Race and Lindy Hop? Some Incipient Thoughts

One of my favorite swing bloggers, Wandering&Pondering posted this video a couple of weeks ago, along with this status (it was on Facebook):

Andy Reid reminded me of this clip as an example of something that could only happen in New York City. Mama Lu Parks worked in the Savoy Ballroom before they tore it down in the 50's. She made it her mission in life to carry the torch of Lindy Hop during that "wandering the desert" era through the 60's, 70's and early 80's. Her protégés showed up at Yehoodi's 6th Anniversary in 2004 which was also the 100th Birthday of Count Basie, and threw down a performance for the ages. We were trying so hard hard to get that "old school" feel for so many years, and they just threw that out there like it was nothing.

Chances are if Wandering&Pondering posts it, its worth watching. I didn’t know who Mama Lu Parks was, but what the hey, JSalmonte posted it, so I watched it.

I immediately knew what he meant when he described the dancing with “that old school feel.” If you watch enough lindy hop, especially old clips of dancers from the 30s and 40s, you get a sense for how things have changed. Nobody dances quite like those old timers did. Even with all the old original music, all the vintage original clothing, in original ballrooms, something is still different about they way they dance. Of course it is. I liken it to watching Mad Men (which, I’ll admit, I don’t much), which has been praised to the skies for the accuracy of its sets, its costumes, its language, its culture. But nobody watching Mad Men would ever for a moment think it was actual footage from the 60s. There’s still a pretend quality to it, an awareness that no matter how technically perfect the performance, its still just that. Its not history, but the performance of history. I wonder about that sometimes; how we can’t really escape the time and place we’re formed in, no matter how we change the details. We are fundamentally creatures of our own time.

Which made me think about the epoch in which swing was “original.” It was the 30s and 40s, before the Civil Rights movement and integration and all that jazz, and while I’m no expert on race relations, its clear from the footage that survives that there were two very distinct cultures of lindy hop in the 30s and 40s: one white and one black.

(skip to about 1:45 to see the lindy hopping and try to ignore the awful sambo stuff)

They almost don’t look like the same dance, right?

But lindy hop started in Harlem in the 30s, when Harlem was a black community (I think it still is, right?). Then it swept through the nation as a national dance craze. So those white dancers dancing, while they’re original dancers in the grand scope of history, wouldn’t be considered originators of the dance. Like blues and jazz, what was originally a black form of expression was absorbed into the greater (mostly white?) culture of the U.S. And I think its probably fair to say that while lindy hop got absorbed into greater U.S. culture, its black dancers and its white dancers were probably not very integrated. (There were a few exceptions; the Cotton Club The Savoy Ballroom, where Fankie Manning threw the first aerial, was definitely integrated[The Cotton Club, I have been informed, was definitely not.]). So two groups of dancers, one black, one white.

I don’t really know what I can say about that, except as I was watching, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the performers were black, while most of the audience was white.

Its fair to say that today, lindy hop is a predominantly white dance. While there are a few notable exceptions (Steven Mitchell, Ryan Francois, you are amazing), mostly they’re white, affluent kids. If they’re not white, they’re Asian. And they probably learned how to dance at college. For some reason, lots of the guys are engineers of some sort (I’ve never been able to figure that out). So what was once a dance of Harlem is being kept alive by a bunch of nerdy rich kids who like to dress up in vintage clothing. What was once a national phenomenon, danced all over the U.S. (granted, not together, but still pretty ubiquitous), is now a sub-culture of partner dancing danced by a privileged few, who are mostly white, middle to upper class, college educated and (usually) pretty nerdy.

That’s maybe putting it a little harshly. I’m not personally rich and I don’t particularly like to dress up in vintage, but the rest is pretty true. I learned to dance in college. I don’t know what drew me to lindy in the first place; there was the famous Gap commercial, of course, but I don’t remember that playing a huge role in my attraction to swing dancing. I do remember watching old movies with my mom and loving the world I saw there. Men in suits and ties, wearing fedoras; women in jaunty hats and wearing gloves and well-tailored dresses. I loved it. And I loved the music that went along with it. Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong. I know when I heard them sing and play, I wanted, maybe even needed to move. So I found a lesson and started. But there’s no doubt that in terms of race and socio-economics, I was the norm.

I’ve been trying to think about why that might be and what it might mean, especially in the aftermath of Miley Cyrus’s racially and sexually charged VMA performance. I wonder about nostalgia and what it is that actually makes me want to lindy hop. And I wonder if I, as a white woman dancing what was in its inception at least a black dance, share anything with Miley. My intent is obviously different; I lindy because it feels good to do it, because I love camaraderie and the openness of the people who do it, because the music is so joyful that I have to do it. But I wonder, especially now, if I should be a little uncomfortable with what I’m a part of, if I can even have anything meaningful to say about it.

I’ve found writing this to be incredibly difficult because of my unease with the whole subject and because I love dancing so much. I’m still not sure if anything I’ve said makes sense or if its even worth saying, since most of my experience with these issues is incidental and not well researched at all. Maybe once I've put in more time and effort, they'll be more articulate. In the meantime, wanna dance?