military, which were guided by the pragmatic color-blindness of American capitalism and militarism, skating rinks were amongst the last bastions of social “leisure” spaces separating white from Black. But unlike the then newly implemented integration of the labor force and the U.S. In the forties and fifties, roller rinks, like swimming pools, amusement parks, and other spaces of recreation in America, were strongholds of de facto segregation in the North, where the second phase of large scale African American migration from the South had recently come to a close. And to understand why is to understand the remarkable space that it occupies at the very core of American civil rights struggles.īut first, a brief history. In short, skating has been vital to both the evolution of popular American dance and dance music for decades. Yet its influence on the development of dance music, from disco, funk, and R&B, to hip-hop, crunk, Miami bass, techno, and later on, footwork, has long gone criminally underdocumented-a glaring omission also reflected in the larger context of academic roller skating histories. And unbeknownst to most of white America, where roller rinks have long closed down or are used predominantly for “artistic” breakdance and figure skating-like competitions, skate culture in Black communities continues to be as popular today as it ever was. Because roller skating in the United States-specifically “style” skating-has long been a Black American past time. That is, predominantly for white communities. However, skating isn’t just defined by a smoothness dictated by the DJ’s predominantly groove- and loop-based music-it has long fed back into the production of dance music that’s as popular outside of the rink as inside.Īnd yet, within the broader pop-cultural narrative, roller skating, like disco, still receives short shrift as a fad that went out of style with pet rocks. Zooming out farther, skaters cruise at rinks counter-clockwise in an oval, over and over again, lost in rhythm but always gliding in time to an all-powerful groove laid down by the DJ. The history of modern roller skating and its relationship to dance music is one of direction, flow, and repetition: on the most micro level, wheels turn, allowing pivots and limbs to swerve and sway.
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