Cakewalk, The

A type of dance created by African Americans in the 1800s that became very popular at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. In its most common form, the cakewalk is characterized by a strutting walking motion, usually kept in time to a syncopated rhythm (that is, a rhythm that places primary emphasis between the beats of standard European musical phrasing).

As with many folk cultural forms, the origins of the cakewalk are difficult to isolate, but it is clear that the dance began during slavery. Evidence shows that cakewalking originated in the 1800s, as enslaved African Americans mocked the minuet dancing (a formal dance) of slave owners. In this sense, cakewalking was a subtle and creatively joking form of resistance to oppressive circumstances.

Other evidence suggests that the cakewalk was once called the “chalk line walk.” The name comes from the practice by which, during harvest celebrations, enslaved African Americans took part in competitions where the participants danced along a line carrying buckets of water on their heads. According to this explanation of the origins of the term cakewalk, a cake was the prize awarded to the winner.

Whatever its origins, the cakewalk assumed its most widespread popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when it was in vogue among many privileged whites in the United States. Two African Americans, Bert Williams and George Walker, contributed most to the popularization of cakewalking, making it acceptable to privileged or “polite” society. In particular, they succeeded with the cakewalk in the venue of New York City's musical the ater, where they were the first to perform the dance. Buoyed by their success, Williams and Walker gained some degree of notoriety in 1898, when they publicly challenged William K. Vanderbilt, perhaps the wealthiest person in New York, to a cakewalk contest. Vanderbilt never responded, but Williams and Walker earned a tremendous amount of publicity [Page 163]for their efforts, and the dance soon became an immense fad.

Typical to the period, whites who danced the cake-walk did so to indulge in and reinforce their negative image of African Americans, whom many whites viewed as primitive or unsophisticated. According to the logic of white racial thinking during the early twentieth century, syncopated music was seen as “African” and therefore primitive. Thus, the cake-walk's use of syncopation conformed to negative white stereotypes of African Americans.

In the decades before Williams and Walker introduced the dance in upper-class venues at the end of the nineteenth century, the cakewalk was commonly practiced in cities across the United States, in bars and other drinking establishments. In these places, lower and middle-class whites listened to an early form of jazz music called ragtime, which had a syncopated rhythm. Moreover, the cakewalk often acted as the finale to many of the minstrel and traveling carnival shows of the period, which also indulged in white stereotypes of African Americans.

The cakewalk reflects three common and complex themes in African American cultural history. First, it was competitive and thus can be seen as a form of signifying—putting on a show for the purpose of displaying one's skill or talent. Second, evidence indicates that the dance originated as a form of creative cultural resistance on the part of enslaved African Americans. Finally, as often occurs in cultural life in the United States, the dance was adapted and stereotyped by white Americans.

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