If you listen to KCRW in Los Angeles you might have gotten the early scoop on the group Jungle. The band seems to be a favorite of the jockeys who play on this NPR station. In 2021, KCRW plugged album Loving in Stereo as their universally beloved forthcoming album. In 2023, the radio station similarly continued their adoration with 2023’s Volcano. However, in the span of those short years, TikTok had a massive surge in users. And one of Jungle’s hits “Back on 74” became a viral sensation, that eclipsed radio, and brought Jungle into the mainstream.
The music video for “Back on 74” is a gorgeous tribute to the art from and athletics of dance. It tracks a single shot over four minutes, employing over a dozen talented dancers. It pays homage to vintage dance videos from bygone eras where cameras would pan from room to room with group movements that coordinate with musical beats. And modestly, the British Duo doesn’t appear in their video at all.
It should be noted that behind every great dance is a great choreographer, and Shay Latukolan created a masterpiece with his work with Jungle. And more recently, Jungle has almagamated their many Latukolan-choreographed videos (‘Candleflame’, ‘Dominoes’, ‘Us Against the World’), and released a full length dance film to accompany the album. (See below)
Jungle’s success is important because it caught the zeitgeist. It tells us where societal values are with art and music. And while Jungle, is by no means “Pop Music”, there is no denying 18 Million YouTube view in just five months, or all the reposts, and dance videos made to their tune. When something captures the public eye so completely, it is guaranteed that it will have an outward ripple in how music and art are created in the future.
Case in point, we have Ariana Grande’s newest music video ‘yes, and?’ (which, we could certainly define as “Pop Music”). First and foremost, Grande’s new music video is art that stands completely on it’s own. It open’s with tongue-and-cheek expressions of celebrity criticism, and has a concept that is inventive in it’s own right. That being said—like Jungle—Grande puts her dancers at the center of her art piece.
The large warehouse space, the simple industrial set, and the focus on human movement really bring music back to one of it’s most basic qualities: our instinctual drive to dance. And this brings us back to a central question—what is the point of music anyway? In the elevator going in to the performance, her critics are dissecting her image, internet presence, and pony-tail. By the end, they are in a state of rapture from the experience of art.
Music is meant to move us. It’s meant to help us feel our feelings, and one of the simplest and purest ways to receive music is to interpret it with your body. So let’s take a cue from this musical moment, and tap back into the rhythm of dance.