The search for the elusive Boujé {UPDATED}

I hope all of you out there had an excellent Labor Day weekend. We did in our house, though it was pretty low-key. On Sunday, my sister-in-law and her family came over and we all went for a swim in our pool. Our boys got to play with their cousin for a little while and a good time was had by all most - our youngest is working on some molars and he was a little fussy. For those of you out there without experience with teething babies, molars have four points, and a baby's molars come through one point at a time. Did I mention that a baby has eight molars total? Oh joy...not, but the afternoon was lovely spent together with family in spite of fussy babiness. Oh, and this weekend I found something I'd been looking for. Zumba-related? Yeah... You know it. About two months ago now, Zumba debuted an ad campaign for their latest Party In Pink.

This is it, featuring actual survivors who also happen to be instructors. It's a great campaign, but one of the questions that appeared over and over again in the comments when this video went up on Facebook was: "What song is that?" It's Boujé by J. Perry. He's Haitian and the song is in French. I've also seen the song spelled Bouger. At the time, the only thing I could find from searching for it was the following video on YouTube:

 

This video was taken in LA at a Zumba Fitness Concert. 

**Dear Zumba,
Please bring a fitness concert to some place in West Michigan within three hours' drive of my house. If you did, I would totally buy a ticket and road-trip it and I know a few others that would probably share the drive with me.
Sincerely,
The Zumbamommy**

So, I was glad to find the full song even if the sound quality of the video isn't great. I -really- wanted this song, I still do! I've looked and looked, in fact I check once a week or so, but the MP3 still isn't available for public purchase yet. Or at least it isn't on Amazon.com. I don't own an i-Anything so I don't have an iTunes account. If it's different there, I wouldn't know. Even the artist's website doesn't list a release date; actually doesn't list the song at all. Bummer. But the double bummer?  Watching this video, I realized that Zumba is using this song for more than just an ad campaign, there's choreography! Choreography that is next to impossible to make out from watching the tiny dancers on the stage, or the blurry jumbo TV's, or the writhing mass of an audience. No amount of squinting at the screen helps; believe me, I've tried. Double bummer and double darn!

Since that video, more have appeared and just this weekend, I stumbled across this little gem. 

According to the info, the video was published June 21, 2013 but I'd swear it wasn't there last week... Bloody magical YouTube pixies... Anyway, The lady in the orange top and black pants up front leading the group is the indomitable force known as Gina Grant. She's one of Zumba's professional dancers. And by professional, I mean that as her regular job, she is paid to travel to places like the Czech Republic (which is where this video was taken) and do Zumba events. The little blond girl in the grey top and pink pants up there with her is Fanny Madarász who is famous in her own right as one of Zumba's youngest presenters. Finding official choreography, that I could actually see well enough to follow, made me a little giddy and I was struck with the urge to try it. At first I thought: "I'll just wait for this evening, after the boys are in bed." But... it didn't work out like that. For those of you who aren't freaky Zumba addicts like myself, I'll try to describe it. It's like a food craving. I think most everyone out there has had one of those at least once. So you decide you'd really like a bite of something, and no substitute seems to make a difference. The yen for that one food gets progressively stronger until you finally have some, and then you go, "Yummy!". Well, my craving for some Boujé reached critical mass in about five minutes flat and the plan to wait until after 8pm went right out the window. To be fair, it -was- only 1:30pm. I mean, what's the Zumbamommy expected to do with that?

Bry was out on the John Deere mowing the lawn, my youngest was down for a nap, my oldest was watching a cartoon... Why not? So I angled my laptop towards a reasonably open-ish spot in the kitchen and grabbed my dance shoes. I don't normally use the kitchen as a dance space, I usually go in the basement. Initially, I thought I'll just try it... A couple times... Keep it low impact... No need to go at it full on, thus no need to go in the basement... Those of you who know me from class, I know you're shaking your heads at me. And the rest of you, probably should be too in all honesty. I don't know who I thought I was fooling because if that was really the plan, I probably didn't need to put on my shoes - the good ones I wear out to class! Heh. Well, after the second time through the song, I realized this and decided I'd made a mistake in not changing out of my regular clothes. So I quickly ran upstairs and fixed that and then got back to it. And by "got back to it" I mean I -really- got into it. If Boujé were a food it would be yummy! The French verb bouger means: "to move, shift or stir". So let's move, shift, and stir already! Sometime during the twelfth run through, Bry came in from the yard to find his wife bouncing around the kitchen in a completely different outfit (very sweaty by this point) and waving her arms. I have to give him props, he made his way through the kitchen without getting whacked. Bob and weave Babe, bob and weave... Then after a few more times through, the baby made it known he was done in his room and ready to come down. So I took another short break to go get him and set him up with some milk and a snack. He sat at the table and watched me run through the song another eight times or so. It was comical the first time he saw me though, he had his cup up to his mouth but I could tell he wasn't actually drinking. He was just staring at me all wide-eyed, milk forgotten. I knew the exact moment he figured out what it was I was doing, he set the cup down and grinned at me, then he started moving to the beat and waving his arms around. That's my little Zumba-baby!

So, to my sister-in-law and her husband, now you guys know the reason I looked a mess when you showed up.

Best advice: Zumba that doesn't work up a sweat? There. Is. No. Such. Thing.

UPDATE:
Since I originally wrote this post, I've acquired both versions of this song...lucky lucky me! Here are some links for your viewing/buying/listening pleasure:

For the official video featuring Admiral T, click here.
For the Amazon MP3, click here.

The version featuring Shabba was only released to ZIN (Zumba Instructor Network) members, but it can be heard (audio only) here.