Both a vigorous rural dance and the musical accompaniment for it. Any discussion of the
term involves both the history of American folk and popular dance and the story of
American popular and folk instrumental music.
The Dictionary of American Regional English lists the word under the main entry
“Breakdown” as a synonym along with “shindig.” The first appearance of “breakdown”
is in a text from 1819. The OED (Oxford English Dictionary), however, locates
“breakdown” in 1864 and “hoedown” as early as 1860. Richard Hopwood Thornton’s An
American Glossary (1912, 2d. ed. 1962) does not include “breakdown” but has three
entries for “hoe-down.”
What appears to be fairly clear respecting the dance tradition is that quite early,
perhaps by the last quarter of the 18th century, a style of dancing heavily influenced by
Blacks, rapid and vigorous in execution, and identified with gatherings of rural people
had developed. It was variously called a breakdown or a hoedown.
A note on the “raftsman passage” from Chapter 16 of the Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn is enlightening. The text describes a keelboat crew in a moment of recreation:
Next they got out an old fiddle, and one played, and another patted juba,
and the rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keelboat
breakdown. They wouldn’t keep that up very long without getting
winded.…
Both dances were of Negro origin: juba, much like a vigorous tap dance to a clapping
accompaniment; and breakdown, a sort of shuffling dance to a fast beat. Bruce R.Buckley
describes the juba as “an African jig-type step with elaborate variations, including stifflegged shuffles and hops” (Buckley 1968:140).
It is likely that the widespread clogging-step dancing-jigging among the English,
Scottish, and Irish immigrants to the New World provided a stimulus that enabled Blacks
to accommodate this European tradition to their own usages, among which the juba was
prominent. In notes accompanying a 1976 Library of Congress issue of American Fiddle
Tunes, Alan Jabbour identifies the reel as the same as a breakdown. Thus, another
stimulus was the set dance—reels, quadrilles, and square dances often accompanied by
the fiddle in 2/4 or 6/8 time.
As for the music to which the hoedown was danced, Robert Perry Christeson’s twovolume The Old-Time Fiddler’s Repertory offers about 200 tunes in musical notation
with key signatures and time indications, identifying them as breakdowns, quadrilles, and
“pieces.” Here, indeed, are most of the favorites of both dancers and fiddlers: “Soldier’s
Joy,” “Devil among theTailors,” “Hell among the Yearlings,” “Gray Eagle,” “Tom and
Jerry,” “Mississippi Sawyer,” and many more, not to mention breakdowns identified by
number rather than title (Christeson 1973–1984).
It is not uncommon for fiddlers to refer to these tunes as square-dance tunes,
quadrilles, or simply dance tunes. What some fiddlers play in 2/4 time, others play in 6/8.
And the variations in the names of the tunes show the same folk process of dynamic
variation apparent in the execution of the tunes: “Forked Deer,” “Forked Horn Deer,”
“Forky Horn Deer,” “Durand’s Hornpipe,” “Durang’s Hornpipe,” “Durango Hornpipe,”
and so on.
In the absence of solid evidence, folk etymologists have supplied engaging,
imaginative, and perhaps even accurate ways of accounting for the terms “hoedown” and
“breakdown.” By some it is suggested that a certain configuration in the dancing of a
quadrille is called a breakdown. Why it is not called something else is not clear. Another
explanation is that in performance a fiddler breaks the piece down into its most musical
components of melody and rhythm and concentrates upon them, an explanation not
unlike the familiar “emotional core” of which a ballad consists. Another explanation
holds that both terms refer to a work stoppage. When a breakdown in some part of a work
process occurred or when an essential piece of equipment was broken—a wagon made
immobile because of a broken coupling pole or “reach,” for instance—there was a
corresponding moment of leisure until the equipment could be repaired. During this lull,
the hoes (perhaps a metonym for all hand implements) were laid down, and the juba and
step dancing-jigging-clogging were performed.
Yet another folk etymologist suggests that in performing a breakdown-hoedown the
dancers’ improvisations included imitations of wielding a hoe. A final explanation claims
that the expression “hoedown” conveyed the idea of speed. Thus, rapid dancing would
have that term applied to it. If this last explanation seems either ingenuous or ingenious,
one might reflect upon the last stanza of “Dixie”:
Dar’s buckwheat cakes and Injun batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter:
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble,
To Dixie’s land I’m bound to trabble;
Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land!
Make haste, line four of this mid-19th century song says, using the words in verb form,
hurry it up, dig out, and get yourself back to Dixie.
If today’s “Flint Hill Special” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” are representative,
the present notion of a breakdown or hoedown features strong rhythm, a driving banjo or
banjo-fiddle lead, and speedy execution, appropriate for clogging but probably too fast
for a square dance.
Louie W.Attebery
References
Attebery, Louie W. 1979. The Fiddle Tune: An American Artifact. In Readings in American
Folklore, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand. New York: W.W.Norton, pp. 324–333.
Buckley, Bruce R. 1968. “Honor Your Ladies”: Folk Dance in the United States. In Our Living
Traditions: An Introduction to American Folklore, ed. Tristram Potter Coffin. New York: Basic
Books, pp. 134–141.
Christeson, R.P. 1973–1984. The Old-Time Fiddler’s Repertory. 2 vols. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press.
Quigley, Colin. 1985. Close to the Floor: Folk Dance in Newfoundland. St. Johns, Newfoundland:
Memorial University.