Beguine (dance) Beguine (dance) The beguine is a dance and music form, similar to a slow rhumba. It was popular in the 1930s, coming from the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, where in local Creole "Beke" or "Begue" means a White person, and "Beguine" is the female form. It is a combination of Latin folk dance and French ballroom dance, and is a spirited but slow, close dance with a roll of the hips (a movement inherited from rumba) After Cole Porter wrote the song "Begin the Beguine", the dance became more widely known beyond the Caribbean. The song was introduced in
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book the Great American Songbook. The album was recorded February 7–9 & March 27, 1956, in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Fitzgerald's manager, and the producer of many of her albums, Norman Granz, visited Cole Porter at the Waldorf-Astoria, and played him this entire album. Afterwards, Porter merely remarked, "My, what marvelous diction that girl has." This album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance." In 2003, it was one of 50 recordings chosen