Mexican Hat Dance ~ 1946 Prelinger Archives Soundie

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Originally a public domain film from the National Archives or Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarabe_Tapatío

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Jarabe tapatío, often referred to as the Mexican hat dance, is the national dance of Mexico. It originated as a courtship dance in Guadalajara, Jalisco, during the 19th century, although its elements can be traced back to the Spanish zambra and jarabe gitano, which were popular during the times of the viceroyalty. Female dancers traditionally wear a china poblana outfit, while the male dancers dress as charros.

The standard music of the jarabe tapatío was composed by Jesús González Rubio in the 19th century. However, its more common instrumental arrangement dates from the 1920s. Nowadays, its music is most commonly performed by either mariachi groups or string ensembles...

The word jarabe (from Arabic xarab), originally meaning "herb mixture", denotes the combination of various Mexican musics (sones) and dances (zapateados). Tapatío, the popular demonym of the city of Guadalajara, reflects the origin of this particular jarabe...

The earliest evidence of the dance comes from the late 18th century. It was originally danced by female couples in order to avoid the disapproval of the church. Shortly before the Mexican War of Independence, mixed couples began to perform it, with a public performance at the Coliseo Theater in 1790 in Mexico City. Shortly after that performance, the jarabe was banned by colonial and religious authorities as it was considered to be morally offensive and a challenge to Spain's control over the territory. However, this only served to make the dance more popular as a form of protest and rebellion, with people holding illegal dances in public squares and neighborhood festivals.

The dance represents the courtship of a man and a woman, with the woman first rejecting the man's advances, then eventually accepting them. It has a definite sexual component in metaphor, which was the original reason for disapproval by authorities.

As the dance has lost its controversial status and gained status as a representative of Mexico, the dancers have come to wear garb that is also highly representative of Mexican women and men. For women, the most traditional outfit is called the "China Poblana." The blouse and skirt combination is named after a woman from India who came to Mexico on the Manila Galleon to work as a servant in the early 19th century. Her Asian dress was copied and then adapted in the State of Puebla, with the skirt now heavily embroidered and otherwise decorated with patriotic images. The traditional outfit for men is that of the charro, generally heavily decorated in silver trim...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundies

Soundies were three-minute American musical films, produced between 1940 and 1947, each containing a song, dance, and/or band or orchestral number. Produced professionally on 35mm black-and-white film, like theatrical motion pictures, they were printed in the more portable and economical 16mm gauge.

The films were shown in a coin-operated "movie jukebox" called the Panoram, manufactured by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Each Panoram housed a 16mm RCA film projector, with eight Soundies films threaded in an endless-loop arrangement. A system of mirrors flashed the image from the lower half of the cabinet onto a front-facing screen in the top half. Each film cost 10 cents to play, and there was no choice of song; the patron saw whatever film was next in the queue. Panorams could be found in public amusement centers, nightclubs, taverns, restaurants, and factory lounges, and the films were changed weekly. The completed Soundies were generally made available within a few weeks of their filming, by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America...

The movie-jukebox idea spawned several imitations and variations of the technical design; the most successful of these imitators were the Techniprocess company (led by Rudy Vallee) and the Featurettes company, which used original novelty songs and usually unknown talent (17-year-old Gwen Verdon appears in a couple of the Featurettes, as "Gwen Verdun"). As Soundies quickly became the market leader for jukebox films, the other companies disbanded, and some sold their films to the Soundies concern...