Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: In our episode on Scott Joplin, we briefly discussed the
Speaker 2: cake walk and its origins is sort of a competitive
Speaker 2: entertainment during the era of chattel slavery in the US,
Speaker 2: and in that discussion I briefly mentioned that square dancing
Speaker 2: also has some thorny backstory, and we immediately got a
Speaker 2: lot of email asking for an episode. So here it
Speaker 2: is to be clear upfront, square dancing is still a thing.
Speaker 2: There are active square dancing clubs all over the US,
Speaker 2: as well as some in Canada. There are regional and
Speaker 2: national square dancing conventions every year. There are also square
Speaker 2: dance organizations outside North America, although it does seem like
Speaker 2: some of those have disbanded over the last few years.
Speaker 2: At least one of them, like specifically mentioned the effects
Speaker 2: of the COVID nineteen pandemic is their reason for disbanding.
Speaker 2: So while square dancing is not as popular today as
Speaker 2: it was at its peak, we're not talking about a
Speaker 2: pastime that's totally gone.
Speaker 1: For anybody that doesn't know. Square dancing is a social
Speaker 1: dance in which four couples dance in a square. For
Speaker 1: a long time, it was basically assumed that each couple
Speaker 1: would be made up of one man and one woman, or,
Speaker 1: in the case of gym class, which how a lot
Speaker 1: of us got introduced to it, yet one boy and
Speaker 1: one girl, unless maybe gym class was not evenly split
Speaker 1: into boys and girls. Some square dancing guides written in
Speaker 1: more recent years point out that the dancer's gender does
Speaker 1: not really matter, and they switch over to using words
Speaker 1: like left partner and right partner, or lead and follow.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the time the calls, which are
Speaker 1: sort of this part of square dancing, still use more
Speaker 1: gendered language. It kind of varies a little bit.
Speaker 2: Those calls, though, are one of the most recognizable hallmarks
Speaker 2: of square dancing. The caller is a person who calls
Speaker 2: out the instructions to the dancing couples, usually intertwined with
Speaker 2: a sort of pattern. The moves that they are calling
Speaker 2: out are known as figures, so for example, the dosy
Speaker 2: dough also called the doc doe, or various other like
Speaker 2: slight regional pronunciations that comes from the French for back
Speaker 2: to back. It's one of several figures whose name does
Speaker 2: come from French. So partners face each other, they pass
Speaker 2: each other right shoulder to right shoulder, and then kind
Speaker 2: of step sideways, so they pass back to back, and
Speaker 2: then backwards so that they pass left shoulder to left shoulder,
Speaker 2: so they kind of go around one another back to back.
Speaker 2: There are dances that use a specific sequence of figures
Speaker 2: in a specific order, which dancers can memorize, but a
Speaker 2: lot of the time, especially in modern square dancing, the
Speaker 2: caller is really the person who's leading the dance, and
Speaker 2: the dancers are following the caller's direction. A common theme
Speaker 2: in a lot of writing about square dancing is that
Speaker 2: it has very old roots. S Foster Damon was a poet,
Speaker 2: a William Blake scholar, and a square dancing enthusiast, and
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty seven he published a short book called
Speaker 2: The History of Square Dancing, and that book begins quote
Speaker 2: anthropologist report that the great apes have been observed dancing
Speaker 2: in lines and circles. If this be so, folk dancing
Speaker 2: is probably older than mankind. Most other writers don't go
Speaker 2: back quite that far. I sort of love that idea, though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Even with not going back quite that farther, there's this
Speaker 2: general sense that we're talking about something with very old roots,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of writing about square dancing starts
Speaker 2: the story with Morris dancing. That's an English folk dance
Speaker 2: that probably dates back to sometime in the mid fifteenth century,
Speaker 2: was well established by the mid sixteenth century. This was
Speaker 2: traditionally performed by men, although that's not always true today.
Speaker 2: Dancers formed two lines facing one another. A lot of
Speaker 2: the time they would have bells tied to their lower legs.
Speaker 2: This is a really energetic dance, involves a lot of
Speaker 2: jumping and leaping.
Speaker 3: A lot of times.
Speaker 2: The dancers have wooden sticks or swords that they tap
Speaker 2: together or strike against the ground. There are similar folk
Speaker 2: dance traditions in other parts of the world, and Morris
Speaker 2: dancing is also likely connected to other traditions like mummers plays.
Speaker 2: Not everyone agrees with this connection to Morris dancing, though.
Speaker 2: In a two thousand and one paper in the Yearbook
Speaker 2: for Traditional Music, Colin Quigley describes the inclusion of Morris
Speaker 2: dance in the family tree of modern Western square dance
Speaker 2: as rather fanciful Quigly is a professor whose research work
Speaker 2: focuses on folklore, ethnomusicology and dance ethnology, and he is
Speaker 2: also a fiddler and a dancer himself. But there is
Speaker 2: a clearer connection between square dancing and country dances that
Speaker 2: were developing in parts of Britain in the sixteenth century.
Speaker 2: A lot of country dances also started with people in
Speaker 2: rows facing one another, but while the morris dancers were
Speaker 2: usually all male, in country dances these were couples, with
Speaker 2: the men in one row and the women in the other.
Speaker 2: Long Ways dances started with the couple at the head
Speaker 2: of the line dancing together, and then the dance moved
Speaker 2: down the line from there. Latecomers could join the end
Speaker 2: of the lines without interrupting anything, and people who maybe
Speaker 2: weren't really all that familiar with the dance could get
Speaker 2: the gist of what they were supposed to do by
Speaker 2: the time it was their turn.
Speaker 1: There were also country dances in other formations, including squares
Speaker 1: and rounds. In sixteen fifty one, John Playford published a
Speaker 1: book called the English Dancing Master, or Plain and Easy
Speaker 1: Rules for the Dancing of Country Dances, with the tune
Speaker 1: to each dance it's usually noted as the first book
Speaker 1: to document all these dances. Many editions followed through the
Speaker 1: seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, which included more and more
Speaker 1: dances over time. Other dances that evolved during this era
Speaker 1: that are sometimes included in the history of square dancing
Speaker 1: include maypole dances, Scottish reels, and Irish jigs, and set dances.
Speaker 2: These English country dances were, like their names suggests, associated
Speaker 2: with the country. Upper class people did them in their
Speaker 2: country homes, while working class people did basically the same
Speaker 2: dances in fields or taverns or other gathering places. When
Speaker 2: these dances were introduced to France in the early eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: the name country dance morphed into contra dance contract meaning
Speaker 2: against or opposing, referencing those two lines of dancers facing
Speaker 2: one another. That then became contra dance, which still exists today. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: as English country dances were being held in fields and homes,
Speaker 2: other styles of dance were being developed in the ballrooms
Speaker 2: of France. A court dance called the branles involved a
Speaker 2: chain of dancers in a line or a circle. The courtellon,
Speaker 2: named for a French word that at the time meant
Speaker 2: petticoat was a court dance in which four couples danced
Speaker 2: in a square. When the courtillon was introduced into English
Speaker 2: speaking areas that name morphed, it got an extra syllable
Speaker 2: as cotillion.
Speaker 3: Extra eye.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it comes out as a syllable, depending on how
Speaker 1: southern your accent is. In the eighteenth century, the courtillent
Speaker 1: grew into the quadrille, which again had four couples dancing
Speaker 1: in a square formation, but tended to be longer and
Speaker 1: more complex and intricate than the Courtillan quadrilla was complicated
Speaker 1: enough that things like playing cards and fans were printed
Speaker 1: that included all the steps.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course, when these were introduced into English, it just
Speaker 1: became quadrille or quadrille.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: I used to have a an acquaintance who I met
Speaker 1: through the family who would say quadrille. Sure they got
Speaker 1: a very short, clipped version of it, which is ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: quite cute.
Speaker 2: There were, also, of course, dances from other parts of Europe,
Speaker 2: but the ones that are usually referenced in terms of
Speaker 2: square dancing history were mostly from England and France, sometimes
Speaker 2: also with the inclusion of Scotland and Ireland, and then
Speaker 2: during the colonial era. In the early years in the
Speaker 2: United States, a dance or other social event might include
Speaker 2: a mix of these and other dances. For example, this
Speaker 2: description of a seventeen eighty two ball was written by
Speaker 2: a tutor at Yale quote. The ball was opened with
Speaker 2: a menuet and a country dance was immediately called. They
Speaker 2: succeeded each other till supper, which was a good one,
Speaker 2: but plane A few cotillions were then danced with one
Speaker 2: or two reels, and the whole closed with a set
Speaker 2: of country dances. Broke up around three, and each retired
Speaker 2: with his partner. Just a note here, since we talked
Speaker 2: about calling earlier. When he says called here, that just
Speaker 2: means that somebody called for a country dance to start
Speaker 2: the calling out of the figures that is part of
Speaker 2: square dancing. Like that was not a thing yet.
Speaker 1: Yes, that was more like a let's have a minuet.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteenth century, French quadrias started to overtake
Speaker 1: English country dances in popularity in the US, again as
Speaker 1: a quadrille. Some of this probably stems from the aftermath
Speaker 1: of both the Revolutionary War and the War of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 1: While there were still pockets of people that felt a
Speaker 1: kinship and even loyalty to Britain. There was also a
Speaker 1: lot of anti British sentiment. Meanwhile, France had helped the
Speaker 1: United States win the Revolutionary War, and in eighteen oh
Speaker 1: three the Louisiana Purchase also meant that a lot of
Speaker 1: land that had previously been claimed by France instead became
Speaker 1: part of the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that just met.
Speaker 2: More people with more potentially French ancestry and knowledge of
Speaker 2: French culture. These dances, of course, also continued to evolve
Speaker 2: after being introduced to North America, and we will talk
Speaker 2: about that after a sponsor break. English country dances and
Speaker 2: French dances like the quadriy continued to evolve after being
Speaker 2: introduced to North America, including through influences from outside of
Speaker 2: the European colonists who brought them. For example, colonists took
Speaker 2: inspiration from indigenous people's round dances, in which a chain
Speaker 2: of dancers forms a circle, and ones in which indigenous
Speaker 2: dancers formed a line that coiled into the center and
Speaker 2: then back out again. There are also letters and journals
Speaker 2: from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries written by Europeans that
Speaker 2: describe Indigenous people learning European style dances, or Indigenous women
Speaker 2: as dancing partners at places like army forts during the
Speaker 2: United States westward expansion. Some of these accounts, especially earlier ones,
Speaker 2: seem to suggest a cultural exchange between Europeans and Indigenous people,
Speaker 2: including descriptions of indigenous communities choosing to do both European
Speaker 2: dances and ones from their own cultures and traditions during
Speaker 2: their celebrations, But other accounts of this describe it more
Speaker 2: as a form of cultural imperialism. For example, Francois de
Speaker 2: Chateaubrian's accounts of his travels through North America in seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety one include a description of a French dancing master
Speaker 2: named Monsieur Violets teaching among the Hedenashone. Taubran's descriptions of
Speaker 2: the indigenous dancers are racist and insulting, and he frames
Speaker 2: violets teaching efforts as bringing civilization quote even unto the
Speaker 2: air and hordes of the New World. Another big influence
Speaker 2: on the social dancing of colonial North America and the
Speaker 2: early United States came from enslaved Africans. This included ring
Speaker 2: dances and ring shouts that originated in Western and Central Africa,
Speaker 2: which people continued to do after being brought to the
Speaker 2: Americas by force. But the biggest African influences on square
Speaker 2: dancing were in the music and the practice of calling.
Speaker 2: In that earlier Scott Joplin episode, we talked about entertainment
Speaker 2: being one of the few careers during his lifetime that
Speaker 2: was open to black people and didn't involve domestic work
Speaker 2: or manual labor. Joplin was born after the US Civil War,
Speaker 2: but prior to the Civil War it was also extremely
Speaker 2: common for enslaved people to work as musicians in the
Speaker 2: homes and gathering places of white people, and based on
Speaker 2: all the documentation we have, of the first people to
Speaker 2: call square dances were black.
Speaker 1: This probably had some roots in the call in response
Speaker 1: that was part of both African and African American traditions,
Speaker 1: but it also had a really practical use. Black musicians
Speaker 1: learned music to play at the homes of white people
Speaker 1: who already knew how to do the dances. They had
Speaker 1: been taught by a dancing instructor or possibly a family
Speaker 1: member or a friend. But when the musicians played these
Speaker 1: same songs for their own communities, people did not already
Speaker 1: know the steps, so the person playing the fiddle or
Speaker 1: the banjo or some other instrument also called out the
Speaker 1: figures so that the dancers would know what to do.
Speaker 2: As a note, it is possible that this calling really
Speaker 2: got its start among enslaved people in the Caribbean, and
Speaker 2: that enslaved people then introduced it to North America from there,
Speaker 2: and European dances were introduced of course to the Caribbean
Speaker 2: as well. For example, there are a lot of variations
Speaker 2: on the quadrille and the Caribbean, with a lot of
Speaker 2: different styles, a lot of slightly different names. They vary
Speaker 2: a lot from island to island, in country to country,
Speaker 2: but like this dance has become a big part of
Speaker 2: those cultures.
Speaker 1: S Foster Damon described calling this way, although he credits
Speaker 1: it to some smart American, which, given the context he
Speaker 1: was writing in, suggests that he thought that this person
Speaker 1: was white.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: Like all great inventions, it was simple. The fiddler or
Speaker 1: the leader of the orchestra merely kept telling the dancers
Speaker 1: what to do next. Nobody who knew the six or
Speaker 1: eight fundamental calls could go very far wrong. The fiddler
Speaker 1: thus ceased to be an accompanist. He became the creator
Speaker 1: of the dance. He could vary the figures at any
Speaker 1: moment just to keep the dancers on their toes. He
Speaker 1: could invent new dances. He could even call at random
Speaker 1: anything that happened to pop into his head. These fancy figures,
Speaker 1: when nobody knew what was coming next, became popular as
Speaker 1: the last dance in a set. The prompter could in
Speaker 1: a actually did sing the calls, weaving rude rhymes and
Speaker 1: filling out the calls with comments on the individuals present.
Speaker 1: Thus the ancient trio of melody, verse and dance was
Speaker 1: identified once more, and the collar was the modern equivalent
Speaker 1: of the antique corugus. But most important of all, he
Speaker 1: kept square dancing alive, fluid growing at the very time
Speaker 1: it was becoming formalized in Europe.
Speaker 2: It's not clear exactly when white musicians or white dancing
Speaker 2: instructors started to call dances. The first known reference to
Speaker 2: a white collar is from Chicago in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 2: but that was almost two decades after the first descriptions
Speaker 2: of black callers at dances. An eighteen forty one book
Speaker 2: called The Ballroom Instructor, containing a complete description of cotillions
Speaker 2: and other popular dances, mentions Squadrill's being called, so by
Speaker 2: that point the practice seems to have become pretty well established,
Speaker 2: regardless of who was playing at the dance or doing
Speaker 2: the calls.
Speaker 1: Although Damon described this as a great invention, a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who wrote about it in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries were really critical of the
Speaker 1: practice of calling. For example, in eighteen fifty six, dancing
Speaker 1: master Charles Durang described called dances as annoying and described
Speaker 1: calling itself as quote a vile custom marring the melody
Speaker 1: of the heirs. This was in his book The Fashionable
Speaker 1: Dancer's Casket or the Ballroom Instructor, a new and splendid
Speaker 1: work on dancing, etiquette, deportment, and the toilet. In eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, Gallop, which was a publication of the American
Speaker 1: National Association of Masters of Dancing, ran an article that
Speaker 1: described the typical caller as quote a very poor musician
Speaker 1: with a big voice, who has got all his knowledge
Speaker 1: from cheap handbooks. That said dancing was an extremely important
Speaker 1: social activity in the nineteenth century when it came to
Speaker 1: community gap gatherings, and a lot of the us the
Speaker 1: only thing that was more important than a dance was church.
Speaker 1: Over time, regional styles of square dancing started to develop,
Speaker 1: with different dances and practices in New England, the Southern
Speaker 1: Appalachian Mountains, and the western United States. But around the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, even as the magazine Gallop was complaining about callers,
Speaker 1: this type of dancing was starting to wane as a pastime.
Speaker 1: People still hosted social dances, but they were more likely
Speaker 1: to be dominated by waltzes and two steps. This was
Speaker 1: especially true in cities where trends had shifted to other
Speaker 1: types of dances, and dancing schools started focusing on those
Speaker 1: rather than things like the quadrille. Square dancing and other
Speaker 1: similar dances held on in more rural areas, though. From
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen to nineteen eighteen, Cecil Sharp and Maud Carpels
Speaker 1: traveled through the Southern Appalachian Mountains as song catchers. They
Speaker 1: were collecting and documenting folk songs. This was during the
Speaker 1: First English Folk Revival, which stretched from the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: through the early twentieth centuries and was an effort to
Speaker 1: collect and preserve folk music before it could fade from memory.
Speaker 1: Both of these folks were British. Sharp was co founder
Speaker 1: of the English folk dance society. In the US, Sharp
Speaker 1: and Carpels found areas where folk dances and folk music
Speaker 1: were still really popular, and Sharp came to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that what he was witnessing was quintessentially American. He also
Speaker 1: thought the ballads he heard being performed in Appalachia were
Speaker 1: British folk songs essentially unchanged, which were simply no longer
Speaker 1: being performed in Britain at all, So there's an irony here.
Speaker 1: You could argue that square dancing was quint essentially American
Speaker 1: because it incorporated influences from Europeans, Africans, and Indigenous peoples,
Speaker 1: becoming its own unique style of social dance. But Sharp
Speaker 1: really framed this more as an untarnessed preservation of Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon heritage. He ignored the spirituals and hymns written by
Speaker 1: Black people that are also part of Appalachian music, disregarded
Speaker 1: any potential influence from indigenous people. S Foster Damon pointed
Speaker 1: out that he also disregarded the much more obvious influence
Speaker 1: of music and dance from Ireland and France. Sharp and
Speaker 1: Carpels did influential and really important work by documenting hundreds
Speaker 1: of Appalachian folks songs that might have gone unrecorded if
Speaker 1: they hadn't. But this was really skewed, and that skewed
Speaker 1: perception fit right into an attempt to revive square dancing
Speaker 1: as something quintessentially American, meaning white like in American Country
Speaker 1: Dances twenty eight Contra Dances largely from the New England
Speaker 1: States by Elizabeth Burschenel, published in nineteen eighteen. The author writes, quote,
Speaker 1: this is one of the old, most truly American sections
Speaker 1: of our country, where many generations of the same stock
Speaker 1: have grown up undisturbed by foreign influences, and where sufficient
Speaker 1: time has elapsed since the days of the early settlers
Speaker 1: for the building up of certain traditions and customs. The
Speaker 1: social group dances which have originated or evolved through common
Speaker 1: usage under such conditions in this country are as truly
Speaker 1: folk dances as those found in the older countries, and
Speaker 1: have elements which are almost universally characteristic of folk dances.
Speaker 1: And yet it has often been said that our country
Speaker 1: has no folk music or folk dancing of its own
Speaker 1: other than that of the American Indian. We are today
Speaker 1: a nation of immigrants, not of Indians, and the folk
Speaker 1: traditions that are most essentially our own are those which
Speaker 1: have developed from traditions brought to us by our early
Speaker 1: immigrants into something peculiarly our own. Later on, she specifically
Speaker 1: mentions those early immigrants as coming from England, Ireland and Scotland.
Speaker 2: And also this attempt to revive square dancing sort of
Speaker 2: the first revival and one that just continued to keep
Speaker 2: being re revived. That was happening at the same time
Speaker 2: as xenophobia and racism were really escalating in the United States,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people really thought these dances were
Speaker 2: a return to a forgotten art form that had been
Speaker 2: developed by white people and was emblematic of white American culture.
Speaker 2: That doesn't necessarily mean that the people who started trying
Speaker 2: to introduce square dancing in schools and things like that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that they were explicitly intentionally doing it as
Speaker 2: a way to reinforce white identity. But there was definitely
Speaker 2: a sense of nostalgia for what people imagined as a
Speaker 2: better time using a form of dance that was similarly
Speaker 2: imagined as having been created by white European immigrants. We
Speaker 2: are going to talk more about all of this after
Speaker 2: we pause for a sponsor break. In the nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: and nineteen thirties, more and more educators in the United
Speaker 2: States started incorporating folk music and square dancing into their curricula.
Speaker 2: One person who's often credited with spearheading this is Grace
Speaker 2: Laura Ryan, who was a physical education and dance teacher
Speaker 2: from Michigan and author of Dances of Our Pioneers, which
Speaker 2: came out in nineteen thirty nine. Another big proponent is
Speaker 2: Henry Ford. There's spent a lot of popular writing about
Speaker 2: him and his advocacy of folk music and square dancing
Speaker 2: over the past few years. A lot of this followed
Speaker 2: a Twitter thread and a Courts article by Robin Panakia,
Speaker 2: and it's included, among other things, a segment on Full
Speaker 2: Frontal with Samantha Bee V.
Speaker 1: Ford was vocally anti Semitic, and among other things, he
Speaker 1: thought that Jewish people had taken over the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: to the detriment of American culture. His newspaper, The Dearborn
Speaker 1: Independent published a series of essays called The International Jew
Speaker 1: that spoken deeply anti Semitic terms about jazz as Jewish
Speaker 1: music and described the music itself in terms that evoked
Speaker 1: racist stereotypes of black people. Attorney Aaron Sapiro later sued
Speaker 1: Ford over material written about him elsewhere in this series,
Speaker 1: leading forward to recant and apologize, but Ford also claimed
Speaker 1: to have no knowledge of what had been published in
Speaker 1: The International jew Henry Ford also did a lot to
Speaker 1: promote folk dancing. He was born in eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: so he was in his teens and early twenties, sort
Speaker 1: of at the end of the peak popularity for these dances.
Speaker 1: In his late teens, he had joined the Greenfield Dancing Club.
Speaker 1: He even met his wife, Claire, at a dance. He
Speaker 1: also started playing the violin at age ten, and eventually
Speaker 1: bought stratavarius. So Henry Ford's promotion of folk music wasn't
Speaker 1: just about jazz. It was about trying to bring back
Speaker 1: the pastimes of his youth. In nineteen twenty three, when
Speaker 1: he was sixty, Ford bought and restored the Wayside Inn
Speaker 1: in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He wanted to host dances there, the
Speaker 1: kind that he remembered from when he was young, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't remember all the steps. He hired dance instructor
Speaker 1: Benjamin Lovett, who went to older dancers and dance teachers
Speaker 1: when he didn't know how to do specific dances that
Speaker 1: Ford wanted. Eventually, Ford brought Lovett and his wife to Dearborn,
Speaker 1: Michigan to teach old fashioned dances there. By late nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five, newspapers in Detroit were reporting on Ford's plan
Speaker 1: for a national revival of folk dances. I think at
Speaker 1: this point we're on revival number two. Of the many
Speaker 1: revivals of folk dancing, the revival, of course, included square dancing.
Speaker 1: He built ballrooms, including one named after love It. He
Speaker 1: established dancing schools, sponsored folk dancing programs and training programs
Speaker 1: for teachers. He donated money to impoverished schools in the South,
Speaker 1: and some of that money went to folk dancing, music,
Speaker 1: and instructional materials. Ford also bought the Boxford Inn outside
Speaker 1: of Detroit and restored it and started trying to rehire
Speaker 1: the musicians who had played there forty years before. Many
Speaker 1: of those musicians had long since retired or died. He
Speaker 1: launched a fiddling contest in nineteen twenty five, although this
Speaker 1: quickly grew beyond his control and he wasn't really part
Speaker 1: of the national contest that grew out of it. When
Speaker 1: more people started having their own radios. At home, Ford
Speaker 1: sponsored a radio program called Early American Dance Music. There
Speaker 1: are aspects of this that just seemed kind of deranged
Speaker 1: to me, Like, well, it's like it's an exemplar of
Speaker 1: the danger sick can happen when like wealth and nostalgia
Speaker 1: collide in in somebody that has a bias for action. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty six, Dearborn Publishing Company put out a
Speaker 1: book titled Good Morning After a Sleep of twenty five years,
Speaker 1: Old Fashioned Dancing is being revived by mister and missus
Speaker 1: Henry Ford. In addition to including definitions for the most
Speaker 1: common figures and music, and diagrams for square dances and
Speaker 1: the Virginia reel and waltz's and others, this book also
Speaker 1: includes Ford's thoughts on why old fashioned dancing is better.
Speaker 1: The writing of this book is actually, I think credited
Speaker 1: to Love It, but it's clear that this is like
Speaker 1: reflecting Ford's opinions. He wrote quote, unless a dance be sociable,
Speaker 1: it cannot live long. Unless it promote the spirit of play,
Speaker 1: it will soon weary its devotees. And it is just
Speaker 1: here that dances requiring eight or twelve or sixteen persons
Speaker 1: as the unit for their performance, make their appeal more
Speaker 1: persons thrown together, the spirit of grown up play is irresistible.
Speaker 1: And besides, there is a wider scope and a stronger
Speaker 1: demand for skill and style. The bane of the modern
Speaker 1: dance was its almost utter lack of grace, style, and skill. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have so many thoughts. Regardless of how much of
Speaker 1: this was specifically about jazz and how much was more
Speaker 1: about Ford's own intense nostalgia, these attempts to revive folk
Speaker 1: dancing were absolutely connected to his opinion that the United
Speaker 1: States was moving in the wrong direction. He was pushing
Speaker 1: back against changing social norms and trying to return the
Speaker 1: country to what he remembered from his youth, which he
Speaker 1: imagined was a better time. Another irony here is that
Speaker 1: one big part of all the social and economic changes
Speaker 1: that were rippling through the country was the automobile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did not seem all that critical of his own businesses. Wrong. Oh, No,
Speaker 1: transportation evolved, but nothing else so uh.
Speaker 2: Interest in square dancing dipped again and then revived again,
Speaker 2: this time starting more in the Western United States. A
Speaker 2: major figure in this next revival was actually a Chinese
Speaker 2: American man named Song Chong, who learned some folk dances
Speaker 2: on a ship en route to Europe and then started
Speaker 2: a folk dance club in San Francisco after he returned
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty seven. He spearheaded the creation of the
Speaker 2: Folk Dance Federation of California, which was formed in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two with Henry buzz Glass as its president. Another
Speaker 2: key figure in this revival was Lloyd Shaw, also known
Speaker 2: as Pappy. Shaw worked at Cheyenne Mountain Schools in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
Speaker 2: and had started encouraging dance as a safer pastime than football.
Speaker 2: He also wanted the schools to get away from an
Speaker 2: identity that was tightly connected to whether they were winning games.
Speaker 2: Shaw started promoting square dances, publishing Cowboys Dances in July
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty nine and establishing a school for square
Speaker 2: dance teachers in nineteen forty one. Shaw also established a
Speaker 2: summer school for callers in nineteen forty nine. Tracy found
Speaker 2: one source saying that Ford, who died in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: funded some of Shaw's work, but that is not something
Speaker 2: that she was able to confirm. Yeah, I just found
Speaker 2: one mention of it in one source. Square dancing's popularity
Speaker 2: continued to grow again during the nineteen forties and fifties.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty eight, Bob osgood established a square dancing
Speaker 2: magazine called Sets in Order, later renamed Square Dancing, which
Speaker 2: ran until nineteen eighty five. A lot of state and
Speaker 2: regional square dance associations were established in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: and the first national square Dance conventions were held in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties as well. S. Foster Damon's History of
Speaker 2: square Dancing, which we've referenced a few times in this episode,
Speaker 2: came out in nineteen fifty seven and it described as
Speaker 2: that time as quote a great period of square dancing,
Speaker 2: just putting it out there that this great period of
Speaker 2: square dancing also included Brown versus Sport of Education in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty five, So the civil rights movement is also part
Speaker 2: of the context for the popularity of a dance form.
Speaker 2: It was mostly associated with white people, which was widely
Speaker 2: imagined as a return to old fashioned Anglo Saxon heritage.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy one, Bob Osgoode an eleven other callers
Speaker 2: established Collar lab to train new square dancing scholars and
Speaker 2: to standardize the calls. Collar labs still exist today. Its
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three convention was held this past April, and
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four convention is planned for March of
Speaker 2: that year in Grapevine, Texas. The International Association of Gay
Speaker 2: Square Dance Clubs was established in nineteen eighty three that
Speaker 2: also still exists and is hosting a convention in Ottawa
Speaker 2: in July of this year and in Durham, North Carolina
Speaker 2: next year. Both of these organizations were established during a
Speaker 2: movement to name square dancing as the national folk dance
Speaker 2: of the United States. A lot of the organizations spearheading
Speaker 2: this movement were involved with modern Western square dancing, but
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, most square dancing had started to fall
Speaker 2: into two broad categories. One was traditional square dancing, often
Speaker 2: accompanied by a live fiddler, with regional differences in how
Speaker 2: dances were done, and the other was modern Western square dancing,
Speaker 2: which had really started to coalesce starting in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Modern Western square dancing is more formalized and standardized in
Speaker 2: terms of figures and calls, and it's often done to
Speaker 2: pre recorded music. There are four main levels, Mainstream plus, Advanced,
Speaker 2: and Challenge, and as their names suggest, each level is
Speaker 2: a bit more complex than the one before, with more
Speaker 2: figures for dancers to learn. Yeah that the musical styles
Speaker 2: more often used with traditional folk dancing usually include things
Speaker 2: like folk music, fiddle music, what you might describe as
Speaker 2: a hoedown, that kind of thing. Modern Western square dancing,
Speaker 2: though like uses music across a lot of different genres.
Speaker 2: During this campaign, roughly twenty states made square dancing their
Speaker 2: state dance, and a handful of others made square dancing
Speaker 2: the state folk dance specifically, and the campaign to make
Speaker 2: square dancing the national folk dance saw some limited success
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen eighties. On June first, nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: President Ronald Reagan signed a joint resolution naming square dance
Speaker 2: as the National Folk dance of the United States for
Speaker 2: the years nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1: That resolution read quote Whereas square dancing has been a
Speaker 1: popular tradition in America since early colonial days, Whereas square
Speaker 1: dancing has attained a revered status as part of the
Speaker 1: folklore of this country. Whereas square dancing is a joyful
Speaker 1: expression of the vibrant spirit of the people of the
Speaker 1: United States. Whereas the American people value the display of
Speaker 1: etiquette among men and women, which is a major element
Speaker 1: of square dancing. Whereas square dancing is a traditional form
Speaker 1: of family recreation, which symbolizes a basic strength of this country,
Speaker 1: namely the unity of the family. Whereas square dancing epitomizes
Speaker 1: democracy because it dissolves arbitrary social distinctions. And whereas it
Speaker 1: is fitting that the square dance be added to the
Speaker 1: array of symbols of our national character and pride. Now,
Speaker 1: therefore be it resolved by the Senate and House of
Speaker 1: Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled
Speaker 1: that the square dances designated the National Folk Dance of
Speaker 1: the United States of America for nineteen eighty two. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, this is just so, Ronald Reagan's yes.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Other similar mills were introduced unsuccessfully in the years of
Speaker 2: five trying to make this like a permanent thing, not
Speaker 2: just nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty three, and at
Speaker 2: various points public hearings were held on the matter. Proponents
Speaker 2: of making square dancing the national folk dance talked about
Speaker 2: square dancing is something that was cooperative, collaborative, accessible, and
Speaker 2: uniquely American. Leon Panetta, who at the time was serving
Speaker 2: in the House of Representatives but would later hold a
Speaker 2: number of other positions including White House Chief of Staff,
Speaker 2: Director of the CIA, and Secretary of Defense, was a
Speaker 2: big proponent of this. One of his statements quote, square
Speaker 2: dancing is an activity that symbolizes, I think the country's
Speaker 2: basic strengths, the unity of the family, and a spirit
Speaker 2: of equality in which all people can equally enjoy this
Speaker 2: form of dancing. It is truly, I feel, symbolic of
Speaker 2: the vitality, diversity, history, and wholesomeness of this country.
Speaker 1: I read that, I'm like how soon. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people were opposed to this whole idea, including folklorists,
Speaker 1: dance historians, and black, Hispanic and Indigenous dancers. One active
Speaker 1: square dancer who spoke in opposition was Bob Dalcimer, who
Speaker 1: was not part of the square dancing organizations that were
Speaker 1: promoting the bills. Dalcimer objected to the inclusion of clogging,
Speaker 1: the Virginia reel, and other dances under the umbrella of
Speaker 1: square dance. He also pointed out that rural communities that
Speaker 1: had been square dancing for generations aka doing traditional square
Speaker 1: dance would probably not recognize modern Western square dance at all.
Speaker 1: Some of the testimony against this bill circled back to
Speaker 1: some ideas we've already discussed. Raina Green at the time,
Speaker 1: president of the American Folklore Society, referenced attempts to force
Speaker 1: Indigenous children to assimilate with white culture. We've talked about
Speaker 1: a number of those attempts on the show before. Quote,
Speaker 1: when my grandmother was a girl, and when my great
Speaker 1: grandmother was a child, they were forbidden to speak their language,
Speaker 1: forbidden to dance their dances by the American government and
Speaker 1: by missionaries in this country. How ironic I think it
Speaker 1: would be if my grandmother, who danced the square dance
Speaker 1: in school, the only place she ever danced it, but
Speaker 1: could not dance her own tribal dances, were now to
Speaker 1: be dishonored, and all of our ancestors were to be dishonored,
Speaker 1: in fact, with the designation of a dance that represented
Speaker 1: the overturn and repression of our own dances and the
Speaker 1: oppression of our people. Green also noted that if Congress
Speaker 1: were instead to consider an indigenous dance as the National
Speaker 1: folk dance, tribal peoples would have difficulty choosing which of
Speaker 1: all the round dances it should be, because the round
Speaker 1: dances are all different, and the communities involved respect and
Speaker 1: honor those differences. And even if there had been more
Speaker 1: acknowledgment that European, Indigenous and African influences all played a
Speaker 1: part in the development of square dancing, that still left
Speaker 1: out a lot of Americans. For example, in the words
Speaker 1: of activist Juan Gutierrez during congressional earrings, quote, first of all,
Speaker 1: our community doesn't have even the slightest idea of what
Speaker 1: square dance is. I am director of a Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: folk music group. I respect the traditional square dancing form
Speaker 1: as well as others, but I believe in national diversity.
Speaker 1: I don't think that square dancing will ever represent the
Speaker 1: diversity of people in the United States. Efforts to make
Speaker 1: square dancing the national folk dance seem to have fizzled
Speaker 1: out in more recent years, and by the late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: square dancing was also starting to fall out of favor
Speaker 1: as part of school pe classes, which again it's where
Speaker 1: Holly and I were exposed to it. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that more on Friday. As we said earlier,
Speaker 1: though there are still local, regional, national, and international square
Speaker 1: dance clubs. A lot of the most active square dancers
Speaker 1: and callers today are elders, and these organizations are predominant white,
Speaker 1: but there are people who are trying to attract younger
Speaker 1: and more diverse participants. There's an episode of Radio Lab
Speaker 1: called Bertie in the Cage from October of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: in which reporter Tracy Hunt went to the National Convention
Speaker 1: and talked to some square dancers there about, among other things,
Speaker 1: how this social dance is trying to evolve. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: very excited for behind the scenes this time around, me too.
Speaker 1: Do you have some listener mail to take us out?
Speaker 2: I do this Sister mail is from Vaughn and Von wrote,
Speaker 2: Dear Holly and Tracy, I found your episode about knitting,
Speaker 2: and I have now listened to all the episodes. You
Speaker 2: keep me company as I hike drive to and from
Speaker 2: work and while I'm doing things at home. Your sense
Speaker 2: of humor, respectful approach to topics, and empathy to all
Speaker 2: the topics is so appreciated. I learned so much from
Speaker 2: your episodes, and most of the topics don't have relevance
Speaker 2: to my working.
Speaker 3: Day until Mother Goose.
Speaker 2: I teach kindergarten in the San Francisco area. We use
Speaker 2: the Mother Goose poems to teach rhyming. We act out
Speaker 2: the poems and draw our own interpretations of them. I've
Speaker 2: been meaning to write in when you've done the previous
Speaker 2: Mother Goose Impossible episodes, and I'm finally doing it. I've
Speaker 2: enclosed the art I use as a sample for Humpty
Speaker 2: Dumpty and Jack be Nimble. Also included are the motions
Speaker 2: in case you'd like to act out the poems. I
Speaker 2: hope you will enjoy the kindergartener's artwork as much as
Speaker 2: I do. This Jack be Nimble is from a current student.
Speaker 2: I've also enclosed my nine year old pug Finn, who
Speaker 2: puts up with me making him wear hats. This one
Speaker 2: is an eggplant hat. Thank you again for introducing me
Speaker 2: to many new topics and all your hard work. I
Speaker 2: wish you continued success, Love Vaughn, So thank you so much,
Speaker 2: Vond for these pictures.
Speaker 3: Something.
Speaker 2: There's one that's a drawing of Humpty Dumpty. Something about
Speaker 2: this drawing of Humpty Dumpty. There is what looks like
Speaker 2: a suggestion of legs in blue. But then what I
Speaker 2: think is the body of Humpty Dumpty reminds me a
Speaker 2: little bit of like like a whole chicken, like with
Speaker 2: the two chicken legs sticking up.
Speaker 3: It is adorable. And then the Jackbie Nimble one Check.
Speaker 2: Has like a very green head and feet that look
Speaker 2: like an anchor to me, so that is fun. And
Speaker 2: then of course a pug and a hat with the
Speaker 2: like pug tongue lall thing going. So anyway, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for sending these adorable pictures.
Speaker 1: That seems like a great way to teach kids about rhymes.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of like sort of easy gesture
Speaker 1: based dances that you could make to go along with
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. So thank you Von for
Speaker 1: this note.
Speaker 2: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 2: or any other podcast, we're at History Podcast at iHeartRadio
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