Q&A | Jig, Flatfoot, Hoedown or Square Dance?
Added 2018-04-16 00:59:26 +0000 UTC"At the Brooklyn Folk Festival there was a woman named Jane Henderson who danced to one of your songs. May I ask what genre of dancing was that? I thought it was Irish but I was wrong." - Josh
Flatfoot, Hoedown, Square Dance, Double-Shuffle, Heel-and-Toe, Jig and Buck Dance are just a few of the numerous terms used to describe a broad style of traditional North American folk dancing where one or more dancers continuously execute rapid, "shuffling" foot movements in-time with music. Prior to about 1820 drums were as commonly played at African-American dances as banjos or fiddles.
To answer Josh's question I'll draw on some of my own experiences around contemporary folk dancers as well as a relevant history book I'm reading, Dana Epstein's "Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War" (University of Illinois, 1997).
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