Get Down

Such a routine has its origins in northern Zaire, Sudan, Zambia and Mozambique while the familiar "'''get down'''" position commonly observed when steppers often begin and end a step by bending deeply from the waist can be traced to many Central and West African cultures. (See: http://rootmag.typepad.com/root_magazine/african_dance/index.html )

In Gahu choreography often dancers move counterclockwise in a circle of alternating men and women; their performance includes “long passages of a lightly bouncy basic ‘ Step ’
leavened with brief ‘get down’ sections in which the dancers lower their center of weight
and move with intensified strength and quickness”Locke, David. Drum Gahu. Crown Point, IN: White Cliffs Media, Co., 1987

The term "get down" in popular music and slang is directly related to this particular element of the African Aesthetic , filtered through the African American experience. Popular use of the term since the middle-20th century, though, is usually credited to the influence of a Euro-American Disc Jockey , Bill "Hoss" Allen , who used it on his nightly soul music shows on Nashville, Tennessee station WLAC , according to Wes Smith in his "The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s" (Longstreet Press, 1989).


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