The thing is, dancing plagues are a totally real thing.
I had to google this to make sure I had not just dreamed reading about them years ago, but it's true. Dancing mania spread throughout Europe many times, predominantly in the 14th and 17th centuries, but the oldest documented case was as early as the 7th century. It affected thousands of people, and to this day has no commonly accepted medical explanation. These weren't just huge parties later decried as unhealthy; men, women and children were all affected and danced to the point of passing out. In one of the most well documented cases, the outbreak in Strasbourg, Alsace in 1518, four hundred people danced over the period of a month. Many died from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion. Various records from the time exist that agree the afflicted were dancing, not having seizures or other medically explainable symptoms. Three centuries earlier, in 1278, two hundred people were compelled to dance across a bridge, which collapsed under the combined weight. The number of outbreaks is surprisingly large and spans across centuries, but there have been no documented cases since the 1600s.
Whether or not Reed based his Jes Grew off of historical dancing plagues is unclear. I haven't seen much evidence to support his being aware of their existence, but I'm not sure what such evidence would look like. Realizing dancing plagues are real, though, felt very similar to first hearing about Michael Kohlhaas. Both Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo are set in real historical time periods and chronicle real events, but with obviously fictitious elements added in. The distinction between historically accurate and not usually seems pretty obvious, or at least can be satisfied by a quick Google search. It is a comforting distinction to be able to make. Yet in both cases, there is a much older historical basis for something we have assumed to be made up. It is a little unnerving, as the line become fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred.
Ok for a moment while reading this I thought you were just making stuff up just because this concept is so outlandish. But no, dancing mania really is a thing. Its crazy that people would dance themselves to death and not stop. Science has multiple explanations for why they could just dance, but it just seems really weird and alien to have people do that, completely unlike any other disease I've heard of.
ReplyDeleteYour idea of the historical connection makes perfect sense. It is a historical fiction book, so it makes sense that Ishmael Reed would link Jes Grew in his book to an actual disease, granting more credibility to the text. It still is hard to believe though, even when I know that it actually happened.
Once again I am pretty surprised that some of the things we are reading actually existed in history. I had heard of vague references to "plagues" that made people dance hysterically, but I had never realized that they were so widespread and had such severe physical effects. I had always assumed that they were more neurological conditions, perhaps an environmental factor that caused mass hysteria. Realizing that this is partially true just serves to blur the lines even more between history and fiction in these novels.
ReplyDeleteIt is extremely interesting to find that another fact that seems to be fiction actually happened in history. I feel as though, through Ragtime and now in Mumbo Jumbo, most of the narrative is actually based in historical fact. Certainly in Ragtime most of the text is realistic enough to be fact, and even in Mumbo Jumbo things that probably are fictional, such as the Wallflower order, do have counterpart that exist in real life, such as groups like the Illuminati.
ReplyDeleteWow. I'm just trying to sort out how dancing can be turned into a plauge in real life. I guess it is fun, but I feel like people would stop once they got tired. It's very interesting, it's totally possible that this sort of circumstance could have happened.
ReplyDeleteThe language of infectious disease is often used in dance music itself to celebrate its ability to take over the host's body ("fever," "lose control," a dance "sweeping the nation," being "taken over" by a groove, etc.). So partly Reed is exploiting a familiar metaphorical pool here.
ReplyDeleteBut I have mentioned that the scope of this narrative will eventually expand all the way back to ancient Egypt--Reed sees this Jes Grew epidemic as a recent battle in a very long war--and part of that will entail tracing this "war" throughout European history. The dancing plagues of the late middle ages might indeed be part of his "evidence" for this narrative.
As a social phenomenon I suppose we have to think about what would cause this: maybe a bunch of people got together, started dancing, had fun, and then the whole crowd mentality thing kicked in and it became a huge dance party. Obviously, in 14th-17th century Europe, this would have been a pretty crazy thing from the eyes of the upper classes (doing the writing of the history). Reading the wikipedia article I noticed this: "Generally, musicians accompanied dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in." Uh...duh?
ReplyDeleteReed having now revealed the Egyptian background to the Jes Grew story, the dancing mania now feels like it has a new sort of power attached to it since it goes beyond just black culture in America all the way to ancient civilizations and in between. I find it really interesting that there haven't been anymore documented cases of dancing mania since the 1600's though; I wonder what exactly caused it to stop/what's different about modern society so that we don't have any more of these cases...
ReplyDeleteI've heard of dancing plagues before, and they sound really wild. It's interesting that none have been documented since the 1600s, I wonder how something like that would be explained today (by people not doing the dancing). You said that people would keep dancing until they passed out/had heart attacks/etc. This seems kind of different than Jes Grew, which is supposed to give its host energy and life rather than exhausting them.
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