Book Excerpt About The Evolution From Group Dancing To Couples Dancing In The United States (from the book "Jazz Dance: The Story Of American Vernacular Dances" )

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides an excerpt from the book Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance by Marshall Stearns and Jean Stearns (first edition published in 1968; second edition published in 1994).

The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the memory of early African American dance inventors, dancers, song composers, and singers. Thanks also to Thomas W. Talley for his collection of African American folk songs and dances, and thanks to Marshall and Jean Stearns for their research and writing. And thanks to all others who are quoted in this post.

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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/10/la-pas-ma-la-songs-dance.html for an earlier pancocojams post on the "Pas Ma La" dance.

Also, click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/05/square-dance-caller-researcher-phil.html for Part I of a two part series on the African influence on American square dance.

Additional pancocojams posts that are related to this post on early African American dancing can be found by clicking the tags that are given below.

Pancocojams Editor's note:
Some of the song lyrics that are found in this post are written in dialect and contain the referent that is commonly referred to as "the n word". As per the policy of this blog, that word isn't fully spelled out in this post.

Also, note that the 1968 Jazz Dance book uses either the referent "Afro-American" or "Negro" for the population now referred to as "African American". Neither "Afro-American" nor "Negro" are currently used as referents for this population.

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Pancocojams Editor:
The Jazz Dance chapter that is partially quoted in this pancocojams post refers to the song "Jonah's Band" which is featured in Thomas W. Talley's 1922 book Negro Folk Rhymes. Here's that song (given "as is" except for an abbreviation for the "n word")

JONAH'S BAND SONG

Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!
Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!

"Han's up sixteen! Circle to de right!
We's gwine to git big eatin's here to-night."

Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!
Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!

"Raise yo' right foot, kick it up high,
Knock dat Mobile Buck in de eye."

Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!
Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!

"Stan' up, flat foot, Jump dem Bars!
Karo back'ards lak a train o' kyars."

Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!
Setch a kickin' up san'! Jonah's Ban'!

“Dance 'round, Mistiss, show 'em de p'int;
Dat Ni**er don't know how to Coonjaint."


From https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27195/27195-h/27195-h.htm Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise and Otherwise, by Thomas W. Talley (1922), Page 1

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BOOK EXCERPT: JAZZ DANCE: THE STORY OF AMERICAN VERNACULAR DANCES
by Marshall Stearns & Jean Stearns
From Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0306805537; Chapter Title: The Tin Pan Alley And Song Lyrics

Page 99

"At an early date lyrics were created to go with dances. “The Dance Rhyme was derived from the dance.” wrote Thomas W. Talley in 1922

Page 100

and-as in the similar example of the Juba discussed in Chapter 4- illustrates his point with a dance called Jonah’s Band.

"First of all be it known that there is a “step” in dancing, originated by some Negro somewhere called the “Jonah’s Band step”…The dancers form a circle placing two or more of their skilled dancers in the middle of it…Some dance leaders, for example simple call out in simple prose- “Dance the “Mobile Buck”, others calling for another step would rhyme their call.”

The chorus of the song consists of the repetition of the line “Setch a kickin up san’. Jonah’s Ban’!” to a Charleston rhythm at which point all the dancers execute the same step.

Before each of three choruses other steps are introduced.

"Han's up sixteen! Circle to de right!
We's gwine to git big eatin's here to-night."

"Raise yo' right foot, kick it up high,
Knock dat Mobile Buck in de eye."

"Stan' up, flat foot, [1]Jump dem Bars!
Karo back'ards lak a train o' kyars."

“Dance 'round, Mistiss, show 'em de p'int;
Dat Ni**er don't know how to Coonjaint."

The Karo and Jump Dem Bars seem to have disappeared without a trace, although the latter is self-explanatory, and a flat-footed bar-jump is typically Afro-American. Old-timers say that the Mobile Buck is an ancestor of the common Buck, which evolved into the Time Step, while the prolific Coonjaint-once a rhythmic shuffle performed by roustabouts loading riverboats and a dance observed in Congo Square-later became identified with the tune of a children’s play-party song (“I love coffee, I love tea...).

In its early folk form the dance song with instructions is a group dance performed in a circle with a few “experts” in the center-and the emphasis is on what they do. An apparently unlimited number of locally known steps are inserted and improvised upon by the experts. The entire performance is held together by the chorus of dancers forming the circle and executing the steps that gives the dance its title. The description of inserted dances is brief if it occurs at all (in the Juba, the inserted steps are merely named) and little editorializing as to its purported origin, nature, or popularity-gimmicks that became common later, when the dances were commercialized.

A transitional dance-song entitled “La Pas Ma La” (Isaac Goldberg says that phrase comes from the French pas mele*, or mixed step) was published in 1865-perhaps the dance introduced by Ernest Hogan and his Georgia Graduates as the Pasmala. As one of the early efforts to combine folk steps with topical dances of the time, the “Pas Ma La” describes its title step in the chorus

Hands on your head, let your mind roll far,

Page 101

Back, back, back, and look at the stars.
Stand up rightly, dance it brightly.
That’s the Pas Ma La.

Old-timers recall the step clearly. “It was a comedy dance,” says Walter Crumbley. “You walked forward and then hopped back three steps with your knees bent” as the directions “back, back, back” indicate. The hand on hand and mind-rolling appear to be optional variations.

The “Pas Ma La” was sometimes confused with an animal dance, which may have added to its survival, for by 1898 a song entitled “The Possum-a-la” was published, one of a series of dance-songs that popped up with titles such as “The Possum Trot” around 1910. “The Possum Trot” says Perry Bradford “was a dance which consisted of a series of fast, flat hops.” Here, the folk tradition which favored a flat-footed style, seems to have become stronger, while blending with the Tin Pan Alley version.

Again, other steps are introduced before each chorus in four verses of the “Pas Ma La”
Fus yo’ say “My ni**ah get yo gun
Shoot-a dem ducks an away you run.
Now my little coon come-a and dance the shute
With the Saint-a Louis pass and Chicago Salute.

The literal direction in the first two lines in which the dancer acts out the shooting of a duck is typical of many vernacular dances and finds an analogue in a rock and roll dance of the early nineteen sixties: The Peter Gunn: emulating a fast-shooting private eye on television. The Saint Louis pass and Chicago Salute are apparently topical concoctions of Tin Pan Alley references to the World’s Fairs.

Another introductory quatrain contains references to three more dances which are better known:
Fus yo’ say “My ni**ah, Bumbishay
Then turn ‘round and go the other way
To the World’s Fair and do the Turkey Trot
Do not dat coon tink he look very hot.

The various spellings of Bumbishay (mentioned along with the Eagle Rock, the Mooche, and Hootchy-Ma-Cootch-which is the Congo Grind- in pianist Jelly Roll Morton’s “Animule Ball”) was known in New Orleans, according to Paul Barbarin, as the “Fanny Bump”- which needs no explanation. Going to the World’s Fair was a strut (“you put both feet together and move forward on your toes” says Ida Forsyne), while the appearance of the Turkey Trot here, about fifteen years before it became a hit in New York, suggest that it came from the folk.

In spite of the atrocious dialect and Jim Crow sentiments, the lyrics of “Pas Ma La” reveal the nature of the changes taking place in the dance-

page 102
sing as it became commercialized. It is clearly no longer a group dance with improvised soloists, but rather a couple dance with fixed steps in definite order. Although the verse names new steps, and the chorus describes the main step, the aim is to sell the dance.

During the early teens and after, the dance-song with instructions multiplied rapidly, and a few, chiefly Negro composers, drew upon folk resources. These few became more influential than their numbers indicate, for although their popularity was limited at first to the Negro public, they gradually-as in the case of “Ballin The Jack”-reached a white audience. This led the way to the more enduring dances of the twenties and thirties that are often named and sometimes described in the earlier dance songs Tin Pan Alley was contributing indirectly to the surfacing of vernacular dance movements.
-snip-
*This French word was written with accent marks.

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