What does “Harlem shake” mean?

A shoulder-driven Harlem dance from 1981, later buried under an unrelated internet meme.

Entry · catalog no. 0019

Harlem shake

/ ˈhɑrləm ʃeɪk /HAR-luhm SHAYK

n. · Harlem, New York City · 1980s

✓ Verified

A dance built on fast, loose shaking of the shoulders and upper arms over a still lower body, danced upright and usually in place. It came out of Harlem's Rucker Park basketball world at the start of the 1980s and moved through Harlem party culture for two decades before hip-hop video put it in front of the country.

“Cat came out at halftime doing the Harlem shake and the whole park lost it.”

Origin & Attribution

Danced first by Albert "Al B." Boyce at halftime of the Entertainer's Basketball Classic at Rucker Park in Harlem in 1981. For years Harlem called it the Al B., after him. Boyce carried it through the neighborhood's party circuit; it reached a national audience in 2001 when Bad Boy Records put it in the video for G. Dep's "Let's Get It." Boyce died in 2006, and his family gave the origin account to the press in 2013.

1981

Al B. Boyce dances it at Rucker Park halftime; Harlem calls it the Al B.

2001

G. Dep's "Let's Get It" video puts the dance in national rotation

2013

An unrelated viral clip format takes the name; Harlem objects publicly

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

Harlem, New York City · 1980s

Spoken by

Black Harlem — Rucker Park regulars, party dancers, and the hip-hop video circuit that carried it downtown

$HARLEMThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Faded

45 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

60/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1981

in the culture

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@bxgriot

The Bronx, NY

@phillyanne

Philadelphia, PA

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

"Let's Get It" — G. Dep feat. P. Diddy and Black Rob, Bad Boy Records, released April 3, 2001

audio · single

■

"Harlem Shake Originator Recalled by Family, Friends as Life of the Party" — DNAinfo New York, February 25, 2013

text · newspaper

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