Dancing for eels was a dance competition activity that was practiced during the 19th century by African-Americans at the market in Catherine Street and Catherine Slip (see Catherine Ferry) in New York City. The dancing steps and gestures used were characterized by relatively fixed choreography. This activity is depicted in a number of folk paintings, and is described in Thomas F. De Voe’s 1862 The Market Book. It is also analyzed in the 1998 book Raising Cain: Blackface performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop by W.T. Lhamon, in connection with the development of blackface minstrelsy as well as African-American music and African-American dance performances.
According to Thomas de Voe's description, dancing for eels was a popular practice at Catherine Market, which in the 19th century was a destination place for African-American slaves from Long Island who would bring to the market berries, herbs, fish, clams and oysters in order to make a few shillings. Originally those African-Americans would be hired by the market people to dance for money or for fish (hence dancing for eels).
The Catherine Market in the 19th century was a mixed meeting place for people of various backgrounds, and white working-class people were frequent spectators of the dancing contests. According to W. T. Lhamon, blackface performance was strongly influenced by Catherine Market dancing elements. Modern rap and hip-hop performance also contain traces of gestural continuity from the New York street dancers, which, for example, can be observed in MC Hammer’s using the Market Step in his video U Can't Touch This: a knees open, heel-to-toe rock, often accompanied by one or both hands overhead. This move traces back to Dancing for Eels 1820 Catherine Market, one of the folk drawings depicting the old competition. This drawing is supposedly the source for a later painting, which dates to 1880-1890s. This painting is oil paint on canvas, laid over a tin backing. The subject and composition has a long popularity in American culture.
According to an 1849 fishing manual, black men still would meet at the market at dawn to skin eels and engage in dance competition for bundles of fish. The audience would vote for the winner through making noises and cheering for their most favorited performance. This style of competition carried on throughout African American culture all the way to modern-day freestyle rap competing. These forms of entertainment grew into routines that featured singing, dancing, and humor for more on stage acts performed by professions. [1]
French hip hop is the hip hop music style developed in French-speaking countries. France is the second largest hip-hop market in the world after the United States.
Blackface is the practice of non-black performers using burnt cork or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment.
Japanese hip hop is hip hop music from Japan. It is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, taking from the era's catchy beats, dance culture and overall fun and carefree nature and incorporating it into their music. As a result, hip hop stands as one of the most commercially viable mainstream music genres in Japan and the line between it and pop music is frequently blurred.
Thomas Dartmouth Rice was an American performer and playwright who performed in blackface and used African American vernacular speech, song and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show entertainers of his time. He is considered the "father of American minstrelsy". His act drew on aspects of African American culture and popularized them with a national, and later international, audience.
The United States' multi-ethnic population is reflected through a diverse array of styles of music. It is a mixture of music influenced by the music of Europe, Indigenous peoples, West Africa, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, amongst many other places. The country's most internationally renowned genres are traditional pop, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rock and roll, R&B, pop, hip-hop/rap, soul, funk, religious, disco, house, techno, ragtime, doo-wop, folk, americana, boogaloo, tejano, reggaeton, surf, and salsa, amongst many others. American music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of comically portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were also some African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.
Ida M. Cox was an American singer and vaudeville performer, best known for her blues performances and recordings. She was billed as "The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues".
The music of New York City is a diverse and important field in the world of music. It has long been a thriving home for popular genres such as jazz, rock, soul music, R&B, funk, and the urban blues, as well as classical and art music. It is the birthplace of hip hop, garage house, boogaloo, doo wop, bebop, punk rock, disco, and new wave. It is also the birthplace of salsa music, born from a fusion of Cuban and Puerto Rican influences that came together in New York's Latino neighborhoods in the 1960s. The city's culture, a melting pot of nations from around the world, has produced vital folk music scenes such as Irish-American music and Jewish klezmer. Beginning with the rise of popular sheet music in the early 20th century, New York's Broadway musical theater, and Tin Pan Alley's songcraft, New York has been a major part of the American music industry.
African-American music is a broad term covering a diverse range of musical genres largely developed by African Americans and their culture. Its origins are in musical forms that developed as a result of the enslavement of African Americans prior to the American Civil War. It has been said that "every genre that is born from America has black roots."
Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban contemporary radio stations feature a playlist made up entirely of Black genres such as R&B, pop-rap, quiet storm, urban adult contemporary, hip hop, Latin music such as Latin pop, Chicano R&B and Chicano rap, and Caribbean music such as reggae and soca. Urban contemporary was developed through the characteristics of genres such as R&B and soul.
The United States of America is the home of the hip hop dance, salsa, swing, tap dance and its derivative Rock and Roll, and modern square dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. There is a variety of social dance and performance or concert dance forms with also a range of traditions of Native American dances.
Master Juba was an African-American dancer active in the 1840s. He was one of the first black performers in the United States to play onstage for white audiences and the only one of the era to tour with a white minstrel group. His real name was believed to be William Henry Lane, and he was also known as "Boz's Juba" following Dickens's graphic description of him in American Notes.
Music history of the United States includes many styles of folk, popular and classical music. Some of the best-known genres of American music are rhythm and blues, jazz, rock and roll, rock, soul, hip hop, pop, and country. The history began with the Native Americans, the first people to populate North America.
Hip hop dance is a range of street dance styles primarily performed to hip hop music or that have evolved as part of hip hop culture. It is influenced by a wide range of styles that were created in the 1970s and made popular by dance crews in the United States. The television show Soul Train and the 1980s films Breakin', Beat Street, and Wild Style showcased these crews and dance styles in their early stages; therefore, giving hip-hop dance mainstream exposure.
American popular music has had a profound effect on music across the world. The country has seen the rise of popular styles that have had a significant influence on global culture, including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, bluegrass, country, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, pop, punk, disco, house, techno, salsa, grunge and hip hop. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse, supporting a number of regional styles such as zydeco, klezmer and slack-key.
Hip hop or hip-hop is a culture and art movement that was created by African Americans pioneered from Black American street culture, also known as hip hop African American culture, that had been around for years prior to its more mainstream discovery while later reaching other groups such as Latino Americans and Caribbean Americans, starting in the Bronx, New York City. Hip Hop is one of cultural movements that has been shaped and dominated by African American males though female hip hop artists have contributed to the art form and culture as well. Hip hop culture is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing. Other elements include historical knowledge of the movement, graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip hop language, and hip hop fashion.
African-American dance is a form of dance that was created by Africans in the Diaspora, specifically the United States. has developed within various spaces throughout African-American communities in the United States, rather than studios, schools, or companies. These dances are usually centered on folk and social dance practice, though performance dance often supplies complementary aspects to this. Placing great value on improvisation, these dances are characterized by ongoing change and development. There are a number of notable African-American modern dance companies using African-American cultural dance as an inspiration, among these are the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and Katherine Dunham Company. Hollywood and Broadway have also provided opportunities for African-American artists to share their work and for the public to support them.
Hip-hop or hip hop, also known as rap, and formerly known as disco rap, is a genre of popular music that originated in the early 1970s by African Americans and Caribbean immigrants in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Hip-hop music originated as an anti-drug and anti-violence genre consisting of stylized rhythmic music that often accompanies rapping, a rhythmic delivery of poetic speech. According to the professor Asante of African American studies at Temple University, "hip hop is something that blacks can unequivocally claim as their own". The music developed as part of the broader hip hop culture, a subculture defined by four key stylistic elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, breakdancing, and graffiti art. While often used to refer solely to rapping and rap music, "hip hop" more properly denotes the practice of the entire subculture. The term hip hop music is sometimes used synonymously with the term rap music, though rapping is not a required component of hip hop music; the genre may also incorporate other elements of the culture, including DJing, turntablism, scratching, beatboxing, and instrumental tracks.
Sanding, also known as sand jigging or sand dancing, is a type of dance performed as a series of slides and shuffles on a sand-strewn floor. In some instances, the sand is spread across an entire stage. In other cases, it is kept in a box that the dancer stays in throughout the dance. Originally a soft-shoe technique, scratching in sand can also add a different texture to the percussion of tap. There is no one type of shoe used to sand dance; traditional tap shoes are used alongside soft shoes and leather boots, all creating a distinctive sound. Willie "The Lion" Smith said of sanding, "You could really hear and feel the rhythm when the dancers shuffled around in a nice pair of patent-leather shoes".
Music and Black liberation refers to music associated with Black political movements for emancipation, civil rights, or self-determination. The connection between music and politics has been used in many cultures and was utilized by blacks in their struggle for freedom and civil rights. Music has been used by African Americans over the course of United States history to express feelings of struggle and hope, as well as to foster a sense of solidarity to aid their fight for liberation and justice. African Americans have used music as a way to express their struggle for freedom and equality which has spanned the history of the United States which has resulted in the creation and popularization of many music genres including, jazz, funk, disco, rap, and hip hop. Many of these songs and artists played pivotal roles in generating support for the civil rights movement.