lambada

The tradition & historical record

Lambada is a dance from the state of Pará in Brazil. The dance briefly became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in the Philippines, Latin America and Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as maxixe, carimbó, forró, salsa, merengue, and samba. Lambada is generally a partner dance. The dancers generally dance with arched legs, with the steps being from side to side, turning or even swaying, and in its original form never front to back, with a pronounced movement of the hips. At the time when the dance became popular, short skirts for women were in fashion and men wore long trousers, and the dance has become associated with such clothing, especially for women wearing short skirts that swirl up when the woman spins around, typically revealing 90s-style thong underwear.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Lambada”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

lambada is Brazilian dance; music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 12 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹