cakewalk

To say that something is a cakewalk means, to us, that it is easy to do. But there are those will look reprovingly at you for using this expression and point to its history in slavery in the U.S.  Apparently the cakewalk was part of the fun in get-togethers that the slaves had on the plantation, at which there was dancing, singing and the chalk-line walk or walk-around. This was an event in which performers were asked to produce the most elegant walk. Sometimes they followed a twisting, turning chalk-line while balancing a bucket of water on their heads. The winner was given a prize of some sort.

The origins of this are supposed to lie in the ring shout, a religious ritual in which the people shuffled around in a circle in a kind of ecstasy. This was brought to America from Africa.  There is an alternative theory that it was an African war dance brought to America, one in which the participants jumped and gesticulated violently but then walked around solemnly in couples.

The slaves are thought to have incorporated send-ups of the plantation owner’s style of dancing in ballrooms, although the objects of their satire never realised this. And sometimes the prize was a cake.

However, once the performance was made part of the centenary celebrations at Philadelphia in 1876, it became a popular item in minstrel shows where the prancing walk was even more exaggerated, and thus a mainstream entertainment.  The prize in Philadelphia was an enormous cake, and so the name settled as the cakewalk.

Very few people would be aware of this history now. But the cakewalk perhaps survives in the 1980s Harlem drag performances in New York  where balls featured a competitive walk to win trophies or money.  And from there it is on to RuPaul’s Drag Race.