Birdie in the Cage

This episode from Radiolab explores the cultural history and implications of square dancing in America, highlighting its evolution and controversies.

1. Square dancing was promoted as a national dance to assert a unified American identity during times of high immigration.
2. It has been used as a tool for cultural assimilation, overshadowing diverse cultural expressions.
3. Efforts have been made historically to make square dancing the national folk dance, reflecting broader nationalist sentiments.
4. Contemporary square dancing communities are making efforts to become more inclusive and reflective of America's diversity.
5. The episode challenges listeners to reconsider the narratives around traditional American practices and their impacts on various communities.

1: Introduction to Square Dancing

This chapter introduces square dancing at a live event, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of its American roots. Lulu Miller: "Square dancing...but whose American tradition is it?"

2: Historical Context

Explores the 19th-century origins of square dancing and its adoption as part of American nationalism. Jad Abumrad: "It's been pushed in front of congress...to make it the national folk dance of America."

3: Modern Implications

Discusses modern perspectives on square dancing, including efforts to address its historical exclusivity. Tracy Hunt: "We had a live band...swung our partners around."

4: Cultural Reflections

Reflects on the cultural implications and the pushback against making square dancing a national symbol. Leon Panetta: "It came out of nowhere...I thought it made sense."

5: Conclusion and Reflections

Concludes with thoughts on how square dancing could evolve to better reflect America's multicultural reality. Phil Jameson: "Square dancing...is a melting pot of dances."

1. Learn About Your Heritage: Engage with your own cultural dances and traditions to appreciate their histories and values.
2. Participate in Local Cultural Activities: Join community dance events to experience and celebrate diversity firsthand.
3. Educate Others: Share the complex history of cultural symbols like square dancing to promote understanding and inclusivity.
4. Support Inclusive Practices: Advocate for inclusive cultural representation in schools and community programs.
5. Reflect on National Symbols: Consider what current symbols represent and push for those that inclusively reflect all communities.

People have been doing the square dance since before the Declaration of Independence. But does that mean it should be THE American folk dance? That question took us on a journey from Appalachian front porches, to dance classes across our nation, to the halls of Congress, and finally a Kansas City convention center. And along the way, we uncovered a secret history of square dancing that made us see how much of our national identity we could stuff into that square, and what it means for a dance to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.

People

Lulu Miller, Jad Abumrad, Tracy Hunt, Leon Panetta, Phil Jameson

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Nicole Kidman
Radiolab is supported by progressive insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance, too, with the name your price tool from Progressive. It works just the way it sounds.

You tell progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today@progressive.com. to join the over 28 million drivers who trust progressive progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

We all know Kit Kat bars taste delicious, but what about how they sound? It's not just a catchy jingle, it's the satisfying crack of breaking off a piece of Kit Kat followed by a crisp crunch. Oh, we forgot one other sound that accompanies Kit Kat bars, too. It's. Or maybe it's more like altogether, Kit Kat bars are music to our ears and yummy flavors to our mouths.

Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. My name is Nicole Kivman, and I've wanted to do a rom.com for so long, and along came a family affair. It's a great romantic comedy, and it was laugh out loud. If you feel like I just need to curl up and watch something that feels very comforting, it's the Netflix experience.

There's laughter and there's joy. That's a family affair. A family affair starring Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King by Richard le Gravinase. Rated PG 13. Sexual content, partial nudity and strong language only on Netflix.

June 28 texting between two different kinds of phones makes photos blurry, ugly, and security risky. Not just that, it also makes video calling, editing messages, or leaving a group nearly impossible. With WhatsApp, everyone can enjoy seamless messaging with the protection of end to end encryption. Streamline your messages across all devices on WhatsApp. Message privately with anyone you want.

Click the banner or download now to learn more. Wait, you're listening? Okay, all right. Okay. All right.

You're listening to Radiolab from wny six. See? Rewind.

This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller. So around this time of year in the states anyway, the days are getting longer, the nights are getting warmer. So everybody just find a partner. It's dancing weather, and if you don't know them, that's fine.

You can just walk up to somebody and say, hi, I'm so and so. Will you dance with me? You know, time for weddings and hoedowns. And of course, the great american tradition square dancing. But whose american tradition is it?

As we come up on July 4, a time to ponder our american ness, we are rerunning a piece from the archives, and that gets into the surprising roots of square dancing. It comes from the wonderful producer and reporter Tracy Hunt. Tracy, we love you. We miss you. In conversation with Jad.

And it actually begins. If anybody needs a partner, just raise your hand and then look around for other hands that are up with the two of them hosting an actual square dance. So here we go. Join hands and circle left.

Back to the right. A little while ago, Tracy and I threw a dance party over at a place called the Bellhouse. That's in Brooklyn. We had a live band all the way back, left hand stone. We had a caller named Alex Kramer.

We swung our partners around. We do si dove. We dove for the clam. I'll swing mine, you swing yours. Might have even shot through the hole in the old tin can.

Join hands and have pretty little rings. One couple make an arch, duck for the oyster. There were about 100 of us there that night learning the very american art of square dancing.

But. But, but you might be asking, why would we do this? Why would Radiolab do a square dancing event in Brooklyn in 2019? Well, it's Tracy's fault. Why can't I hear anything?

Oh, it's not plugged in. Oh, it all goes back. I need to find a freaking adapter. Oh, here. Here we are.

To a conversation Tracy and I had in the studio before we ever got up on stage together. Okay, so square dancing. Lay it on me. A dance that I should say, before I started reporting this story, I'd never seen. I kind of knew about it.

Saw it in the musical Oklahoma. It was inflicted on me in grade school. I know. I think that's just an inheritance from growing up in the south. Well, actually, no, it's not just a southern thing.

Besides the fact that it somehow missed me in Miami, it was taught in pretty much every other school in the country. Huh. Quick scan of the audience. How many of you had to do score dancing in school? That's something that we actually confirmed later at the event.

Oh, my God. So many of you. Wow. Most of the audience. I feel like that was most of the audience.

But the thing is, it doesn't just stop at schools. Square dancing is a state dance or the state folk dance in about 30 states. 30. Alabama, California, Idaho, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, and on and on and on top of that, it's been pushed in front of congress on two separate occasions where people fought to make it the national folk dance of America. Elevating it right up there with a bald eagle, by the way, that's a red tail hawk.

Because eagles do not sound as cool as we think they do. And, you know, squirrel dancing isn't exactly what we thought it was, either. I mean, you know, it didn't really kind of mesh with my idea of America exactly. But when I started digging and I went super deep, I gotta say, it kind of messed with some of my ideas of my America and your America and our America. Mm.

Okay, so just to get things started off, I'm gonna take you back to the 1890s, or 1890 ish. In the late 18 hundreds, there were many immigrants coming to this country from southern and eastern Europe. According to folk dance scholar Phil Jameson, at that time, a new wave of immigrants were coming to America. Italians and Slavs and polish people and jewish people. And they were seen as very different from the earlier waves of english and irish and german immigrants.

And the old stock Americans sort of pushed back against these immigrants and said, wait a minute. We are the real Americans. Our ancestors were here first. And, you know, think of 1890 is when the daughters of the American Revolution was founded. We were a generation past the emancipation Proclamation and the trail of tears.

And in 1892, the pledge of allegiance was put into our public schools. And so Bill says, around this time, there was a national conversation bubbling up about who we as Americans are. Like, when we say us, who is us?

Well, according to film, one answer to that question came from a music scholar, an english ballad collector named Cecil Sharp, who came to the southern mountains from about 1916 to 1918. He went all around the appalachian mountains in the southern us, visiting families, sitting on front porches and asking people to sing, and was astounded that people were still singing old british ballads that had long since died out in England.

They were singing about Barbara Allen and their saying about lords and ladies and white steeds and bloody daggers and all that. Now, this was interesting to him, because Sharp's idea, and he wasn't alone in this, is that the people living in southern Appalachia, the white people living there, these people had been isolated here in the mountains for generations and were therefore the keepers of the purest anglo saxon heritage in America.

And when he was in eastern Kentucky, he came across that pure heritage in dance form. He came across some people doing a square dance. That was a demonstration for him. And the thing about this dance that he was seeing, it had some elements of french dances, french cotillions and quadrilles where six couples would be in some sort of formation, holding hands, moving in a circle, but also parts of it that looked like old scots irish and english country dances where couples would link arms and skip around each other, then make arches for other couples to duck through. So all of these different moves were coming together in this one dance he was seeing happening right in front of him.

And he just made this assumption that these were anglo saxon people and this is the folk dance of our ancestors. Now, obviously, there were a lot of different kinds of people living in those mountains that he was ignoring. But despite that, or maybe more like because of it, this idea that square dancing was quintessentially american just took off. And shortly after that is when they started teaching folk dances in schools. So the first place I heard any of this was this tweet thread that was very tantalizing.

It sort of pegged Henry Ford as the mastermind behind this white supremacist plot for the square dancing and all the schools in order to, like, save white children from jazz or something. I see. So this is an attempt at whitewashing. Basically, yes. Got it.

Now, first of all, Henry Ford was an anti semite, and for some reason thought jews invented jazz and hated jazz, and he tried to promote dances from, quote, northern peoples. But Henry Ford had nothing to do with teaching square dancing in physical education classes. That part of the tweet thread isnt quite true, but the whitewashing part isnt exactly wrong. It was actually one dance educator in Michigan, Grace Ryan in Michigan, who started teaching the square dance as a way to assimilate the children of european immigrants to be true Americans. More teachers picked it up.

She wrote some books that kind of popularized it around the country among teachers. And before you know it, bam. Square dancing in schools from Tuscumbia, Missouri. And they call themselves the lake of Ozark Square dance. And then the dance started to spread.

You all set? All right. People were dancing in community halls, in public squares and churches and barns. By the thirties, square dancing is all over the radio. Hey, hey, grandfather.

As tv start popping up in american homes, places, square dance is, too. You know, you could just go to YouTube and, like, google lucky strike square dancing. And you see this, like, really weird commercial where there's actually, like, cigarettes doing the square dance. Oh, lucky strike means find a bico by the forties and fifties. It's huge.

The square dancing craze sweeping across the nation keeps on growing. In New York in a big way, square dancing clubs start forming all over the place. Out west, it starts to get a little yee haw with men in cowboy shirts and boots and women in big, fluffy skirts. It's so beautiful. In 1951, they form a national organization that puts on this national square dancing convention, where tens of thousands of people gather from all over the country and square dance together.

Square dancing is part of the heritage of the United States, born with the very birth of the country. And then the square dancers of America want something from Congress. They want their dancing. Square dancing. Officially named the national football of the United States.

These groups went to Congress to say that square dancing should be the american dance. Square dance is indeed uniquely american. It's american american. And actually, it was officially the national folk dance from 1982 to 1983. So I really wanted to talk to the people who were part of this effort, but a lot of them are dead.

You mean. Oh, so this is an old movement. This is an old movement. This is Leslie. I did manage to find the congressman.

You're in the dark. He is coming right in. Who introduced some of these bills. Sorry. Here we go.

Okay. His name is. Hello, Leon Panetta. Hey, how are you, Tracy? Former secretary of defense and former director of the CIA, Leon Panetta.

The Leon Panetta? The Clinton Leon Panetta? The Clinton Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff. I think this is a moment for a strong, steady hand. Usually these days he's on CNN answering hard questions about drones, responsibility of the intelligence community, national security.

It has to be comprehensive. So I think he was a little surprised when I called him up and said, you know, hey, you want to talk about square dancing? Well, it came out of, it came out of nowhere, brought back. He introduced a bill about square dancing. Yep.

Well, I actually did folk dancing when I was in grammar school and enjoyed it then and always kind of kept track of. Back in the 1980s, he was a congressman out of California, and there was a couple that were involved in folk dancing, George and Ann Holzer, I believe, were their names. He had some square dancers who were very supportive of his campaigns. So it was very much a politically kind of like, favorite type of thing. They came to me with the idea, but he was actually pretty kind of passionate about it when I was talking to him.

Oh, yeah. I thought it made sense to try to establish and recognize it as the national folk dance. Well, on the face of it all, that sounds harmless enough, but wait a minute. There was this kind of immediate and very muscular opposition to this bill. This House subcommittee today suddenly discovered that about the only people who would be happy to commemorate square dancing are square dancers.

One by one, dance historians, folklorists got in front of the mic and said, you gotta be kidding me. To make folk dancing a national dance to me, would be a slap in the face to other artists. This makes absolutely no sense. This is a nation of immigrants. The United States is a country filled with a lot of different kinds of people from a lot of different parts of the world.

To single out a dance that represents even a very small fraction of british origin immigrants would be in a certain. To every other cultural group in this country. Everyone was like, square dancing? Seriously, what about hula? Isn't that a folk dance?

What about that? Or for that matter, breakdancing as an expression of urban folk culture, not to mention the people who were here first, Native Americans who have their own dance traditions.

You know, one bit of testimony that actually stuck with me was from the 1988 hearing. It was a woman named Raina Green. She was at one time the head of the American Folklore Society, and she is a member of the Cherokee Nation. And she said, my grandmother has only ever done the square dance in schools. That's the only place she ever did it.

And at the same time, she was forbidden from doing her own tribal dances. And so to come and say that square dancing is now the national folk dance would be to dishonor her and dishonor all her ancestors. And even just to put a finer point on it, I mean, you take something like the massacre at Wounded Knee. I mean, that was the culmination of a series of events that I think began with a dance. Wow.

So it wasn't simply that they were being forgotten. I think they were being very violently suppressed at times. The dance has. The question of what dance you do is not always. It's sometimes violent, you know?

Yeah, I'm curious about, like, what would be your reaction to that argument? Well, I mean, I certainly appreciate indian tradition and what happened to the Indians throughout history. There's no question how abused they were. At the same time, it's important to recognize some of the things that make the United States what it is today. I always remember de Tocqueville's comments when he came to this country and went to the frontier and, by the way, saw people folk dancing at that time.

But he mentioned something that I think is particularly important. He said, the difference about America is that in those small communities throughout the west, people care for one another. They have a sense of community. Yeah, I don't think that that was when the Tocqueville was here and he was looking at the west. I don't think that that was much of a time of togetherness.

I mean, plenty of indian tribes were being driven off their land. I don't want to start a whole thing, but I guess it's just. I don't want to have a romanticized view of that time period. No, I don't think we have to have a romanticized view. The fact remains that all of us in our communities do recognize the importance of helping one another, and that isn't romanticizing a damn thing.

And I just think at some point, it would be a nice gesture to all of those that enjoy that to make clear that the United states recognizes the square dance is particularly unique to the history and to the culture of America. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this. Sure. Yeah. That was a.

I wish there was a slightly more satisfying response there. I feel like you guys were not having the same conversation or something. That was like, yeah, to say the least. And it made me realize that, you know, maybe I shouldn't be talking to a politician. I should be talking to screen answers.

And so I made some phone calls. Oh, are you Linda? I'm Linda. I traveled to the heartland of America, and square dancers hug. Okay.

All right. That's called a yellow rock. What I found out about square dancing was actually really surprising. Like what? Well, you're gonna have to wait till after the break.

Oh, well, then. Radiolab will continue in a moment. WNYC Studios is supported by wondery presenting wow in the world. Hosted by guy Raz and Mindy Thomas, wow in the world is an adventure filled cartoon for the ear podcast, all about amazing innovations in science and technology for curious kids and their grownups. Whether it's exploring the wows of slow melting ice cream or why we get a brain freeze when we're enjoying a cold, tasty treat, or even ways we can keep our planet cool, wow in the world always has a new discovery that will leave the whole family saying, wow.

And this summer, when you listen to wow in the world, you can also hear weekly wow missions that will send you on a real life scavenger hunt to discover the wows of your world. This summer, bring your imagination out into the world and find your wow. Listen to wow in the world. Wherever you get your podcasts, visit wondery.com summerofwow to find new episodes and to download scavenger hunts for the whole family.

I'm Jad. This is Radiolab. We are back from break with producer Tracy Hunt doing the dance of the square where we haven't actually done the dance yet. That's coming where we'd left off. So far, we'd seen what happened when a bunch of square dance evangelists took their cause to Congress, pushed for square dance to be the american folk dance.

People pushed back against that, claiming, actually, no, the square dance leaves people out. It actually represents something truly painful in our country's past. That's where we left off. Yeah, but that was in the eighties, more than 30 years ago, and I wanted to see what was going on with square dancing today. And I was making a bunch of calls, and I eventually talked to this one woman named Linda Peterson.

She was part of the effort to make square dancing the state folk dance for the state of Maryland. And she invited me to the national Square dancing convention. Hi, I'm in the lobby of the downtown Marriott in Kansas City, Missouri, in this huge convention center. People were just arriving. They had their suitcases.

You can see, like they were bringing in these costume racks, I guess, filled with big, huge skirts, western shirts, cowboy boots, lots of glitter, lots of crinoline. And anyway, Linda and I had planned to meet in the lobby of this hotel, so hopefully she will notice that I'm the person with the big fuzzy microphone, also the black one. I will say that I did find black's great answers there. You did? I counted while I was there about eleven.

Out of how many? About 3000. Oh, wow. So I guess one in 300.

That's a ratio. Yeah. But eventually. Oh, are you Linda? I'm Linda.

Linda spotted me. I'm good. Square dancers hug. Okay. All right.

And then she just takes me around and she just starts. This is tracy. Hi, Tracy. Tracy introducing me to everybody. I'm glad to meet you.

Hi, Tracy. In the square dance world, each person was just friendlier than the last.

There was an opening ceremony. Dear heavenly Father, we gather this together, some speeches, a prayer.

Eventually, we did finally get to see some dancing. And it sounds like this.

Walk all around here, corner girls seats.

Wow.

And there's these super complicated calls. And instead of a traditional fiddle band with a banjo and so on, they're actually playing eighties pop hits. Wow. And this is actually common. I talked to this one caller who was like, yeah, I use j lo sometimes.

Yes. I actually walked into one room where they were using Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

They really do use, like, just all kinds of music. And, you know, it was just a long ways off from, like, you know, Oklahoma style western frontier version of square dancing that I had in my head. And when I started going around talking to people, New York public radio. So this is just my mic and I'm recording. Just letting you know.

That's a microphone. It is a microphone. It was also pretty clear that sugar cookies, this push to make it the national folk dance was kind of waning. So after a while, I think the square dance folks decided, you know what? Let's let it.

Let's not stir up trouble. Let's keep a positive attitude and image for our activity. This is Roy. I talked to him and his wife, Betsy Gotta. Betsy Gotta is kind of a big deal in the score dancing world.

Anyway, they made it sound like they had heard the backlash and sort of, in some way, kind of got the point. We were talking about that, and there were times when the square dance activity, perfectly honest, for a long time, it was a white activity. I think that that does make, you know, someone like me, who I'm a black person go, huh? You know, why is, you know, why is this activity that's, you know, seemingly for and by and created by white people? Why does that have to be the national american dance?

You know? And it kind of does feel like a little like you're, you know, I'm being excluded or I'm being told that, you know, that this is what it means to be an american. And a lot of people in our activity took heed of that and said, yeah, you know, there's a valid point, but we still kind of felt that it was the one dance form that hopefully transcended all of that because it is all inclusive. Granted, it wasn't, but then again, America wasn't an inclusive society. And what we kind of wanted to do was bring everybody in.

That was our strategy. We wanted to set the hook and wheel everybody into the group. And what sort of came out for me over time was that for them, you know, being the national dance, it wasn't so much like trying to make this, like, piece of white culture, like, enshrine it into, you know, some sort of national symbol. It was more about good marketing, you know, you know, to make square dancing better, to get more people and keep them. Numbers are declining.

Yeah. And so interesting. So their idea was, this is a way to. So it's not about let's whitewash America. Or maybe it was, but they.

That wasn't the sort of spoken idea. It was more like, let's not die. Yeah. And while I was there, they really made a point about how square dancing is really, really just open and inclusive, what makes it unique to us. This is Dana Shermer.

He was the president of Collar Lab. That's the group that trains all the callers. And he's also the guy who said he uses J. Lo. Sometimes I think when you hear the music, the first time you step in there and touch hands, the magic just goes right through your hands.

You can just feel the warmth and the friendliness of all the people in the group with you. Like, you come into the square and you don't care who they are, where they came from, or what happens. Nobody knows anything about anybody else. But you all have to work together. You know, you're in the group and you're gonna have fun.

And I don't, look, I'm an accountant. I don't go out there looking for accountants. I go out there and get in the square. And what do you do? I'm a farmer, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, you know, doesn't matter.

We have all kinds of people, and we're all going to dance together. It's a teamwork. You're doing something together as a team. Yeah. It's like an equalizer.

Yeah, we're all together. This is something I heard over and over and over again that square dancing welcomes everyone. It doesn't matter who you are. You don't worry about sexual orientation. You don't worry about color.

You don't worry about where they're from. All you worry about is, can they square dance? Can they help me have a good time? Square dancing, that's all that matters. I can remember when we, the square dance world, were making some strides in opening out in 1965, which was the year of Martin Luther King's march from Selma to Montgomery.

The national convention was in Dallas, Texas, and I was there. And the country in the south was scary enough. We drove through the south in a car from New Jersey, and for a while we were followed because they thought we might have been outside agitators who were going to register people to vote or something. And we were just a family coming back from the square dance convention. But for some reason, and I do not know the background, that was the year that a group of african american dancers from, I believe, the Detroit and or Chicago areas decided to attend the national convention.

This could have been very scary in that atmosphere, but they were very smart, and I watched them. I was just out of high school, and I watched them. And what they did was they never entered a square uninvited. They started a group. They'd stand on the floor and put up their hand with three fingers up, which means we need three couples and let people come to them who would be comfortable dancing with them.

And they never forced the issue. If three couples needed a fourth and they all said, come and join us, they would fill that square. And there was not a single problem at that convention. And the, you know, the african american dancers have been part of. Part of the activity since then.

I'm gonna let y'all go. Thank you. Thank you. Then the line and break. Screw just in case.

Hmm. I mean, walking away from that visit, what did you make of all that, of the convention, the whole thing? Well, you know, it was a great experience. I felt very welcomed, and everyone was really, really sweet, but, you know, it still kind of felt like it was welcome and come do our thing, you know? And I have talked to some black square dancers and LGBTQ square dancers who didn't want to go on the record with me, but they said, you know, we don't really feel comfortable coming to this convention every year and all that.

To just say that, you know, it just doesn't really necessarily feel like it could be like my dance is still kind of their dance. But I talked to Phil Jameson after I went to the convention, and Phil, if you remember, he was the guy who told us about Cecil Sharp and the mountains and kind of the traditional story about where square dancing comes from. And during that conversation, he really kind of upended this whole idea of my dance or our dance in their dance. I spent about ten years of my life as a professional musician and dancer. So Phil was actually a musician and dancer for a long time, and he was actually part of this clog group called the Greengrass Cloggers.

I was on the road for seven years with that group, and we traveled all over the US and overseas as well. And he says, a lot of times after these performances, people would come up and ask him, you know, where did these dances, these folk dances, like the square dance, where did it come from? And so I'd go and look in books and try to. Try to read up on the history of these dances and all the books that were out there. Square dance books just talked about the British Isles and the Hardy pioneers coming to the mountains with their dances, and they would basically tell the same story that he told us, Cecil Sharp, and how this dance is a combination of french and english and irish dances.

But at a certain point, Phil says, it just didn't seem right to me because the population of Appalachia has never been pure white Anglo Saxon. It's always been a mix.

Of course, there were native american people there to begin with, but there were enslaved people with the earliest settlers, and there was slavery throughout the southern mountains. And, you know, when you look at the musical traditions, the fiddle is accompanied by the banjo, and that has african roots, and you look at the vocal traditions. When I first come to this country, yes, people still sing the old british ballads, but they also sing gospel songs, blues songs, tin pan alley songs, and minstrel songs, all kinds of things. Around 2001, I just started digging into it, and I just wanted to get to the bottom of the story and figure it out. So Phil would end up spending 14 years looking at letters, travel narratives, historical accounts, and dance manuals, anything he can get his hands on.

And what I discovered was there was an evolution of the dances that occurred during the 19th century and basically a multicultural hybrid that have elements of dances from the British Isles reels. And there's african american and native american influence as well, all in the mix. Oh, what does he mean? Does he mean. Well, he means that they were all doing these dances, not just white people.

This was shared culture back in the day. You'd find african american folks dancing these dances and white folks dancing them, and native american folks were dancing them, and things from their own past would creep into this dance. For example, there's this one move in square dancing where you have one dancer in the middle. And some people think this is actually related to something called the ring shout, which is like a traditional dance from west and central Africa. And, you know, the crazy thing is that he told me, the thing that makes the square dance, the square dance dance calling itself comes from the black tradition.

Oh, black bitty black beast. There's no evidence that that ever happened in the european dances, but there's a lot of call and response in african dances. And the earliest dance callers were all black fiddlers who were playing for dances. Basically. Phil told me that when you were back in Europe, the way you learned these dances is that you had a dancing master, you had a dancing school.

You go to these schools, and you learn all the steps. Yeah, but when you came to America, to colonial America, there weren't as many dancing masters in dance schools to go around. And so the way that the fiddlers who were performing at these dances could tell people what the next move was was to call it. And this was a way for people who didn't go to dancing schools to be able to do the dances. So you discovered that square dancing is a melting pot of dances.

Yes, square dancing is definitely, you know, so called melting pot dance. But what. What happened by the 20th century is they basically, these traditions became whitewashed, and the black history behind it got forgotten. Oh, am I home? You turn around, dig a hole in the ground?

Oh, am I home? How am I home? You turn around, dig a hole in the ground? Ho. Am I home?

Did anyone at the hearing make the argument that he was making? No. No. This is something that he's kind of discovered in the last few years. It is interesting.

Cause now you're like, hmm, maybe it should be the national folk dance. But I don't know. I mean, does that still feel like someone else's dance that you just now have a small. Yeah, I did side roles. I did.

I still don't think that square dancing should be the national. But I. You know, and I told Phil that, like. But I was like, you know, if you told me that, you know, black people had something to do with this dance, that Native Americans had something to do with, like, kind of the development of this dance, if you told me that, then I would say, oh, so that actually, this dance is a lot more american, you know, in that inclusionary way that we would like to think of America as than I would have thought, and maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea. And then he pointed out, well, what about latino people?

What about asian people? And what about, you know, like, once again, we're, like, way too multicultural a society to, like, just say, but what if this thing. Okay, what if you.

I'm trying to be. As. I'm trying to create a scenario that's the most inclusive thing possible. Okay, but it's not gonna. I'm not gonna get there.

I'm gonna leave so many people out. But. But it's like. I don't know. I mean, couldn't.

It couldn't. Isn't there room in square dancing? In other words, for. If there's room for black people. I shouldn't say room.

I mean, if there. What's the word? Yeah, fine. If there's room for black people, there's certainly room for white people. Why not create a square dance that's as diverse as America?

I mean, fuck, people could tap dance at a square dance. I mean, it's just. It's all. It is. Like, tap dance in a square dance.

You can clog in a square dance. Why not? You can find videos of people clogging in a square formation. You could, I don't know, do modern dance in a square dance. That's a little harder, but maybe it's a little harder, but ballet, sure.

Hip hop dancing. I could see more hip hop dancing in a score dance. Well, okay, it was at this point, when this conversation started to go somewhere that we decided, you know what? We should have a live show. Does anyone else have any other ideas about what's a fun group dance that we can all do together?

What'd you say? The moonwalk? Okay, all right, all right. Problematic now, but whatever, you know, documentary. But any others?

The Charleston, the twist. So we had done our introductory square dance with everyone, and we told them this history. The what? The. But, okay.

But then we heard about this one particular square dance call, and this is the one that's related to the ring shout, which I mentioned earlier. So, Alex, let's talk a little bit about the last dancer tonight. So we brought our square dance caller, Alex Kramer, back on stage. But at some point, you're going to use a call that. What's the call going to be?

Oh, right, right. So did you forget already? So the dance is called birdie in the cage. Okay? So the call is.

The first call is put the birdie in the cage. And so then what happens is, if you're the birdie at that moment, you just, like, hop on in to the center of the circle and you get to do your special dance. It can be the YMCA, the dubut, the chicken, the funky chicken, the floss. You can floss, you can milly rock, you can kid and play. You can twerk, you can twerk.

Can nae nae. You can what? Nae nae nae nae? Yeah, absolutely. So that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna do a little scray dance. And then he's gonna say, brittany in a cage. And then everyone's gonna do whatever the f you want. Hey, show us what you're working with.

And join hands. Circle left. Circle to left. Round. You go back to the right.

Don't take all night.

Go into the center with a great big shout. Do it again, do it again. Swing your partner. All about prominent, prominent. Go around the town and you'll wave it upside down.

Were you dancing? Yeah, I was trying. I was trying to. Couple ones, have some fun. Couple one, go up, circle left with couple two, birdie in the cage.

Couple one, couple two, circle. I remember it was just chaos. It was like crazy chaos. Bird, hop out and throw. Hop in.

Cause, like, he was doing these calls and we were swinging around and, like, you kind of want to get your dance going in the middle, but then you don't have enough time. And then you throw off the rhythm, and then suddenly it all falls apart. But then he'll do a call. Everyone snaps back onto the beat. Circle two to the left.

Birdie in the cage. Yeah, I was standing off. I had gotten off the stage, and I was standing off to the side, leaning against the wall and trying to just stay out of people's ways. Cause there was a lot of limbs flailing around. Yeah.

From where I was standing, when people got into the middle, when the birdie got into the middle of the cage, the birdie was usually just hopping around and jumping up and down because you didn't have much time. You're just like, I gotta do my thing, and then I gotta get out. Circle, and around you go. Last chance, birdie number four. Show us what you're working with.

And so, whatever our national dances, I guess it's just people hopping around a lot until it's not their turn to hop around anymore. Now swing your partner. Yeah, it was just a hot mess, but it was the happiest hot mess I've been a part of in a long time.

Kind of beautiful. Yeah, really beautiful.

One more thing, you know, as I was going through all this, I kind of just stumbled into this community of african american musicians who were really embracing this kind of. This old time music, this folk music, and really reclaiming it. And one of those musicians was Jake Blunt, and he actually performed for us at that live event. He is a fiddler. So you're gonna perform a song for us.

Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yes. It's called poor black sheep, and it comes from a black banjo fiddle duo. Nathan Frazier and Frank Patterson, who were from Nashville, Tennessee, were recorded in, I think, 1946. And I learned this tune from them via my teacher and friend, Rhiannon giddens.

So I thought it'd be a really cool idea if we just, like, played his song. Yeah, totally. And say, thank you, jake. I loved his description. I keep thinking about when he said, when he plays, it's like his brain moves into his arm.

Cause I was like, when you hear this and you're like, oh, yeah, he's just all arm.

Well, thank you, Tracy. You're welcome. This episode, of course, was reported by Tracy Hunt and produced by Annie McEwen. And we also had an assist on the sound design mix front from Jeremy Bloom. Also, I just want to say thank you to Leellen Friedland, Bob Dulcimer, Alex Kramer, our caller.

Our amazing band from the live event, Stephanie Coleman, Courtney Harmon, and Steph Jenkins. And Phil Jameson, has a book out called hoedowns, reels and frolics, roots and branches of southern appalachian dance. You should definitely check that out. Thanks.

Hi, I'm basid Khari, and I'm from Somerset, New Jersey. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keef is our director of sound design.

Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, Ekedi Foster, Keys W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Niana, Matt Keelty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Valentina Powers, Sara Khari, Sara Sandak, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, I'm Luis Vera and I'm calling from Mexico City. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Tempettu foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Radiolab is supported by Big Brains. The podcast produced by the University of Chicago. Big Brains translates the latest groundbreaking research and world changing discoveries into digestible brain food. Recognized as the top higher education podcast by case, Big Brains asks questions like can we use AI to speak to animals? Or could bioelectricity help regrow limbs?

Get access to some of the world's biggest brains in bite sized episodes by listening and subscribing to big brains wherever you get your podcasts.