The association of Lambada and Dirty Dancing/Forbidden Dance became quite extensive, mostly due to the 1990 movie Lambada, although the people who dance this rhythm in Brazil and everywhere else prefer to define it as a sensual and romantic dance rather than erotic.

After 1994 the Brazilian music style (also called Lambada), which gave birth to the dance, started to fade away, and the dancers began to use other musical sources to continue practicing the Lambada dance. Among these rhythms were the Flamenco Rumba (such as from the Gypsy Kings) and some Arabian music. Today the majority of Lambada is danced to Zouk music and the dance evolved so much from its original form that there is an ongoing discussion whether the Zouk-Lambada is a new type of dance or just the natural evolution of the Lambada of the early 90's.

The Zouk-Lambada style is still very popular in many countries such as Brazil, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, USA, Israel, Italy, Aruba, Germany, Japan and Australia.

The history of lambada

The origin

Since the time Brazil was a Portuguese colony (between year 1500 a.d. and 1822 a.d.) the Carimbó has been a popular dance in the north part of the country. It was a loose and very sensual dance in which the woman tried to cover the man with many spins and rounded skirts. The music was played mainly among beats of drums made of trunks of wood, thinned by fire.

As time passed by, the dance changed, as did the music itself, gaining many influences from the Caribbean music due to its geographical proximity which also generated some new rhythms like the Sirimbó and the Lari Lari, changing forever the way the original Carimbó was danced.

The name and the father

During the late 20th century, local radio stations from Belém started to call these type of music as "strong beated rhythms" and "rhythms of Lambada" (see Lexicon below). The term "Lambada" had a strong appeal and began to be associated with this new emerging face of an old dancing style.

By 1983 the Carimbó dance began once more to be danced in couples, in a 2-beat style, something very similar to the Merengue, but with the addition of many spins. Some authors relate to have experienced this kind of dance in Belém and Macapá. By that time a local Brazilian singer called Pinduca published a long-play record with this kind of music and for this it is strongly believed he is the true father of Lambada, although he never got to be known anywhere else.

The fusion between the metallic and electronic music from Caribean brought again a new face to the Carimbó, which started to be played throughout the north-eastern region of Brazil (a place well known for its touristic appeal), and so this new Carimbó travelled with a new name of Lambada.

The Lambada from Bahia - the first Boom

As the Lambada traveled through and down the north-east coast of Brazil reaching Bahia, it began receiving some influences from the forró , until it finally became a 4-beated dancing style, which was definitively different from the original Carimbó.

The way of dancing this new born Lambada was with arched legs, and the steps were done from one side to the other, and never from front to back. This was also the time in which the tight skirts were in fashion, and both things (the dance and the fashion) got much close to one another. Today at some places like the Lambar (a night club in São Paulo) this icon of a girl in a high and short skirt dancing with a man in long loose trousers still maintain its appeal on an outdoor.

During these years the Carnival of Bahia was increasing in popularity and every summer a new kind of dance showed up, and would disappear during the following year when another dancing style and rhythm would surge on the following summer. Such was the case a few years before the Lambada with the Fricote and the Ti-Ti-Ti that truly disappeared.

Along with the "trio elétricos" (Big mobile band trucks covered with speakers all around) playing the songs everywhere in Salvador the Lambada music and dance started to become very popular in Bahia, and established itself in the city of Porto Seguro. Still, in this first boom of the Lambada, the south-east region of Brazil (the country's economic centre) despised the rhythms which came from Bahia and most Lambada songs remained restricted to the North-east region of the country.

By that time, although it has been recognized as huge summer-fever success, the Lambada was far away from having its true world-wide success. Many of the first lambaterias (dance houses devoted to dancing Lambada) which opened on 1988 couldn't stand the low season and closed a few months later.

The forbidden dance

From these years (circa 1988) came the first Legend about Lambada: the legend of the forbidden dance. With its roots on Forró and Carimbó and several other northern-brazilian dancing styles, Lambada was eventually related to the Maxixe, a dancing style that back in 1930 was the true forbidden dance because of its spicy lyric songs and its movements.

At its peak, and perhaps made on purpose to create even more exposure on the media, Lambada was advertised as an erotica and pornographic type of dance, when at best it was just a sensual way of dancing. The successful formula of advertising dances as erotic-driven has followed through after the end of the Lambada season in Bahia. Well established rhythms such as the Axé have suffered the same fate and this trend gave birth to seasonal hits such as the "dança da garrafa" and music groups like Gera Samba.

The international beat

While the Lambada was being buried at winter in Brazil, some entrepreneurs from Europe found other more ambitious plans for it. At the end of that very summer, a couple of French business man came to Brazil and bought the musical copyrights of something like 300 lambada musics. They then returned to France, founded the Kaoma Band, boosting it up with some serious Marketing dollars, and turned Lambada into a world-wide known music style, reaching even the far east corner of the world such as Japan.

The second boom

The Lambada world phenomenon was so strong that something almost unbelievable happened: the music returned to Brazil as a foreign music style, reaching the more economically evolved south-east region of Brazil. Some people reckon this re-insertion of Lambada has changed the way the young Brazilian couples were dancing in the 1990s.

Whether this is true, the fact is around that time and for more than 30 years since the Beatles, young couples were not interested in dancing together. At the beginning of the 90s these young people started to dance together once again and hundreds of brazilian-style ballroom dancing schools were re-opened.

This second Lambada wave was larger in success, reaching the whole Brazilian population. It left strong imprints on the Brazilian culture when the Lambada became as internationally known as the Samba was.

The dance changes

With world-wide and national repercussion the dance started to evolve. On its origins (circa 1988) the couples would stick to dancing close to each other touching their bellies all the time. Such was the case of an early Lambada dancing contest at "Lambateria UM" (a dance venue) in which the contestants were to be eliminated if ever they ever became separated during the performance.

During the second boom, the strong demand for dancers in films and shows brought together the experinece and techniques of many professional dancers and started changing the way the Lambada was danced. Jive style turns were added and also some acrobatic movements were incorporated. It is from this era that the Cambre (a bend from the waist to the side or to the back coming from ballet) was incorporated.

Along with the Lambada music playing in every radio station, many musicians coming from various other pop-styles such as Fafa de Belem and Sydney Magal, followed the trend and recorded several songs that became well known hits and from time to time still find their way today on the dance floor.

Hunting for a new rhythm: the decline of the lambada music and the rise of a new dance

After a while the Lambada music style entered in decline and in 1994 it was already very difficult to find any Lambada songs on any music store. Lambada composers started to fade away and people like Beto Barbosa were never again to be heard of.

The dance lost a lot of its strength and appeal and hordes of dancers migrated to other more traditional Brazilian dancing styles or followed the trends into other Bahia's summer season dances such as the Axé. Others still remained attached to the Lambada dance and started to seek other Caribbean music styles such as the Soca, Konpa and Zouk to keep on dancing the Lambada moves.

Other non-Caribbean music styles were also incorporated such as the Flamenco Rumba from Gipsy Kings and some Arabic songs, but the majority of the tunes selected were Zouklove (a sub-style of Zouk) or the African Kizomba, which bears great similarity to Zouklove. Also slow Caboswing, from the Cape Verde, is used often by dancers. Some of the artists popular by Zouk and Lambada dancers include Suzanna Lubrano, Gil Semedo, Kaysha, Edith Lefel, Ludo, Princess Lover and Thierry Cham, but also pop artists like Shakira, Madonna, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, Cher, Jennifer Lopez, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion.

Nowadays most teachers and dancers are using the term Zouk-Lambada, Lambazouk, or simply Zouk to refer to the Lambada dance, and there's an ongoing discussion on Brazilian dancing forums of whether these are actually two (or even three) different kind of dances. Since 2004 at the Lambazouk Barcelona Congress teachers and enthousiasts came together to discuss the various options