What institution fosters the spread of African-based dances most?
That institution is the “jook.” And that is the first secular culture arena to emerge after emancipation. Jooking activity had been going on on the plantation. Africans would get together, make illegal liquor, bring it to the dances, cook dandelion greens, food from their garden, animals they had killed — possums, raccoons — bring ’em to the dances out in the woods. And so what they did was they reconstituted African village celebrations. And the jook represents the first Americanization of that tradition. African-American dance really early on is organized around a narrative, around the principles of the narrative. The dances were originally danced plays. When people dance in West Africa, it’s organized and it has a purpose and it tells a story and it imparts principles. It imparts the norms of the society. It has a function, a high function. And that is not lost simply because we’re transported a few thousand miles across the Atlantic a few hundred years into the future. Early on,
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- What institution fosters the spread of African-based dances most?
