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Square Dance
A square dance is a dance for four couples, or eight dancers in total, arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, facing the middle of the square. Square dances contain elements from numerous traditional dances and were first documented in 16th-century England, but they were also quite common in France and throughout Europe. Early square dances, particularly English country dances and French quadrilles, traveled to North America with the European settlers and developed significantly there. In some countries and regions, through preservation and repetition, square dances have attained the status of a folk dance. Square dancing is strongly associated with the United States, in part due to its association with the romanticized image of the American cowboy in the 20th century, and 31 states have designated it as their official state dance. The main North American types of square dances include traditional square dance and modern western square dance, which is widely known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Square Dance
Traditional square dance is a generic American term for any style of American square dance other than modern Western. The term can mean (1) any of the American regional styles (broadly, Northeastern, Southeastern, and Western) that existed before around 1950, when modern Western style began to develop out of a blend of those regional styles, or (2) any style (other than modern Western) that has survived, or been revived, since around 1950. Traditional square dance can be distinguished from modern western square dance by the following characteristics: #A limited number of basic movements, or “calls,” enabling the average dancer to join the group by assimilation rather than by taking a series of lessons. #Dance figures (sequences of basic movements) that are called in a set order and repeated, rather than improvised by the caller. (In Southeastern style the caller chooses figures from a repertoire of a dozen or two and can call them in any order, but the order of movements wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Country Dance
A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a group of people, usually in couples, in one or more sets. The figures involve interaction with your partner and/or with other dancers, usually with a progression so that you dance with everyone in your set. It is common in modern times to have a "caller" who teaches the dance and then calls the figures as you dance. Country dances are done in many different styles. As a musical form written in or time, the contredanse was used by Beethoven and Mozart. Introduced to South America by French immigrants, Country Dance had great influence upon Latin American music as contradanza. The ''Anglais'' (from the French word meaning "English") or ''Angloise'' is another term for the English country dance. A Scottish country dance may be termed an . ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester, New Hampshire (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence, Rhode Island (the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island). In 1620, the Pilgrims, Puritan Separatists from England, established Plymouth Colony, the second successful English settlement in America, following the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barn Dance
A barn dance is any kind of dance involving traditional or folk music with traditional dancing, occasionally held in a barn, but, these days, much more likely to be in any suitable building. The term “barn dance” is usually associated with family-oriented or community-oriented events, usually for people who do not normally dance. The caller will, therefore, generally use easy dances so that everyone can join in. A barn dance can be a ceilidh, with traditional Irish or Scottish dancing, and people unfamiliar with either format often confuse the two terms. However, a barn dance can also feature square dancing, contra dancing, English country dance, dancing to country and western music, or any other kind of dancing, often with a live band and a caller. Modern western square dance is often confused with barn dancing in Britain. Barn dances, as social dances, were popular in Ireland until the 1950s, and were typically danced to tunes with rhythms.Vallely, F. (1999). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs. After 1942, when Congress terminated the Library of Congress's funding for folk song collecting, Lomax continued to collect independentl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell (October 24, 1911 – March 11, 1986), known as Sonny Terry, was an American Piedmont blues and folk musician, who was known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers and occasionally imitations of trains and fox hunts. Career Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia. His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and went blind by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work, and was forced to play music in order to earn a living. Terry played "Campdown Races" to the plow horses which improved the efficiency of farming in the area. He began playing blues in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died, he began playing with Piedmont blues–style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died in 1941, Terry established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and they recorded numerous songs together. The duo became well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired several generations both politically and musically with songs such as "This Land Is Your Land", written in response to the American exceptionalist song "God Bless America". Guthrie wrote hundreds of country, folk, and children's songs, along with ballads and improvised works. '' Dust Bowl Ballads'', Guthrie's album of songs about the Dust Bowl period, was included on '' Mojo'' magazine's list of 100 Records That Changed The World, and many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Songwriters who have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence on their work include Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Hunter, Harry Chapin, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Andy Irvine, Joe Strummer, Billy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margot Mayo
Margot Mayo (May 30, 1910 – ) was an American dance instructor, educator, and collector of folk music. Early life Margot Mayo was born Margaret Melba Mayo on May 30, 1910 in Commerce, Texas, the youngest of eight children of William Leonidas Mayo, the founding president of East Texas Normal College."Margot Mayo." ''Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors'', Gale, 2002. ''Gale Literature Resource Center''. Accessed 29 Jan. 2020."Mayo Family Collection" Texas A&M University-Commerce Libraries. Accessed March 16, 2021. Career She was a key figure in the 1940s New York City revival of folk dancing and |
Pete Seeger
Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene", which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers' rights, and environmental causes. A prolific songwriter, his best-known songs include "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), " If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), " Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (also with Hays), and "Turn! Turn! Turn!", which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement. "Flowers" was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Folk Music Revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music. Overview Early years The folk revival in New York City was rooted in the resurgent interest in square dancing and folk dancing there in the 1940s as espoused by instructors such as Margot Mayo, which gave musicians such as Pete Seeger popular exposure. The folk revival more generally as a popular and commercial phenomenon begins with the career of The Weavers, formed in November 194 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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