The Hippest Trip in America by Nelson George Read Free Book Online

vacations going down to Virginia from Brooklyn, and my sister and I were grilled about the latest dances up north and forced to demonstrate until the steps had been passed on. Part of the appeal of James Brown’s live show was that he, like an anthropologist of movement, had collected dances as he traveled, turning the Camel Walk into either a record or a piece of his impeccable show. Dick Clark’s Bandstand certainly played its role in establishing many national dance trends (such as the 1960s phenomenon that was the twist). But the few black Philadelphia high school kids who got onto American Bandstand had a huge impact on what dances made it onto the broadcast. So while black dance style was included in Clark’s broadcast, it was in small doses and often performed by white teens imitating their black peers. This kind of cultural co-optation was typical of American culture for most of this nation’s history: black style—in music, dance, slang, and attitude—watered down for white mass consumption.
    This is precisely why Soul Train was so revolutionary. This was black dance by black dancers presented by a black producer via a mass-media platform. This wasn’t isolated exposure on a black radio station at the end of the AM dial, or a brief appearance by James Brown or Jackie Wilson on the Ed Sullivan Show . This was a regularly scheduled get-down right in your living room, whether you were black or white.
    What viewers saw on Soul Train wasn’t just one style but a polyglot of approaches, some indigenous street dance, some just individual flamboyance, and often happy accidents discovered in the heat of competition. From the show’s national debut up to when break-dancing went pop in the 1980s, Soul Train was the most important showcase for contemporary idiomatic dance in the world. Music videos eventually usurped that role, but it didn’t happen immediately. Most of the dancers’ profiles to come are of folks from that golden era.
    Never had the vernacular dances of black folks—dances that have roots in African religious rites and that traveled, by force and DNA, across the Atlantic Ocean—had such a vivid national showcase. Moves that in Africa would have had a connection to a god of water or fertility had been transformed into a model of self-expression unique to the American experience. There was an ecstatic nature to the best Soul Train dances. The writer Albert Murray, in writing about the blues, used the phrase “Saturday-night ritual” to explain the raucous parties that happened at juke joints of the South. With Soul Train, it was Saturday-morning celebrations.
    â€œIn the history of dance, Soul Train has its own place,” said Debbie Allen, a choreographer, dancer, and actress with a highly distinguished show-business career: two Tony Awards, three Emmys, and a choreographer and star in TV’s Fame series. So she knows dancing. “You know there are different generations and genres of dance that can never be duplicated but will always be imitated . . . And Soul Train has its own lane because it inspired millions and millions. Look how long it lasted, and look how many people went through that show . . . There’s so many choreographers that you will never know that they honed their skills watching Soul Train. ”
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    Soul Train brought funky booty-shaking moves into America’s living rooms.
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    The show was a Saturday ritual watched with religious fervor and dedication. Instead of putting a donation in the collection plate, you purchased Afro Sheen, read Right On! magazine, or simply imitated the dances you witnessed in an act of supplication. Soul Train wasn’t explicitly church, though Don Cornelius would have been a spectacularly cool pastor. Yet there was a spiritual quality to the dancing in Soul Train that touched the soul of viewers. Damita Jo Freeman, Jeffrey Daniel, Fred Berry, Jody Watley, Tyrone