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What is Country Western Dance?
By: Faith
First and foremost. The music is what dictates the
dance. The term "Country dancing" started as what's known as a
"hoedown," "barndance" "Clogging" or "Square-dancing" when a bunch of "hill"
or mountain people would get together, occasionally, with their family,
friends and neighbors. If you played a fiddle, banjo, madalin,
guitar, bass, or steel guitar you brought it along to the social
gathering. After everyone had a chance to eat and visit a while,
the folks with musical instruments would start playing and everyone
else would dance. They did a lot of square dances of various kinds,
slow, 3-quarter-time, waltzes and the slow 1 step slow dance. The waltz
maybe done to various kinds of music. However, the way in which you
waltz to a country music beat is different than that of a waltz
dance to big-band music beat. The beat for which the dancers need to
keep time to will be faster or slower between the two different music
styles. The clothing attire that everyone was garbed in was the clothing
they wore on a day- today basis. Boots, Cowboy hats, long dresses and blue
jeans. The same thing holds true for the folks out on the farms
and ranches. The clothing was called country & western style,
because that's the way the folks from the hill-country and the folks from the
western ranches of Texas and Oklahoma dressed. The waltz being the exception, but for the most part,
square dancing, and far as I know, is only done to traditional fiddle
and banjo playing country music. Also Country dancing is done with a
partner. As for the "new" country dancing, or country line
dancing. Well that's something different. It was brought about during the
Urban Cowboy rush, as a takeoff from the movie "Urban Cowboy" and has
gone through many transformations since then. The dances can be done to
a lot of different music, not just country music. These new line dances,
just like a lot of the so called "country music artist's, are just
using the title of "country music" to put a label on themselves
because they can. In short, to answer to your question, the music is the
most important thing in determining whether it is country dancing.
Second, like I stated before, Country dancing is a dance involving
couples/partners. As an example. If I were to go out and find 5
different cowboys to dance with, and I did the two-step with each one of
them, to the same song each time, they would all do the two-step
differently because even if the song is the same, with all cowboy's keeping a
1,2,2 country two-step beat, each cowboy will have different turns,
spins or just a different rhythm-style in the way he moves around the
dance floor. The trick for the female is learning how to become a good
follower. This is true for all couple/partner dancing no matter what
style. Yes. Both couples would be considered "country
dancing" if you dressed them differently, but they danced to the same
music. For example: Take two couples dress one couple in
wrangler jeans, cowboy hats and cowboy boots. Dress the other couple
in slacks, skirt and loafers. Then have them do a waltz to the
Bob Wills Country Classic "Waltz Across Texas" and both couples would be
considered country dancing. However, it's not considered
country dancing, or any dancing for that matter, if you don't know how to
do the waltz or how to dance at all. Conversely, if you took that same
two couples and had them do the "jitterbug" to some big band swing
music. Both couples would be considered doing "swing"
dancing. When people refer to "leaving their roots" they are
referring to country music today not having any heart or soul of
traditional sounding country music. They are pointing out, with
the use of those words, that today's country music; isn't. It's "POP"
music. Leaving their roots, is a way of trying to get people
to notice that; Hey there is a big difference here. What they are
calling "country music" today has no connection to the heritage of what
country music was founded on or how it came about, and they/we are
wanting to hear some country music with a more traditional
country sound to it. Because WE MISS that sound and we want the word
"COUNTRY" TO BE AS THE DEFINITIONS ARE LISTED IN MERRIAM WEBSTER'S
DICTIONARY: (1) "RURAL" "OF OR RELATING TO COUNTRY MUSIC" (2) "RURAL REGIONS AS
OPPOSED TO TOWNS AND CITIES." THE WORDS/PHRASE "COUNTRY MUSIC" AS DEFINED IN MERRIAM
WEBSTER: (1) "MUSIC DERIVED FROM OR IMITATING THE FOLK STYLE
OF THE SOUTHERN US OR THE WESTERN COWBOY" HERE YOU GO THE WORDS/PHRASE "COUNTRY DANCE" AS
DEFINED IN MERRIAM WEBSTER: (1) "AN ENGLISH DANCE IN WHICH PARTNERS FACE
EACH OTHER" THE WORDS/PHRASE "COUNTRY AND WESTERN" DEFINED:
"COUNTRY MUSIC" Hope this helps with writing your paper. (there is,
I'm sure, lots of miss-spelled words, but you'll get the gist of what
I'm trying to say) Take care!! Faith In Calif.
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