Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture
5/5
()
About this ebook
Katrina Hazzard-Gordon offers the first analysis of the development of the jook—an underground cultural institution created by the black working class—together with other dance arenas in African-American culture. Beginning with the effects of African slaves’ middle passage experience on their traditional dances, she traces the unique and virtually autonomous dance culture that developed in the rural South. Like the blues, these secular dance forms and institutions were brought north and urbanized by migrating blacks. In northern cities, some aspects of black dance became integrated into white culture and commercialized. Focusing on ten African-American dance arenas from the period of enslavement to the mid-twentieth century, this book explores the jooks, honky-tonks, rent parties, and after-hours joints as well as the licensed membership clubs, dance halls, cabarets, and the dances of the black elite.
Jook houses emerged during the Reconstruction era and can be viewed as a cultural response to freedom. In the jook, Hazzard-Gordon explains, an immeasurable amount of core black culture including food, language, community fellowship, mate selection, music, and dance found a sanctuary of expression when no other secular institution flourished among the folk. The jook and its various derivative forms have provided both entertainment and an economic alternative (such as illegal lotteries and numbers) to people excluded from the dominant economy. Dances like the Charleston, shimmy, snake hips, funky butt, twist, and slow drag originated in the jooks; some can be traced back to Africa.
Social dancing links black Americans to their African past more strongly than any other aspect of their culture. Citing the significance of dance in the African-American psyche, this study explores the establishments that nurtured ancestral as well as communal links for African-Americans, vividly describing black dances, formal rituals, such as debutante balls, and the influence of black dance on white culture.
Related to Jookin'
Related ebooks
Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlackness in the White Nation: A History of Afro-Uruguay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNothing but Love in God's Water: Volume I: Black Sacred Music from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Afro-Muse: The Evolution of African-American Music Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParty Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers' Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBehold the Land: The Black Arts Movement in the South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Voice That Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouthscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStruggle on Their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDancing Bahia: Essays on Afro-Brazilian Dance, Education, Memory, and Race Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Hear My People Singing: Voices of African American Princeton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmbodied Avatars: Genealogies of Black Feminist Art and Performance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhiting Up: Whiteface Minstrels and Stage Europeans in African American Performance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Chicago: A Black History of America's Heartland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Ain't Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJazz Religion, the Second Line, and Black New Orleans: After Hurricane Katrina Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Negro Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExits and Entrances: Interviews with Seven Who Reshaped African-American Images in Movies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and the United Farm Workers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfrican American Cinema through Black Lives Consciousness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Ethnic Studies For You
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Rednecks & White Liberals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Life Sentence: The Brief and Tragic Career of Baltimore’s Deadliest Gang Leader Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Blood of Emmett Till Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Self-Care for Black Women: 150 Ways to Radically Accept & Prioritize Your Mind, Body, & Soul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heavy: An American Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories of Rootworkers & Hoodoo in the Mid-South Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Wretched of the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Boy [Seventy-fifth Anniversary Edition] Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Encyclopedia of the Yoruba Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Reviews for Jookin'
1 rating0 reviews