﻿BEST-mix #1 Entry
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Song: 't Smidje
Artist: Laïs
Album: Laïs (1998)
Genre: Folk Rock

Song Info
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This song is the debut single of the Belgian folk rock trio Laïs. The language of the song is Flemish, and the title means "The Young Blacksmith". The song became quite popular in Europe thanks to its extremely fun, yet easy to learn group dance routine. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JybjpwId9E (unfortunately, someone screwed up the music and the people got kinda lost :D).

From the band's website:
"The story of a young blacksmith, married to the most beautiful girl in the world, who, unfortunately, has the worst possible character. He gives us good advice.
Our first single, together with 'De Wereld Vergaat'. In Flanders the lyrics were already known from Miek & Roel's version. We thought we could make a jig of it and started dancing. That's the story of this arrangement. We're accompanied by Kadril on this one."

Artist Info (Source: Wikipedia)
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Laïs (Celtic for voice) is a Belgian group, bringing contemporary folk and world music in a unique manner. The female vocal trio part of Laïs are three young women from Kalmthout: Jorunn Bauweraerts, Annelies Brosens and Nathalie Delcroix. They are known especially for their polyphonic close harmony songs, occasionally a cappella, based on self-composed melodies with lyrics dating back to the Middle Ages. Their career started in 1994, when Jorunn and Annelies performed a song at the folk festival in Gooik, near Brussels. Nathalie joined the group somewhat later. They had their breakthrough after their appearance at the folkfestival of Dranouter, near Ypres, in 1996. Their debut CD album was released in 1998. They performed in South Africa, Canada, France (as a supporting program for Sting), the Netherlands and China. In April 2004 they released their third CD to the market under the title Douce Victime, with covers from Jacques Brel and Herman van Veen. It was recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. They have won the respect of several greats in the music business, such as Emmylou Harris and Sting.

Steps
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This definitely isn't a typical DDR song, but its danceability made it a perfect candidate for a stepfile.

Light (3): Well, just 4th notes... However, they're quite dense so you don't get bored.

Standard (5): Quite a few jumps here, as well as a few 12th notes. The patterns are more simple at the beginning and get more dense as the song progresses, so the player can get used to the melody more easily.

Heavy (8): Since this is a folk song, there is a lot of jumping and galloping. As it is the case with the Standard chart, the steps get more demanding as the song progresses. The steps follow the vocals pretty closely during the sung parts, but I think this works very well in this case. I've included gallop-crossovers in the final verse for even more vigorous jumping.

Graphics
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I have to say, I'm really satisfied with how the graphics turned out. I think they pretty much capture the essence of the song. The background looks like a torn and burnt page from a medieval book (and so does the title in the banner). I designed the graphics from scratch with Photoshop (except the drawing of the blacksmith, which I found of the web).

Extras
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I have included the lyrics so you can sing along... in case you know how to read Flemish :D

Hope you enjoy this!