Dance (Juba)

Welcome to another week of social distancing! Here on Tea with Liya, I'm playing a song that will hopefully brighten your day. "Juba Dance", composed by R. Nathaniel Dett, was based on an African American dance from the 1800s. Even while these slaves were in forced working conditions, they were still able to keep up the joy by singing and dancing. Hopefully you'll take some inspiration during the times of COVID!


Listen to the song here
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You don't have to read a professional paper to learn something you didn't know about the world yesterday. In fact, all it took was a Google search for me to learn about where this song came from.

I read on Wikipedia about a style of dance called Juba, which was brought into the Caribbean and America by African slaves. They would keep the time by stomping and patting themselves, because the slave masters didn't allow drums for fear of secret messages hidden in the rhythms.

Later in the 1800s, Juba dances were publicly performed and composers began writing down songs to accompany them. One famous example of these songs is the one I'm playing for you today. It was composed by R. Nathaniel Dett, who used elements of ragtime to write a song celebrating his native culture. He was also the first African American to earn a Bachelor's degree in music.

Leading into the 1900s, music for Juba dances began influencing other styles of performance such as rhythm & blues and tap dancing. And here in the 2000s, it influenced the music on a little website that often refers to itself as a teacup.

If you like listening to ragtime and boogie songs, you'll definitely like this one. It wouldn't exactly fit into those categories, but it will sound quite similar when you listen to it.

Keep filling your teacup with music!

~Liya