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- Tapping the African and European barrel : tap dancing across the colou...

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MyBlues The way I feel about blues

- Tapping the African and European barrel : tap dancing across the colour line
Posted on August 26th, 2011

In my previous article I have started a narrative on my quest for the roots of the blues in the early slave music. I would now like to make a small step sideways to dedicate a few words on tap dancing. Yes, tap dancing, because it is a form of music which illustrates beautifully how European and African cultural forms melted together into new styles, which is one of my pet topics. The tapping, with its frequent use of syncopation, has indeed its roots in both the Irish step-dancing and black slave dances. Its roots go back to the mid 1800s, but the early germs go back earlier. To paraphrase Zora Neale Hurstons Lords of Sound, we could say that tap dancing originated in the rhythmic movements made by the Lords of Dance We can trace back the origins to the West Africans who on slave ships danced, on occasion, to unfamiliar march-time beat music played on for them also unfamiliar instruments by members of the ships Europeans crews. As the ships pitched and lurched, the Africans did a foot stomp. Rhythmic clapping sometimes went along with the steps (1) It was a tradition known as patting Juba. The word Juba is etymologically related to the word Giouba which refers to an African step-dance which somewhat resembled a jig with elaborate variations. Once arrived on the plantations, some slaves were on occasion required to entertain the white plantation owners by playing music and dancing. The degree to which the African slaves could stick to their sounds and rhythms varied. In the southern region of New Orleans for instance, the attitude of the slave owners was more compliant towards the cultural background of the slaves than in the more northern and eastern regions where the prevailing Protestantism tended more to a restraining of the African elements in the slaves culture. It has been documented that, given the relative lack of musicians in eastern North America, the plantation owners sometimes asked their slaves to play on European American instruments for white parties. One needs to keep in mind also that many plantations were very often far removed from town and that the entertainment possibilities were few. From surviving notices and posters about escaped slave musicians, one can by the way deduct that those slaves were higher priced than the others: the reward money for bringing them back was higher than that offered for common labourers (Komara, 2005). It is in this context that evolved a dance which combined elements of Irish jigs and reel dance on the one hand with the African ring dance on the other hand. The latter (also called the Ring Shout) is said to originate from the African Circle Dance and was performed only to percussion instruments, clapping of the hands, stomping of the feet and a call and response type of singing (or shouting). The strong rhythmic dancing using the body as only instrument was a good substitute for the banning of drums, which were (mostly) considered by the plantation owners as a potential rebellious instrument which could inspire mutiny. This dance, the Juba, involved stomping as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks. Later on, from the mid 1800s, music and lyrics were added, and the dance was popularized by William

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26/08/2011 12:47

- Tapping the African and European barrel : tap dancing across the colou...

http://www.myblues.eu/blog/?p=1386

Henry Lane, who was also called Master Juba. He was one of the first black performers in the United States and is credited as one of the most influential figures in the creation of American tap dance. Using his body as a musical instrument, he worked out a unique style blending African-derived syncopated rhythms with movements of the Irish jig and reel. William Henry Lane was a free-born African American in Rhode Island (around 1825) and began learning the Irish jig and reel from an uncle who was a dance hall and saloon performer in New York City. His original use of different areas of his feet to create rhythms, keep time, and improvise complex, syncopated rhythms was innovative. He used his heels to create the deeper tones of the bass drum, and the balls of his feet to layer softer, higher sounds. He added to the juba other ethnic dance steps he had learned (shuffle, the slide, buck dancing, pigeon wing, and clog) and transformed it into a new dance that became known as tap dancing. He was soon billed as the Dancing Wonder of the Age. He toured with a white minstrelsy group wearing black face makeup! in New England, and finally crossed the Atlantic : in 1848 he danced for Queen Victoria on a United Kingdom tour and also established a dance school in London. He died very young in 1852 or 1853 somewhere in England after living an intense life as a touring performer, giving shows every day and night during 11 years. Exhaustion and malnutrition are said to have killed him.

Tap dancers will tell you that even today he is acknowledged as the creator of tap and that he is celebrated for his many contributions to modern dance. For me, William Lane is a fine example of an exponent of a unique American musical culture, that mixed African and European traditions, and who danced his own way across the colour line. If you want to have an idea of the energy created by the Juba, have a look at this footage of Master Juba, a production created by GLYPT : the Greenwich & Lewisham Young Peoples Theatre, which toured East Anglia and London in the Autumn of 2006 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWyMda_ibSY (1) Lane, William Henry(1825c. 1852) Dancer, Minstrel Shows Aped Blacks, Becomes Master of Dance, Chronology SOURCES - http://www.ehow.com/about_6454744_history-african-dance-music.html - http://masterjuba.com/ - http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/4342/Lane-William-Henry-1825-c-1852.html - http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/lane-william-henry-master-juba-1825-c-1852 - http://www.blackamericaweb.com/?q=articles/news/the_black_diaspora_news/29520 - Shane White and Graham White : The Sounds of Slavery, 2005 - Edward Komara, Encyclopedia of the Blues, 2005

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26/08/2011 12:47

- Tapping the African and European barrel : tap dancing across the colou...

http://www.myblues.eu/blog/?p=1386

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