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Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
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From the book Different Drummers: Rhythm and Race in America:
During slavery in the British colonies of America (as in the British Caribbean colonies), slave owners were deeply suspicious of slave music, in particular the drum and its rhythmic language. In 1740, for instance, one year after the Stono Slave Rebelion, the South Caorlina legislature outlawed "the using and keeping of drums, horns or other loud instruments which may call together or give sign or notice to one another...
A half-century later, a similar law was passed in North Carolina and in 1839, Louisiana restricted the use of drums... And, much as in Trinidad and other Caribbean Islands, American slaves reacted to such legislation by inventing new makeshift instruments: jugs, bottles, pans, even their own bodies upon which they could continue to strike out their rhythms...
Thus tap dancing was born as a minstrel art, in the slave camps and on ships trading (and pirating) throughout the Caribbean isles, on the river boats and in city dock districts. As the tapped-out "words" of African talking drum languages were forgotten and the moves infused with Irsih clog-dancing jigs, tap dancing took on a life all its own.
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