Black (Dance) History Month Begins!

For the past few years, I've used Facebook Februarys to highlight the African and African-American presence in dance history. This year, I've moved here to give myself a little more space, and to give those friends who just want pictures of my family the ability to opt out. So, if you're here, I guess you are ready to take a ride! Black (Dance) History aficionados, let's go...

Today, I'm leading with this video, which I call the best three minutes of dance in the universe. Click the photo to play the video. Don't worry, I'll wait....

Featured in Hellzapoppin' (1941)

... so, I'm not wrong, right?

Later on this evening, I'll be teaching a beginning workshop in swing and foxtrot, and the swing will look nothing like this. So, what's the deal? Oh, my lovely dancers, there is so much history to unpack, I think we'll just take all week. Shall we? Yes, lets.

You can't know Whitey's Lindy Hoppers or the Harlem Congaroos unless you know the Savoy, and you can't know the Savoy until you know the Harlem Renaissance, and you can't know any of that until you know the Great Migration, so lets all meet at the end of Reconstruction and see if we can make our way back to this amazing clip.

In 1880, 90% of African-Americans lived in the American South, and conditions were bad. The end of Reconstruction meant that the federal government had basically left this population hanging out to dry. Voting rights, legal rights, civil rights - all were under attack. Violence was on the rise, with thousands of black men and women murdered by lynch mobs, publicly and without legal consequence, in the decades that followed. At the same time, industrializing cities of the Northeast and Midwest were outpacing the economy of the rural South. Result? The Great Migration. Between 1914 and 1940, 1.6 million blacks moved from the farms of the South to the factories of the North and Midwest (and later to the new urban areas of the South). By the 1970's, fewer than 50% of African-Americans were rural Southerners.

The effect of this migration was electric. In cities, African-Americans found new patterns of segregation waiting for them, but in this case, the concentration of black culture and (comparative) economic well-being produced a flowering of art, literature, and MUSIC! (That's the Harlem Renaissance, for those of you keeping track.) Music, in particular, made its way quickly from the African-American community to the white mainstream. In popular music, the change at in the early 20th century is striking.

Listen to "Bird in A Gilded Cage," by Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkc9f-5ZW-k This was one of the most popular tunes in 1900.

Now contrast it to "King Porter Stomp," written by Jelly Roll Morton in 1923, and recorded in 1926. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca-bENUU-4Q

Ragtime and blues are African-American inventions, and the dances that went along with them show elements of Africanist aesthetic that could not be destroyed by years of life under slavery. Improvisation, back beat, polyrhythm, and the articulated torso traveled along with the migrants and the music. Ragtime was adopted by Tin Pan Alley, Broadway featured the Charleston, and Harlem became a place for audiences of all races to seek the best black music and dancers. But the Cotton Club (and others like it) were for white audiences only, and the black performers saw a line of segregation at the edge of the stage.

Then, in 1926, a new place opened in New York City. The Savoy Ballroom was integrated from the start, with white owners and black managers, and a mixed crowd on the floor seven nights a week. Still, its location was in the heart of Harlem, and the dance that ruled was another African-American invention, the Lindy Hop. Charles Lindbergh "hopped" the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 in a solo flight, and a dance named after him appeared the same year. But to say that the Lindy was invented in that year ignores the continuum of style that flows through the Ragtime Era. As with so much vernacular history, it is impossible to say exactly how the Lindy Hop emerged, but we can be confident that the dancers of Savoy made it happen, partially out of sheer competition. A special corner was reserved for the best dancers, and there they worked to create new steps for themselves and copy what they could from each other. From this elite group, a team was recruited in 1935 by a bouncer-turned-manager named Herbert White. Whitey's Lindy Hoppers performed for about eight years, disbanding during World War II. Today's clip is from the 1941 movie, Hellzapoppin'.

The Lindy Hop is now only one of the dances referred to as "swing." But in the 1930s, swing was a term applied to music, not dance. In the 1930s the dance was faster and freer than what 21st century dancers have come to know. According to Norma Miller, one of Whitey's dancers, the tempo of the music was sometimes a tension in the ballroom, with black patrons encouraging the bands to speed up and white patrons asking to slow down. In either case, the slower moving versions came to dominate after WWII, and versions of "jitterbugging" proliferated.

Tomorrow, Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, and more on swing...

Now, get out there and dance!