What Is Majorette Bucking? - A Video Of Jackson State University's Prancing J-Settes & An Excerpt From A 2022 University Thesis

MrUSMC1999, Oct 20, 2019
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This music is Hip Hop artist Mystikal's 2000 hit entitled "Danger".

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a 2019 YouTube video of Jackson State University's Prancing J-Settes majorette dance line performing bucking.

This post also presents an excerpt of J'aime Griffith's University of Oklahoma's 2022 thesis entitled "Historically Black College And University Dance Lines: Redefining And Identifying Elements To Determine Aesthetic Value".

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

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to the Prancing J-Settes and thanks to the publisher of this embedded video on YouTube. Thanks also to J'aime Griffith for researching and writing the thesis which is quoted in this post.
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It's important to note that majorette bucking isn't the same dance movements as "buck and the wing" tap dancing movements or "buck jumping" that is most closely associated with New Orleans Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs and Mardi Gras second lines. 

Majorette bucking (as performed by Jackson State University's Prancing J-Settes, the Dancing Dolls from the television series Bring It, and as performed by other dance lines) consists of rhythmic pelvic thrusts (pelvic contractions). that are part of entire dance routines. Depending on the type of dance line, these dance routines are performed to Hip Hop music that is played by live marching bands or played with records.

Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-pigeon-wing-buck-wing-and-buck.html for the pancocojams post entitled "The Pigeon Wing, The Buck & Wing, And Buck Dancing, Part I (information & videos)" Also, click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/05/new-orleans-buck-jumping-information.html for Part II of that series for the pancocojams post about New Orleans buck jumping.

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THESIS EXCERPT
From https://shareok.org › bitstream › handle › 2022...
"Historically Black College And University Dance Lines: Redefining And Identifying Elements To Determine Aesthetic Value".

University of Oklahoma Master of Fine Arts In Dance Thesis

By J’aime Griffith, 2022

© Copyright by J’aime Griffith 2022

…”The term “j-setting” is a tribute to Jackson State University Prancing J-Settes’ marching and dance style.  Shirley Middleton, Hollis Pippins, and Narah Oatis pioneered what is now known as j-setting. Shirley Middleton was the sponsor from 1970 to 1975. Narah Oatis succeeded Middleton in 1975. Hollis Pippins was a JSU twirler and early choreographer for the Prancing J-Settes.

J-Setting is high-energy full-body movement. It’s joyful, exciting, full of life, fierce, and in your face. This explosive movement has the power to command any room. You cannot be soft and apologetic in your approach; the movement calls for confidence and must be done with the fullest physicality. As it relates to ephebism, sharpness is associated with sudden or abrupt changes in dynamics.  This is visible when the J-Settes perform stand routines and even more so during the field show. When watching j-setting choreography, the excitement comes from the dynamics of the choreography and the wide range of motion that makes up the Prancing J-Settes’ movement vocabulary. Ephebism contains traits such as attack, flexibility, vitality, drive, and power. Attack signifies sharpness, force, and speed.  Flexibility implies the ability to articulate a body part going from one extreme to the next. Within this dance style, there is a sense of freedom in the body and control over the body at the same time. Bucking demonstrates attack and flexibility. Bucking, a movement the J-Settes are known for uses the entire torso but is initiated by the pelvis. The pelvis tilts forward and back in a “thrusting” manner (attack). The entire torso creates a “C,” alternating front and back, contract and release (flexibility).

In the documentary on the history of bucking, “When the Beat Drops,” the Prancing J-Settes bucking motion is compared to when a horse kicks out its back legs.  It’s a jolting and jerking motion.  Polycentrism and Polyrhythm are evident in bucking as well because, in addition to the movement in the torso, the legs and arms also contribute to bucking. From the Africanist viewpoint, movement may be produced by any body part, the center(s). Polycentrism is when two or more centers produce movement simultaneously.

I’ve identified the pelvis as one center when bucking. The knees are another. The leg position when bucking varies. However, regardless of the position of the legs, to buck, the knee must remain at least slightly bent. 

[...]

Although bucking can be choreographically placed anywhere in the dance sequence, The Prancing J-Settes are known to choreograph three quick bucks in a row. The Africanist dance aesthetic and the HBCU dance line aesthetic as a whole value repetition. The stand routines are repeated multiple times back-to-back during one song, at the captain’s discretion. Also, a signature movement may be repeated throughout the football game, like the Prancing J-Settes and bucking. In both cases, the repetition is intensification, but also, to make sure you saw us. Gottschild explains where repetition stems from in an Africanist perspective:

To the Europeanist ear, reprises may seem monotonous and superfluous; in the Africanist perspective each repeat is different than the one that went before, is shaped by the one that went before, and predicates the one that will follow. The repetition principle exemplifies the transcendent power of the Africanist worldview, for there is much repetition in traditional quotidian African life: pounding grain, seeding ground, kneading bread, reaping the crop. In transferring repetition from the chores of daily life to the realm of creative expression, the Africanist aesthetic transforms the prosaic into the sublime and makes a spiritual conceptual connection between the two.

I could not find any information supporting the idea that the Prancing J-Settes created bucking nor the intent behind the movement when added to the Prancing J-Settes’ movement vocabulary.  In “When the Beat Drops,” during an interview with three Prancing J-Sette dancers, they acknowledge that they are not the only dance line that bucks but, what sets them apart is that they buck with class, style, and form. Bucking was not as edgy and hardcore as it is now, but it has always been a part of the Prancing J-Settes’ movement vocabulary. It became bigger and more dynamic to be seen across the field.

Other HBCU dance lines incorporate bucking into choreography but not all HBCU dance lines buck. For example, Southern University Fabulous Dancing Dolls focuses more on the port de bra, the movement of the arms. They also use the torso and pelvis with a more fluid, delicate, and softer approach, like body rolls and sitting in the hip. Furthermore, there are dance lines that combine both, like the Alabama State University Stingettes. A fluid, soft and delicate approach and a sharp and forceful approach create “sudden or abrupt changes in dynamics.” The meshing of these two extremes once again showcases ephebism in the HBCU dance line aesthetic.

The Assumption of Promiscuity

In the United States, Africanist culture is seen by European culture in a negative way. The Africanist and European culture do not see eye to eye when it comes to moving the body. For example, the butt and pelvis. From the Europeanist perspective, Africanist ways of moving the body when dancing are vulgar and promiscuous. Partly because, in the Protestant Christian underpinnings of mainstream white culture, visible use of the separate parts of the torso comes off as sexually suggestive.  On the other hand, the eminence of the buttocks is a positive cultural and aesthetic value indicator in Africa and African diasporan communities, daily postures and dance aesthetics emphasizing the buttocks have been practiced for centuries.  My experience has led me to understand, the big problem is we critique each other’s culture through our own perspective; through the lens of what we know to be correct. (This way of using perception has led me to question how we judge HBCU dance lines.) The presumption of promiscuity is associated with and leads directly to the sexually corrupt stereotypes that the Europeanist perspective assigns to Africanist dance and its people.  Perhaps movement in the torso, specifically the pelvis and butt, is sexually suggestive even without that intention because it is near the “hidden treasure.”  Gottschild offers a perspective in “Part ll Mapping the Territories” of The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool:

In fact, the positive or negative male fixation on the female backside seems to be a given (at least in Europeanist and Africanist cultures), regardless of era or ethnicity. The buttocks are a secondary stand-in for what they hide— the labia, the vagina. As sexualize as other characteristics may be –from feet and legs, to hair and skin, and most of all, breast – the butt is the sentinel standing guard over the hidden treasure. 

Surrounded by mainstream white culture, some African Americans have adopted a traditional European American outlook on the black dancing body. Bucking is described as aggressive, explicit, and sexually suggestive by Frederick McKindra in his Buzzfeed News article, “The Rich, Black, Southern Heritage of Hip-Hop Majorettes.” He says:

…the J-Settes employ a style that is more explicit. J-Settes prefer grounded, flat-footed movement; they squat or bend or buck. To buck is to aggressively thrust the pelvis forward, a movement that is obviously sexually suggestive — and in the rubric of American sexuality, deviant when cast on a feminine body. It’s almost an inversion of twerking — another dance phenomenon white Americans took some time to fully metabolize. Bucking is done to the bawdy, pulsating fortissimo of a raucous brass section, the crack of a snare, or the explosive boom of a bass drum. Doing so becomes an affirmation that a receptive sexual partner can also claim pleasure by thrusting ecstatically, a rebuff against an American sexual politics that historically resigns the passive partner to demuring sex. Straight black women and gay black bottoms reclaim power through the movement by refuting a white, puritanical dictum that bodies should not desire or enjoy the passive position...though, of course, it’s classier than that.

Once again, I do not know the intention behind the movement when first performed by the Prancing J-Settes but I do know “obviously sexually suggestive” is a common interpretation of bucking, and any of the movement done by the HBCU dance lines that involves moving the pelvis, hips, butt, and breast. Kariamu Welsh Asante comprised a group of essays written by herself and multiple other African dance scholars, African Dance: An Artistic, Historical and Philosophical Inquiry.  In Doris Green’s chapter, “Traditional Dance in Africa,” she writes about her inquiry of the intention behind the pelvis in so many of traditional African dances:

When I first went to Africa, I had a perplexing question—”Why are there so many pelvic contractions in African dances?” This movement, pelvic contractions, was used in all categories of dances—war, religion, recreation, and puberty. Puzzled by this movement, I demanded an answer and found that many of my younger cultural informants did not have a plausible answer and had accepted the answer of a “sexual notion” to explain the existence of this movement. My retort was “if so, then why does it appear in your war dance”---to which there was no response. Relentlessly, I continue to ask this question. When I asked older (first generation) cultural informants, they related movement to instrumentation of the dance. In Nigeria, Chris Olude stated that secondary rattles are worn on the body in many dances. These rattles must be moved in accordance to the music. If the rattles are worn on the waist, then the dance has to move the waist. Moving the waist will produce a “pelvis contraction”. Therefore, one will see the pelvic contraction in various categories of dances. This answer was the general response by first generation cultural informants, while second generation cultural informants often did not have an answer.

It’s interesting that the younger cultural informant had accepted the answer of “sexual notion” to explain the intention behind the movement and the older cultural informants related the pelvis movement to the need to produce sound with the rattles. If I were to ask older African American Christians the reason for the pelvis movement in today’s popular dances or the HBCU dance lines, they would say it is sexually suggestive. However, in African and Africanist Diasporan culture the movement in the torso is an aesthetic value based on whole-body dancing. When encouraged to learn the latest social dances, black children are not being trained by the older generations to lead a life of promiscuity, but to continue a tradition of polycentric, polyrhythmic body fluency. 

Growing up in a Christian household, I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music or learn and perform secular dances. One day at a family function, my cousins and I started dancing in the doorway of the living room where the adults were talking. Everyone’s parents seemed to be amused except my dad. He told me to stop that “nasty dancing.” At that moment our “Protestant Christian underpinnings of mainstream white culture” perspective trumped our Africanist aesthetic value in the torso. When I asked Onecia Ford, an alumna Prancing J-Sette, to describe their style, she did not mention anything sexual. Even when taught to buck, they aren’t instructed to imitate anything with sexual suggestive underpinnings. They are instead instructed to create a “C” in the back.  Like learning the latest social dances, when taught to buck, they are not being trained by the older generation of Prancing J-Settes to lead a life of promiscuity, but to continue a tradition of polycentric, polyrhythmic body fluency.

J-Setting and the movement of the pelvis itself are not necessarily sexually suggestive but the delivery can be. The placement of the arms can have a lot to do with the intention behind the movement and how the choreographer wants the audience to perceive the movement. I’ve noticed the dance lines in the SWAC exude sensuality more so in 2022 compared to the past. This has to do with the arm and hand placements. When performing the body rolls and any movement isolating the pelvis, butt, breast, and hips, the hands are placed on the body sliding over the breast, hips, and butt. The face can also add to the movement being delivered and perceived in an “obviously sexually suggestive” way. For example: licking and biting the bottom lip, smizing, winking, poking out the lips, squinting the eyes, and slightly separating the lips. I’ve noticed this same trend in commercial dance, more specifically in heels  class and choreography. The choreography in these popular heels classes and in music videos has become less suggestive and more literal. The dancers are placing their hands directly on their private parts. The choreography also focuses on body rolls and accenting the butt, hips, and breast and is incomplete without the sensual facials acting out the explicit lyrics. The choreography performed by HBCU dance lines that is sexually suggestive is definitely on trend for 2022. The level of sexually suggestive choreography cannot be compared back then and now. A matter of going too far and crossing the line depends on where the line is drawn, and the line seems to continue to move further away each year. “
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I reformatted this excerpt to enhance its readability.
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Here's information about SWAC fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Athletic_Conference
"The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is a collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, which is made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I for most sports; in football, it participates in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly referred to as Division I-AA.

The SWAC is considered the premier HBCU conference and ranks among the elite in the nation in terms of alumni affiliated with professional sports teams, particularly in football"...

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