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Stick Dance (African-American)
Stick dance was a dance style that African–Americans developed on American plantations during the slavery era, where dancing was used to practice "military drills" among the slaves, where the stick used in the dance was in fact a disguised weapon. Origins To add to the dance element of the practise, other slaves would gather around the competitive fighters. They would clap in rhythm, and sing in a call-and-response style, while one caller led the rest of the crowd. Like the banjo and other instruments, the berimbau was based on African instruments and developed by African-American slaves. An early depiction of slaves performing a stick dance is an 18th-century watercolour painting called ''The Old Plantation'', which is in the collections of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. It shows a dozen African-Americans gather in front of two slave cabins, with one stick dancer, and two women dancing with scarves to music of a drummer and a banjoi ...
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Slave Dance To Banjo, 1780s
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perform some form of work while also having their location or residence dictated by the enslaver. Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, or suffering a military defeat; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life or for a fixed period of time, after which they would be granted freedom. Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the wo ...
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Call-and-response
Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of antiphony. African cultures In some African cultures, call-and-response is a widespread pattern of democratic participation—in public gatherings, in the discussion of civic affairs, in religious rituals, as well as in vocal and instrumental musical expression (see call and response in music). African bondsmen and bondswomen in the Americas continued this practice over the centuries in various forms of expression—in religious observance; public gatherings; even in children's rhymes; and, most notably, in music in its multiple forms: blues, gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, jazz, hip-hop and go-go. Many work songs sung on plantations by enslaved men and women also incorporate the call and response format. African-American Women Work Son ...
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Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso and mento. Histo ...
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Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM) is the United States' first and the world's oldest continually operated museum dedicated to the preservation, collection, and exhibition of American folk art. Located just outside the historic boundary of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, AARFAM was founded with a collection donated by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and an endowment from her widower, John D. Rockefeller Jr., heir to the Standard Oil fortune and co-founder of Colonial Williamsburg. With her seminal collection, Abby Rockefeller "elevated a body of material that had long been dismissed as homespun craft to a nationally-recognized and highly-regarded form of American art." The original building opened in May 1957 and was expanded in 1992 before being moved and expanded again in 2007, each time to accommodate its growing collection. Abby Rockefeller's collection of 424 pieces became the basis of a collection that now includes more than 7,000 folk art pieces dating from t ...
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Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is bordered by James City County, Virginia, James City County on the west and south and York County, Virginia, York County on the east. English settlers founded Williamsburg in 1632 as Middle Plantation (Virginia), Middle Plantation, a fortified settlement on high ground between the James River, James and York River (Virginia), York rivers. The city functioned as the capital of the Colony of Virginia, Colony and Commonwealth of Virginia from 1699 to 1780 and became the center of political events in Virginia leading to the American Revolution. The College of William & Mary, established in 1693, is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United ...
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Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia is the capital of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 census, it is the second-largest city in South Carolina. The city serves as the county seat of Richland County, and a portion of the city extends into neighboring Lexington County. It is the center of the Columbia metropolitan statistical area, which had a population of 829,470 in 2020 and is the 72nd-largest metropolitan statistical area in the nation. The name Columbia is a poetic term used for the United States, derived from the name of Christopher Columbus, who explored for the Spanish Crown. Columbia is often abbreviated as Cola, leading to its nickname as "Soda City." The city is located about northwest of the geographic center of South Carolina, and is the primary city of the Midlands region of the state. It lies at the confluence of the Saluda River and the Broad River, which merge at Columbia to form the Congaree River. As the state capital, Columbia is the s ...
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Orangeburg, South Carolina
Orangeburg, also known as ''The Garden City'', is the principal city in and the county seat of Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population of the city was 13,964 according to the 2010 United States Census and declined to 12,704 in the 2020 census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia, on the north fork of the Edisto River. Two historically black institutions of higher education are located in Orangeburg: Claflin University (a liberal arts college) and South Carolina State University (a public university). History 18th century European settlement in this area started in 1704 when George Sterling set up a post here for fur trade with Native Americans. To encourage settlement, the General Assembly of the Province of South Carolina in 1730 organized the area as a township, naming it Orangeburg for William IV, Prince of Orange, the son-in-law of King George II of Great Britain. In 1735, a colony of 200 Swiss, German and Dutch immigrants formed ...
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Minstrel
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who sang songs and played musical instruments. Description Minstrels performed songs which told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty and high society. As the courts became more sophisticated, minstrels were eventually replaced at court by the troubadours, and many became wandering minstrels, performing in the streets; a decline in their popularity began in the late 15th century. Minstrels fed into later traditions of travelling entertainers, which continued to be moderately strong into the early 20th century, and which has some continuity in the form of today's bu ...
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Cakewalk
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black Slavery in the United States, slave plantations before and after End of slavery in the United States of America, emancipation in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around". It was originally a processional partner dance danced with comical formality, and may have developed as a subtle mockery of the mannered dances of white slaveholders. Following an exhibition of the cakewalk at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the cakewalk was adopted by performers in minstrel shows, where it was danced exclusively by men until the 1890s. At that point, Broadway shows featuring women began to include cakewalks, and grotesque dances became very popular across the country.. The fluid and graceful steps of the dance may have g ...
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Set De Flo'
Set de flo' (Set the floor) was a type of dance competition held among African Americans during the 19th century. It possibly is based on dance styles originating in Africa. Overview Set de flo' dancing involves drawing a circle on the ground (usually on a dirt floor); dancers are required to not step outside the bounds of the circle, and if they did, they will be disqualified. A caller, usually a fiddler, would call out increasingly complicated dance steps, which the dancers would have to perform without a misstep. Competitors could dance solo, or as couples. The expression "set de flo'" apparently refers not to the drawing of the circle on the ground, but to a particular dance step where the dancer would stomp on the floor when they began dancing, a move that appeared to set the floor in place for the dancer. When couples competed, the man and woman would bow to one another at the start of the dance. The woman would place her hands on her hips, then her male partner would grin an ...
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Patting Juba
The Juba dance or hambone, originally known as Pattin' Juba (Giouba, Haiti: Djouba), is an African-American style of dance that involves stomping as well as slapping and patting the arms, legs, chest, and cheeks (clapping). "Pattin' Juba" would be used to keep time for other dances during a walkaround. A Juba dance performance could include: *counter-clockwise turning, often with one leg raised *stomping and slapping *steps such as "the Jubal Jew", " Yaller Cat", "Pigeon Wing" and "Blow That Candle Out". The dance traditionally ends with a step called " the Long Dog Scratch". Modern variations on the dance include Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley Beat" and the step-shows of African American Greek organizations. History of the dance The Juba dance was originally brought by Kongo slaves to Charleston, South Carolina. It became an African-American plantation dance that was performed by slaves during their gatherings when no rhythm instruments were allowed due to fear of secret codes hidd ...
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Weapon Dance
A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense, warfare, or suicide. In broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a tactical, strategic, material or mental advantage over an adversary or enemy target. While ordinary objects – sticks, rocks, bottles, chairs, vehicles – can be used as weapons, many objects are expressly designed for the purpose; these range from simple implements such as clubs, axes and swords, to complicated modern firearms, tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological weapons, and cyberweapons. Something that has been re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized laser. History The use of weapons is a major driver of cul ...
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