Harper’s Weekly‘s December 21, 1861 edition features (among many other images) this stunning centerfold of Winslow Homer’s “A Bivouac Fire on the Potomac”: Homer depicts an encounter between diverse American cultures — celtic, North African, West African, Afro-Caribbean — centered on the evening’s entertainments of dance, fiddle, and other camp pastimes.
Tag: dance
Smith: “The Creolization of American Culture” (2013)
“William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy”
Epstein: “Sinful Tunes and Spirituals” (1978)
Black Folk Music to the Civil War
Jamison: “Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics” (2015)
“Roots and Branches of Southern Appalachian Dance”
Lhamon: Raising Cain (2000)
Lhamon reconstructs the hidden history of public dance, musical fusion, Jim Crow, and racial identity (& transgression) in antebellum U.S. cities, then traces it forward into the 20th century:
The Hardtacks 