Choreographed by Promoters : The lambada has required careful U.S. marketing efforts to push the Brazilian dance craze

L am-ba-da: three syllables of erotic, exotic, light-hearted dance floor aerobics. Anyone who’s flipped on a television set lately has seen at least a flash of this newest craze, the pelvis-cozy, legs-entwined couples dance, imported from Brazil via Europe by media-savvy promoters who want everyone to pick up the beat.

This country is now experiencing a lambada saturation campaign of impressive proportions. With hordes of folks rushing to cash in on what may well be a fad with the shelf life of an ice cream cone, there’s a lot of fevered footwork taking place, not all of it on the dance floor. Look out--here come lambada movies (six at last count), videos, records, concerts, books, nightclubs, classes, contests and clothing.

Dance crazes, of course, have always been a part of our social and economic fabric, and over the years we’ve seen them come and go. And recycle.

Tango was hot in the 1930s and 1950s, and hot again in 1986 when the revue “Tango Argentino” sent thousands scurrying for dance classes and slinky black clothes. In recent years, such movies as “Saturday Night Fever,” “Flashdance,” “Salsa,” “Breakin’ ” and “Dirty Dancing” have popularized various showy, sexy dances and created trends. But lambada is different. It’s a pre-movie trend-in-progress. And it’s everywhere.

A spontaneous happening? Hardly. Lambadamania is a carefully orchestrated, fine-tuned effort on the part of several farsighted entities and it began, as lambadalegend has it, about a year ago, when French music entrepreneur Jean Karakos and his partner, Olivier Lorsac, “discovered” the decades-old Afro-Brazilian-Caribbean music and dance style in northern Brazil. They knew right away they were onto a good thing. Karakos recalls: “I thought it was a very hot, sexy, happy dance, fun but not vulgar. It brought men and women back together after 20 years of dancing apart, and they need that.”

Happy to fill that perceived need, he developed a comprehensive marketing plan to export his Brazilian find to the rest of the world, applying some of the American marketing techniques he learned while operating a record distributing company here for 10 years. “Americans do business very fast,” he says, “and I’ve been able to quickly conclude major deals that might have taken years in Europe.”

First, he and Lorsac acquired publishing rights to a number of lambada songs (more about that later, as controversy arose over ownership of the song), then they formed a multinational band, Kaoma, which made a single record, “Lambada,” and an album, “World Beat.” And then they filmed an eye-catching video that proceeded to sweep Europe to its feet.

Karakos says: “The idea was to launch strongly in one country, which we did in France, thanks to CBS-France and TF 1, France’s major television station, which guaranteed us 250 airplays.”

The strategy worked and in just a few months “Lambada” was topping music charts in some 15 European countries, selling a record 4-million units by the time Karakos, with Epic/CBS Records, arranged a U.S. tour for Kaoma in December.

For this country, says Karakos, the plan was different. “In Europe radio and television are national but in America, everything is local. The radio market here has been especially hard to crack because of the language difference”--’Lambada’ is in Portuguese.

“And momentum is very important here. You have to choose starting markets carefully. We decided to target both the Latin and hip markets, hoping for a crossover audience, so we concentrated on cities with large Latin populations, like New York, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco.”

Following a widely viewed New Year’s Eve appearance on “Entertainment Tonight,” American media began to vie for lambada coverage with increasing frequency, and in no time Kaoma’s dancers were enlivening a range of television shows, as national magazines took note.

Chris McGowan, a Billboard magazine writer who is doing a book on Brazilian music, says his sources refute the “legend” that lambada was banned as immoral in Brazil in the 1930s by then-dictator Getulio Vargas. He says: “It’s an invention to make the dance seem more salacious. It’s another example of the silly marketing of it.”

Local Latin bands are hastening to add lambada tunes to their repertories, while nationally, according to latest Billboard listings, Kaoma’s “World Beat” is No. 1 on the Latin album chart, and “Los Creadores de la Lambada” is No. 17. On the Latin singles chart, Kaoma’s “Lambada” remains No. 1, their “Dancando Lambada” is No. 18 and Teresa Guerra’s Spanish version of “Lambada,” “Llorando Se Fue,” is No. 12.

The Lambada Movies

With Kaoma blazing a trail, other lambada ventures have indeed started to follow. A veritable stampede of film making is under way, with lambada included in Zalman King’s upcoming “Wild Orchid,” and at least two other local edit-as-they-shoot productions in a dead heat to hit movie theaters in April. “The Forbidden Dance,” a 21st Century quickie, has already enjoyed considerable local and national media coverage, while Cannon’s “Lambada--Set the Night on Fire” is running neck-and-neck in what appears to some to be a competition between cousins and former Cannon Group partners Menahem Golan (executive producer of “The Forbidden Dance”) and Yoram Globus.

With the movies near completion, the popularity of Kaoma’s “World Beat” (which has sold 500,000 units in the United States) and the group’s next American tour in April, Epic Records has gone into promotional high gear. Dan Beck, vice president of product management says: “We’re close to seeing this thing escalate--we’ve seen it in sales, and next we’ll see the influence of radio, the tour and the movies.”

“We worked out a timetable at the beginning and things are going pretty much on schedule, although public awareness is running way ahead of time. That’s helping us with radio, which is definitely a prominent element in our strategy.”

He reports that his company is at work on a “how-to” video, to be released in conjunction with the Kaoma tour. Also planned are a special for VH-1 (an MTV spin-off station) and a two-song Kaoma video package, scheduled to retail for $9.99.

Even with all bases seemingly well-covered, Beck leaves little to chance, saying, “I’m doing a newspaper, a lambada update, that will go to concert promoters, agents, celebrities, media and our accounts. This month (Kaoma) will be doing in-store visits, another round of media and a performance at the National Assn. for Record Merchandisers conference.” Beck also mentions both Bantam Press and Puttnam are interested in a lambada book.

It’s not only big business that stands to profit from the Brazilian import. In the last two months, lambada dance classes have sprung up and are thriving. Such local clubs as Spice and Cover Girl now schedule frequent lambada nights and contests. (See article below.) Even “Oba Oba ‘90,” this year’s version of 1989’s Brazilian music and dance revue, opening on Broadway this month, now includes a lambada production number.

The Lambada Fashions

The fashion industry is also racing to adapt to lambada, with a lambada boutique expected to open in New York’s Macy’s department store early this month. If Macy’s leads, will others follow? Steve Ginsberg, West Coast bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily, thinks so: “If it’s a success other stores will jump on it. The business could use a little spark, a hot trend, especially the junior market.”

Local clothing manufacturer Andrew Strasmore, president of Fire Inc., says his company, which produced a number of costumes for “Forbidden Dance,” was asked by 21st Century to produce a line under the Lambada label.

“We passed up the licensing agreement,” he says, “because of the time factor. There’s such tremendous media interest that people don’t want to wait for a license to do a look. We’re already pumping out short little sexy miniskirts. Buyers are interested right now and we can’t wait until April. In this case fashion is preceding the breaking of the movies.

“ ‘Flashdance’ was the last time a true pop culture film had a great impact on fashion, and I don’t think those producers really thought in terms of licensing or fashion trends. But 21st Century has a licensing department that probably works with just about every movie they do. . . .” to milk all they can from whatever it is.”

“Forbidden Dance” choreographer Miranda Garrison, who was assistant choreographer for “Dirty Dancing” and “Salsa” and also operated tango clubs in the aftermath of “Tango Argentino,” has a perspective on the marketing of those dances.

She says: “Dirty dancing wasn’t publicized the way salsa and lambada were--there was no huge-scale advance marketing that I know of. And tango got hot after the show when classes were promoted. But lambada is already a craze. Everyone’s been looking for something to be the next step from dirty dancing.”

The Brazilian Reaction

And what do real Brazilians make of this phenomenon? Local reaction seems to be mixed, as expressed by music journalist Ana Maria Bahiana. She says: “Brazilians are saying that at last the world is paying attention to one of our cultural exports, but there’s also a general feeling that this is the ‘Carmen Miranda syndrome’ again: It’s the old story of foreigners going to Brazil and reaping a cheap profit. Those two Frenchmen were very clever--they tapped a dormant market.”

Roberto Lestinge, who hosts a Brazilian music radio show Sundays on KCRW (FM 89.9), says of the movies: “Brazilian music has been out there forever and this is probably the first time since the bossa nova that Hollywood has taken any interest in it. They want to perpetuate a Mickey Mouse mentality, which means giving a false idea of foreign culture. Lambada is cheap to use--it doesn’t belong to anyone and it’s up for grabs. That’s why they can get away with making a movie for a couple of million dollars. They can come up with whatever.”

“The Forbidden Dance” has been taking flak from some local Brazilians and UCLA Latin American Studies students for that “whatever.” They say that the movie, which purports to show lambada originating in the Amazon rain forest, is inauthentic and misleading.

Amy Shimshon, a UCLA student specializing in Latin American studies, is concerned because the movie shows Amazonian Indians dancing lambada and capoeira , a martial-arts dance, although both forms are generally considered to be Afro-Brazilian and are believed to have originated in Para and Bahia, in northern Brazil.

“The movie misrepresents Brazilian culture and history and mixes everyone up asif it doesn’t make a difference if you’re an Indian or African Brazilian,” she says. “What’s frustrating is that once again the African influence that helped create these popular dances has been washed away, and now lambada is going to be presented on the screen as if it was European-Brazilian.”

But “Forbidden Dance” director Greydon Clark says: “We’re not saying this is authentic lambada, nor is this a documentary. . . . It’s a fun movie, hopefully one that people will enjoy as a fable.”

It’s not only the Brazilians who are objecting to imported lambada. Robert DeMoss of Focus on Family, a Pomona-based Christian group, says: “I’ve been getting calls from parents. In some ways teen-agers are like hormones in sneakers, and in an age where there are 33,000 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases reported every day in America, something that excites the fire within the loins of our youth is perhaps not the most helpful or positive influence. It’s like anything in the entertainment culture: if we can milk it, we do, regardless of any sociological impact on adolescents.”

Although the Chilean Catholic church recently denounced the dance as immoral, a dissenting view comes from Antonio Esteban, a local Catholic priest, who says he’s heard no complaints from parents. “People are making a big fuss over a dance when there are so many important issues going on in the world now.”

An issue for Karakos since the beginning of his lambadaventure is a complex legal tangle that evolved from a lawsuit filed against Karakos by two Bolivian brothers claiming to be the original composers of the song “Lambada.” They say they were not properly compensated for the use of the song. Pascal Imbert, Kaoma’s U.S. manager in New York, says the brothers, whose names were eventually credited on the record, signed contracts not only with Karakos but with other companies as well.

As a result, two-thirds of “Lambada” royalties in France reportedly are frozen, pending court action in France to decide ownership of the song.

Irwin Robinson, president of EMI Music Publishing, says EMI has world rights, outside of Mexico, to the lambada song through its French publishing company.

For Karakos, the more controversy the better. “I hope very much the Moral Majority will start speaking about it,” he says. “That will make us real publicity. I wish Mr. Falwell would start speaking about it every Sunday.”