Grand Audio Car Visual: Freestyle

A few weeks ago I saw Adventureland, starring Kristen Stewart. Adventureland is set in the summer of 1987, in an amusement part a lot like Adventureland. My birthday is in the summer, and I probably celebrated it at Adventureland in the summer of 1987.

The soundtrack brought me right back to that summer, specifically staying with my Grandma Tinnelly in The Bronx. My father worked in The Bronx, and before work he would drop me off at my her apartment. We would go to church, shop the market, and she would show me off to her friends we met on the street. Everything we needed was reachable on foot.

On the street, the kids were listening to freestyle music. The lyrics of freestyle music are about first love, lost love, innocent love, sweet love, spring love, needing love, forever and ever love. They also broach the way young people physically express their love, through dancing and sex. Frequently, the beat of the music is a metaphor for a heart beat - fast, urgent and insistent.

Freestyle music revels in the drama of teenage love. It also had a specific look - big hair, hair products, flawless skin, outfits purchased at Merry Go Round, or Chess King, and Revlon Toasted Almond lipstick. Acoustically, freestyle music sounds best in a night club at a volume that prohibits conversation, from a boom box, or from the open windows of a car with a large spoiler.

I couldn't even attempt to work that look. But I loved that music then, and I love it even more now. It is currently 59°F (15°C) and partly sunny in New York City. Last Friday night I listened to freestyle music on the jukebox until 4am. This summer I plan on spending so many nights like that, listening to the lyrics of Lisa Lisa and dancing to the beat of Expose.

In the summer of 1987, I fell in love with New York City. The heat, the energy, the mix of people, generations, groups - all together on the street.

Some history from Wikipedia:

Freestyle is a form of electronic music. The music first developed primarily in New York City and Miami in the mid-1980s.

Freestyle's true roots is traced back to Shannon's "Let the Music Play", which debuted in 1983. The song was produced by Mark Liggett and Chris Barbosa, who changed and refined the electro funk sound, adding Latin American rhythms and a syncopated drum-machine sound.

Shannon - Let the Music Play:

Freestyle reached its peak in 1987 before it fell in popularity and was slowly replaced by burgeoning house music in 1988.

Why Freestyle is actually called freestyle is subject to speculation.
Some feel the term freestyle may refer to the difference between the mixing techniques used by DJs spinning this form of music (at least in its pre-house incarnations) and those who were spinning disco, the only other widely played dance music that incorporated sung vocals. Disco, with its relatively predictable beat structure, could be mixed with smooth, slow, and consistent techniques, but freestyle's syncopated beat structures demanded that DJs get creative, incorporating aspects of both disco and hip-hop techniques; they often had to (or had more freedom to) mix more quickly and more responsively to the individual pieces of music.
Others believe it refers to the vocal technique: singing melodic pop vocals over the kind of beats that were previously used only with rap and semi-chanted electro-funk vocal styles was a form of freestyling —getting creative by mixing up the styles— somewhat akin to the use of the term in reference to competitive freestyle rap.

Another explanation is that the dancing associated with this music allows for a great degree of freedom of expression than the other music that was prevalent at the time. Each individual dancer is free to create his or her own style.

In Miami, the freestyle name evolved after confusion between Tony Butler's track "Freestyle Express" by Freestyle and Debbie Deb's "When I Hear Music," a slightly older but more popular track that was produced by Butler. The sound became synonymous with Butler's production, and the name of the group he was in, Freestyle, became the genre's name.

Debbie Deb - "When I Hear Music" :

It is a genre with rather clear features: a dance tempo with stress on beats two and four; syncopation with a bass line, lead synth, or percussion, with optional stabs (provided as synthesized brass or orchestral samples); sixteenth-note hi-hats; a chord progression that lasts eight, 16, or 32 beats and is usually in a minor key; and relatively complex, upbeat melodies with singing, verses, and a chorus, with themes about love or dancing. Freestyle music in general is heavily influenced by Latin music, especially with respect to rhythms and brass-horn and keyboard parts. The Latin clave rhythm can be felt in many songs (such as in the defining “Clave Rocks” by Amoretto). The tempo of Freestyle music is almost always between 110 and 130 beats per minute (BPM), typically around 118 BPM. The keyboard parts are often elegant and clever, with many short melodies and countermelodies, again a strong influence from Latin music. It also features complicated drum machine patterns that a human drummer would have extreme difficulty playing.

Expose: Point of No Return (Live at the Apollo):