by ADAM FLINTER
If the internet has given us one positive thing, it’s the opportunity to experience the best of other cultures and bring our understanding of life closer together.
With that in mind I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to stop talking so much shop and run you through two of the best (and by best I mean oddest) bits of south-east Asian culture I’ve come across.
Luckily for you, both examples use the medium of dance and are genuinely unique.
First up is the Indonesian/Malaysian craze of Poco Poco, which can be best described as a variation of the line dance that arrived in the 1980s, became and national craze and never went away.
It became so popular that at one point Malaysian police departments used it as part of their daily exercise routine. But then disaster struck.
If you’ve heard the phrase Poco Poco, it might be because it achieved a small degree of international notoriety when a cleric in Malaysia issued a fatwa banning it for various reasons but largely because it has people dancing in the shape of a crucifix and elements of soul worshipping.
Perfect reasoning if it weren’t for the fact that it none of that was remotely true and its origins were as an Indonesian folk dance. Judge for yourself in the videos how haram it is.
The second – and really, truly indigenous – is the misleadingly titled Mambo from Singapore.
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