Book Review: "Dancing in the Streets" by Barbara Ehrenreich

I like cheap books yes, but free books is something I don't think anyone can resist and so, I got this from the little haul. I had no idea what it was about when I downloaded it to my phone - it just had a cool title and I have to say, I did a bit of 'cover judging'. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised though. We get to see tribal dances, carnval, we learn about the celebrations to Dionysus and all these great and celebratory dances that are sometimes misunderstood by us. Honestly, it was great and should teach you to go for things you don't know even more. I would say 'do it scared' but I do everything scared so I don't know whether this counts.

We are introduced to a setting in which the Europeans arrive in distant lands for colonisation, observing the natives dancing and celebrating, they do not know what is going on but they know they don't like it. But, here's the problem, this kind of dancing and celebration had been going on in Europe for many a century through the concept of carnival. The author refers to Heart of Darkness and other texts in which she sees the comments made by the eurocentric folks about the dancing by these distant people and not many of them seemed to be very kind. I'm not going to lie though, it sounded like what they were doing was a lot of fun. Many of the snobby Europeans spoke of the drums having a possessive quality, something that frightened them. I mean how out of touch do you have to be for drums to frighten you? I know right.

But when we move around, we get to see that these celebrations have been everywhere in European history as well, so it's not even accurate that these snobby Westerners hadn't known anything like this before. It wasn't even carnival just yet, it was the Ancient Romans and the celebration of Dionysus. There were celebrations, dancing, wine and on top of this, homosexuality - and that's where Romans drew the line. Apparently, the Romans were not as accepting of homosexuality as their Greek counterparts and that's quite upsetting but the Romans were never really known for being fun. One thing that I found quite strange is that usually, women were not really allowed to drink wine and party, but as soon as this particular festival came around - it was a free-for-all. The Roman upper class may have not enjoyed it, but normal people definitely did.

But we still haven't hit carnival yet, we go on to looking at the dancing and festivities of the masses which would lead to carnival. There were 'dancing plagues' in which many people would dance after being bitten by a spider and then, there was the development of another dance which would apparently fend off the bite of the spider. But, one thing the author finds is that the masses were normally dancing because they toiled in stressful conditions for most of the year - so it was actually a fight against depression and low mood. This would include breaking down the boundaries of gender and class. Lower class people would dress up as kings and make fun of them through performance. People would dress as members of the church and do lewd things. And yet, this was accepted even though the church wanted it to stop.

We move through carnivals, Burning Man even rock concerts and honestly, I really enjoyed learning about the way in which the church, the upper class and the people who wanted to stifle the joy of the working class but failed terribly at it. It seems to me as if there is always a requirement from the top to make those at the bottom shut up and be miserable - but the people dance on. I'm not going to reveal everything that is covered in this book because I think it wouldn't make too much sense if I said everything. What I will say is this: I'm not normally someone who likes reading about joy and dancing, celebration and parties. But this book has proven really enjoyable, very informative and enlightening. I urge you to read it, or at least add it to the list of books you wish to read in the future.