WEBVTT - Square Dancing 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.040 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:14.880 I'm Tracy V. 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:16.800 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:21.919 In our episode on Scott Joplin, we briefly discussed the 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:25.520 cake walk and its origins is sort of a competitive 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:29.280 entertainment during the era of chattel slavery in the US, 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:34.599 and in that discussion I briefly mentioned that square dancing 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:39.040 also has some thorny backstory, and we immediately got a 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:41.839 lot of email asking for an episode. So here it 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:46.440 is to be clear upfront, square dancing is still a thing. 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.839 There are active square dancing clubs all over the US, 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.519 as well as some in Canada. There are regional and 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:58.480 national square dancing conventions every year. There are also square 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:02.640 dance organizations outside North America, although it does seem like 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:05.720 some of those have disbanded over the last few years. 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.640 At least one of them, like specifically mentioned the effects 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.840 of the COVID nineteen pandemic is their reason for disbanding. 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:18.360 So while square dancing is not as popular today as 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.240 it was at its peak, we're not talking about a 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.720 pastime that's totally gone. 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:27.080 For anybody that doesn't know. Square dancing is a social 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.840 dance in which four couples dance in a square. For 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.600 a long time, it was basically assumed that each couple 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.039 would be made up of one man and one woman, or, 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:38.440 in the case of gym class, which how a lot 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:41.160 of us got introduced to it, yet one boy and 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.640 one girl, unless maybe gym class was not evenly split 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.520 into boys and girls. Some square dancing guides written in 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.400 more recent years point out that the dancer's gender does 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.720 not really matter, and they switch over to using words 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.400 like left partner and right partner, or lead and follow. 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.600 But a lot of the time the calls, which are 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.720 sort of this part of square dancing, still use more 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:09.079 gendered language. It kind of varies a little bit. 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.600 Those calls, though, are one of the most recognizable hallmarks 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:17.440 of square dancing. The caller is a person who calls 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.320 out the instructions to the dancing couples, usually intertwined with 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.720 a sort of pattern. The moves that they are calling 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:28.000 out are known as figures, so for example, the dosy 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.520 dough also called the doc doe, or various other like 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:36.960 slight regional pronunciations that comes from the French for back 0:02:37.000 --> 0:02:39.960 to back. It's one of several figures whose name does 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:43.480 come from French. So partners face each other, they pass 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:45.960 each other right shoulder to right shoulder, and then kind 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.040 of step sideways, so they pass back to back, and 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:52.120 then backwards so that they pass left shoulder to left shoulder, 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:54.360 so they kind of go around one another back to back. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.919 There are dances that use a specific sequence of figures 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.120 in a specific order, which dancers can memorize, but a 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.480 lot of the time, especially in modern square dancing, the 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:08.600 caller is really the person who's leading the dance, and 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:13.400 the dancers are following the caller's direction. A common theme 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.040 in a lot of writing about square dancing is that 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:20.160 it has very old roots. S Foster Damon was a poet, 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:23.640 a William Blake scholar, and a square dancing enthusiast, and 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:26.760 in nineteen fifty seven he published a short book called 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.320 The History of Square Dancing, and that book begins quote 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.080 anthropologist report that the great apes have been observed dancing 0:03:34.080 --> 0:03:37.640 in lines and circles. If this be so, folk dancing 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:42.280 is probably older than mankind. Most other writers don't go 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:48.240 back quite that far. I sort of love that idea, though. 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:49.080 Yeah, me too. 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.600 Even with not going back quite that farther, there's this 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.920 general sense that we're talking about something with very old roots, 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.040 and so a lot of writing about square dancing starts 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.560 the story with Morris dancing. That's an English folk dance 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:05.920 that probably dates back to sometime in the mid fifteenth century, 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:10.040 was well established by the mid sixteenth century. This was 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:13.960 traditionally performed by men, although that's not always true today. 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:17.680 Dancers formed two lines facing one another. A lot of 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.440 the time they would have bells tied to their lower legs. 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.520 This is a really energetic dance, involves a lot of 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:24.479 jumping and leaping. 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:25.359 A lot of times. 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.440 The dancers have wooden sticks or swords that they tap 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:32.920 together or strike against the ground. There are similar folk 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.080 dance traditions in other parts of the world, and Morris 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:40.239 dancing is also likely connected to other traditions like mummers plays. 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:44.719 Not everyone agrees with this connection to Morris dancing, though. 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:47.240 In a two thousand and one paper in the Yearbook 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:51.200 for Traditional Music, Colin Quigley describes the inclusion of Morris 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.520 dance in the family tree of modern Western square dance 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.719 as rather fanciful Quigly is a professor whose research work 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:03.479 focuses on folklore, ethnomusicology and dance ethnology, and he is 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:07.200 also a fiddler and a dancer himself. But there is 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:12.039 a clearer connection between square dancing and country dances that 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.120 were developing in parts of Britain in the sixteenth century. 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.960 A lot of country dances also started with people in 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:22.760 rows facing one another, but while the morris dancers were 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:26.440 usually all male, in country dances these were couples, with 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.360 the men in one row and the women in the other. 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.800 Long Ways dances started with the couple at the head 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.080 of the line dancing together, and then the dance moved 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.120 down the line from there. Latecomers could join the end 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.400 of the lines without interrupting anything, and people who maybe 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.520 weren't really all that familiar with the dance could get 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:49.640 the gist of what they were supposed to do by 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:50.919 the time it was their turn. 0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:55.760 There were also country dances in other formations, including squares 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.680 and rounds. In sixteen fifty one, John Playford published a 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.320 book called the English Dancing Master, or Plain and Easy 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:06.440 Rules for the Dancing of Country Dances, with the tune 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.640 to each dance it's usually noted as the first book 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:14.039 to document all these dances. Many editions followed through the 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:17.240 seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, which included more and more 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.680 dances over time. Other dances that evolved during this era 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.760 that are sometimes included in the history of square dancing 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:30.000 include maypole dances, Scottish reels, and Irish jigs, and set dances. 0:06:30.480 --> 0:06:35.800 These English country dances were, like their names suggests, associated 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.880 with the country. Upper class people did them in their 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:42.599 country homes, while working class people did basically the same 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:47.120 dances in fields or taverns or other gathering places. When 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:51.640 these dances were introduced to France in the early eighteenth century, 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:56.359 the name country dance morphed into contra dance contract meaning 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.839 against or opposing, referencing those two lines of dancers facing 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:07.320 one another. That then became contra dance, which still exists today. Meanwhile, 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.720 as English country dances were being held in fields and homes, 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:14.040 other styles of dance were being developed in the ballrooms 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:17.640 of France. A court dance called the branles involved a 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.400 chain of dancers in a line or a circle. The courtellon, 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:23.640 named for a French word that at the time meant 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.040 petticoat was a court dance in which four couples danced 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.600 in a square. When the courtillon was introduced into English 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.040 speaking areas that name morphed, it got an extra syllable 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:35.920 as cotillion. 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:37.560 Extra eye. 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:39.760 Sometimes it comes out as a syllable, depending on how 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:43.560 southern your accent is. In the eighteenth century, the courtillent 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:47.240 grew into the quadrille, which again had four couples dancing 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.720 in a square formation, but tended to be longer and 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:55.760 more complex and intricate than the Courtillan quadrilla was complicated 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.760 enough that things like playing cards and fans were printed 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:01.600 that included all the steps. 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:02.200 Yeah. 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.080 Of course, when these were introduced into English, it just 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.520 became quadrille or quadrille. 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:08.880 Yes. 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:14.040 I used to have a an acquaintance who I met 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.200 through the family who would say quadrille. Sure they got 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:19.560 a very short, clipped version of it, which is ye, yeah, 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:20.239 quite cute. 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:25.320 There were, also, of course, dances from other parts of Europe, 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:28.480 but the ones that are usually referenced in terms of 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:33.080 square dancing history were mostly from England and France, sometimes 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.800 also with the inclusion of Scotland and Ireland, and then 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.560 during the colonial era. In the early years in the 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:43.360 United States, a dance or other social event might include 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.559 a mix of these and other dances. For example, this 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:50.120 description of a seventeen eighty two ball was written by 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.400 a tutor at Yale quote. The ball was opened with 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:57.240 a menuet and a country dance was immediately called. They 0:08:57.280 --> 0:08:59.760 succeeded each other till supper, which was a good one, 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.280 but plane A few cotillions were then danced with one 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.160 or two reels, and the whole closed with a set 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.800 of country dances. Broke up around three, and each retired 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.400 with his partner. Just a note here, since we talked 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.400 about calling earlier. When he says called here, that just 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.040 means that somebody called for a country dance to start 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.600 the calling out of the figures that is part of 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:24.960 square dancing. Like that was not a thing yet. 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.640 Yes, that was more like a let's have a minuet. 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:29.360 Yes. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:33.800 In the early nineteenth century, French quadrias started to overtake 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.520 English country dances in popularity in the US, again as 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:41.320 a quadrille. Some of this probably stems from the aftermath 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.480 of both the Revolutionary War and the War of eighteen twelve. 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.680 While there were still pockets of people that felt a 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.240 kinship and even loyalty to Britain. There was also a 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.360 lot of anti British sentiment. Meanwhile, France had helped the 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.840 United States win the Revolutionary War, and in eighteen oh 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.880 three the Louisiana Purchase also meant that a lot of 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:06.040 land that had previously been claimed by France instead became 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:07.440 part of the United States. 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:08.920 Yeah, that just met. 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:12.440 More people with more potentially French ancestry and knowledge of 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:17.680 French culture. These dances, of course, also continued to evolve 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:20.560 after being introduced to North America, and we will talk 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:33.520 about that after a sponsor break. English country dances and 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.960 French dances like the quadriy continued to evolve after being 0:10:38.000 --> 0:10:43.120 introduced to North America, including through influences from outside of 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:47.640 the European colonists who brought them. For example, colonists took 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.760 inspiration from indigenous people's round dances, in which a chain 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:55.760 of dancers forms a circle, and ones in which indigenous 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:58.680 dancers formed a line that coiled into the center and 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.640 then back out again. There are also letters and journals 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.320 from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries written by Europeans that 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:11.240 describe Indigenous people learning European style dances, or Indigenous women 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.559 as dancing partners at places like army forts during the 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:19.720 United States westward expansion. Some of these accounts, especially earlier ones, 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:24.160 seem to suggest a cultural exchange between Europeans and Indigenous people, 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.600 including descriptions of indigenous communities choosing to do both European 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:32.200 dances and ones from their own cultures and traditions during 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.440 their celebrations, But other accounts of this describe it more 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:40.880 as a form of cultural imperialism. For example, Francois de 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:44.840 Chateaubrian's accounts of his travels through North America in seventeen 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:49.240 ninety one include a description of a French dancing master 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:54.920 named Monsieur Violets teaching among the Hedenashone. Taubran's descriptions of 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.600 the indigenous dancers are racist and insulting, and he frames 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:03.559 violets teaching efforts as bringing civilization quote even unto the 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:07.880 air and hordes of the New World. Another big influence 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.640 on the social dancing of colonial North America and the 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:15.600 early United States came from enslaved Africans. This included ring 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:20.040 dances and ring shouts that originated in Western and Central Africa, 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.520 which people continued to do after being brought to the 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:26.840 Americas by force. But the biggest African influences on square 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.680 dancing were in the music and the practice of calling. 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.520 In that earlier Scott Joplin episode, we talked about entertainment 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:37.520 being one of the few careers during his lifetime that 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:41.760 was open to black people and didn't involve domestic work 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:45.960 or manual labor. Joplin was born after the US Civil War, 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.920 but prior to the Civil War it was also extremely 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:54.280 common for enslaved people to work as musicians in the 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.880 homes and gathering places of white people, and based on 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.360 all the documentation we have, of the first people to 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:03.280 call square dances were black. 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:07.000 This probably had some roots in the call in response 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.240 that was part of both African and African American traditions, 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.080 but it also had a really practical use. Black musicians 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.560 learned music to play at the homes of white people 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.480 who already knew how to do the dances. They had 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.760 been taught by a dancing instructor or possibly a family 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.920 member or a friend. But when the musicians played these 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.360 same songs for their own communities, people did not already 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:32.080 know the steps, so the person playing the fiddle or 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:35.240 the banjo or some other instrument also called out the 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:37.480 figures so that the dancers would know what to do. 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.920 As a note, it is possible that this calling really 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:45.240 got its start among enslaved people in the Caribbean, and 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:49.040 that enslaved people then introduced it to North America from there, 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.760 and European dances were introduced of course to the Caribbean 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:58.880 as well. For example, there are a lot of variations 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.520 on the quadrille and the Caribbean, with a lot of 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.800 different styles, a lot of slightly different names. They vary 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:07.360 a lot from island to island, in country to country, 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:09.520 but like this dance has become a big part of 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:10.600 those cultures. 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.160 S Foster Damon described calling this way, although he credits 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:19.200 it to some smart American, which, given the context he 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.760 was writing in, suggests that he thought that this person 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:22.280 was white. 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:23.479 Quote. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.080 Like all great inventions, it was simple. The fiddler or 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.960 the leader of the orchestra merely kept telling the dancers 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.000 what to do next. Nobody who knew the six or 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:36.960 eight fundamental calls could go very far wrong. The fiddler 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.000 thus ceased to be an accompanist. He became the creator 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.000 of the dance. He could vary the figures at any 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:45.840 moment just to keep the dancers on their toes. He 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:48.920 could invent new dances. He could even call at random 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:53.200 anything that happened to pop into his head. These fancy figures, 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.440 when nobody knew what was coming next, became popular as 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:59.720 the last dance in a set. The prompter could in 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:03.240 a actually did sing the calls, weaving rude rhymes and 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:06.320 filling out the calls with comments on the individuals present. 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:10.560 Thus the ancient trio of melody, verse and dance was 0:15:10.600 --> 0:15:14.200 identified once more, and the collar was the modern equivalent 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:18.040 of the antique corugus. But most important of all, he 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:22.480 kept square dancing alive, fluid growing at the very time 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:25.520 it was becoming formalized in Europe. 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.640 It's not clear exactly when white musicians or white dancing 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:33.800 instructors started to call dances. The first known reference to 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.000 a white collar is from Chicago in eighteen thirty six, 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.520 but that was almost two decades after the first descriptions 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:46.040 of black callers at dances. An eighteen forty one book 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.480 called The Ballroom Instructor, containing a complete description of cotillions 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.960 and other popular dances, mentions Squadrill's being called, so by 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:59.000 that point the practice seems to have become pretty well established, 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.120 regardless of who was playing at the dance or doing 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:02.680 the calls. 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:06.960 Although Damon described this as a great invention, a lot 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.640 of the people who wrote about it in the mid 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.520 eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries were really critical of the 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:16.280 practice of calling. For example, in eighteen fifty six, dancing 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:21.080 master Charles Durang described called dances as annoying and described 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:25.040 calling itself as quote a vile custom marring the melody 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.280 of the heirs. This was in his book The Fashionable 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.360 Dancer's Casket or the Ballroom Instructor, a new and splendid 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.440 work on dancing, etiquette, deportment, and the toilet. In eighteen 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.480 ninety three, Gallop, which was a publication of the American 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.160 National Association of Masters of Dancing, ran an article that 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.920 described the typical caller as quote a very poor musician 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.920 with a big voice, who has got all his knowledge 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:55.760 from cheap handbooks. That said dancing was an extremely important 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.240 social activity in the nineteenth century when it came to 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.880 community gap gatherings, and a lot of the us the 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:04.760 only thing that was more important than a dance was church. 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:09.320 Over time, regional styles of square dancing started to develop, 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:13.600 with different dances and practices in New England, the Southern 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.399 Appalachian Mountains, and the western United States. But around the 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:21.560 eighteen nineties, even as the magazine Gallop was complaining about callers, 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.959 this type of dancing was starting to wane as a pastime. 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.560 People still hosted social dances, but they were more likely 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.960 to be dominated by waltzes and two steps. This was 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.040 especially true in cities where trends had shifted to other 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.719 types of dances, and dancing schools started focusing on those 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.800 rather than things like the quadrille. Square dancing and other 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:47.280 similar dances held on in more rural areas, though. From 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:51.720 nineteen sixteen to nineteen eighteen, Cecil Sharp and Maud Carpels 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:56.159 traveled through the Southern Appalachian Mountains as song catchers. They 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.760 were collecting and documenting folk songs. This was during the 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.360 First English Folk Revival, which stretched from the late nineteenth 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.119 through the early twentieth centuries and was an effort to 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:10.200 collect and preserve folk music before it could fade from memory. 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.560 Both of these folks were British. Sharp was co founder 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.359 of the English folk dance society. In the US, Sharp 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:21.680 and Carpels found areas where folk dances and folk music 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:25.080 were still really popular, and Sharp came to the conclusion 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:29.240 that what he was witnessing was quintessentially American. He also 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.240 thought the ballads he heard being performed in Appalachia were 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:36.679 British folk songs essentially unchanged, which were simply no longer 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:41.040 being performed in Britain at all, So there's an irony here. 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:46.679 You could argue that square dancing was quint essentially American 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:52.160 because it incorporated influences from Europeans, Africans, and Indigenous peoples, 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:57.240 becoming its own unique style of social dance. But Sharp 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:02.520 really framed this more as an untarnessed preservation of Anglo 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:07.520 Saxon heritage. He ignored the spirituals and hymns written by 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:12.600 Black people that are also part of Appalachian music, disregarded 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:17.480 any potential influence from indigenous people. S Foster Damon pointed 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:21.600 out that he also disregarded the much more obvious influence 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:25.359 of music and dance from Ireland and France. Sharp and 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:30.600 Carpels did influential and really important work by documenting hundreds 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.000 of Appalachian folks songs that might have gone unrecorded if 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:39.959 they hadn't. But this was really skewed, and that skewed 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.800 perception fit right into an attempt to revive square dancing 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:49.720 as something quintessentially American, meaning white like in American Country 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.000 Dances twenty eight Contra Dances largely from the New England 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:58.199 States by Elizabeth Burschenel, published in nineteen eighteen. The author writes, quote, 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.560 this is one of the old, most truly American sections 0:20:01.560 --> 0:20:04.840 of our country, where many generations of the same stock 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:09.000 have grown up undisturbed by foreign influences, and where sufficient 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.800 time has elapsed since the days of the early settlers 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:15.639 for the building up of certain traditions and customs. The 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:19.320 social group dances which have originated or evolved through common 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.199 usage under such conditions in this country are as truly 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:26.560 folk dances as those found in the older countries, and 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:30.520 have elements which are almost universally characteristic of folk dances. 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:33.439 And yet it has often been said that our country 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:36.639 has no folk music or folk dancing of its own 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:40.400 other than that of the American Indian. We are today 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:44.040 a nation of immigrants, not of Indians, and the folk 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:46.960 traditions that are most essentially our own are those which 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:50.200 have developed from traditions brought to us by our early 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:55.679 immigrants into something peculiarly our own. Later on, she specifically 0:20:55.720 --> 0:21:00.600 mentions those early immigrants as coming from England, Ireland and Scotland. 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:07.080 And also this attempt to revive square dancing sort of 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.280 the first revival and one that just continued to keep 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.480 being re revived. That was happening at the same time 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:18.000 as xenophobia and racism were really escalating in the United States, 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.400 and a lot of people really thought these dances were 0:21:21.440 --> 0:21:24.760 a return to a forgotten art form that had been 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:29.960 developed by white people and was emblematic of white American culture. 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:33.840 That doesn't necessarily mean that the people who started trying 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:38.080 to introduce square dancing in schools and things like that 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.760 doesn't mean that they were explicitly intentionally doing it as 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:46.000 a way to reinforce white identity. But there was definitely 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:50.600 a sense of nostalgia for what people imagined as a 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:54.240 better time using a form of dance that was similarly 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:59.520 imagined as having been created by white European immigrants. We 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:02.320 are going to talk more about all of this after 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:14.600 we pause for a sponsor break. In the nineteen twenties 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.439 and nineteen thirties, more and more educators in the United 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:23.360 States started incorporating folk music and square dancing into their curricula. 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:27.359 One person who's often credited with spearheading this is Grace 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:31.080 Laura Ryan, who was a physical education and dance teacher 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:35.720 from Michigan and author of Dances of Our Pioneers, which 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.800 came out in nineteen thirty nine. Another big proponent is 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:44.000 Henry Ford. There's spent a lot of popular writing about 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:46.800 him and his advocacy of folk music and square dancing 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:50.120 over the past few years. A lot of this followed 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:53.280 a Twitter thread and a Courts article by Robin Panakia, 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.040 and it's included, among other things, a segment on Full 0:22:57.080 --> 0:23:00.080 Frontal with Samantha Bee V. 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.919 Ford was vocally anti Semitic, and among other things, he 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:07.200 thought that Jewish people had taken over the entertainment industry 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:11.360 to the detriment of American culture. His newspaper, The Dearborn 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:15.760 Independent published a series of essays called The International Jew 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:19.840 that spoken deeply anti Semitic terms about jazz as Jewish 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.119 music and described the music itself in terms that evoked 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:28.280 racist stereotypes of black people. Attorney Aaron Sapiro later sued 0:23:28.359 --> 0:23:31.760 Ford over material written about him elsewhere in this series, 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:36.320 leading forward to recant and apologize, but Ford also claimed 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:38.720 to have no knowledge of what had been published in 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:43.320 The International jew Henry Ford also did a lot to 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.760 promote folk dancing. He was born in eighteen sixty three, 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:50.200 so he was in his teens and early twenties, sort 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:53.640 of at the end of the peak popularity for these dances. 0:23:54.200 --> 0:23:58.240 In his late teens, he had joined the Greenfield Dancing Club. 0:23:58.359 --> 0:24:01.800 He even met his wife, Claire, at a dance. He 0:24:01.880 --> 0:24:05.480 also started playing the violin at age ten, and eventually 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:10.439 bought stratavarius. So Henry Ford's promotion of folk music wasn't 0:24:10.600 --> 0:24:13.280 just about jazz. It was about trying to bring back 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.840 the pastimes of his youth. In nineteen twenty three, when 0:24:16.840 --> 0:24:20.320 he was sixty, Ford bought and restored the Wayside Inn 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:24.320 in Sudbury, Massachusetts. He wanted to host dances there, the 0:24:24.400 --> 0:24:27.480 kind that he remembered from when he was young, but 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:31.200 he couldn't remember all the steps. He hired dance instructor 0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:34.920 Benjamin Lovett, who went to older dancers and dance teachers 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:37.320 when he didn't know how to do specific dances that 0:24:37.359 --> 0:24:42.040 Ford wanted. Eventually, Ford brought Lovett and his wife to Dearborn, 0:24:42.080 --> 0:24:47.080