(Roughly) Daily

Posts Tagged ‘Atlanta

“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”*…

 

Lindy Hop

 

In Atlanta’s historic Vine City neighborhood, hidden among the trees overgrowing the lot at the corner of Sunset and Magnolia, is a barren concrete slab. On this spot, in the heart of an early-1930s African American community, Atlanta was first introduced to what would become “America’s National Dance”: the Lindy Hop.

Teenagers from all over the Westside would flock to the Sunset Casino and Amusement Park. The cavernous pavilion, which had been converted to a dance hall, featured a rotating cast of local talent along with the best swing bands in the world — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald. The Sunset also held Saturday afternoon dances and weekly Jitterbug contests. At the Sunset, for just 25 cents, the city’s black youth could briefly escape the ravages of the Depression and Jim Crow and dance their cares away…

Swing Dance is a modern umbrella term that describes a range of partner dances associated with swing music. But the realest swing dance is the Lindy Hop. The Lindy Hop was an art form invented by black dancers at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem during the late 1920s, and almost the entire history of African American dance was its source material. The dance is based on a core move called the “swing out,” in which two partners engage in a reciprocally counterbalanced swinging movement around each other. The dancers then layer on infinite embellishment and elaboration, including the acrobatic “air steps” for which the dance is known. Lindy hoppers may use rehearsed choreography when competing or performing. When dancing socially — as we normally do — Lindy Hoppers, like jazz musicians, improvise all their movements in real time, creating a wholly new dance at each moment on the floor.

The Lindy Hop evolved through the growing popularity of big bands in the mid-1930s, especially as dance troupes began touring and appearing in Hollywood movies. The term “jitterbug” was introduced to the lexicon by a Cab Calloway song in 1932 and became the preferred term for young Lindy Hop dancers, ultimately becoming synonymous with the dance itself. By the time that LIFE magazine belatedly proclaimed the Lindy Hop to be “America’s national folk dance” in 1943, the dance had been a part of cultural and social life in African American communities across the country for well over a decade…

In the South of 90 years ago, young African Americans started dancing the Lindy Hop.  It was an act of resistance, an assertion of freedom against the discrimination and violence of the time.  Today, swing dancers across the South — black and white together — pay proper tribute to that legacy: “Jitterbugging With Jim Crow.”

* music by Duke Ellington, lyrics by Irving Mills (1931)

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As we trip the light fantastic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. became the first African American to rise to the rank of General in the U.S. Army.  His son, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr., was the first African American General in the U.S. Air Force, a rank he attained after commanding the famous Tuskegee Airmen.

Benjamin_o_davis

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., in 1944

source

 

Written by (Roughly) Daily

October 25, 2019 at 1:01 am

How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm?…

Urban Density “Shadow”

TOKYO: Population 42,607,376 – Area 7,408 km² – Density 5,752 pp/km²

From Cotonou in Benin, with just more than 1.5 million people, to the Tokyo metropolitan region, with more than 42 million inhabitants, a total population of 1.2 billion people– 35 per cent of the world’s urban population in 2010– live in one of 129 ‘extended metropolitan regions’ across the world.  LSECities has taken a closer look:

Using Google Earth satellite imagery, we captured a ‘snapshot’ of where people live and estimated ‘net densities’ by systematically tracing the built-up area of each metropolitan region – including central zones, satellite towns and the peripheral areas (a detailed methodology can be found online). The fact that 23 million people in Manila occupy a space one eighth the size of the same number of New Yorkers, or that Atlanta in the USA is 25 times larger than Hong Kong with roughly the same population, says something about the capacity and resilience of urban form as well as physical and geographical constraints…

Explore further at LSECities’ “Measuring the World’s Urban Footprint.”

[TotH to Flowing Data]

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As we hail a cab, we might recall that it was on this date in 1864 that Union General William T. Sherman ordered residents of Atlanta, Georgia, to evacuate the city.  Sherman had taken Atlanta with little effort, and had promptly destroyed rail lines that might connect the city with Southern reinforcements.  Preparing to march on, Sherman didn’t want to be responsible for the civilian population of the city, so decided to evict them:  from September 11- 16, 446 families, about 1,600 people, left their homes and possessions and were “dropped” by Sherman’s men far south of the city, in the vicinity of the remains of the defeated army of Confederate General John Bell Hood.  In November Sherman and his men, having resupplied themselves with the goods that remained in Atlanta set out on their infamous “March to the Sea,” destroying nearly everything that lay in their path.

Sherman’s men destroying rail lines in Atlanta at the time of the evacuation order

source

ATLANTA TODAY: Population 7,506,267 – Area 6,888 km² – Density 1,090 pp/km²

Written by (Roughly) Daily

September 7, 2012 at 1:01 am

Scoping scale…

On AndaBien, web designer Steve Rose pursues his extra-vocational enthusiasms… among them, evolution.

His Evolution Timeline is a marvelous evocation of the sheer temporal scale of our antecedents.

— From first life-forms to homo sapiens

* The background indicates inches and feet.
* 1/20th in. = roughly 100 thousand years. (108,000)
* 1 inch = about 2 million years. (2,160,000)
* 1 foot = about 26 million years. (25,920,000)
* The whole page is about 135 feet wide, almost half a football field, representing 3.5 billion years. (3,500,000,000)

The very beginning of the timeline (and of life on Earth)

So, be prepared to scroll…  and scroll and scroll and scroll…  And to learn.  (By way of reinforcing one’s sense the extraordinary sweep of it all, readers might also appreciate Rose’s “Evolution, The Movie.”)

As we struggle with the recent revisions to the tree of life and the suggestion that humans are more closely related to fungus than to plants, we might recall that it was on this date in 1886 that Coca-Cola was first sold to the public at the soda fountain in Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was formulated by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton, who mixed it in a 30-gallon brass kettle hung over a backyard fire.  Pemberton’s recipe, which survived in use until 1905, was marketed as a “brain and nerve tonic,” and contained extracts of cocaine and (caffeine-rich) kola nut. The name, using two C’s from its ingredients, was suggested by his bookkeeper Frank Robinson, whose excellent penmanship provided the famous scripted  “Coca-Cola” logo.

Pemberton’s Palace

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