Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance

Needham, Maureen. 2002. ‘Kykunkor, or The Witch Woman: An African Opera in America, 1934’, in Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, ed. Thomas F. De Frantz. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 233-66 

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Few will dispute the profound influence that African American music and movement has had in American and world culture. Dancing Many Drums explores that influence through a groundbreaking collection of essays on African American dance history, theory, and practice. In so doing, it reevaluates "black" and "African American " as both racial and dance categories. Abundantly illustrated, the volume includes images of a wide variety of dance forms and performers, from ring shouts, vaudeville, and social dances to professional dance companies and Hollywood movie dancing.