“Danza Kuduro” had gone into oblivion, then Conceição arrived

The sound of an accordion, a reggaeton rhythm, a perfect text for group dances under the stage of some provincial festival: “The hand arrives, belt alone / from medium turn, kuduro dance / don’t let me now that this only fills / move the head, kuduro dance”. It’s the summer of 2011 when Italy also discovers “Kuduro dance”, catchphrase made in Puerto Rico signed by such Don Omar and Lucenzowhich had started to climb the charts on the other side of the Atlantic a few months ago.

Outside the Latin American world William Omar Landrón Rivera and Luís Filipe Fraga Oliveira, these are the real names of Don Omar and Lucenzo, until that moment they were two perfect strangers: no one had ever heard of them and if it hadn’t been for “.Fast & Furious 5”, in whose soundtrack their song had ended up, probably “Danza kuduro” – born as a reworking of a song already published by Lucenzo, “Vem dançar kuduro”, which however had not had great success – would have remained a phenomenon circumscribed. Instead “Danza kuduro”, accompanied by a very trashy video clip showing the two singers on a yacht in the company of curvy girls in costumeshelped clear reggaeton into the US and European charts, selling 5 million copies in the US and 2.5 million copies on this side of the Atlantic. On purpose: the kuduro mentioned in the song is a dance style – and a musical genre – from Angola, born as a ritual to pay homage to the victims of the civil war which devastated the country between the 1970s and the early 2000swhen some musicians began mixing rhythms from genres such as calypso and soca, before spreading outside the country with the immigration of Angolan citizens to Portugal. Finished into the oblivion of world discography after that sensational initial exploit, fifteen years after its release “Danza kuduro” is now back in trend. And the credit – or the blame, depending on your point of view – goes to Sérgio Conceiçãothe new coach of Milan.

It is precisely to the tune of “Danza kuduro” that the Portuguese coach created the ballet with which he now usually celebrates trophy victories: the cigar in the mouth, the hand on the belly, a step borrowed from salsa. The scene, already seen at the time when the former Lazio, Parma and Inter midfielder was coaching Porto, the club with which he made himself known to the whole world when he was still wearing boots and with which he won three Portuguese championships as a coach, three Portuguese super cups, four national cups and one league cup, was repeated on Monday night in the Milan dressing room at Al-Awwal Park, the stadium in Riyadh – Saudi Arabia – which hosted the final of the Italian Super Cup Arriving on the bench of the Rossoneri last December 30th after the dismissal of his compatriot Paulo Fonseca, Sérgio Conceição first managed to bring Theo Hernández and his associates to the final by beating Thiago Motta’s Juventus and then, on Monday evening, he saw the Devils become the protagonists of a sensational comeback against Simone Inzaghi’s Inter: after going ahead by two goals, the Nerazzurri in the second half the time they conceded goals from Hernández himself, from Christian Pulisic and, during injury time at the end of the 90 minutes, from Tammy Abraham.

.Conceição thus managed to win his first trophy as Milan coach.

At the end of the match, the show moved right into the Rossoneri locker room. Someone started “Danza kuduro” by Don Omar and Lucenzo from his cell phone, Conceição found a cigar and, after lighting it, went wild to the tune of the hit: “At the end of the game the players immediately told me that I had to dance,” he said then, commenting on the sketch, which went viral on social media in Italy and abroad (on TikTok “Danza kuduro” was used in 1.2 million clips).

If at the end of the games “Danza kuduro” left a deeper mark than was (not) thought at the time – on Spotify, fifteen years after its release, the song has 1.8 billion streams, while on YouTube the video clip has 78 million views – all trace of Don Omar and Lucenzo has been lost in recent years.

Neither of them was able to repeat, as a soloist, the success of that hit. Lucenzo hasn’t released an album for fourteen years: the last one was the one that included “Danza kuduro”, “Emigrante del mundo” in 2011. Don Omar announced his retirement from the scene in 2017. Last spring he announced he had cancer, receiving an outpouring of love from fans. The treatments had an effect and this summer the singer returned to performing live, kicking off a tour entitled “.Back to reggaeton”, which promises – and It almost sounds like a threat – to bring all over the world.