The Influences Of American Minstrelsy & Early 20th Century Black Dances On South African Gumboot Dances

Edited by Azizi Powell

Latest Revision: April 6, 2022: These changes include this title change and removal of content about American influences on historically Black Greek letter stepping and strolling

Original title: "Was South African Gumboot Dancing REALLY The Main Source Of The Movements For Historically Black Greek Letter Fraternity & Sorority Stepping?"

****
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about South African gumboot dancing and historically Black Greek letter fraternity and sorority steppin(g).

Part I presents excerpts about the early influence of African American movement arts such as pattin Juba and tap dancing on South African gumboot dancing.

Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2018/08/similarities-differences-between-south.html for Part II of this series. Part II presents my comments about some similarities and differences between historically Black Greek letter organizations (BGLO) stepping and South African gumboot dancing.

Five videos of South African gumboot dancing and five videos of historically Black Greek letter organizations step show performances are also showcased in that post.

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

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
-snip-
Portions of this post were previously published in the following pancocojams post:
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-origins-of-south-african-gumboot.html "The Origins Of South African Gumboot Dancing

and

http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2016/10/correcting-record-south-african-boot.html Correcting The Record - South African Boot Dancing Isn't The Direct Source Of Fraternity & Sorority Stepping

****
SOME SOUTH AFRICAN INFLUENCES AND SOME BLACK AMERICAN INFLUENCES UPON SOUTH AFRICAN GUM BOOT DANCES
These excerpts are given in no particular order. Numbers are given for referencing purposes only.
Excerpt #1:
From http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/bakalang.htm
..."For most Bhaca* migrants to eGoli**, the City of Gold, work and leisure were continually controlled by structures of authority and surveillance in the form of mine bosses, managers and police. In this context, all space was public. There was little room for individual expression or privacy. The nature of this experience gave rise to the particular aesthetic of gumboot dance performance, regardless of who now performs the dance (Muller 1999: 91).

The gumboot style of dance draws on a variety of dance sources: Bhaca* traditional dances such as ngoma; minstrel performance; popular social dances such as those that accompanied jazz music performance in the 1930s and 40s. The jitterbug, for example, and most obviously, the tap dance popularised through films of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Gumboot dancers may have been influenced by touring black tap dance groups (Muller 1999: 100). Erlmann (1991: 99-100) argues that isicathulo or gumboot dance was developed around mission stations in KwaZulu Natal with the introduction of footgear to African peoples by missionaries in the late 19th century (Mulller 1999: 92):

Isicathulo means shoe, boot or sandal; it also refers to a boot dance performed by young boys since the first contact with Europeans (Muller 1999: 94).

In their search for aesthetic models and expressions of self-conscious urban status, v [sic: we've?] first became interested in the dances and songs developed in and around the mission stations. Interestingly, it was on rural mission stations that isicathulo, one of the first urban working-class dance forms, developed. Tracey maintains that the original isicathulo dance was 'performed by Zulu pupils at a certain mission where the authorities had banned the local country dances.' The name isicathulo, shoe, boot or sandal, reflects the introduction of footgear at the missions, the sharp sound of boots and clicking of the heels contrasted with the muffled thud of bare feet in more rural dances such as indlamu-Zulu (Erlrnann 1991: 99).

Coplan (1985: 78) argues that schools picked up new urban influenced rural dances, even though missionaries forbade them. One such dance, is cathulo (shoe) was adopted students in Durban; from there it spread to dock workers who produced spectacular rhythmic effects by slapping and pounding their rubber Wellington boots in performance. All this rhythm made it popular with mine and municipal labourers elsewhere, especially Johannesburg. There it became the 'gumboot' dance, divided into a series of routines and accompanied by a rhythm guitar. By 1919, gumboot had filtered back into school concerts. It soon became a standard feature of urban African variety entertainment, and a setting for satirising characters and scenes drawn from African work life.

What clearly distinguishes all gumboot dance from earlier rural practices is its use of footgear for its performance. Pre-colonial dance forms are generally thought to have been performed barefoot. One Zulu name given to gumboot dance, isicathulo, provides the first indication of innovation. The root of the word cathama means to walk softly, quietly and stealthily. It has been incorporated into two kinds of black performance culture in South Africa: isicathamiya and isicathulo. The first is the style of music and dance performance recently made famous by Joseph Shabalala and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. In this context it means to walk softly and stealthily, like a cat. The second refers to the opposite, gumboot dance, which is characterised by louder stepping in gumboots, the clapping of hands and slapping of the boots (Muller 1999:93)

Perhaps the most revealing source, however, is the dance as practised by these older Bhaca dancers and transmitted to their sons in KwaZulu Natal. Unlike the autonomy of many dance forms in the Western world, gumboot dance engages and comments on the exigencies of everyday experience in mine culture (Muller 1999: 98)."...
-snip-
* "The Bhaca people or amaBhaca are an ethnic group in South Africa, mainly found in the small towns of the former Transkei homeland, Mount Frere, Umzimkhulu and surrounding areas - a region that the amaBhaca call kwaBhaca, or "place of the Bhaca". (The Bhaca people or amaBhaca are an ethnic group in South Africa, mainly found in the small towns of the former Transkei homeland, Mount Frere, Umzimkhulu and surrounding areas - a region that the amaBhaca call kwaBhaca, or "place of the Bhaca". (Eastern Cape, South Africa)

While the amaBhaca are often considered to be part of the more populous Xhosa people, they maintain an independent kingdom and distinct culture."...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaca_people

**"EGoli"= Johannesburg, South Africa

****
Excerpt #2:
From South African Music: A Century of Traditions in Transformation, Volume 1 by Carol Ann Muller (Google book), p. 161, and 163 (162 isn't available in the Google Book version).
Carol Ann Muller writes that gumboot dancing (South African term isicathulo) first began in the Christian missions that were established for Black South Africans. The gumboot dancing in the mines is a significant development of that dance but not the only form of that dance.

Here are some quotes from that book:
"Isicathulo means shoe, boot, or sandal; it also refers to the boot dance performed by young boys since the first contact with Europeans. It is defined as “a modern rhythmic dance adopted by certain Christian natives, in which dancing is both individual and in groups. (Cockrell 1987, 422)....

p. 163
"The other cultural influence that shaped gumboot dancing was the minstrel shows, performed in Durban by American and English troupes beginning in the nineteenth century. Jonney Hadebe, one of the members of Blanket Mkhize's gumboot team explains the early history of gumboot dance in a program note written for the South African Railway's gumboot dancers:
In 1896, subsequent to watching white men tap dancing and clapping their hands, the amaBaca decided to make a dance of their own. They called it the gumboot dance. The dance was a rhythmically performed act of dancing, clapping hands, and slapping the calve muscles-the calf muscles being protected by rubber gumboots.

In the year 1896, the group consisted of eight members, six dancers, and two playing musical instruments. In those days the soles of the gumboots were cut off and the dancers wore shoes....

I have been a gumboot dancer for the past twenty-three years. (Jonny Hadebe, ca. 1978)

.... (p. 165)
It is quite feasible that the amaBaca saw minstrel shows performed by white black-faced minstrels in 1896. It is not clear, however, if it is tap dancing or simply the complex footwork of minstrel performers that impacted upon those men in that year....

Tap dancing is also reported to have been extremely popular at the Bantu Men's Social Center in Johannesburg in the 1930s. (Phillips ca. 1938, 297). This would have been the more sophisticated gumboot dancing that Hadebe subsequently discusses."

****
Excerpt #3
From Elizabeth C. Fine's book SoulStepping: African American Step Shows (University of Illinois Press, 2007):
p. 78
The rubber boot or gumboot dancing... is an excellent example of the complex relationships between African and African American music and dance. Gumboot dancing (isicathulo), one of the first urban working-class dances in South Africa, may have been developed in rural missions by Zulu pupils who were not allowed to perform traditional dances. The word isicathulo, Hugh Tracey notes, means “shoe”. When the students danced the shoes that missions required them to wear created louder sounds than did bare feet. Around the time of World War I “rural, urban, mission, and working-class performance traditions” intermingled in isicathulo, which “as a step-dance” was closely related if not identical to other dance forms that had evolved earlier among farm laborers and inhabitants of the rural reserves.” (3)

Erlmann suggest that isicathulo dancers “frequently indulge in sophisticated solo stepping, prototypes of which had been available to migrant workers, from the mid-1920s through Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire movies as well as touring black tap dance groups.” Indeed, South Africans were exposed to African American music and dance traditions as early as 1890, when Orpheus M. McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers spent almost five years touring South Africa. In subsequent years, black South Africans came to the United States. One, the famous “ragtime composer Reuben T. Caluza, renowned “as a skilled isicathulo dancer”, enrolled in Virginia’s Hampton Institute in 1930 to earn a B.A. in music. Caluza and three other students from Africa formed the African Quartette performing both songs and dances along the East Coast.

They even sang for Franklin D. Roosevelt Quartet member Dwight Sumner wrote that in their summer tour of 1931 the “African Quartette sang Zulu songs, under the direction of Mr. Caluza, and also gave African folk dances.” It is likely that Caluza shared his talents with students. If so, members of fraternities and sororities could have incorporated some gumboot movements into stepping. Caluza went on to earn a masters degree at Columbia University in 1935, where again he could have shared gumboot dancing with students.

Malone notes that during the 1970s and 1980s gumboot dancing “was introduced in North American urban areas and showcased by many of the dance companies that performed styles of traditional African dances.” Evidence from Erlmann, however, suggest the possibility if a much earlier exposure to gumboot dancing and, conversely, the incorporation of African American influences into South African dances. Caluza’s story is only one small example of the continuous interactions among Africans and African Americans that created a complex interaction between music and dance forms on both continents"...

****
This concludes Part I of this three part pancocojams series.

Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

Visitor comments are welcome.