Symphony No. 1 in E minor: III. Juba Dance

The Juba dance was a rhythmic, foot-stomping, body-slapping dance practiced by enslaved African Americans, since drums were often forbidden them. Price places this dance where a classical symphony would normally put a minuet or scherzo, a light dance-like movement before the finale.

The movement opens with a bouncy, syncopated main tune in the strings and winds, its off-beat accents suggesting hands clapping and feet patting rather than a formal ballroom dance. Listen for the steady, insistent pulse underneath, it never lets up, giving the movement its physical, danced quality even though no one is actually dancing on stage.

A contrasting middle section turns quieter and more lyrical, letting solo winds trade short phrases over a gentler accompaniment, before the opening dance idea returns with fuller orchestration and a more emphatic close. Throughout, listen for the way Price moves the same rhythmic cell through different instrumental colors, so a single idea keeps reappearing dressed differently, strings, then woodwinds, then full orchestra.

The movement is compact and high-spirited, built for momentum rather than development, and it functions as the symphony's scherzo, a fast, playful interlude between the slow second movement and the finale that follows it.

Florence Price composed her Symphony No. 1 in E minor in the early 1930s while living in Chicago, having moved north as part of the Great Migration. She entered the symphony in the Rodman Wanamaker competition and won first prize in 1932. The following year, on June 15, 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed it at the Chicago World's Fair under conductor Frederick Stock, making Price the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. The Juba Dance movement drew on a dance tradition rooted in enslaved communities' improvised rhythms, giving the symphony a distinctly American, African American voice within a European symphonic form. After Price's death in 1953, much of her music went unperformed for decades until manuscripts were rediscovered in 2009, sparking renewed interest and frequent performances of this symphony and its dance movement today.