Mini-disco in Spain/Canaries – favourite songs and dances

This year we spent vacation in Gran Canaria and Tenerife. For us the choice was largely driven by the Canaries having sun and warmth at times of the year (April and October respectively) when most other beach/sun holiday locations that are within sensible travel are cooler.  It did however introduce us to the world of ‘Mini-disco’, which our children (aged 3 and half, and 20 months) both loved.

‘Mini-disco’ typically consists of children’s songs (the sort that you might typically have heard at children’s birthday parties).  Groups of children then often dance, sometimes on a stage, in rhythm with each other (or not!), sometimes led through a dance routine by an adult.  The ages of the children can vary from toddlers who have barely begun to walk, almost up to teenagers.

For the children involved, mini-disco can help develop social skills, help overcome shyness, and, perhaps most importantly, be enormous fun.

Mini-disco is often also a ‘hit’ also with parents, in that it helps tire out the children, and thereby help send them to bed on time.  On the downside, it can result in rushed dinners in order to arrive at the dancefloor/stage on time.

On the occasions that we had the opportunity to participate in ‘Mini-disco’ the following songs were played, all being classic examples of ‘mini-disco’ at its best (click on song name for clip of music, or click on lyrics for the … lyrics!):

• Veo veo (lyrics) – Spanish
• Superman (lyrics) – Italian
• Il Coccodrillo come fa? (lyrics) – Italian
• The Hokey Cokey (lyrics) – English
• Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (lyrics) – English
• Chu Chu Ua (lyrics) – Spanish

Songs are often in their original languages, as well as alternatives (typically English, Italian, Spanish, and sometimes also French and German).  Searching for any of these songs on YouTube will likely result in numerous examples of private handycam videos of mini-disco dances, as well as occasional pop videos from Europop bands.

All of these songs, and many others can be found in the album ‘Minidisco International Songs’, by Django Music / DD Company (website link here).  The website contains short 20-30 second snippets from the songs and links to the songs on iTunes (with a couple of exceptions where in some cases the link is not shown, but iTunes nevertheless does have the songs). The website also contains song lyrics.  Searching for the song names on iTunes will also result in numerous other covers of the songs being found.

What is your experience with ‘mini-disco’?  What is your favourite song?  Do you have links to any good mini-disco songs/videos?