Beguine (dance) Porter's "Jubilee" (1935). In 1984 Italian pop music duo Al Bano and Romina Power released the song "Al ritmo de beguine (Ti amo)" from their album "Effetto amore". 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
Begin the Beguine to finish without the printed music ... about the sixtieth measure I find myself muttering another title, "End the Beguine."" At first, the song gained little popularity, perhaps because of its length and unconventional form. Josephine Baker danced to it in her return to America in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, but neither she nor the song were successful. Two years later, however, bandleader Artie Shaw recorded an arrangement of the song, an extended swing orchestra version, in collaboration with his arranger and orchestrator, Jerry Gray. After signing a new recording contract with RCA Victor Shaw chose "Begin the Beguine"