Macarena

One version samples a line from The Graduate ('I am not trying to seduce you!') which was later removed due to possible copyright issues.

A version of this song lives on in elementary schools across the United States. It's called the "Month-a-ray-na" We teach kids how to remember the months of the year by singing them to the music of the chorus. It fits p.e.r.f.e.c.t.l.y and the kids do the dance at the same time. Makes learning fun. C'mon, join me: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, HEY Month-a-ray-na!

Wait, this song's lyrics actually mean something?!? I always assumed that it was just catchy gibberish! Then again, I have very little fluency in Spanish...

In the 90's i was very much into rock music,everything sucked,,But then Brujeria a heavy metal band from Mexico made a song with the rhytmn of Macarena tittled 'Brujeria',comical lyrics,but sounded better,to me,that is

Another version was record in1993 by Majo & Co. Was number 1 in CHILE and is much better that the original version.

You know? in 1942 italian TRIO LESCANO recorded the song "Cantiamo in tre"

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=137055202976871

this is the chorus!!!

They always play this at The Disability Network Christmas Party and CMH Dance every Year,there is a Christmas Macarena.

I remember when they showed the video on t.v. ..I thought the two guys were from the same country Desi Arnez was from ( Cuba ), and that it was a Cuban - Flamenco dance. I tried to get one Mexican woman who was working as a staff where I lived back in the 90s ; but she told me the the Spanish words were a little too dirty to be translated into English. But she did showed me the dance steps to the song, which I thought was a form of sexual move to attract the person of the opposite sex ; plus the lyrics when listen to are too awfully fast to understand.

Or try Tatiana's version here...
http://new.music.yahoo.com/tatiana/tracks/perro-lanudo--46863065
It's not the original, but you get the idea

Verrrry interesting.
Has anyone heard Los Rockin' Devils "Perro Lanudo", which is a Spanish version of Mickey Lee Lane's "Shaggy Dog", which hit the Top Ten in Mexico in '64? It seems as if Los Del Rio did, back then. "Macarena" copies all the moves, inflections and rhythmics of Perro Lanudo/Shaggy Dog, one after the other. But don't take my word for it. I was playing Perro Lanudo in my studio, and an engineer was passing by and said, "Ahhh, the Macarena", and just kept on walking.

Perro Lanudo was the featured song in Mexico on a daily or weekly TV program, and is still popular on the dancefloors in the UK and the rest of Europe.
Shaggy Dog also was Top Ten in Austrialia and reached #1 in Oklahoma City...back then.

Los Del Rio was/were contemporaries of Mickey Lee Lane way back then (in the 60's)

I remember the first time i heard this song was at a club and a friend of mine taught us the dance. I thought the song was called "Margarita" and so the next day when i went to go find the song, the clerk corrected me and said it was "Macarena"

Wendy in Shawano, WI: Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that "It Ain't What You Do" was originally a jazz song. It is primarily known to '80s listeners as a pop song (with a little reggae influence) by Bananarama. That very well could have been what your mother remembered.

That laugh at the beginning samples Yaz's US dance/disco smash from 1982 called "Situation".

According to this, Macarena didn't exist before 1993. But when she heard it in the 90's, my mom said she REMEBERED it (as a teen, I think she said, and she just watched her grandson get married this past Saturday). Are we missing an artist here somewhere? (While it's possible she could be confusing it with "It Ain't What You Do, It's the Way That You Do It," I doubt it, because she never was into jazz/big band. And I can't say because I don't know the song.)

by the way, this was voted the most annoying summer song,just so you know.

Good God!!!!!!!! this is one of the most irratating excuses for a "song" it has ever been my misfortune to hear!!!!(i will never listen to this song under my own free will)

The tune to "Macarena" sounds similar to "It Ain't What You Do, It's the Way That You Do It," an old jazz song famously covered by Bananarama and Fun Boy Three in 1982.

Today most people seem to simply think of "Macarena" as being ridiculously overplayed and forever identified as a quirky relic for wedding reception dances. The truth is it was one of the most instantly entertaining and catchy hits of the decade...the first 50 times you heard it.

Let's face it: it's "cool" to scoff at this song nowadays. It was so popular -- even among dorky-looking, stiff-dancing, middle-aged and senior tourists -- that it's become stylish to disparage The Macarena. But if you strip away the social history and the youthful, counter-cultural imperative to reject anything your parents actually like, what you're left with is one heckuva cool piece of music. Those who are "sick and tired" of The Macarena because it was "played all the time" should try listening to different radio stations and different styles of music occasionally. Back in '96 I hardly EVER heard this song because the stations I listened to rarely played it. If you're tired of it, it's your own dern fault. Fact is, it WAS a cool piece of music and it STILL IS a cool piece of music.

This song was irritating now and then

This song and dance was one of those things, while it was popular to do it at the time, you look back and think "Why was that ever popular?"

I wore out almost all of my 8-track tapes in 1996 when "Macarena" was on every station. I had (and still have) a 1983 Isuzu Diesel pickup and a 1978 Dodge Magnum, and I drove the Magnum all the time to escape the Macarena because it had something other than plain AM/FM. I hated that song then, I still do and I am glad that no radio stations where I live play it.

it use to be cool to dance to but now i would feel like an idiot to bust out to this song

you always see video highlights of bernie williams or wade boggs doing the macarena from that day. crazy.

In 1996 I was teaching a college engineering course in communications technology in which one of our lab exercises involved the use of a radio-frequency spectrum analyzer. By way of showing how the instrument could pick up a single frequency out of many, I hooked it to a wire antenna hung out the window. I was then able to tune into ship communication, aircraft radios, cell phone conversations, and television signals. At one point I gave the frequency selector a random punch and apparently hit the frequency of a local radio station: The Macarena came bursting forth from the speaker of the $50,000.00 device. Everyone roared: you hear that song _everywhere!_ But it is great fun, and dance crazes are a fundamental human activity, easily as important as electronics theory. M Kinsler

I have noticed that the dance which accompanied the song Macarena has been credited to a ?Venezuelan Flamenco instructor (Mia Frye) with having invented the Macarena dance in 1996. She is supposed to created it for her class to dance to. The dance eventually caught on with the rest of the world.
Can someone then please explain the following. The same steps/moves for this dance were doing the rounds in the 1970?s and usually to ?The Locomotion? (Little Eva). As a DJ during that period (before and after) I saw the dance performed at least once a week. In 1989 I even video?d my own daughter (aged 8 at the time) doing the exact same dance (but this time to Kylie Minogue?s version of ?The Locomotion?). I would like to say that this type of action of ?claiming? someone elses dance is rare.. but sad to say it is not. This has happened a number of times within ?Line Dancing?.
?and something else? and there will be at least 400 dancers to back me up.. February 1994, The Metropolis Dance Club, Fremantle, Australia? on comes the music ?Saturday Night? By Whigfield (some 6 months before it?s a hit in the UK)? and they are all doing the same dance.. at the bars.. on the stairs? on the balconies.. and of course ? on the dancefloor?. ALL doing THAT dance (two before it was ?created? by Mia Frye)
I have been a choreographer of dance (Ballroom/Line/Soul) for nearly 40 years and have choreographed nearly 400 dances including an easily identifiable 'Line' dance going back to 1968 (which may blow the myth about 'The Bus Stop' being the first in 1975). At some point there may come a time when I may see one of my dances being ?claimed? as some elses creation ? whoa betide them if they try..

Jeanne - I was in Egypt in October 1996 and was on a felucca in the Nile in Cairo with some fellow American ex-pats I came across. A cruise ship went by playing the Macarena and all the people on the cruise ship were dancing - from the sound of it, they were definitely American too. When was your trip to Egypt? That memory is one of my fondest and my heart started pounding when I read your post. How cool would it be if that was you on the cruise ship?! I registered for this site just to tell you that! :-)

When i was in kindergarten in Ft. Sam Houston an army base right by San Antonio Texas they taught us the song in school to try to teach us north south east west ect. or maybe bacause it was easier than doing work the macarena was everywhere on the base and in san antonio

i am in a dance class at my high school and i have to do a dance with a group so we chose the macarena ... i found this site and its ok so far... i found out this info. and its pretty good, but i have to rewrite it.... uuuhhhhh!!! its gonna take for ever!

off to type my paper... oh how i hate to type! yeah!

oh come on everyone loves this song. i dont care about the words or the meanings or anything but its so much fun to dance to it with friends. it really lightens the mood.

I think the world record for most people dancing cumulatively in one place for 10 years straight was, ironically, at the same place, Yankee Stadium, every time the Boston squad came to town.

The laughing heard in the song is actually sampled from Yaz's "Situation". Lead singer Alison Moyet is the one laughing...

This is truly a travasty to how stupid americans are that a stupid song like this could be at #1 for 14 weeks its sad really

This is reminds me of my teenage days when I would go after other men, mostly older men at dance clubs. This is one of my favorite songs.

I had no idea about the history of the Macarena. The first time I encountered it, my husband and I were on a cruise ship on the Nile in Egypt. They played the Macarena, and before long, our whole group of 35 people were doing it non-stop. It was wonderful.

i remember watching a show about cruise ships, (one of those airport style 'reality' shows), and everytime they had a scene showing the dance floor/nightclub on board ship, they seemed to always, without fail, be dancing the macarena... lol

I danced this in numerous parties in the past and I appreciated it!