Issue 54: Gum Boot Dancing

I had never heard of Gum Boot Dancing, but it is for real! Here is a picture from the wikipedia entry:

File:Bootsa.jpg

and I quote (from wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumboot_danceFile:Gumboot dancer.jpg

“Gumboot dancing was conceived by black miners in South Africa as an alternative to drumming—which authorities restricted one of the other reason for gumboot dancing was for the miners in south africa as they worked they sang. gumboot dancing has now become a worldknown dance,in schools kids perform the dance. The boots were a solution to a problem of often flooded gold mines in which men otherwise stood in knee-deep water toiling at their work stations.”

 

I discovered gumboot dancing from this resource, which has sibelius and pdf notation for a gumboot dance. I love the idea of adding bells to the boots, and creating secret codes from the steps and rhythms.

http://www.teachingmusic.org.uk/story.aspx?lngStoryID=14638

 

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