Cakewalk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the form of music and dance. For the musical notation program, see Cakewalk (sequencer).
For other meanings, see Cakewalk (disambiguation).
Cakewalk
Stylistic origins African American music
Cultural origins US
Typical instruments banjo, piano, small bands
Mainstream popularity c. 1890 - 1910
Derivative forms Ragtime


Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slaves in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk. The dance takes its name from competitions held on plantations prior to Emancipation, in which prizes, sometimes cake, were given for the best dancers.

Contents

[edit] As a Plantation Dance

The authors of "Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance" reported that an early 1950s experiment with African guests turned up "no worthy African counterpart" to the Cakewalk.[1] While folklorist Harold Courlander reported that he had seen "certain passages" which were "virtually indistinguishable" from the Cakewalk in South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria. Brook Baldwin nevertheless wrote in 1981 that "Researchers have not yet pinpointed the origin of the cakewalk."[2]

[edit] First Person Accounts

In the 1981 article "The Cakewalk: A Study in Stereotype and Reality" Brooke Baldwin cites "an almost exhaustive compilation of those accounts which have been found so far".[3] This compilation consists of eyewitness accounts by ex-slaves from Virginia and Georgia recorded by WPA researchers in the 1930s, along with second hand accounts from other sources. Baldwin notes that "when the researchers of the Federal Writer's Project of the W.PA. interviewed aged ex-slaves in the 1930s, there was no longer any need to suppress information about the happier moments of slave life."[4]

Louise Jones; "de music, de fiddles an' de banjos, de Jews harp, an' all dem other things. Sech dancin' you never seen before. Slaves would set de flo' in turns, an' do de cakewalk mos' all night"."[4]

Georgia Baker said that she sang a song when she was a child. "Walk light ladies, De cake's all dough" She laughed and added, "Us didn't know it when we was singin' dat tune to us chillun dat when us growed up us would be cakewalkin' to de same song".[5]

Estella Jones; "Cakewalkin' was a lot of fun durin' slavery time. Dey swep yards real clearn and set benches for de party. Banjos wuz used for music makin'. De women's wor long, ruffled dresses wid hoops in 'em and de mens had on high hats, long split-tailed coasts, and some of em used walkin' sticks. De couple dat danced best got a prize. Sometimes de slave owners come to dese parties 'cause dey enjoyed watchin' de dance, and dey 'cided who danced de best. Most parties durin' slavery time, wuz give on Saturday night durin' work sessions, but durin' winter dey wuz give on most any night."[6]

[edit] Second Hand, Oral Tradition Accounts

A South Carolinian told of Griffin, a fiddler who played for the dances of the whites as well as for the "annual cakewalks of his own people".[6]

A story told to him by his childhood nanny in 1901 was repeated by 80 year old actor Leigh Whipple, "Us slave watched white folks' parties where the guests danced a minuet and then paraded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways and then meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we'd do it too, but we used to mock 'em every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it, but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn't dance any better."[6]

Ex-ragtime entertainer Shepard Edmonds told in 1950 of memories related to him by his parents from Tennessee; "...the cake walk was originally a plantation dance, just a happy movement they did to the banjo music because they couldn't stand still. It was generally on Sundays, when there was little work, that the slaves both young and old would dress up in hand-me-down finery to do a high-kicking, prancing walk-around. They did a take-off on the manners of the white folks in the "big house", but their masters, who gathered around to watch the fun, missed the point. It's supposed to be that the custom of a prize started with the master giving a cake to the couple that did the proudest movement."[6]

Baldwin concludes that the Cakewalk was meant "to satirize the competing culture of supposedly 'superior' whites. Slaveholders were able to dismiss its threat in their own minds by considering it as a simple performance which existed for their own pleasure" (p. 211). [7]

Not included in the Baldwin article, vaudevillian Tom Fletcher, heard the following account from his grandfather, " The cake walk, in that section and at that time, was known as the chalk line walk. There was no prancing, just a straight walk on a path made by turns and so forth, along which the dancers made their way with a pail of water on their heads. The couple that was the most erect and spilled the least water or no water at all was the winner."[8] Fletcher also commented that, "The old "chalk-line walk was revived with fancy steps by Charlie Johnson a clever eccentric dancer... The "chalk-line walk" then became known as the "Cake Walk."[9]

[edit] Another Theory

Ethel L. Urlin writing in the 1912 "Dancing, Ancient and Modern" stated that the cakewalk "originated in Florida, where it is said that the Negroes borrowed the idea of it from the war dances of the Seminole...The negroes were present as spectators at these dances, which consisted of wild and hilarious jumping and gyrating, alternating with slow processions in which the dancers walked solemnly in couples. The idea grew, and style in walking came to be practised among the negroes as an art."[10]

The "Encylopdia of Social Dance" echoed the Seminole Indian connection, stating that "Classes sprang up among the negroes for the teaching of the dance and the proper way to promenade" in the 1880s. As Florida developed into a winter resort, the dance became more performance oriented, and spread to Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and finally New York.[11]

[edit] Cakewalk in Minstrelsy, Musicals, and as a Popular Dance

An exhibit at the 1876 Phildelphia Centential featured blacks singing folk songs and doing an old dance called the "chalk-line walk" in a plantation like setting.[12]

In the 1893 production of "The Creole Show", which had opened in 1889, Dora Dean[3] and her husband Charles E. Johnson made a hit dancing the cakewalk, their speciality, as partners.[13] During its run from 1889 through 1897, this show played to crowds in Boston and New York at the old Standard Theatre on Greeley Square, one of the first productions to discard blackface makeup. The production had a Negro cast with a chorus line of sixteen girls, and at a time when women on stage, and partner dancing on stage were something new.[14]

The Illustrated London News carried a report of a barn dance in Ashtabula, Ohio in 1897 and written by an English woman traveller. "The origin of that expression "taking the cake", had previously been an enigma to me, if I had ever thought about it before, but it was suddenly in an unexpected and most practical way (revealed to me)." Just before the ball was declared finished a long procession of couples was formed who walked in their very best manner around the room three times before the criticizing eyes of a dozen old people, who selected the best turned-out pair, and gravely presented them with a large plum cake.[15]

In July 1898 the musical comedy "Clorindy The Origin of the Cakewalk" opened on Broadway in New York. Will Marion Cook wrote ragtime music for the show. Black dancers mingled with white cast members for the first instance of integration on stage in New York.[16][17] Cook wrote, "My chorus sang like Russians, dancing meanwhile like Negroes, and cakewalking like angels, black angels! When the last note was sounded, the audience stood and cheered for at least ten minutes. This was the finale which Witmark had said no one would listen to. It was pandemonium... But did that audience take offense at my rags and lack of conducting polish? Not so you could notice it!"[18][19]

"Dusky troopers march & cake walk" was written by Will Hardy and published in 1900.[4] Sheet music covers for more cake walks can be viewed here.[5] [6]

Scott Joplin mentioned the cake walk in his folk ballet "The Ragtime Dance", published in 1902.

"Let me see you do the rag-time dance,
Turn left and do the cakewalk prance,
Turn the other way and do the slow drag -
Now take you lady to the World's Fair
And do the rag-time dance."

Performances of the "Cake Walk", including a "Comedy Cake Walk" were filmed by the American Motoscope & Biograph Co.in 1903. Prancing steps were the main steps shown in the "Cake Walk" segment, which featured two couples, and a solo dancer. All dancers were African American.[20] 1903 was the same year that both the cakewalk and ragtime music arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Leaning far forward or far backward is associated with defiance in Kongo. "We are palm trees, bent forward, bent back, but we never break." Another interpretations of these motions were "melting" to the beat, or protecting what is new (leaning forward) with the past (leaning back). The appearance of the cakewalk in Buenos Aires may have influenced influenced early styles of tango.[21]

The Cake Walk was more fluid and imaginative than the established two-step, it was nevertheless a regularized form, more improvisational than its previous form, but highly formalized compared to later dances such as the Charleston, Black Bottom and Lindy Hop.[22]

[edit] Cakewalk as a Musical Form

Most cakewalk music is notated in 2/4 time with two alternate heavy beats per bar, giving it an ooompah rhythm.[23] The music was adopted into the works of various white composers, including Robert Russell Bennett, John Philip Sousa and Claude Debussy. Debussy wrote Golliwog's Cakewalk as the final movement of the Children's Corner suite (1908).[24] The Cake Walk was an adapted and amended two-step, which had been spawned by the popularity of marches, most notably by John Philip Sousa.[25]

The basic habanera rhythm (Roberts: 1998:50) Baldwin (1981)

Cakewalk music incorporated syncopation and a habanera like rhythm into the regular march rhythm.[26][27] This syncopation was "an idiomatic corruption, a flattened-out mutation of what was once the true polyrhythmic character of African music".[28]

[edit] Quotations

Born in 1871 James Weldon Johnson observed a cakewalk at a ball.

However, it was at one of these balls that I first saw the cake-walk. There was a contest for a gold watch, to be awarded to the hotel head-waiter receiving the greatest number of votes. There was some dancing while the votes were being counted. Then the floor was cleared for the cake-walk. A half-dozen guests from some of the hotels took seats on the stage to act as judges, and twelve or fourteen couples began to walk for a sure enough, highly decorated cake, which was in plain evidence. The spectators crowded about the space reserved for the contestants and watched them with interest and excitement. The couples did not walk round in a circle, but in a square, with the men on the inside. The fine points to be considered were the bearing of the men, the precision with which they turned the corners, the grace of the women, and the ease with which they swung around the pivots. The men walked with stately and soldierly step, and the women with considerable grace. The judges arrived at their decision by a process of elimination. The music and the walk continued for some minutes; then both were stopped while the judges conferred; when the walk began again, several couples were left out. In this way the contest was finally narrowed down to three or four couples. Then the excitement became intense; there was much partisan cheering as one couple or another would execute a turn in extra elegant style. When the cake was finally awarded, the spectators were about evenly divided between those who cheered the winners and those who muttered about the unfairness of the judges. This was the cake-walk in its original form, and it is what the colored performers on the theatrical stage developed into the prancing movements now known all over the world, and which some Parisian critics pronounced the acme of poetic motion.

—James Weldon Johnson: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912, Chapter 5, page 50

[edit] Modern times

The term "cakewalk" is often used to indicate something that is very easy or effortless. Though the dance itself could be physically demanding, it was generally considered a fun, recreational pastime. The phrase "takes the cake" also comes from this practice.[29][unreliable source?]

Along the lines of this "easy or effortless" meaning, there is the modern Cakewalk (carnival game) which requires no dancing skill at all to win.

The term "cakewalk" has also been used to describe a game at a carnival or fair in which people walk around a numbered circle along to music. When the music is stopped, the caller draws a number from a jar and whoever is standing closest to that number wins a cake.

One version of the cakewalk is sometimes taught, performed included in competitions within the Highland Dance community, especially in the southern United States. [30]

In addition to the Highland Dance community, a version of the cakewalk seen in vintage film clips from the early 1900s is kept alive in the Lindy Hop community through performances by the Harlem Hot Shots and through cakewalk classes held in conjunction with Lindy Hop classes and workshops.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance By Marshall Winslow Stearns, Jean Stearns Contributor Brenda Bufalino. 1994. Da Capo Press. pages 11, 13. ISBN 0306805537
  2. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 210.
  3. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 209.
  4. ^ a b Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 207.
  5. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 207,208.
  6. ^ a b c d Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 208.
  7. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 205-218.
  8. ^ Steppin' on the Blues. by Jacqui Malone. University of Illinois Press. 1996. page 43. ISBN 0-252-022114
  9. ^ Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. Lynne Fauley Emery. California: National Press Books. 1972. page 207. ISBN 087484203
  10. ^ page 13 text available at this url [1]
  11. ^ Encyclopedia of Social Dance. Albert and Josephine Bulter. 1971 and 1975. Albert Bulter Ballroom Dance Service. New York, NY. page 309 in 1975 edition. no ISBN or other ID
  12. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 212.
  13. ^ A Century of Musicals in Black and White: An Encyclopedia of Musical Stage Works By, About, Or Involving African Americans. By Bernard L. Peterson. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993. page 92. ISBN 0313266573, 9780313266577
  14. ^ Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance By Marshall Winslow Stearns, Jean Stearns Contributor Brenda Bufalino. 1994. Da Capo Press. page 118. ISBN 0306805537
  15. ^ The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues. By Giles Oakley. Published by Da Capo Press, 1997. page 31. ISBN 0306807432, 9780306807435
  16. ^ African American Dance
  17. ^ Black Broadway web site
  18. ^ Will Marion Cook, "Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk" (1944) Will Marion Cook, "Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk" (1944). Printed in Theatre Arts (September, 1947), pp. 61-65.
  19. ^ on line excerpt from book
  20. ^ America Dances! 1897-1948. 2003. DanceTime Publications. segments of the same name. DVD
  21. ^ Tango The Art History of Love. Robert Farris Thompson. 2005. Pantheon Books. pages 8, 89, 108. ISBN 0-375-40931-9
  22. ^ Scott Joplin the Man Who Made Ragtime by James Haskins with Kathleen Benson 1978 Doubleday and Company page 74 ISBN 0-385-11155-x
  23. ^ The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz Revised Edition 1987 Smithsonian Institution Press page 14,15
  24. ^ Crawford, Richard (2000). An Introduction to America's Music. New York City: W. W. Norton & Co.. 
  25. ^ Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance By Marshall Winslow Stearns, Jean Stearns Contributor Brenda Bufalino. 1994. Da Capo Press. page 11. ISBN 0306805537
  26. ^ [2]
  27. ^ Baldwin, B. (1981). The Cakewalk: A study in stereotype and reality. Journal of Social History, 15 (2), 210.
  28. ^ Early Jazz - Its Roots and Musical Development. Gunther Schuller. 1968. Oxford University Press. page 15 19-500097-8 0-19-504043-0. ISBN
  29. ^ "Cakewalk Dance". Streetswing Dance History Archive. http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3cake1.htm. Retrieved on 2007-04-01. 
  30. ^ Kirsty Duncan PhD. "Introduction to Highland Dancing". Electric Scotland. http://www.electricscotland.com/dance/intro.htm. Retrieved on 2007-04-05. 

[edit] External links

Search Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cake walk
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk"
Personal tools