juke, jook, joint, ?
![Picture](/uploads/4/9/0/3/49033527/8840383_orig.jpg)
So how did the famous music box earn its funky name?
- ‘juke-joint’ = a small inexpensive café mainly in the southern States. These public houses were typically reserved for blacks only and were located right next to cotton fields.
- ‘juke-box’ = an automatic coin-op phonograph
But how does one "juke"? Or..what is a "juke"? Both "juke" and "jook" derive from the ancient Elizabethan word "jouk." Brought to America from Western Africa, this term is believed to mean "to dance or act wildly (disorderly) in the evening after a long hard days work in the (cotton) fields" (Almind 12)
"In 'The Story of the Blues' by Paul Oliver, published 1969, the following sentence can be found on page 21: '...Saturday night was for good times, with the liquor flowing, the shouts and laughter of dancers rising above the noise of a juke band or gin-mill piano, and sometimes the staccato report of a revolver fired in jest - or in earnest...' (Almind 30).
Below is a clip from the film "The Color Purple" (1984). The film's setting stretches from 1909-1936. This scene showcases the culture of a juke joint. The camera pans through the crowded room slowly, like a visitor experiencing the joint for the first time. It gives viewers a sense of the intimate space, the celebratory spirit, the blues music, the liquor, the dancing and the romance of this hideaway. Important to note (and hard to miss) is the presence of the band in this juke joint. The transition from live music to the mechanical jukebox is uniquely grounded in the place and time
Below is a clip from the film "The Color Purple" (1984). The film's setting stretches from 1909-1936. This scene showcases the culture of a juke joint. The camera pans through the crowded room slowly, like a visitor experiencing the joint for the first time. It gives viewers a sense of the intimate space, the celebratory spirit, the blues music, the liquor, the dancing and the romance of this hideaway. Important to note (and hard to miss) is the presence of the band in this juke joint. The transition from live music to the mechanical jukebox is uniquely grounded in the place and time