ROUGH DIAMOND COLLECTIVE

one of the better articles about freedia i’ve read

“When I see the dance, I am seeing ancestral movement, something that’s been around since the time of the slave trade,” Altercation says. “People have always done this dance in New Orleans, but it has been well protected, like a secret society, for hundreds of years. People have been murdered for doing this dance.” She chuckles. “Or, you can just say it’s the crazy dance kids are doing in the clubs these days.”

 “Freedia’s actual manager, Melvin Foley, says in the bounce documentary Y’Heard Me, ‘I can’t really book a Freedia or a Nobby in Atlanta because the clubs there aren’t ready for them.’ Which is totally true if you’re talking about the black community. But I tried to help create a situation for Freedia where generally open- minded people could check her out and have access to her. I first took Freedia to New York because I knew people there who threw parties with a huge mix of people: punk shows with straight kids, gay kids, black, white, Puerto Rican kids, Asian kids, and it didn’t matter what kind of band came on. They just wanted to be into things. Those are the kinds of situations I have tried to put us in, and we’ve never really tried to get bookings in straight black hip-hop clubs, or gay clubs.”

They preach cultural reciprocation instead of cultural appropriation, how instead of just taking from this New Orleans bounce culture, you give something back to it. And one of the ways you can give back to this culture is literally by dancing when Freedia tells you to. No other American dance music besides bounce really has a human being front and center, except square dancing, so to dance when Freedia tells you to is to participate in this cultural conversation.”