A brief history of Vernacular Jazz
The early 20th century in America was a hotbed of creativity in the social dance world, and perhaps the most impactful of the dance families to gain notoriety during the 1920’s and 30’s was the jazz dance family. Vernacular Jazz Dance contains some of the most recognizable dances in American history, including the Cake Walk, the Charleston, and the Lindy Hop. These dances continued to evolve as part of the same family tree, and modern iterations include Hip Hop & House dancing on the solo side, and West Coast Swing & Carolina Shag on the partner dance side.
Design by Kimberly Testa. Image sourced from "Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches” by Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver
Vernacular Jazz is a term used by historians Jean and Marshall Stearns in their book “Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance”. It refers to American dances which are danced to jazz music, and which embody vernacular dance ideals, including individuality, improvisation, and rhythm. Vernacular in this case is used to signify that the steps are not institutionalized or taught as part of a regimented or academic syllabus, and has been called “street jazz” in the past to draw the difference between it and the jazz dance taught in ballet and modern dance academies. The biggest difference? “Modern” jazz has a heavy foundation in European dance values, while vernacular jazz has a heavy foundation in African dance values.
Dance in African Culture and the Development of Ring Shouts
The roots of jazz dance are derived from West African dances that were brought to America over the course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The enslaved people were from many distinct tribes and nations, such as the Asante, the Igbo, the Mossi, and the Yoruba. These tribes had distinct languages, religions, and values, and those responsible for their forced migration often separated individuals of the same nationality to make it more difficult for them to coordinate and potentially resist. Despite this, all of these cultures placed a high value on dance as an integral part of life, and many used dance as a form of religious expression (This is a marked difference, it should be noted, from the puritan-driven culture of European Americans at the time, which viewed dancing as a sinful activity and actively shunned expressions of dance). Most of these nations and tribes of Western Africa shared a common ancestral dance, known as The Circle. While the Circle Dance had many cultural variations and expressions, the core features of the Circle Dance were present across many of the tribes who experienced forced migration, to the point that it was the only effective way for enslaved people to communicate with each other. They would dance together in what came to be known as "ring shouts," where they would shuffle their feet and move counter-clockwise in a large circle using their hands and feet to create percussive sounds and vocalizing and stomping to express emotions and spirituality in ways that were accessible for them in a foreign land that banned the use of their traditional instruments. The ring shout became a tool of connection and survival, allowing victims of the middle passage to connect and find commonality in their traditions from Africa. It is because of these ring shouts that jazz music, with its polyrhythms and emphasis on percussion, had a means of arrival in America at all.
The Cake Walk
As the ring shouts began to lead to development of a shared culture among enslaved people, so too did it lead to shared expressions of resistance against their oppression. This lead to the development of the first truly American dance idiom, the Cake Walk.
5 dancers recorded performing a Cake Walk. Clip made available through the Library of Congress.
Sundays in the South were marked by the plantation owners dressing in their Sunday best, spending the day at church and reflecting on the tenets of Christianity. Because of its importance as "the Lord's Day," very little work was done on Sunday, and for most enslaved people, it was the closest thing they had to a day off from labor. The slaveholders, who viewed the ring shouts as silly frolics, would dress their workers in secondhand finery and have them perform for their families and friends at social gatherings. Enslaved people found a way to use these occasions as opportunities to parody their overseers, dancing with exaggerated expression and movement. For the plantation owners, this came across as both naive and flattering—an attempt by those in servitude to mimic the niceties of high society. They didn't recognize that they were being satirized, and even when they did, it was generally far better received than if the complaints and mockery were expressed verbally. One enslaved person couldn't say to another, "the master looked like a fool the other day flirting with that lady from town," without worrying about punishment. It was safe, however, to express that idea through dance; even if the target of the mockery recognized what was going on, chances were comparatively better that they would laugh it off.
It also encouraged competition: who could do the best or funniest imitation? As the language of the dance continued to develop, some plantation owners would enter their best dancers in competitions against those from other plantations. The prize for winning these dance competitions was usually a small cake, thus giving the dance its name.
The Jooks
A clip recorded at a jook joint in 1970’s rural Texas. Made available through KinoLibrary.
After emancipation, dancing continued to develop among emancipated African Americans in the jooks, which were, in essence, America’s first nightclubs. Jooks were places for African Americans to gather, drink, dance, flirt, and gamble. Travelling dancers would seek out the best jook in each new city they visited to show off the dances they learned on the road. Dancing in the jooks evolved to place increased emphasis on dancing between couples rather than groups, and the “hugging dances” were set to early blues music. These hugging dances were a reclaiming of African attitudes towards sex and sexuality, where there was no sense of shame regarding topics that European Americans so often regarded as taboo. Dance idioms like the Slow Drag, the Fishtail, the Funky Butt, and others, all started to develop in the jooks. Two other dances started their journeys alongside them, which would eventually thrust African American dance to the forefront of American society.
The Black Bottom and the Charleston
Ever since the cakewalk introduced the elements of entertainment and showmanship to African dance performed for white audiences, American society started to become curious about African American dance expressions, especially those which were comedic. The Black Bottom became the first of those dances to cross heavily into the American mainstream. The name is derived from a predominantly black neighborhood in Detroit of the same name. It set the hip and body movements seen in the jooks to upbeat ragtime music, resulting in a dance that was both lively, simple to learn and very rebellious against the stuffy standards of European ballroom dancing at the time. Its rise in popularity took it all the way to Broadway; the 1921 all black musical Shuffle Along heavily featured Black Bottom, was a massive success, and helped launch the careers of Josephine Baker, Adelaide Hall, Florence Mills, and others.
Authentic clips of the Black Bottom are difficult to find. This is a recreation by a European of what the “original black bottom” looked like. While the authenticity of the movement is debated, it embodies vernacular jazz ideals.
Alongside the Black Bottom, another dance was developing throughout the Southern United States. People were fascinated with the dance that looked like walking or running, but stayed in place. Over time, this dance started to pick up popularity as it travelled through the jooks. In 1923, it debuted on Broadway in the musical Running Wild, and immediately set the dance world ablaze. Named after its southern roots, the Charleston remains one of the most influential American dances the world has ever seen. Variations of Charleston can be found from music videos of every decade, and Hip Hop idioms that trace their lineage directly to Charleston are all over apps like Tik Tok. The Charleston broke the final barrier of taking dance into the mainstream. As the Stearns write, “the distinction between popular dances to watch and popular dances to dance was eradicated; everyone was doing it.” Charleston movement was incorporated into the developing art of tap dance in the theater world, which ensured its eternal presence in the performing arts and led to the later development of theater jazz.
Al Minns and Leon James show several variation of the Charleston on the DuPont Show of the Week. Originally aired November 26th, 1961.
The Lindy Hop
In 1928, dancers at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem were dancing a variation of the breakaway (a partner variation of Charleston) when a reporter asked one of them, “Shorty” George Snowden, what dance they were doing. Snowden, off the cuff, called it the Lindy Hop, a name inspired by aviator Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh’s “hop” across the Atlantic, the first trans-oceanic flight from Europe to America in history. The Savoy Ballroom was one of the only ballrooms in America that was proud to be racially integrated. As the saying goes, skin color didn’t matter, only your moves on the dance floor. Shorty George and his partner, “Big” Bea, became regular winners of contests at the Savoy Ballroom. They inspired dancers like Al Minns, Leon James, Pepsi Bethel, Norma Miller, Dawn Hampton. One dancer in particular, Frankie Manning, became the most well regarded Lindy Hopper in history, and is considered the inventor of the first air step in 1935. Lindy Hop developed alongside the development of a swung rhythm in jazz music, and as such was the first true swing dance. All other swing dances trace their lineage back to these dancers and the Savoy Ballroom.
From the 1941 film, Hellzapoppin’. Choreographed by Frankie Manning. Featuring Frances “Mickey” Mickey Jones & William Downes, Norma Miller & Billy Ricker, Willa Mae Ricker & Al Mines, and Ann Johnson & Frankie Manning
Musicians: Slam Stewart (Bass), Slim Gaillard (Piano, Guitar), Rex Stewart (Cornet), Elmer Fane (Clarinet), Jap Jones (Trombone), Cee Pee Johnson (Drums)
Frankie Manning was the lead choreographer for a dance performance group called “Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers”, named after their promoter Herbert “Whitey” White. The group is featured in several films from the 30’s and 40’s, and Frankie Manning choreographed The Big Apple, a routine featured in the 1939 film Keep Punching.
The Big Apple performed in the 1939 film “Keep Punching”, choreographed by Frankie Manning. Featuring Frances “Mickey” Jones & William Downes, Joe and Joyce Daniels, Norma Miller & George Grenidge, Lucille Middleton & Frankie Manning, and Thomas “Tops” Lee & Wilda Crawford.
The Big Apple was a shout dance (the moves were called out loud by a shouter and everyone did them together, much like the cha-cha slide) before Manning used the common moves to choreograph the routine featured in Keep Punching. The line dance has become one of the most enduring tools of learning vernacular jazz steps, and there are two others that deserve mention: The Shim Sham and the Tranky Doo.
In the late 1920’s, tap dancers Leonard Reed and Willie Bryant were touring in Chicago when they came up with a routine of standard tap steps they called “The Goofus”. It caught on, and after some slight modification, the Shim Sham became a curtain call for tap dancers all over the country during the 1930’s. They would all perform it together during their bows, with some dancers doing technical variations as they performed it. The Shim Sham has since become known as the National Anthem of tap dance, and in the 1980’s Frankie Manning popularized a version for swing dancers that is virtually guaranteed to be done somewhere in the world every single night. It is most often danced to the song “Taint What You Do (It’s The Way That You Do It)” by Jimmie Lunceford.
Various iteration of the shim sham performed over the years.
The Tranky Doo is another line dance choregraphed by Frankie Manning. It is featured in the documentary The Spirit Moves, accompanied by the song “The Dipsy Doodle” by Ella Fitzgerald, and for a long time this was the most popular song with which to perform the routine. However, the song does not match the traditional 32 bar structure of the dance, and songs like “Chant in the Groove” by Fats Waller have become common substitutes.
The Tranky Doo, from the 1987 documentary “The Spirit Moves: A History of Black Social Dance on Film” by Mura Dehn.
Performers: Al Minns, Leon James, and Pepsi Bethel.