Jump Rope Videos

In 1983, British artist Malcolm McLaren released the album Duck Rock. “Double Dutch” was one of the singles from Duck Rock. This video is a great bit of history. It is sort of like a “jump rope time-capsule”. It’s fun to look at all of the things that have changed in the 24 years since this was released.

In this video, there are no guys jumping rope. It is 100% girls. Compare that to today where it is no longer a girls only activity. The USA Jump Rope All Star team has 12 boys and 12 girls. Overall USA Jump Rope has about 60% girls and 40% boys¹.

Also, almost everyone in this video is African American. Today the sport is very ethnically diverse. There are jumpers from all backgrounds. Jump Rope is also now a truly global sport. FISAC/IRSF is the governing body for the World Championships. On their website they list membership numbers from at least 31 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

References:
¹ - The Denver Post - Disney film spurs jump-rope sales

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Double Dutch, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.