cakewalk
Sign in to saveAlso known as cake walk
thumb|George Walker (vaudeville)|George Walker, [[Aida Overton Walker, and Bert Williams link arms and dance the cakewalk in the first Broadway musical to be written and performed by African Americans, In Dahomey.]] thumbnail|right|Painting from 1913 thumbnail|right|1915 sheet music cover (late for cakewalk music): "Ebony Echoes: A Good Old-Fashioned Cake-Walk" by Dan Walker. New York, NY: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co.
Key facts
- Music genre.name
- Cakewalk
- Music genre.image
- File:Cake walk 1903, 10 seconds.gif
- Music genre.caption
- Five dancers perform a cakewalk, 1903
- Music genre.cultural_origins
- Southern United States
- Music genre.derivatives
- Ragtime
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Cake walk 1903, 10 seconds.gif
Show 1 more fact
- Commons category
- Cake walk
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Article
12 sectionsContents
- As a plantation dance
- Firsthand accounts
- Secondhand, oral-tradition accounts
- Alternative explanations
- Lack of detail/consistency in explanation of the cakewalk's origin
- Cakewalk in minstrelsy, musicals, and as a popular dance
- Cakewalk as a musical form
- Modern times
- Fairground ride
- Notes
- References
- External links
thumb|George Walker (vaudeville)|George Walker, [[Aida Overton Walker, and Bert Williams link arms and dance the cakewalk in the first Broadway musical to be written and performed by African Americans, In Dahomey.]] thumbnail|right|Painting from 1913 thumbnail|right|1915 sheet music cover (late for cakewalk music): "Ebony Echoes: A Good Old-Fashioned Cake-Walk" by Dan Walker. New York, NY: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co.
The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers of Black people on plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern United States. Alternative names for the original form of the dance were "chalkline-walk", and the "walk-around". It was originally a processional partner dance performed with comical formality.