Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot, and Tap

In the film associated with this book you can see a grizzled old white Mountaineer do an African animal dance, one that friends of mine have filmed folks doing in Mali today. This book is the best thing available on the old time dance traditions that once thrived in the mountains and valleys of the South, a the mix of African and European dances. This book provides not only an outsider's explanation of the dances, but tries to take as many of its words from the dancers themselves, not just about their dancing, but about their lives, and the music they dance to. Diagrams of the dancing steps are even provided at the end of the book. Those of us interested in old time music, blues, and other traditional musics forget that so much of it was born as music for folks like these to dance to. As a musician, I have learned so much from studying the dancing that the tunes I play on the banjo, fiddle, and guitar was made for. As a musicologist studying the history of black banjo music, I do not think I could have gotten as far as I have without the aid of this and other studies of Black and European-American dance. I heartily recommend the accompanying DVD of the same title which is even more fun than this book