Entry · catalog no. 4208
slow drag
/ /ˌsloʊ ˈdræɡ/ /sloh DRAG
verb · New Orleans and the rural Black South · 1890s
✓ Verified
1.
A close-embrace partner dance at slow tempo: the couple pressed together, hips swaying or grinding, feet dragging across the floor rather than stepping, with little travel around the room.
“They slow dragged through the whole set and never left that one square of floor.”
2.
The slow tempo written for it, and by extension any slow-tempo rag or blues built to be danced that way.
“A Real Slow Drag — the finale of Treemonisha.”
Origin & Attribution
Black New Orleans in the 1890s and the jook joints of the rural South. Scott Joplin is the one who wrote it down: the slow drag is one of ten figures called out by the vocalist in "The Ragtime Dance," composed in 1899 and published in 1902, and the finale of his opera Treemonisha, published in 1911, is titled "A Real Slow Drag" and comes with Joplin own written Directions for the Slow Drag — when moving forward, drag the left foot; when moving backward, drag the right. That is a Black composer notating a Black social dance, and it deserves to be read as the choreographic record it is rather than as a curiosity. The New Orleans bassist Alcide Pavageau, born 1888, carried the nickname Slow Drag for the rest of his life because of what he could do in the contests on Basin Street. Alan Lomax found the same dance still going in the Delta decades later. The white press called it obscene; contemporary dance scenes tend to relabel it generically as blues dancing, which severs it from its name.
1899
Joplin names it as a figure in "The Ragtime Dance" (published 1902)
1911
Joplin publishes written Directions for the Slow Drag with Treemonisha
1993
Lomax describes it still danced belly to belly in the Delta
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
New Orleans and the rural Black South · 1890s
Spoken by
New Orleans and rural Black Southern jook dancers; later urban blues rooms
$SLOWDRThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring124 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
50/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1902
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
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Citations & Sources
■
"The Ragtime Dance," Scott Joplin — composed 1899, published 1902
published
■
Treemonisha, Scott Joplin — opera, published 1911, with Directions for the Slow Drag
published
■
Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau (1888–1969), New Orleans bassist nicknamed for the dance
oral history
■
+ Cite a sourceThe Land Where the Blues Began, Alan Lomax — book · 1993
book
See also