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The Afro-American Transformation of European Set Dances and Dance Suites1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

John F. Szwed  and
Morton Marks
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It is well acknowledged that the court dances which developed in Europe from the seventeenth century onward spread to the rural areas of Europe and to the new world. What has not been properly recognized is that these dances — the quadrille, the cotillion, the contradance and the like — were taken up by Afro-Americans in North and South America and the West Indies and were modified and adapted to local cultural circumstances. In many cases — especially in the West Indies — they continue to be found today. Yet as similar as these dances may look or sound, their functions are not always necessarily the same as those of their European sources. At one extreme, they were “Africanized” for sacred purposes; at the other, they were re-formed and became the basis of a new world popular culture. An example of the former occurs on the island of Montserrat.

There country dance orchestras made up of various combinations of fife, fiddle, concertina or accordion, triangle, and two drums known as the woowoo and the babala (or babla) play for social dancing, but the same music is also used for inducing possession on other occasions, called “jombee dances.” On these latter occasions quadrille dance rhythms are intensified and gradually “Africanized” in order that individuals may become possessed and convey the messages of the spirits.

Type
Research Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Summer 1988 , pp. 29 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1988

References

NOTES

2. For the European background of set dances and dance suites, see Guilcher, Jean Michel, La Contredanse et les renouvellments de la danse française. (Paris: École Practique des Hautes-Études et Mouton, 1969)Google Scholar and Richardson, Philip J.S., The Social Dances of the Nineteenth Century in England (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1960)Google Scholar.

3. Dobbin, Jay D., The Jombee Dance of Montserrat: A Study of Trance Ritual in the West Indies Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

4. Compare to bambuala and babalao, as well as to the Gaelic drum, the bodhrán.

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6. Dobbin, pp. 136-37. Dobbin also provides an exceptionally vivid and complete presentation of a dance he witnessed (pp. 60-96).

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12. Some of the most exciting work on Afro-American dance outside of the United States is being done by the West Indian anthropologist Marie-Céline Lafontaine. Cf. her “Musique et société aux Antilles.” Présence Africaine no. 121-122 (1982): 72–108Google Scholar; “Le Carnaval de l' ‘autre’,” Les Témps Moderne no. 441-442 (April-May, 1983): 2126–2173Google Scholar; and Alors ma chère, moi … (Paris: Editions Caribéennes, 1987)Google Scholar.

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14. Hear, for instance, Fremont Fontenot's “Contredanse” with accordion and triangle on Zodoco: Louisiana Creole Music, Rounder 6009, or “Contredanse & Shoefly Swing” on Louisiana Creole Music, Folkways 2622.

15. “Musique et société aux Antilles,” pp. 101-105.

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43. Hearn, Lafcadio, “Levee Life,” in An American Miscellany, Vol. 1 (New York: Albert Mordell, ed., Dodd, , Mead, , 1924)Google Scholar. Dunham describes a Jamaican Maroon set dance that follows a similar pattern of Europe-to-Africa style change through the progression of the dances.

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50. Jones, Louis, quoted in Marquis, Donald M., In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), p. 107Google Scholar; see also Beatrice Alcorn, quoted on p. 94; and Charlie Love's and Harrison Barnes's interviews (“‘Buddy Bolden was a Tall Man …’”) on The Music of New Orleans, Vol. IV: The Birth of Jazz (Folkways 2464).

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53. Transcribed in Harris, Rex, Jazz, second edition (London: Penguin Books, 1953), pp. 66–67Google Scholar.

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56. Davin, Tom, “Conversations with James P. Johnson,” The Jazz Review Vol. 2, no. 5 (June, 1959): 15–16Google Scholar. See also Walter “One-Leg Shadow” Gould's comment that “Old Man Sam Moore was ragging the quadrilles and schottisches before I was born … He was born way before the [Civil] war.” Blesh, and Jannis, , They All Played Ragtime, p. 190Google Scholar. One contemporary observer also drew attention to the square dance qualities of The Big Apple, a popular dance of the 1930's, which was said to have originated in Columbia, South Carolina (Crichton, Kyle, “Peel That Apple — the Story of the ‘Big Apple’” in Gold, Robert S., Jazz Talk, p. 18Google Scholar.

57. Tom Davin, p. 170.

58. Davin, , “Conversations With James P. Johnson,” Jazz Review, Vol. 2, no. 6 (July, 1959), p. 12Google Scholar.

59. Davin, p. 13.

60. Blesh, and Janis, , They All Played Ragtime, p. 190Google Scholar.

61. Blesh and Janis, p. 188. In August Wilson's play, “Joe Turner's Come and Gone,” an after-dinner secular ring shout at a Pittsburgh rooming house turns into a possession ritual.

62. See Stearns, Marshall, The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 13Google Scholar, on the importance of the form for preserving style. Sterling Stuckey provides the best overview of the evidence for the presence of the ring shout in the United States and in West Africa.

63. There may also be reason to see an East Coast tradition at work here, one with roots in the coastal areas of Northern Florida and South and North Carolina, and extending (by migration) to Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Delaware, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York. Sharing the characteristics of 3-3-2 additive rhythm, shifting meters, etc., this tradition produced the Broadway influences of James P. Johnson and Eubie Blake (Baltimore), the pop music of Jerry Lieber (Baltimore), the gospel music of Philadelphia, North Jersey and New York City, the bebop of Dizzy Gillespie (South Carolina) and Thelonius Monk (North Carolina), and the avant-garde playing of John Coltrane (North Carolina.)

64. Hagert, p. 1.

65. “Quadrille,” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 15, p. 491Google Scholar. Examples include the Bologna Quadrilles (based on Rossini's Stabat mater), Chabrier's Souvenirs de Munich (based on themes from Tristan und Isolde), and Faure and Messager's Souvenirs de Bayreuth (based on themes from The Ring).

66. As quoted in Schuller, p. 139. Schuller's work was an invaluable source for these comments on Morton.

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69. Stearns and Stearns, p. 23.

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