The Cakewalk- A Study in Stereotype and Reality (1981)

THE CAKEWALK:ASTUDY IN STEREOTYPE AND REALITY

"Cakewalk" is the only caption on the 1904 picture postcard. In the center of thecard the artist has drawn a black woman with huge lips, kinky hair, yellow hat,pink dress, green socks and orange shoes, lifting her skirt as she kicks her legs.She is flanked by two ludicrously dressed men. One sports a top hat and a greenand yellow striped bathing suit under a red and white striped swallowtail coat. Theother, a high-stepping fellow who carries a cane, is dressed in a straw hat,oversized red polka-dot bowtie, and mismatched striped pants and shirt. l Theimpact of this visually strong image is overwhelming.

The overall effect for the modern viewer is most unsettling. In fact, uponencountering this caricature in 1981, a person unfamiliar with turn-of-the-centurypopular culture might think he had discovered the unique creation of an aberrantmind. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Similar derogatory images proliferatedin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and not only on postcards.Sunday comics, illustrated humor magazines, children's toys, advertising,lithographs, sheet music covers, stereo cards, product boxes and assorted knickknacks all featured stereotyped racial imagery in which blacks stole chickens,devoured watermelons, wielded razors, picked cotton, gambled, imitated whitedress and speech, smiled widely, and danced and danced and danced.

An 1893 trade card advertising Arbuckle's coffee depicted three"representative sports and pastimes" of "American Negroes," possum hunting,banjo playing and cakewalking. The cakewalk couple are elegantly dressed in pinkand green, the woman smiling coyly as her partner struts proudly by. The text onthe back of the card notes that "the American Negro is a child of nature, and oneof the most entertaining, interesting and happy of beings." The cakewalk, dancedby the couple, "fond of display and gorgeous in their choice of colors," isexplained straightforwardly as a "contest to determine the most graceful and bestof walkers," in which couples "pass in serious and sober fashion, to theaccompaniment of music" before judges who award a cake to the most deserving.Actually, among the many white-drawn renderings of the dance, this is one of theleast caricatured. For, despite the accompanying comments made on the simple,happy-go-lucky black character, the couple is not drawn in awkward andexaggerated postures, nor in gaudily mismatched and ill-fitting costumes.

A grotesque rendition of the event was the more common in the 1890's. AnArm and Hammer Baking Soda trade card gave a most inglorious account of thecakewalk tradition when it pictured a black maid leading a "bread-walk" of hugelipped, bug-eyed "nigs" around a loaf of bread made with their product. And themanufacturers of "Three Black Kids" cigars placed a picture of two highstrutting, ragged boys dancing to the accompaniment of a banjo on the insidecover of each cigar box.

The cakewalk stereotype was not only used to sell, it was used to entertain.Stereo cards, photographs which could be viewed in three dimension, were apopular parlor diversion in an age before television, and black subjects a favoritecategory of cards. An 1896 card, "Belle of the Cake Walk," pictured a black man

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in elaborately flowered drag, posing in a frozen dance position before adilapidated shack. Other cards featured black-faced dancers or actual black modelsoutfitted in the most outlandish costumes imaginable.

Numerous toys also featured black cakewalking characters. A high-kickingpaperdoll was comically resplendant in red and white striped pants and a greenswallowtail coat, while a white-gloved dancer with spats and cane danced acrossthe side of a tin noise-maker. And a board game, "The Cakewalk Game,"featured on its cover a parade of couples dressed in a rainbow array of colors (oneman wears an orange-checked suit with blue cumberbund and red tie!).

Cakewalking "darkies" even decorated the walls of turn-of-the-centuryAmerican homes. Currier and Ives, the New York firm whose famed, cheaplithographs catered to the popular tastes of millions of nineteenth-centuryAmericans, in 1883 published "De Cakewalk" as one of their dozens of comicblack subjects. And twenty years later, as testimony to the fact that popularinterest in the topic had not waned, the Prang Lithographic Company printed alush chromolithograph ofa couple about to receive the prize cake.

Twentieth-century Americans in the age of inventions were not content,however, to rely solely on drawings for their entertainment. In 1903 the AmericanMutoscope and Biograph Company released three film shorts featuring thecakewalk. Each of these pioneering, silent motion pictures is less than one minutelong, but together they reveal much about what their audience knew of thedance.2

In "The Cakewalk," a black man in formal attire and beribboned cane leads twocouples in the march. Both women wear proper, long, dark-colored dresses; themen, dark tails. Their movements are strutting, but "dignified." Considering thetimes in which it was filmed, this movie is remarkably understated in nature. Itindicates that alternative views of the cakewalk were available for consideration;however, in this case, that alternative view may have existed only as a foil to themore flamboyant one. For the film's companion piece, "The Comedy Cakewalk,"depicts the dance in far greater accordance with the prevailing stereotype. Thismovie also features a leader and two couples, but now the women wear floral hatsand flashy, mid-calf length dresses of striped silk, and one of the men wears awhite duster coat and white top hat. The women raise their skirts as they strut byin much more animated fashion, and the leader stops the march at one point to doa Charleston-type step. These actions, of course, seem all the more "eccentric"when contrasted with the first film. "The Ballyhoo Cakewalk," except that it hada much larger cast of characters, was a recapitulation of the comedy walk both incostuming and action.

The same company produced a film in 1907 entitled "Fights of Nations."3 Thismovie was a veritable catalog of racial and ethnic stereotypes, depicting fightsamong knife-carrying Mexicans, money-hungry Jews, heroic Scots, and drunkenIrishmen. The black segment, "Sunny Africa - 8th Ave., New York," pictures arazor-slashing fight over a girl which temporarily interrupts a spirited cakewalk ina black dance hall. This placed the dance squarely within a whole set ofstereotypes. Interesting also to those who note today that all American minoritieshave suffered at the hands of caricaturists, is the film's finale, "America - Landof the Free," in which the ethnic characters from all the previous vignettes joinwhites at a military ball to rally around Uncle Sam and make up - all, that is,except the blacks.

Besides the obvious fact that the moving picture was the ideal medium forportraying an activity which depended so much on motion, caricaturists had


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another reason for wanting to capture the cakewalk and every stereotype on film.Photography lends an air of realism to what it shows; that which it pictures is morebelievable as "real life" than that which the cartoonist draws. This was not onlytrue of movies, but of photographic postcards. Representative of these many cardsis one captioned "Typical Negro Cakewalk." Among the six couples posing as iffrozen in mid-step are a man dressed in an orange and yellow ragland coat, and awoman in a gaudy pink and blue dress with pink stockings. The caption impliesthat this is a documentary shot of an authentic black gathering; the greaterpossibility that it was an elaborately staged and costumed production directed bywhites is never mentioned.

Photography by no means replaced artist-drawn renditions, however. "TheCake Walk" was the title for numerous comic postcards, including one whichfeatured a real gramophone record of the dance and a group portrait of a wholecast of stock black characters: a banjo player, a boy eating watermelon, a pair oflovers, and a gayly dressed cakewalk couple. It was even the subject for postalholiday greeting cards. One extending "Hearty Christmas Wishes" pictured aludicrously dressed black man strutting alongside four dogs who mimicked hissteps on their hind legs. And a Valentine card featured a man in a green knickerssuit, monocle and sunflower bouttoniere, declaring to his lady love, "Ef yo' willonly be rna wife, We'll dance a cakewalk all troo life."

Whatever the popular medium, be it a magazine ad proclaiming that Knox'sgelatine takes the cake, or a postcard souvenir of the cakewalk on the Atlantic Cityboardwalk, the purpose of the caricature was the same, to portray cakewalkingblacks as buffoons who could never take that final step, no matter how highkicking, into white culture and high society. But only the most superficial analysisof a stereotype would begin and end with the obvious observation that it affordedone group the chance to laugh at the "inferiority" of another. Closer analysisdemands more questions be asked. Why, of all the activities in which blacksengaged, was cakewalking chosen as. the subject of caricature? What did thisparticular stereotype allow caricaturists to imply about blacks that distorting otheraspects of their life would not?

Researchers have not yet pinpointed the origin of the cakewalk, but mostbelieve that it began several decades before its widespread popularity amongwhites and concomitant stereotyping in white popular culture, in the slavequarters of Southern plantations. Because antebellum slave narratives wereproduced largely for their abolitionist propoganda value, they concentrated on thenegative aspects of slave life and devoted little attention to slave culture. Thus,though several mention Christmas festivities and corn-shucking parties, few gointo detailed descriptions of the types of music and dances employed. It is notsurprising, therefore, that the cakewalk is not specifically mentioned. However,when the researchers of the Federal Writers' Project of the W.P.A. interviewedaged ex-slaves in the 1930's, there was no longer any need to suppressinformation about the happier moments of slave life. Blacks could now reveal thatin spite of living under a system of repression and control unequalled in history,they had retained a rich and vital culture. And in their reports, the cakewalk ispresent.

Louise Jones, an ex-slave from Virginia, reminisced about Christmas: "demusic, de fiddles an' de banjos, de Jews harp, an' all dem other things. Sechdancin' you never did see befo. Slaves would set de flo' in turns, an' do decakewalk mos' all night."4 Georgia Baker, an eighty-seven year old ex-slave fromGeorgia, told her interviewer that "Marse Allen" used to sing this song to the


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slave children: "Walk light ladies, De cake's all dough; You needn't mind deweather, If de wind don't blow." She then laughed and added, "Us didn't knowwhen he was singin' dat tune to us chillun dat when us growed up us would becakewalkin' to de same song."5 But Estella Jones, another Georgia ex-slave, gavethe WPA collection's most elaborate description:

Cakewalkin' wuz a lot of fun durin' slavery time. Dey swept de yards real clean andset benches for de party. Banjos wuz used for music makin'. De womens wor long,rumed dresses wid hoops in 'em and de mens had on high hats, long split-tailed coats,and some of em used walkin' sticks. De couple dat danced best got a prize. Sometimesde slave owners come to dese parties 'cause dey enjoyed watchin' de dance, and dey'cided who danced de best. Most parties durin' slavery time, wuz give on Saturdaynight durin' work seasons, but durin' winter dey wuz give on most any night.6

Other ex-slaves related their memories independent of the WPA project. ASouth Carolinian told of Griffin, a fiddler who played for the dances of the whitesas well as for the "annual cakewalks of his own people."7 Some handed downtheir stories in the Afro-American oral tradition to their children or to othermembers of the next generation. In 1960 Leigh Whipple, an eighty year old blackactor, related such a story told him in 1901 by a seventy year old woman who hadbeen his childhood nurse. She explained that she was still in such good conditionbecause her abilities as a "strut girl" had won her an easier life than that enjoyedby most slaves. At her first plantation her master watched her cakewalking for idlepleasure:

Us slaves watched white folks' parties where the guests danced a minuet and thenparaded in a grand march, with the ladies and gentlemen going different ways andthen meeting again, arm in arm, and marching down the center together. Then we'ddo it, too, but we used to mock em, every step. Sometimes the white folks noticed it,but they seemed to like it; I guess they thought we couldn't dance any better.

But her second master recognized her "value" as a dancer; he entered her and apartner in contests and wagered on them. When she won, she received presentsand special privileges.8 In 1950, Shephard Edmonds, an ex-ragtime entertainer,passed on the memories of the cakewalk in antebellum Tennessee which his freedslave parents had passed down to him:

. . . the cakewalk was originally a plantation dance, just a happy movement they didto the banjo music because they couldn't stand still. It was generally on Sundays,when there was little work, that the slaves both young and old would dress up inhand-me-down finery to do a high-kicking, prancing walk-around. They did a take-ofTon the high manners of the white folks in the 'big-house,' but their masters, whogathered around to watch the fun, missed the point. It's supposed to be that thecustom of a prize s~rted with the master giving a cake to the couple that did theproudest movement.

The last two stories demonstrate that the purpose of oral lore is to inform thenext generation not only of cultural forms, but also, and more importantly, of themeanings behind them. Unlike the sheer physical descriptions of the danceoffered by the ex-slaves to white WPA interviewers, both of these stories told toyounger blacks also imparted the message that the cakewalk was more than arecreational dance; it was an outlet for satirizing the manners of the whites whooppressed them. Both also related with some satisfaction that those whites whothought themselves superior to their slaves were so stupid that instead ofrecognizing the satire aimed at them, they became unwitting champions of it.

This white belief, that black dance was a sincere, though not completely


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successful emulation of "higher" white cultural forms, characterized an earlycaricatured portrayal of "A New Year's Day Contraband Ball at Vicksburg,Mississippi." In 1863 Harper's Weekly woodcut pictured a hall crowded withdancing slaves, who ranged from fat, bandana'd mammies and ragged farmhandsto finely dressed belles and dandy dudes. The facial features of some were grosslycaricatured, while others were sympathetically drawn. The caption explained thewide range of characterization:

The negroes preserve all their African fondness for music and dancing, and in themodified form which they have assumed here have given rise to negro dancing andmelodies in our theatres, a form of amusement which has enriched many. But thecolored people should be seen in one of their own balls to enjoy the reality. Thecharacter of the music and the dance; the strange gradation of colors, from the sootyblack of the pure breed to those creatures, fair and beautiful, whose position amongtheir darker brethren shows the brutal cruelty of their male ancestors for generations,who begot them to degrade them, and who had thus for years been putting whiteblood into slavery. There is in these balls one thing which cannot fail to impress anyobserver. Coming as they all do from a degraded and oppressed class, the negroesassume nevertheless, in their intercourse with each other, as far as they can, themanners and language of the best classes in society. There is often a grotesqueexaggeration, indeed; but there is an appreciation of refinement and an endeavor toattain it which we seldom see in the same class ofwhites. IO

The point of the whole scene was to show the blacks' "primitive appreciation" ofwhite culture, which resulted in their "grotesquely exaggerated" version of it inimitative dancing. Incidental was the satirist's more astute observation thatsomething of black culture, something potentially enriching, was retained in thescene, also.

This Civil War era caricature is a rare example of contemporary whitecommentary on slave dancing outside of a minstrel setting. The scarcity of whiteplanters' and travellers' accounts of antebellum cakewalking can be attributed tothe same reasons that no secular slave music received much attention. LawrenceLevine, in his brilliant study of Afro-American folk thought, Black Culture andBlack Consciousness, suggests the possibility that many white observers of slavesociety were either unaware of songs which blacks knew enough to keep tothemselves, or unwilling to record that which didn't fit into their preconceivednotions of black culture. I I Seemingly innocent spirituals, not songs of satiric andprotesting social commentary, were what they believed blacks produced~ thus,they were what they heard and recorded.

Not only did antebellum white observers ignore the lyrics of secular slavesongs~ they also paid insufficient attention to the style of the music and the stepsdanced to it. Almost all secondary sources on slave music rely heavily on the 1820travel account of Benjamin Latrobe, who vividly described the African dancesperformed in the New Orleans Place Congo, because few other accounts whichgive such attention to detail exist. Most observers were content to note that theblacks did African dances, or danced "wildly." They shared the ethnocentricbelief that, unlike Europeans whose culture had a form and style whichdifferentiated a quadrille from a waltz, Africans were cultureless and only engagedin formless, irrational, barbaric behavior. Thus, they reasoned, all black danceswere alike and needed no further description than "wild."

Even later black narratives are not as rich a source of information on slavery-eracakewalking as one would hope or might expect. The few descriptions cited earlierare not a selective sampling but an almost exhaustive compilation of thoseaccounts which have been found so far. This lack of reportage, less


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understandable than that among abolitionist slave narrators and ethnocentricwhite observers, most likely had two major causes. First, the WPA "informants"probably realized that these interviews gathered by government agents would bedirected mainly to a white audience. And, as folklorists long ago discovered, thereis a reluctance among people to share the secrets of their culture with strange datacollectors. Second, many of the WPA interviewers (most of whom were nottrained folklorists) shared the same assumptions antebellum white observersheld. When "informants" reported that slaves sang spirituals, interviewers oftenasked follow-up questions: "Could you sing one for me?" But when told thatslaves held parties and danced all night, most simply went on to the next topic.The interviewers willingly believed that slaves could express a child-like faith inthe white Christian God (whites had not yet guessed at the hidden-revolutionarymeanings of spirituals), but they could not conceive of blacks participating in arich cultural life independent of European forms. Thus, they felt no need to pressthe ex-slaves for further explanations of remarks which hinted that such a cultureindeed existed.

This dearth of information on the origin and form of the cakewalk in its folksetting (before it became distorted on the minstrel stage) does not mean,however, that modern scholars have been unable to analyze its component partsand its possible African roots. Indeed, Lawrence Levine is on firm ground whenhe asserts that there is "a wealth of evidence to buttress Herskovitz' assertion thatthe dance 'carried over into the New World to a greater degree than almost anyother trait of African culture.' "12

Anthropologist Harold Courlander, in noting that the strut was a dance motifdrawn from the black and not European tradition, reported that in the "seculardances of South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria," he himself had observed "certainpassages which were virtually indistinguishable from what in this country go bythe name of the Cake Walk, Shuffie, and Strut."13 Musicologists William Schaferand Johannes Reidel have traced the cakewalk's characteristic "Polyrhythmicstructure" to African music, in which this is an "outstanding feature."14 JohnRoberts also keys on the common rhythmic structure of the two musics in notingthat the cakewalk's basic syncopated rhythm of Fn n in the right hand setagainst the steady "oompah" in the left, is directly traceable to African styles. ISRagtime expert Rudi Blesh also calls attention to the fact that right handedsyncopation against a "regularly accented bass" is a commonplace of both Africanmusic and plantation "folk melodies." 16

And jazz historian Marshall Stearns returns to observations of the dance stepsto make the same connection. He links the cakewalk to the Southern Ring Shout,which he in turn traces back to the African Circle Dance. He explains that thisAfrican dance became adapted to its American setting to become a truly AfroAmerican form. Its characteristic African shuffie step, he argues, was supplantedby the strut because of the satiric purpose of "taking otr' on the grand, struttingmanners of the whites. 17

What Stearns and most other authors who mention the satiric element of thecakewalk fail to note, however, is that satire, or signifying, is itself a characteristictrait of black music. Few show adequate appreciation for satire as a cultural traitwhich gives black music a dimension beyond its rhythm. In Ishmael Reed's 1972novel, Mumbo Jumbo, itself a sparkling example of black satire, Reed describes thephenomena of the "Roaring Twenties" as an outbreak of "Jes Grew." Jes Grewis an "anti-plague" which causes blacks first, and then others, to manifest theirtrue nature. Its principal symptom is spontaneous dancing. At one point Reed


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pauses to reflect: "Don't ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong,Bessie Smith ... Ask the dazzling parodying punning mischievous pre-Joyceanstyle-play of your Cakewalking your Calinda your Minstrelsy give-and-take of theultra-absurd." Ishmael Reed appreciates the signifying element of theCakewalk. 18

Another trait that several slave accounts of the cakewalk mention is its contestelement. This in turn points to its essentially improvisatory nature andcharacteristic of responsoriality. Schafer goes so far as to label the cakewalk "agrand promenade with improvisatory possibilities." 19 Stearns explains therelationship between contest and improvisation by noting that "in competitionstress is placed on individual invention. "20 But no authors point out how the waythe contest was decided exhibited the trait of responsoriality. Several accounts ofcontests, during and after slavery, indicate that the audience shouted support forany couple displaying unusual inventiveness or elegant execution. This cued themand the other couples as to how to dance in order to win the favor of the judges,often the audience members themselves. There was a constant give and take, calland response, between dancer and viewer that is but another essentialcharacteristic of black music.

Thus, the cakewalk can be identified as an Afro-American folk form with rootsin African music through its traits of syncopation or supsended beat,polyrhythmic structure, signifying, improvisation, and responsoriality. Allcombine to make it a genuinely black cultural product, which is exactly whywhites, from the beginning, attempted to coopt and stereotype it.

When two groups with conflicting interests and differing cultures (in this case,racially stratified blacks and whites in nineteenth and twentieth-century America)are forced to coexist within a larger society, it is not unusual for the more powerfulgroup to try to impose its values and culture on the whole community. For, thepresence of viable cultural alternatives among those they label as inferior providesevidence which threatens to shatter their carefully but precariously constructedsocial definition of reality, a definition which justifies their domination and selfinterested rule. If blacks are, indeed, inferior and cultureless, the reasoning goes,whites are justified, even duty-bound, to rule them with an iron and "guiding"hand. But, if they are, instead, intellectually and morally equal and capable ofcreative thought, the justification is removed.

Dance was a prominent cultural strength of blacks, the cakewalk a particularlydistinctive example of it, whose purpose was, after all, to satirize the competingculture of supposedly "superior" whites. Slaveholders were able to dismiss itsthreat in their own minds by considering it as a simple performance which existedmerely for their own pleasure. To coopt the cakewalk, physically seize control ofit, was within the power of whites who "owned" the blacks with whom they lived.(Of course, it continued to be danced surreptitiously by slaves who retained itsmocking nature, also; but, what slaveholders didn't know about didn't worrythem.) And, as previously noted, knowledge of the cakewalk was restricted largelyto these Southern plantations in the antebellum period.

As blackfaced minstrelsy developed in the postbellum period from its four-manorigins to lavish and finally, mammoth, productions, the cakewalk appeared to awider audience, but now in the guise of the walkaround finale. Rourke, in herclassic study of American Humor, noted that this "minstrel climax of competitivedancing was clearly patterned on plantation dances which went back to Africa. "21Some minstrel-like performances evidently did strive for authenticity, such as theexhibit presented at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial, in which a plantation scene


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was recreated for blacks who sang folk songs and did an old dance called the"chalk-line walk" or cakewalk. 22 But more representative was the "BlackAmerica" show, an extravaganza with a cast of five hundred which was staged in aBrooklyn park in the summer of 1895. The difference was, that while this showalso claimed to be a "realistic ethnological exhibit," it was actually a stereotypedpiece in the steadily deteriorating minstrel tradition. The abolition of slavery mayhave halted whites from seizing actual control of black cultural forms, but it didnot deter them from recreating black life and culture on the white-controlled stageto conform to their own negative expectations. Robert Toll designates this"ultimate in white fantasies about the Southern Negro" as symbolic of the "finalculmination of the minstrel show." It included a scene in which the entire castdescended on a watermelon cart to devour its contents. The first part of the showconcluded with a cakewalk which the program claimed was not a predeterminedperformance. It explained the plantation history of the dance, then instructed theaudience to select the victors by shouting out their favorite couple's number. Theperformers responded to this shouting by increasing the pace Of the dance.23

This curious mixture of caricature and authentic dance characterized thetension which underlay all minstrelsy. As Schafer states, "minstrelsy was bothracist and a way to marginally bring black music to white America. "24 It at oncepresented actual black music and poked fun at it by labelling it "peregrination forthe pastry." Postbellum white caricaturists substituted denial and denigration ofblack culture for their race's lost license to control it. Minstrelsy misrepresentedthis black creative form, while at the same time making white people in smalltowns all over America aware that any black culture existed at all.

In most later shows, blacks were employed to do the dance which whites couldnever seem to master with equal style and verve~ however, many cakewalkerswere whites in blackface. A typical blackface farce was "Jes Like White Folks," inwhich a black girl with "aristocratic ideas" gets the notion to hold a fancy partyhighlighted by a possum walk. After cajoling her rowdy guests into a "proper"contest, she discovers that her brother has stolen and eaten the prize possum. Thescene ends in pandemonium.25 Imamu Baraka has commented on such farcicalpresentations of the cakewalk, "If it is a Negro dance caricaturing white customs,what is that dance when a white theatre company tries to satirize it as a Negrodance? I find the idea of white minstrels in blackface satirizing a dance satirizingthemselves a remarkable kind ofirony."26

All in all, the relationship that was cultivated between the cakewalk, minstrelsyand the coon song was an exceedingly uneasy one. Coon songs, later to beadopted by ragtime, grafted caricatured titles and lyrics onto cakewalk music tocreate a most curious hybrid, including such songs as "Rastus on Parade," "DeDarkey Cavaliers," and "Kullud Koons' Kake Walk."

This was to be expected of white hack writers and greedy music distributors, buteven serious black ragtime composers were "stuck" with images inherited fromthe minstrel stage. Schafer and others have tried to demonstrate that though theseblack writers, from economic necessity, continued the familiar grotesque images,they gradually mediated and humanized them.27 In some cases, as with BertWilliams' "Nobody," this is undoubtably true. But in other songs this argumentis, at best, tenuous. Blesh takes this argument to its extreme in an apologia forErnest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me," which does not stand up to acritical reading of the text. 28 Indeed, Hogan himself repeatedly expressed regretfor writing this song in later life.

Perhaps even worse than the titles and lyrics of these songs were the


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illustrations on their sheet music covers. The characters featured on Hogan'sinfamous hit were bug-eyed, blubber-lipped dandies sporting checked sports coatsand diamond lapel pins. "The Coon's Trademark: A Watermelon, Razor,Chicken and a Coon," a hit performed by Williams and Walker, had on its coverdrawings of all these familiar and derogatory stereotypes. These images appealedto a racist buying public, and enticed them to purchase the music.

This is not to suggest, however, that the music itself went unnoticed andunappreciated. On the contrary, it was infectiously popular. Through thecomposition of rags, Schafer asserts, "blacks seized control of the image of blacksin popular music." Amidst the "verbal idiocy" of racist lyrics, "there arose astrain of vital and clear black music of great nobility and power. "29 Whites hadtheir stereotyped images of blacks visually and verbally confirmed, but aurallyshattered. This ever present duality in ragtime cakewalk music, according toBlesh, allowed blacks to "project ragtime rhythms into the public consciousnessthrough the medium of the coon song. "30 Judging by the thousands of songswhich were produced, the public consciousness was saturated.

The tensions of this duality could play havoc with the careers and artistictemperaments of black artists who had to deal with the music every day.Comedian, coon song singer, and cakewalk virtuouso Bert Williams, for instance,had to conform to theatrical conventions of the black in order to obtain work; but,according to his biographer, Ann Charters, those same conventions "crippled histalent and limited his achievement." Though at times he transcended thestereotypes which his audience expected him to portray, at most times it wouldhave been more "impossible for him to escape these stereotypes than to fly. "31

Nowhere is the duality better illustrated, however, than in the partnership ofWill Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Cook wrote the music and Dunbarthe lyrics for the 1898 black musical, "Clorindy: the Origin of the Cakewalk." ForDunbar the project was a lowpoint in a career already plagued by demands toconform to stereotypes. Dunbar was embarrassed by his lyrics, which were in theworst minstrel tradition. Despairing at the contribution he'd made to thestereotyping of his own race, he vowed never to write such lyrics again (a vow hedidn't keep) .32

However, Cook's reaction to the opening performance reveals no suchdisappointment or shame. And, indeed, from his perspective, there was no needfor remorse. Margaret Butcher wrote that "Clorindy, ahead of its time, hinted atthe symphonic development of Negro syncopation and harmony not to be fullydeveloped for ten to fifteen years."33 And James Weldon Johnson praised Cook'smusic for its "musicianly treatment ofragtime."34 The sixty minute show, with atwenty minute cakewalk finale, was a huge success; and Cook's music was worthyof its folk origins. His exuberant reaction, therefore, is understandable: "Mychorus sang like Russians, dancing meanwhile like Negroes, and cakewalking likeangels, black angels! "35 The music brought prideful joy to its composer, despair toits lyricist. Audiences may have perceived the cakewalk as a simple pleasure, butto black writers and performers it remained a sometimes joyous and triumphant,and sometimes compromising and painful, enigma.

The retention of the contest element in what had become a performance piece,also added to the enigmatic quality of the dance. As in the 1895 "Black America"pageant, in many shows paid performers actually engaged in a contest. From thereminiscences of ex-dancers, it becomes apparent that these contests were notfixed, that competition with its accompanying traits of improvisation andresponsoriality actually did take place. Stearns interviewed several dancers who


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gave this impression. "Rubberlegs" Williams, ajazz dancer who worked in a 1922carnival plantation show, remembered that he "worked up a strut, and won thecake most of the time." Nettie Compton, who was a specialty cakewalk performerin an otherwise all white circus, in 1902, remembered that the male contestantsimprovised fancy tap and acrobatic steps in order to win. "Slow Kid" Thompson,who had been a cook in a Shreveport circus, doubled as a cakewalker as did therest of the black kitchen help.36 In a white carnival atmosphere alien to the folksettings of this black dance, managers felt a need to add these touches ofauthenticity. Yet, as if to neutralize this authenticity, they costumed andpresented their cakewalkers as a troupe of clowns.

The cakewalk contest became such a popular part of minstrel shows and musicalrevues that promoters took it off the professional stage and into the amateurtournament. Cakewalk contests popped up nationwide. These contests, 'n turn,fed back into the professional shows, with victors sometimes winning vaudevillebookings. In 1892 the first annual national championship, or Cakewalk Jubilee,was held at Madison Square Garden, featuring fifty finalist couples who had wonlocal competitions. Such contests were going concerns, charging admission forviewers and offering prizes as lucrative as $250. Angry black contestants in 1897tried to have police arrest the management of the Jubilee for racially prejudicedjudging.37 They were, of course, unsuccessful, but their ire shows the level ofemotion that was invested in the cakewalk. Some contestants who travelled fromcontest to contest established reputations which rivalled those of paid performers.In 1899 the song, '''Doc' Brown's Cake Walk," celebrated the fame of a KansasCity black man who claimed to be the undefeated champion of these contests. Thesheet music cover told "Doc's" story beneath a photo of him in cakewalk attire.38

On the ragtime stage certain performers also became known as cakewalkvirtuousos. No major black musical or revue could succeed without a cakewalknumber. Charles Johnson and Dora Dean's strobe-lighted staging and stylishdancing brought critical acclaim from the white press and inspired Williams andWalker to write the hit tune, "Dora Dean." Black Patti's Troubadours showcombined operatic medleys with comic cakewalk numbers. The cakewalksequence ended in the same razor-slashing pandemonium which had been"interrupting" the walkaround finales of minstrel farces for decades. 39 TheWhitman Sisters troupe performed the dance on the black vaudeville circuit, whilethe vaudeville team of Harrigan and Hart had inserted "Walking for dat Cake, anExquisite Picture of Negro Life and Customs" into their otherwise all-white showas early as 1877.40 And no Uncle Tom's Cabin troupe was considered completewithout cakewalkers in gaudy costumes.41

However, it was with the comedy song and dance team of Bert Williams andGeorge Walker that the cakewalk became most closely identified. Their act, whichemployed a drum-major cakewalk leader and seven parading couples, featuredWalker's grace as a dancer and Williams' comic, feigned bumbling attempts toimitate the steps of the others. By 1898 their names were so synonymous withcakewalking that the American Tobacco Company decided to exploit theassociation by hiring the pair to pose for cigarette ads.42 The color photographs,which depict them in cakewalk postures and dandy dress (Walker wears a fulllength gold coat, spats, and a red and white striped vest), were used not only inthe ads, but in a series of postcards and on various sheet music covers.

The dance became so popular at the turn-of-the-century that it spilled over intowhite and even European society. At a time which has been described as the nadirof white American attitudes toward blacks - in an age of racist polemics,


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lynchings, and disenfranchisement - a black dance became the rage of whitesociety. An editorial in the 1899 Musical Courier spoke out vehemently againstthis situation, declaring:

Society has decreed that ragtime and cakewalking are the thing, and one reads withamazement and disgust of historical and aiistocratic names joining in this sex dance,for the Cakewalk is nothing but an African danse du ventre, a milder edition ofAfrican orgies.43

But this response was, by its own admission, atypical. For example, one of the"historical and aristocratic names" to which it undoubtably referred was WilliamK. Vanderbilt, who had hired the black dancer, Tom Fletcher, to teach him thecakewalk. Vanderbilt gained some notoriety for this on his own, by displaying hisnewly acquired talents at an exhibition. But public attention was truly drawn to histerpsichorean activities when Williams and Walker made them the focus of apublicity stunt. The duo hand-delivered a letter to Vanderbilt's door, complainingof his exhibitionism and challenging him to a contest to determine the truecakewalk champion. Vanderbilt never responded, but the pair's point was made.44

And it is the point of their challenge which elevates this incident above that of ahumorous historical footnote, and makes it instead a key clue in understandingwhy the black cakewalk became a white fad. When Williams and Walker accusedVanderbilt of "having posed as an expert" on the cakewalk, thereby "distractingattention from [them]," they were challenging much more than one whitedilletante's right to cut into their livelihood. They were attacking the white race'sattempted ultimate usurpation of this black cultural form.

The cakewalk had not cast a spell over thousands of negro-phobes, transformingthem into toe-tapping negrophiles. On the contrary, by 1898 white popular culturehad so denigrated the image of the black cakewalker, and so infiltrated itself intothe production of ragtime music, that white society was convinced that the dancewas now its rightful province. White America, confident of its racial superiorityand attracted by the rhythm and spectacle of the cakewalk, concluded in its selfappointed role as cultural arbiter for the whole society, that whites could best carryon the cakewalk tradition.

White song-writers such as Holzmann and Mills, motivated by the lure of fameand wealth, contributed some of the best known rags of the era. As trainedmusicians, they applied the cakewalk formula in writing new tunes. But, asMargaret Butcher has noted, many white rags were "thin, superficial uses ofragtime's rhythmic and harmonic idiom."45 For most white writers of ragtime,the music was not a folk form to be adapted to the needs of a new age, but anobject to be "commercially exploited." The assessment of the modern scholar isexemplified by Schafer, who wrote that though most ears couldn't tell thedifference between art and commercial rag, the "pseudo-rag" was a "debased"form "which abandoned [cakewalk] rhythms and march structure for chaoticparades of arpeggios and trick fingering. "46

Even John Phillip Sousa got into the act. Sousa, among the first bandleaders torecognize the adaptability of the march-like cakewalk to performance by brassbands, featured cakewalk syncopation in his 1900 performance at the ParisExposition and the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Ironically, no black rags wereplayed at St. Louis, only white, diluted forms. The cakewalk was so successful forSousa that he even advertised for composers to submit new songs to him.47 And,in 1908, Debussy demonstrated his and Europe's appreciation for the music bycomposing "The Golliwog's Cakewalk, "48 (The Golliwog is a black doll-likecreature popular in Europe.)


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However, these plans to seize control of the cakewalk from blacks hit somesnags. Black performers remained the dancers really in demand, and still had to beimported into white shows. And while racist lyrics abounded, it was blackcomposed tunes which were whistled and danced to all over America. MargaretButcher has written, "the appeal was not in what was said, but in the rhythm andswing. "49 Blacks continued to make America aware of the power andattractiveness of their cultural forms, despite white attempts to make it seem thatthey were not really black art forms at all. The ultimate usurpation, exclusivewhite composition and performance of the cakewalk, was a failure. And, at a timewhen the stereotyped view of the black was dependent on the belief that he wascultureless and incapable of artistic creation, this was intolerable.

Thus, the burden of proving black racial inferiority was returned to whitecaricaturists, who had to make it seem as if black culture had never existed at all.They attacked the very strengths of the race which threatened to disprove theirstereotypes. Cakewalkers were made to appear ludicrous. Their dance, whichsatirized white manners, was presented as a ridiculous and unsuccessful attemptto emulate white culture. Their dress was depicted as tastelessly gaudy; theirpostures, distorted. Instead of projecting grace, caricatured cakewalkers projectedawkwardness. This image was then repeated and repeated and repeated until itwas reinforced in the minds of all those people who bought postcards, sheetmusic, stereo cards and toys. Finally, this image supplanted the true one inAmerican popular culture. It is sad that the memory of the "cakewalk clown" haslingered on - sadder still that the true history of this folk form has beenforgotten. The time is long overdue that the record be set straight.

Yale University

FOOTNOTES

Brooke Baldwin

1. All postcards and other artifacts described are from the collection of the author.

2. All are located in the film archives of the Library of Congress. "The Cakewalk" and"Comedy Cakewalk" are on reel FLA 3381, L.C. #367. The "Ballyhoo Cakewalk" is reelFLA 4107, L.C. #1093.

3. Also located in Library of Congress film archives, reel FLA 5382, L.c. #2412.

4. Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York, 1977), 15.

5. George Rawick, The American Slave: Georgia Narratives (Westport, Ct., 1972), part one,55.

6. ibid., part two, 348.

7. Dena Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (Chicago, 1977),211.

8. Marshall Stearns, Jazz Dance (New York, 1968),22.

9. Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime (New York, 1950),96.

10. Harper's Weekly, 1863,337.

11. Levine, Black Culture, 17-18.


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12. Levine, Black Culture, 16.

13. Harold Courlander, Negro Folk Music (New York, 1963), 202.

217

14. William Schafer and Johannes Riedel, TheArtofRagtime(BatonRouge,La., 1973),75.

15. John Roberts, Black Music of Two Worlds (New York, 1972),52, 198.

16. Blesh and Janis, Ragtime, 7.

17. Stearns, Jazz Dance, 123.

18. Ishmael Reed, MumboJumbo (New York, 1972), 174.

19. Schafer and Riedel, Ragtime, 8.


21. Constance Rourke, American Humor (New York, 1931), 88.

22. Eileen Southern, The Music ofBlack Americans: A History (New York, 1971), 272.

23. Robert Toll, Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America (New York,1974), 262-3~ and Southern, op. cit., 274.

24. Schafer and Riedel, Ragtime, 15.

25. c.1. Emms, Jes Like White Folks (Ohio, 1903).

26. Leroi Jones, Blues People (New York, 1963), 86.

27. Schafer, and Riedel, Ragtime, xii, 15-19,24-27.

28. Blesh and Janis, Ragtime, 88-9.

29. Schafer and Riedel, Ragtime, 19,24.

30. Blesh and Janis, Ragtime, 13.

31. Ann Charters, Nobody: The Story ofBert Williams (New York, 1970),81-3.

32. Addison Gayle, Oak and Ivy: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar (New York, 1971),87-8.

33. Margaret Butcher, The Negro in American Culture (New York, 1956), 57.

34. James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York, 1930), 102-3.

35. Southern, Music, 295.

36. Stearns, Jazz Dance, 70-1.

37. Charters, Nobody, 36.

38. Terry Waldo, This is Ragtime (New York, 1976),38.

39. Charters, Nobody, 35-6.


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40. Stearns, Jazz Dance, 78,86, 117-118.

41. Harry BirdofT, The World's Greatest Hit: Uncle Tom's Cabin (New York, 1947),347-54.

42. Charters, Nobody, 35-6.


44. Stearns, Jazz Dance, 122; Johnson, Manhattan, 104-5.

45. Butcher, Negro, 57.

46. Schafer and Riedel, Ragtime, 6, 90.

47. Blesh and Janis, Ragtime, 74-5, 100; Stearns, Jazz Dance, 123.

48. Peter Gammond, Scott Joplin and the Ragtime Era (New York, 1975),39.

49. Butcher, Negro, 56.


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The Cakewalk- A Study in Stereotype and Reality (1981)

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