The Snowy Path

Comment by Al Smitley on February 16, 2016 at 5:57pm

Bob, I'm not disputing your point because I really don't know, but......though the early tutorials certainly contained tunes in 6/8, I don't think (at least in the minstrel genre) that "Jig" an "6/8" are necessarily interchangeable.

Comment by Wes Merchant on February 16, 2016 at 7:28pm

Al, I think you'll find jig used for both though in the case of 6/8 I know the term "Irish jig" is sometimes. The tune Idlewild is notated as a "banjo jig" in Ryan's, but it's elsewhere notated as a 6/8 jig, and really comes out sounding about the same either way. http://abcnotation.com/searchTunes?q=Idlewild&f=c&o=a&s=0

Converse has a 3/4 version of "Rocky Road to Dublin", commonly seen in 9/8, in "Banjo and How to Play it". It seems to work there. Dan Emmett includes three 9/8 "retreats" in the Bruce and Emmett fife book. So  this is a time signiture that was around back then. 

Comment by Strumelia on February 16, 2016 at 7:59pm

Let's also keep in mind the big difference between social dancing (people dancing in pairs and/or groups/squares/lines...as opposed to a performer type dancer(s) on a minstrel stage or in a competition.  Most communities had very regular social dances with live musicians...probably more frequently than performances or 'shows'.

Comment by Bob Sayers on February 17, 2016 at 12:35am

Al and Strumelia,  I don't really know a lot about the history of American social dancing in the mid-19th century--that's a research topic for a future day.  I presume, however, that the jig was a popular dance in immigrant, especially Irish, communities in New York and Boston in the 1840s and 1850s.  There's actually a fair amount of visual evidence for this assertion.  Think of the famous engravings of William Henry Lane (Juba), John Diamond, and others who were actually called jig dancers.  During the 1860s and 1870s, there are plenty of carte de visite images of minstrel dancers (some in blackface) wearing fancy tights and posing like Irish step dancers.  (Rather humorously, most of the people who comment on these images, because of the costumes, assume that they must be Spanish toreadors!!!)  But I digress.  Jigs may not be well-represented in the banjo tutors.  My guess, however, is that minstrel musicians (fiddlers and banjoists) of the time would have been quite familiar with the idiom--especially those who provided the accompaniment for competitive dancers like Juba and Master Diamond.   

Comment by Bob Sayers on February 17, 2016 at 12:51am

Well, I'm going to have to edit myself.  It may be that Irish jigs and minstrel jigs were somewhat different, as Al and Wes suggested.  Here's Wikipedia's take on the matter:

In 19th-century America, the jig was the name adopted for a form of step dancing developed by enslaved African-Americans and later adopted by minstrel show performers. Danced to five-string banjo or fiddle tunes in 2 2 or 2 4 meter played at schottische tempo, the minstrel jig (also called the "straight jig" to distinguish it from Irish dances) was characterized by syncopated rhythm and eccentric movements. Jig dancers employed a repertoire of "hits" on the heel or toe, ""hops" on one foot, "springs" off both feet as well as various slides and shuffles.^[11] The most famous early jig dancer was Master Juba, an African-American who inspired a host of white imitators, many of whom performed in blackface. John Diamond, an Irish-American who competed with Master Juba in a series of "challenge dances," was among the most prominent of these white minstrel jig dancers. Minstrel jigs, as well as clogs and breakdowns, were crucial to the evolution of 20th-century tap and soft-shoe dancing.

Comment by Rob Morrison on February 17, 2016 at 2:43pm

The word jig in the 19th century seems to have referred to any dance tune, regardless of time signature, e. g. Butler's Jig, Prince's Jig, Jim Crow Jig, Nine O'clock Bell Jig, Rattlesnake Jig, Hobson's Jig, and a slew of others, all in 2/4 time.  However, there were a few minstrel tunes or songs in 6/8, such as Carry Me Back to Old Virginny, Pop Goes the Weasel, and Oh! Boys, Carry Me 'Long.  I don't think they're any harder to play.  I think that's just what people say because there aren't that many. 

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