friends never heard of. It was hard at times, because I would give in and just turn the radio on just so they don’t have to suffer riding in the car with me with music they didn’t know.
Eventually, though, bands do become popular. That small handful of fans you were apart of starts to increase in size. It’s inevitable. There will be more bands to discover, but the pattern is almost always the same. Find a band, follow their ever growing success, get lost in a mosh of new fans who heard that one song become popular on the radio, repeat. Also, once you become part of a band’s “fandom”, you’re most likely exposed to a lot more (love, hate, camaraderie, etc.), and this small group of people you become a part of all of a sudden becomes you’re whole world. In other words, what seems like a small fan base to others not aware of the band or genre of music, can be a huge community to those who are. This can apply to other fandoms.
Anyway, back to what Zumba has taught me. It’s taught me that music is FUN. Especially when working out. Who cares if the artist/band is a big headed fame monster? Who cares if they’re singing about mindless ignorant shit? Who cares if it’s Kesha? Who cares if it’s reggae? Who cares if it’s in a language I can’t understand, nor speak? Who cares about the sexual innuendos? Just don’t watch the music videos! MTV doesn’t show any anymore anyway, so why bother?! I’m going to stop being so pretentsious, and let go of all the negativity I used to have about music. I may not agree with some artists’ view of music & fame, but I won’t let that get in the way of the fact that one of their songs is actually fun to dance/workout to….because sometimes DCFC is just not effective enough to run to. All my love to DCFC, but I can’t find a good running pace for “Brothers On A Hotel Bed.” It is good for a cool down/stretch, though.
