Tap: The First Jazz DanceTap is a marvelous style of dance and, as it turns out, one of the very early folk and popular dances in America - actually a predecessor to jazz music. Below is an excerpt from a book that goes into tap dance's beginnings. The book is called "Teach Yourself Tap Dancing" and is written by Derek Hartley.
Title: "Teach Yourself Tap Dancing" Author: Derek Hartley Excerpt: Tap has always been laid claim to by two or three sources. African Americans says it is a black dance; the Irish have fiercely defended its origins as theirs and the English have maintained an interest because of clog dancing. Clog has a history all to itself, as does Irish dance and African dance. But tap dance is all and none of these. |
There are those American voices who have always said, and continue to say, that it was stolen from them by the white dancers back in the early days of Minstrelsy. That would be the early nineteenth century, and there is some truth to this claim. However, everybody stole dance moves from everybody else and there were certainly a lot of Irish in the emerging cities of America! The city environment was actually responsible for some of tap's history but the countryside was also responsible - and that was where the poor black settlers were mainly employed before the American Civil War.
You have only to watch early film to see the crossover in the dancers themselves. Those coming to America (the New World) at that time all brought with them their cultural identities. And with these identities came their dances. It is obvious to my eyes that even the great and wonderful Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson himself had a significant Irish influence in his dancing, in feet as well as in body, although he is credited as being one of the black forerunners in the integration of white and black dancing in entertainment all over America.
Therefore, what eventually came about was that a 'New World dance' was born, but from the Old (other) World dances of those millions of people arriving.
Tap is our American folk dance. It is the red, white and blue. I don't know how else to explain it.
- Eleanor Powell (Foreword) in Jerry Ames, The Book of Tap, 1977
So much intensity, formed from so diverse a cultural mix, was bound to produce a new and extremely vibrant dance form. This early dance form became known as jazz. Tap was thus the first jazz dance.
Jazz music was part of the African soul, with those syncopated and infectious rhythms, but it was formalized and written down by the more savvy and educated Europeans at the time. Later, the descendants of the slave ships from Africa produced their own jazz works, and great musicians such as Eubie Blake, Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller were merely the more famous of a groundswell of African inspired music and rhythm.
Tap dance was the precursor to jazz music - not the other way around - and was the first performance jazz dance that became popular among street entertainers and travelling tent performers. Before this there was strutting, cakewalking and eccentric dancing to be found everywhere and on every stage. The first really overwhelmingly popular social jazz dance was the Charleston, in the 1920s, a dance every bit as equal in terms of mass following as the Twist in the late 1960s.
- from "Teach Yourself Tap Dancing," by Derek Hartley
You have only to watch early film to see the crossover in the dancers themselves. Those coming to America (the New World) at that time all brought with them their cultural identities. And with these identities came their dances. It is obvious to my eyes that even the great and wonderful Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson himself had a significant Irish influence in his dancing, in feet as well as in body, although he is credited as being one of the black forerunners in the integration of white and black dancing in entertainment all over America.
Therefore, what eventually came about was that a 'New World dance' was born, but from the Old (other) World dances of those millions of people arriving.
Tap is our American folk dance. It is the red, white and blue. I don't know how else to explain it.
- Eleanor Powell (Foreword) in Jerry Ames, The Book of Tap, 1977
So much intensity, formed from so diverse a cultural mix, was bound to produce a new and extremely vibrant dance form. This early dance form became known as jazz. Tap was thus the first jazz dance.
Jazz music was part of the African soul, with those syncopated and infectious rhythms, but it was formalized and written down by the more savvy and educated Europeans at the time. Later, the descendants of the slave ships from Africa produced their own jazz works, and great musicians such as Eubie Blake, Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller were merely the more famous of a groundswell of African inspired music and rhythm.
Tap dance was the precursor to jazz music - not the other way around - and was the first performance jazz dance that became popular among street entertainers and travelling tent performers. Before this there was strutting, cakewalking and eccentric dancing to be found everywhere and on every stage. The first really overwhelmingly popular social jazz dance was the Charleston, in the 1920s, a dance every bit as equal in terms of mass following as the Twist in the late 1960s.
- from "Teach Yourself Tap Dancing," by Derek Hartley