Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing, by April F. Masten
In the 1840s, Blacks and Irish, packed together in New York City slums, exchanged culture, created new variations on the jig and engaged in heated contests between dancers. Diamond and Juba is the story of the era’s most famous “challenge dancers,” Irish American John Diamond and African American William Henry Lane aka Juba. They entertained large, multiethnic audiences with bets were placed on the outcomes much like boxing matches. Diamond and Juba earned good money but died young and in the poor house—Diamond in the U.S. and Juba in voluntary British exile.
American history professor April F. Masten (State University of New York at Stony Brook) stitches together a plausible account of their lives, largely through researching period newspapers whose depictions were laced with the prevalent prejudices of that time. (Neither man left behind letters or journals.) Diamond and Juba is a window onto a little understood period when a distinctive American culture was born from an Afro-Euro mix. As Masten points out, a direct line connects the pre-Civil War challenge dances with rock and roll, break dancing and hip-hop.
Get Diamond and Juba on Amazon here.
Paid link
