It’s highly likely that you haven’t been able to escape the Internet meme ‘Harlem Shake’. OnTheWight had featured a couple of videos that had been made on the Isle of Wight joining the 50,000+ that have been uploaded to YouTube so far (at its peak, 4,000 Harlem Shake videos were being uploaded to YT a day!). In short, it became completely mainstream quite a while ago.
That wasn’t the real Harlem Shake
What is now emerging is that, far from it being a new thing, the real Harlem Shake has been in existence for over thirty years. The big difference, is – as one of those interviewed in New York’s Harlem said – the real Harlem shake involved rhythm.
We thought you might like to watch some videos to learn more about this, rather than read it in text.
Videos giving you background
By way of gentle introduction, there’s a video where young children are shown meme ‘Harlem Shake’ videos and asked a few questions. As is often the case with children, some of their reactions are fantastic.
Towards the end of the children’s reaction video, the real Harlem Shake comes into discussion, giving us a great segway into the next video …
Harlem Reacts to ‘Harlem Shake’ Videos
Someone took the initiative to go and ask the people of Harlem what they thought of the YT craze that was running under their name. Let’s say they’re not big fans of it. Be aware, there’s a few mentions of the vernacular s**t in the video.
The Real Harlem Shake
Only seems right, after all of this talk of the real Harlem Shake, you should get a chance to see how it’s done.
