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What are some of the most profound examples of the African-American contribution to American dance?
There appears to be a substantial amount of evidence to indicate that it was probably an African-American or African fiddler in the South that invented American square dance calling. So that's quite a shattering assumption in some quarters, because we don't see a black presence in American country culture today. So how is it that a black fiddler could have possibly invented American square calling? First of all, the contra dances, the square dances, when they came to America are not called. In Europe, those dances have to be committed to memory. And the way that was done, especially by the upper and the more affluent classes, was to study with a dancing master. Well, of course, when we come to America things change. They don't have the rigid hierarchy based on royalty, based on the aristocracy. And of course, in the traditional contra dances in Europe the line is formed according to status. Well, once we come to America, things change. Now imagine this scenario. Here we are all on Massa Hazzard's plantation and he decides to give a dance and he calls in all the field hands, white and black, all of his white indentured servants as well as his black slaves, all of the house servants, and we're all in the big hall and we want to have a dance. "But Massa, us don't know the figgers." There is one person who would know the figures, and that's the fiddler, who was more than likely loaned out to all the aristocratic dances. So he had committed all the figures to memory. Of course, in his own musical past there's a predisposition toward improvisation, and most West African dances are called. Every one I have done is called. They're either called by the change in the drum rhythm, by a high-pitched squeal in the dancer's voice, by a signal from a whistle or a cow's horn. But the change in the dance figures, the change in one movement to the next, the move -- a movement that moves from here to swinging down, for example, is called. It's not done just on the volition of the dancer. And so the African fiddler would bring that tradition of calling to the European contra dance. Here we go. "Honor your partner!" (Hums.) "Honor your corner!" (Hums.) "All the men right." (Hums.) "Now do-si-do." (Hums.) It was probably an African-American fiddler that invented that process, made a major contribution to American country culture, American country dance and music and, of course, the contribution of Africans to American country culture is more profound than we acknowledge.
The banjo, of course, the ultimate country music instrument, we all know was originally an African instrument. We associate it with Appalachian culture, with Ozark culture, even with Irish culture, but not with the culture of its origin. Well, a few years ago I was at a conference in the Smithsonian and one of the banjo experts, a man named Gordon McCann, showed a videotape of what he called "old-time Ozark dancing." He introduced the film by saying that "You have to find a really elderly person to see this type of dancing done." And he showed an old lady, probably in her late 70s, early 80s, dressed in coveralls, brogan boots, an old straw hat, and, literally, a corncob pipe, almost a stereotype picture of an old, elderly Ozark lady. And she got up and she began to do this old-time Ozark dancing and she did the "Mashed Potatoes." She did what I learned in 1955 as the "Mashed Potatoes." My mouth dropped open. I was astounded. And so I asked Gordon, I said, "Where did she learn this movement? This is something I learned in Cleveland, Ohio in an urban setting in 1955." And he said to me, "Well, if you get to any of the old people, this is what they'll tell you, but they won't admit it. They'll say, 'Well, we learned all these things from the blacks.' When you ask them, 'Well, where are the blacks now?' [they'll say,] 'Well, they all left in the Great Migration northward and they left us with this culture.'" . . . in much the same way that the banjo passed out of American culture into Ozark culture as the ultimate country music instrument. A number of the dance influences can be identified there as well.
The dance generates its own rhythm. The rhythm generates the dance. The rhythm is the dance. The dance is the rhythm.
When Africans are brought here, as all people who moved from their native [land] for whatever reason, under whatever circumstances, people attempt to re-create the familiar. And so they bring with them those traditional ways of surviving, those traditional ways of marking rites of passage, those traditional ways of relating to each other, those traditional ways of delineating community, delineating status inside of the slave community.
Explain the significance of the fancy figures.
The fancy figures are the last set in the contra dance, and in the fancy figures the dancer is allowed to be less inhibited. There's room for improvisation. And the fancy figures are derived from the days in which the slaves were called in to performed the last dance in the set. And they brought to the floor African postures and gestures that were foreign to the European body. Those postures and gestures that the Africans brought were seen as more exciting, more exotic, wilder, violating rhythmic structure, adding improvisation, twists and turns and movements that were foreign to the European eye. The fancy figures and the other contributions of Africans to American country dancing really provide us with the bedrock out of which American dance grows. Without the African contribution, we probably would not have had American dance as we know it.
I read an account by Charles Dickens in which he went into a -- what he called a "London dance parlor." Of course, during the time of Charles Dickens there were merchant ships, and oftentimes these merchant ships would have black laborers, some of them slaves, some of them free black laborers. And when the merchants docked, there were places in London where these black laborers would gather for social activity. Charles Dickens ventured into one of these one day and he wrote a description of what the dancing and the calling of the dance looked and sounded like. And I remember the quote. He says that "Dark Jack's calling is foreign to that of the London parlor." And he says that it was punctuated with screams and yells and jumping and exclamations in places that you would never hear in the native, contra dances. I found that very interesting, that these American black merchants, or seamen, would take their traditions to London and be observed by Charles Dickens. When they landed in London, there were places where they went to socialize. And so he went into one of these places and he made some observations. And the thing that stands out most clearly in my mind is his observation about the square dance calling, the contra dance calling, that went on there. Of course, by then, calling had been taken up and taken back to Europe and was being used there.
How integral is dance to the rest of life in African-American culture?
Dance is deeply connected to labor on at least two fronts, in at least two ways. First of all, dance movement is derived from ritual. And ritual movements are attempts to crystallize those postures and gestures that contribute to human survival. For example, certain planting gestures are solidified in harvest dancing. In fertility dancing and fertility rituals, those movements imitate those gestures and those postures that are held in esteem in the society, and those postures and gestures that are held in esteem are those that are most useful and those that contribute most heavily toward survival. Dance movements that imitate the dropping of a seed into the earth, for example, are solidified as dance. And those things are taken directly from labor. That's one way.
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