What a Pride dance floor asks for

A Pride dance floor is like no other. It isn't a club, even though there are lights. It isn't a concert, even though there's a stage. It's a street full of strangers, in thirty-something degrees, a bottle of warm water in hand, hoping the next track is the one.

When I write a lyric with that moment in mind, I try to put myself in that street. Not the ideal listener with headphones on, but a sweaty crowd with three seconds to decide whether to dance or go and get another drink. That crowd is demanding in a very particular way. And I think it asks for some quite specific things.

A chorus you learn first time

The first thing the floor wants is to be able to join in with something it's never heard before. It sounds impossible, but it isn't. A Pride chorus has to be understood on the first go-round and shouted back on the second. Few words, repeated, with a long vowel where people can open their mouths wide.

That has forced me to mistrust my own lyrics. I love lines packed with words, details, stories. On a dance floor they're no use. Or they work in the verse, which is when people look at each other, laugh, or order something else at the bar. The chorus has to be almost a slogan, something that would work painted on a placard.

That's why I think titles matter so much. A title like «Tan Cateto» (Such a bumpkin) can be shouted. Two words, an insult turned inside out, a phrase anyone can fling into the air with an arm raised. I don't know if it's a dance-floor song. But the title, without a doubt, is shaped like a shout.

You can dance to humour too

Some people think only solemn anthems work at Pride, songs of resistance with strings and vocals that crack. They do work, of course. There's a moment every night when people need that. But I think a Pride dance floor wants complicity above all. And complicity very often comes from laughter.

A song with a title like «La vecina cotilla» (The nosy neighbour) or «No quiero otro novio cojín» (I don't want another cushion boyfriend) has an advantage in the street: everybody knows what it's about before it starts. Everybody has a neighbour like that or an ex like that. People point at each other, laugh, whisper in each other's ears. The dancing turns into a conversation.

The dance floor is very grateful for that, and you barely notice it on headphones. A joke shared with five hundred people sounds different from a joke on your own. It becomes a small collective act. And on a day like that, laughing together at the same things is political enough.

The floor belongs to every age

Something often forgotten is how mixed the crowd at Pride is. There are kids out for the first time, men who've been coming for decades, mothers with fans, tourists who understand nothing and dance anyway. The floor doesn't belong to twenty-somethings.

That calls for songs that shut nobody out because of age. It's why I love the copla flavour in PLANETA GAYFOLK. Copla, the old Spanish torch song, is recognised by grandfather and granddaughter alike, even if for different reasons. A dramatic twist, an exaggeration, a theatrical lament over a pop beat: all of that connects generations that never cross paths anywhere else. The Pride dance floor is one of the few places where a seventy-year-old and an eighteen-year-old can dance to the same song without either of them doing it out of politeness.

The slow moment

Now, a contradiction I haven't solved. Every dance floor needs to come down at some point. People get tired, sit on a kerb, look for shade. And there, if the song is right, something lovely happens: the whole street goes half still and someone puts their arms around someone.

I'd like to write more songs for that moment. But I find it hard. My natural bent is humour, camp, the quick line. And in the slow moment at Pride, humour can be too much. Or not. Sometimes I think a slow song with humour in it is exactly what that pause needs, because it lets you be moved without turning solemn. I don't know. I'm leaving it here as unfinished business.

The GAYFOLK trilogy ends with an album called «El día de la liberación» (Liberation day). When I think of that title, something like a Pride street comes to mind. A day when the planet described in the first album and longed for in the second is finally under your feet. The three albums play as one story in three acts, and the third is the one that feels most like a party.

I'm not saying anyone should play the whole album on a float. That would be odd. But I do believe a Pride dance floor asks for that very thing: the feeling of having arrived. After the longing, after the fear, after whatever it cost. Dancing there is celebrating that you're where you wanted to be, even if just for one night.

It also asks for something practical: having the songs to hand. The albums are free to download, no sign-up, at mikesaintlouis.com/descargas, and the songs are on Spotify, Deezer and YouTube. For a party at home with friends, downloading them is all it takes.

The last thing the floor asks for has nothing to do with music. It asks that nobody looks down on anyone. That the boy who dances terribly dances anyway. That the lady with the fan has her spot. That nobody has to explain who they are to be there. If a song helps with that, even a little, it's done its job.

Everything else, lyrics and music videos, is at mikesaintlouis.com.