Rapper sword - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

North East

Rapper sword is a kind of sword dance

Sword dance

Sword dances are recorded from throughout world history. There are various traditions of solo and mock battle sword dances from Greece, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, China, Korea, England, Scotland and Japan...

associated with the North-East of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

History

The rapper sword tradition was traditionally performed in the mining villages of the Northumberland and Durham coalfield in North East England

North East England

North East England is one of the nine official regions of England. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Teesside . The only cities in the region are Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland...

, especially in Tyneside

Tyneside

Tyneside is a conurbation in North East England, defined by the Office of National Statistics, which is home to over 80% of the population of Tyne and Wear. It includes the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Metropolitan Boroughs of Gateshead, North Tyneside and South Tyneside — all settlements on...

. The dance involves five people (often accompanied by two Tommy and Betty

Tommy and Betty

Tommy and Betty are two roles in rapper sword dance that represent the father and mother of the dancers. The Tommy and Betty often introduce the dance to the audience and seek to engage the audience...

characters) connected by short, two-handled, flexible swords (called rappers) forming an unbroken chain. The dance is related to the Long Sword dance

Long Sword dance

right|YorkshireThe Long Sword dance is a hilt-and-point sword dance recorded mainly in Yorkshire, England. It is related to the rapper sword dance of Northumbria, but the character is fundamentally different as it uses rigid metal or wooden swords, rather than the flexible spring steel rappers used...

of Yorkshire, as well as other sword dance

Sword dance

s in Europe.

The dance is a fairly rapid one, performed at around 100–160 beats per minute, with different team styles using different rates. It should nonetheless be performed in a smooth and graceful manner, with one figure flowing seamlessly into the next. A number of acrobatic figures can be employed, including forward and backward somersaults over swords.

The dance is now almost always performed to jigs (6/8 time), and indeed the normal form of rapper "stepping" – a form of shuffle imported in the 1920s from the local clog dance tradition – would not be possible if a jig were not used. However, some of the earliest teams used hornpipes rather than jigs. The jigs used include local tunes, although most rapper jigs used for at least the last hundred years are Irish tunes, probably imported by Irish immigrants to Tyneside in the nineteenth century. Many instruments can and have been used to accompany rapper dances, the most popular being fiddles, tin whistles and accordions. The music is usually performed solo, although can be performed as a duet; however, rapper is not usually performed to a band.

The costume in which the dance is usually performed, referred to as the "kit", is a stylized version of the working clothes of the local nineteenth century coal miner (see photograph, left). It consists of shirt, sash, breeches, hoggers (similar to breeches but shorter) or long trousers, and socks or stockings. Some traditional teams decorated their kit with ribbons or rosettes, and added a tie and/or waistcoat.

Modern teams use a variety of kits, mostly based on the traditional costume, with each team using different combinations of colours to try to have a unique corporate image. Some other modern sides, especially women's sides, use very different kits.

An article reviewing the costumes used by traditional sides was published in The NUT and is available in the Archives section of The NUT on the Net website.

Based on early historical records, the dance would appear to be derived from an older tradition using rigid swords – like the Long Sword dance. At some stage in the nineteenth century, these rigid swords were replaced by flexible rappers. This major development in the tradition may have been entirely accidental – perhaps someone tried to improvise a sword using a flexible length of steel (such as a saw blade with the teeth filed down), and in a moment of inspiration realised the potential of using flexible swords. Teams were certainly known to have improvised rappers from mining tools such as saw blades and bed laths; and in any case, purpose-made flexible rappers would have been prohibitively expensive before the invention of the Bessemer process

Bessemer process

The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. The process was independently discovered in 1851 by William Kelly...

in 1855 allowed steel to be made inexpensively.

During the nineteenth century, teams of rapper dancers from the pit village

Pit village

A pit village is a term used in the UK for the village serving a deep coal mine.Many of the workers lived in houses that were provided by the colliery. Many villages have experienced depopulation after colliery closures forced people to move to other towns and cities where there are jobs for them...

s of Tyneside, and later Wearside, would travel annually to the towns of Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

, Sunderland and Durham

Durham

Durham is a city in north east England. It is within the County Durham local government district, and is the county town of the larger ceremonial county...

to perform the dance for the crowds – and for a consideration in money! This was later revived as a source of income during the miners' strikes and lay-offs of the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

By the early twentieth century, the tradition was beginning to die out, but was revived by the interest generated after Cecil Sharp

Cecil Sharp

Cecil James Sharp was the founding father of the folklore revival in England in the early 20th century, and many of England's traditional dances and music owe their continuing existence to his work in recording and publishing them.-Early life:Sharp was born in Camberwell, London, the eldest son of...

published notations for five of the traditional village dances in his book, The Sword Dances of Northern England. After the First World War

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, the revival was marked by the fierce competition between pit villages in the rapper classes of the newly-instituted North of England Musical Tournament held annually in Newcastle upon Tyne.

After the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, the tradition progressively declined in its original pit villages, partly as a result of social changes in the mining communities. However, another revival was initiated after the war by students at Kings College in Newcastle upon Tyne (now the University of Newcastle upon Tyne

University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle University is a major research-intensive university located in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England. It was established as a School of Medicine and Surgery in 1834 and became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne by an Act of Parliament in August 1963. Newcastle University is...

), which subsequently spread beyond the traditional area. Revival teams worldwide now perform the tradition, sometimes learnt from published notations, sometimes taught by rapper dancers in what is almost a continuation of the earlier oral traditions.

In modern times the competitive element of rapper sword dancing has been revived in the form of the DERT competition.

Further information

Further information is provided by the Rapper Online Web site, including the origins and history of the dance, teams listing, notations of traditional dances and more. Current and historical information is also available at The NUT on the Net – the Web edition of The NUT, the journal of the rapper sword dance.

Leading exponents of the tradition in its traditional area include theHigh Spen Blue Diamonds, the Newcastle Kingsmen, Monkseaton Morris Men, the Sallyport Sword Dancers and Short Circuit . The Rapper Online Web site provides a list of rapper sword teams.

The DERT (Dancing England Rapper Tournament) competition, which is open to all rapper sword teams, is held annually. DERT 2011 was held in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

on 4-6 March 2011.

Rapper dancing has gained international popularity. Jack The Rapper, based in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, attended DERT in 1996, 1999 and 2003. The DERT 2005 and 2006 competitions were attended by three teams from the United States: Beside the Point, Candyrapper (2005) and Scrambled Six (2007). There are also teams dancing rapper in Australia, Germany and Basque Country.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.