Theorizing ‘Africanness’: Why ‘African Dance’ is not ‘African Dance’

What has baffled me most throughout my academic and professional career is the concept “African Dance.” In a world in which almost everything is framed in the idiom of the market, the concept ‘African Dance’ has proven particularly compelling. Widely used by academic institutions, arts organisations, dance companies and troupes, scholars, teachers, performers, and a wide range of arts practitioners, this concept is still craving for a comprehensively laid out explanation. In an attempt to find an accurate rationalization of what is and what is not ‘African Dance’, I have bounced the question: ‘What is African about ‘African Dance’?’ to a range of people, including continental Africans.

The answers that I have received in response to the above question are as varied as the people that I have consulted. In fact, the responses have raised more questions than answers. A number of these responses are just a regurgitation of what some scholars have posited as “characteristics of ‘African Dance’” – use of the drum, circular formation, poly-rhythmic, orientated towards the earth, improvisation, isolation of body parts, etc.

This lack of explanatory intelligibility makes the concept ‘African Dance’ resemble the biblical tower of Babel, which builders failed to complete because they started speaking different languages-tongues.

The questions that arise from this conceptual ambiguity are: Why is the concept ‘African Dance’ a mystification? If the concept ‘African Dance’ is too succinct, how deep is its impact?

It appears the coining of this concept was based on the assumption of universalism of knowledge and cultural practices in Africa. Theorization of dance and music practices from cultures in Africa was anchored in the sense of “’horizontal fraternity’, itself imaginatively embedded in fiction of cultural homogeneity” (J.L. Comaroff & J. Comaroff, 2009). Artistic relativism and ethnic heterogeneity was disregarded. Yet, Africa as a continent is a collection of heterogeneous demographics, and not a homogeneous entity. It is estimated that Africa is composed of more than 3000 tribal and sub-tribal communities, with each tribe boasting of a range of cultural practices that are poles apart.

The miscellany of ethnicities and sub-ethnicities translates into multiplicities of music and dance traditions that are distinct from one another and unique to these particular communities. As Judith Lynne Hanna appositely attests, “Africa has about 1000 different languages and probably as many dance patterns. Dance styles vary enormously and so do definitions of dance. For example, among the Ibo, Akan, Efik, Azande, and Kamba, dance involves vocal and instrumental music, including the drum, whereas among the Zulu, Matabele, Shi, Ngoni, Turkana, and Wanyaturu, drums are not used, and sometimes the users of drums are despised.” Therefore, to clamp these culturally diverse dance forms into one umbrella – ‘African Dance’, was bound to create ontological, epistemological, axiological and etymological challenges in the study and practice of dance forms from cultures in Africa. 

 Karimojong people of North Eastern Uganda performing one of the traditional dances. The drum is not common in dances of the Karamojong people.

The notion that ‘African Dance’ is ‘African Dance’ was exacerbated by the actuality that most of Africa’s pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial cultural history was written and documented by habitually non-Africans. And frequently, early European observers of African behavior did not consider African dance to be dance, for it was not the familiar classical ballet or foot-tapping folk dance of their home countries (Hanna, 1973). This history cannot be wished away for it forms and informs the current academic, literary and artistic discourses and trajectories.  Whereas writing about cultural history might seem to be mere chronicling of events, circumstance, experiences, stories and instances, the interpretation and consumption of ethno-commodities by the writer (consumer), and its conversion into literary work is as imperative. In the process of writing, these commodities are re-processed, re/mis/interpreted, and misrepresented. In this instance, theorization of vernacular dance forms from cultures in Africa suffered latent and manifest orientalism, which gave birth to contemporary artistic orientalism.      

The first researchers, writers and teachers of dances from cultures in Africa were mostly Europeans and North Americans. Moreover, they were anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and sociologists – not dancers. According to Mazrui (2002), our understanding of Africa and its past has been bedeviled by reports written by imaginative European travelers throughout the continent. Predictably, their analysis, conceptualization and interpretation of cultural identities in Africa was more ‘Americentric’ and Eurocentric than ‘Afrocentric’. Not even their ethnographic approaches to scientific and non-scientific discovery could deliver clarity and details encompassed in dance practices from cultures in Africa! In many ways, the recollection of past events, passed on by word of mouth in Africa today, may be a better guide than the vivid and romantic accounts of some of the European explorers (Mazrui, 2002).

In this Western-oriented literary trajectory, the content generated about dances from Africa fell prey of a noteworthy scale of confirmation, intellectual and cultural bias; and the ensuing knowledge de-Africanized. Cognizant of the fact that “Africans are a people of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow" (Mazrui, 1986), what must concern us is the history of the present. Or, more specifically, its effects: how is it alternating the comportment in which artistry, scholarship and teaching of dances from cultures in Africa is experienced, philosophized, conceptualized, re-theorized, comprehended, ratified, and represented.  

‘African Dance’ is just an imagined concept. It is a sheer geographical expression than a representation of multicultural existentialities and artistic, creative and aesthetic dualities that are replicated in the diverse dance and music traditions. Max Beloff reminds us that 'it is easier to understand the contiguities of geography than continuities of history.' The generalization of African dances has ensconced a subterranean and stereotypical fallacy that Africa is not a continent with mottled demographics but a single identical entity. If we are convinced that the concept ‘African Dance’ is valid, why don’t we have ‘European dance’ or ‘American Dance’ or ‘Asian Dance’ as styles of dance?

The concept ‘African Dance’ is begging for lucidity. Revisiting this notion is logical, and redefining it most apt.  It is our duty as teachers, researchers, trainers, scholars, performers and instructors of “Dances from Cultures in Africa” (emphasis) to unravel this historical distortion, deconstruct this nebulous concept and the mindset that it has fashioned.   

Modifying the concept ‘African Dance’ to ‘Dances from Cultures in Africa’ can be a good starting point in providing this long awaited clarity, which will assist  these art forms to claim their rightful place in modern and global civilization.

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University

Africa needs more female leaders, not great men.

For many years, Africa has grappled with establishing a continent-wide democracy that would shove her population into social, political and economic sumptuousness. A number of interventions have been made at macro and micro levels to achieve socio-political and economic transformation but the results have not been proportionate.

It seems the fissure in this endeavor is lack of full involvement of women in the management of political and non political enterprises. Yet, Desmond Tutu, a South African Clergyman and human rights activist reminds us thus: “If we want to see real development in the world then our best investment is women.” It is this strength that women richly posses that Orville Richard Burrell aka Shaggy reiterates in his famous musical hit ‘strength of a woman.’  

The strength of a woman is a historical precedent. When society entered Neolithic age from monolithic era, women took up the responsibility of attending to agriculture (gatherers).  Men continued to live as hunters. Here is the thing. With agriculture, you have to invest in the garden, take good care of it in order to get a good harvest. With hunting, you do not need to invest at all. You just go to the grassland and poach. It is in this reality that the view that women are naturally investors and not exploiters, service providers and not plunders, and caregivers/takers and not opportunists, finds a home.  Because of this natural knack to facilitate life, women in sub-Saharan cultures are considered to be ‘the custodians of the earth.’

From a theological perspective, it is women who gathered bits and pieces of bravery to approach the tomb in which the great spiritual giant, Jesus Christ, had been buried. They are the ones who broke the news that the tomb was empty, the man had resurrected. Therefore, it is women who midwifed the highly celebrated EASTER holiday.

Fast track to politics. The continental political barometer indicates that women, if given chance can preside over the much needed change. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president has been able to pull the West African country out of trenches of political instability that Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor, her predecessor, had dumped it into. Liberia had become the ‘mad-man of West Africa.’ Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hague for masterminding military and political mayhem in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But nobody has captured the eyes and hearts of her admirers and adversaries than Maama Joyce Hilda Banda, the president of Malawi. Maama Banda rose to political acme after the sudden demise of her predecessor, Bingu wa Mutharika. Banda was Bingu’s vice president.

When Banda fell out with Bingu wa Mutharika, her former antecedent and boss over political management of the country, politics reared its ugly head.  The president opened the political den, and let out sharks to slice Banda into pieces with aim end her political ambitions. The vultures persistently hovered over Banda’s political umbrella

Malawian President Joyce Hilda Banda

Like a serene wife in an abusive marriage, Maama Banda let patience, calmness, and judiciousness prevail over emotional fury and political anguish. She was saved by her levelheadedness, and the constitution - which bared the President from firing the vice president.

As fate and luck would have it, President Bingu wa Mutharika succumbed to heart attack, and the constitution delivered Maama Banda to the highest office in Malawiland.

In office for hardly 3 months, Maama Banda’s desire to make sagacious reforms leaves even the most vigilant person to doze in complacency. She knows very well that you cannot have a starving/malnourished family and line up to buy a pet – a German shepherd. Or, you cannot be a vagabond and live like Kim Kardashian.

Maama Banda has moved to sell of all luxurious coupés that the former president had invested most of Malawi’s little money in. She is also determined to sell or lease the $13 million presidential jet, which Bingu wa Mutharika, her late predecessor, had bought in 2009. “I can well use private airlines,” she reportedly said. She has a master plan to inject all the proceeds in grassroots projects that will kick start transformation of Malawi.

The recurring excuse that the women that have proved themselves as able leaders are too few to warrant assurance that women can deliver Africa is tired, spurious, and tenuous. It nauseates. It must be retired. The point here is that the number of men who have wrecked havoc, messed up, and violated the political power vested in them by masses is overwhelming.  

 

  An interior view of the multimillion mansion of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe

Africa’s male presidents are experts in immersing themselves into privilege of living. Their political survival is fundamentally dependent on corruption and patronage, and not delivery of public goods and services. Of course, there are some male leaders that have caused the much needed change. But these visionary leaders have been let down by their counterparts, the vast majority, who plunder their countries to facilitate their gluttony for luxury and self economic aggrandizement. 

They live a deluxe and snobbish lifestyle that would make dotcom celebrities such as Kanye West, 50 Cent, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Nikk Minaj, David Beckham etc to faint in envy. These charlatans are never bothered about the plight of the people that they lead. 

Africa is yearning for not only the mindset of visionary ladies like Maama Banda but also their active leadership in body politic, social and economic bureaucratic at all levels. The last bullet that Africa has in her chamber is women. Men have had their opportunity and they have flagrantly squandered it.

Let the continent give women a chance!

We have mobilized them in large numbers, we have circumcised them; let’s encourage women to firmly wield the surgical knife.

Male circumcision or ‘peni-surgery’ is selling like a proverbial hot cake. Hospitals and private clinics are minting money out of this exercise. Surgeons are smiling all the way to the bank by merely making people lose their body parts. All you need to do is to project yourself as a ‘peni-surgeon’, and those craving for the knife will flood your clinic in numbers. The euphoria with which male circumcision was met is almost overwhelming the medical facilities that offer such services. 

The government of Uganda has also joined the male circumcision mantra. Priority populations for male circumcision include: all male adults, young male adults, adolescent males, male newborns, and men at higher risk HIV exposure. Service delivery modes that have been identified include: hospitals, clinics, outreach, mobile vans, public and private non-governmental organisations, and other licensed bodies. The task of male circumcision implementation has been vested in the hands of: surgeons, family physicians, and clinical officers.

Male circumcision is spreading like bush fire. More than 360 young males were circumcised in less than one week in Arua district alone, while more than 200 turned up for the same operation in Rukungiri district in just the month of May. You get to know the magnitude of a campaign when people in upcountry areas vehemently adhere to the call. BUT the question is: why are people clamoring for male circumcision? What is the magic in circumcision that has ignited this bravery in men to face the knife?

 Young boys lining up for circumcision in Arua District (Photo by Clement Aluma, The Daily Monitor)

Well, a number of reasons have been fronted. There is a section of society that is circumcising for purely health purposes. Unarguably, majority of males are flooding health centers for circumcision because of popular belief that male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS acquisition during penile-vaginal sex. There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60% (WHO). Health experts believe that male circumcision shrinks chances of acquiring HIV/AIDS on grounds that: "removal of the foreskin reduces the ability of HIV to penetrate the skin of the penis, immunological cells such as langerhans are prime targets of HIV, small tear during sexual intercourse could allow a portal of entry for HIV, and men with foreskin are prone to sexually transmitted infections." (NTV Uganda, June 11,2012).

It seems the blissful euphoria about male circumcision is soaked in the trendy credence that ‘peni-surgery’ is the solitary waft to HIV/AIDS bane. This mindset has to be encouraged and discouraged. Discouraged in the sense that the already circumcised and those in the circumcision queue have to be reminded that “Male circumcision provides only partial protection, and therefore should be only one element of a comprehensive HIV prevention package” (WHO). Circumcision alone does not mean that a person can have sexual marathons across different villages/neighborhoods, towns and cities with impunity. Like big brother, HIV/AIDS is out there watching; he is sophisticated and constantly set to pounce on any lackadaisical prey. 

HIV/AIDS is a challenge that is still feasting on our demographic fabric. We cannot just armpit this fact. In his 2012 state of the nation address, President Museveni lamented that “Ugandans have relaxed on HIV/AIDS.  I hear the prevalence rate has gone up to 7%.  More dangerously, new infections were 129,000 in 2011 up from 115,000 in 2007.  This is an increase of about 3,500 new infections per annum. What a big shame!  Why should anybody get HIV/AIDS today when all the information on prevention is available?  HIV/AIDS only is transmitted through promiscuity.  Close this gap.  Some of the interventions cover up this failure.  Anti-promiscuity measures must be emphasized.” Museveni’s dirge is not farfetched!  Exhilaration about male circumcision as emerging precautionary gizmo against the deadly virus threatens to undercut the efficacy, and desire to apply other methods of HIV/AIDS control. 

Yet, if HIV/AIDS scourge is to be deterred from spreading, other methods of preclusion such as abstinence use of condom and faithfulness between couples, have to be plainly and consistently articulated and promoted.

The male circumcision theme song or/and prayer should be composed and sung or/and recited for and by the freshly circumcised. The lyrics of this song or/and prayer should emphasise that: “HIV/AIDS is still with us. It is still an existential reality. It is so much alive, and its jaws are wide open to clip whoever boogies in its territory. Losing a sheath is not a guarantee that a person is well shielded from its venomous transgression. A surgical knife alone cannot surrogate condom usage, abstinence, and faithfulness between couples.”

I personally do not believe in programs that exclude women especially when it comes to issues where they are key stakeholders. Male circumcision is one of the programs that have kept women on the sidelines.  Yet women can play a key role in making the anti HIV/AIDS message sink in the heads and hearts of men before and after circumcision.

In this bend, women should be encouraged to always wield a double bladed, triangularly edged surgical knife with abstinence, use of condom and faithfulness between partners at each apex, and circumcision at the center. They should persistently sharpen this knife with reminder to the ‘foreskinful’ and ‘foreskinless’ men that HIV/AIDS is still on rampage. And they need to always keep this knife near that male body part that is in constant hankering for circumcision and what follows after that.

Serving Beyond the Stage: The Role of the Arts in Community Building in Post War Areas in the Great Lakes Region

In my previous article, I provided an account of the consequences armed conflicts and rebellions have meted out on cultural arts practices in the great lakes region. One of the grave effects is alienation of communities from their cultural history and chronological heritage. A number of interventions have been instituted by governments, civil society organisations, private sector agencies and non-governmental organisations with aim to aid rebuilding and resettlement of communities in post war areas. Focus has been put on education, health, agriculture, and physical infrastructures sectors.  Not enough resources have been invested in the culture sector as a driver that can steer social, political and economic transformation.

Indigenous performing arts act as an encyclopedia of cultural norms, practices, beliefs, values, philosophies, ideologies and theories. Language, dress code, economic practices, theological beliefs, ethno-botany and medicine, and social structures are coalesced in music, dance and drama of a people. Further, the arts are a laboratory in which cultural evolution can be tested or/ and detected. Reclaiming cultural identity is vital in advancing social, psychological, political, and cultural empowerment of the communities that were ravaged by armed conflicts in the great lakes region. This sense of cultural identity cannot be reinstated without active application and utilization of arts.

Whereas communities in war torn regions were distanced away from their indigenous music and dance practices, some arts performance elements were retained in some cases. Additionally, there are knowledgeable individuals that survived the wrath of this armed conflicts. To this end, communities can be supported to utilize the already available knowledge and resources to repossess what the war snatched away from them.  Community based performances, indigenous family apprenticeship in the arts, competitions, festivals and ceremonies that engross the arts should be encouraged within these communities. This will revivify the lost sense of cultural identity, cachet and pride.

Population in the great lakes region is becoming younger. With fertility rate at 6.7% in Uganda, 4.8% in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 6.7% in Southern Sudan, 4.46% in Burundi, and 5.4%in Rwanda, the young population is promising to do all but rise. Cases of young population explosion in post war areas are evident. To this end, it is imperative to design programs tailor-made to facilitate early child development. These communities have music and dances that were composed and created to encourage social, cultural, physical, psychological, and psycho-motor development and empowerment of the child. 

 Children in northern Uganda performing Bwola dance (courtesy photo)

Performing arts can be used to advance creativity, nurture talent, cultivate cultural consciousness, and encourage a sense of communal responsibility among the young population. In addition to providing the education, shelter, health care and food for the child, stakeholders need to encourage and promote integration of arts in programs that target children in post war areas.

From a purely economic standpoint, cultural arts can impart skills and knowledge that youth in post war areas can turn into economic ventures.  Training in music composition and performance, dance choreography and performance, arts documentation and production can advance competence of these communities in the arts. Government and other stakeholders need to develop and implement programs that aim to encourage communities to convert indigenous art forms into commercial products. Follow up mechanisms can be put in place to promote and market artistic works produced by these communities. This will increase the employability and productivity of youth in these communities.

The importance of the arts in fostering lifelong skills is well captured by Charles Onyango Obbo (The Daily Monitor, March 21, 2012) who has noted thus: “The best example for this, in Makerere University at least, is in a place where no one ever looks. It is at what was once, and probably still is, the most despised course at Makerere University – Music, Dance, and Drama (MDD). The most tired and small-minded joke on Makerere Hill for years is that MDD stands for Musiru Dala Dala (he/she is very stupid).  However, MDD is the only course at Makerere that teaches you to be what you learn. You learn to act, and you act. You learn to sing, and you sing.” Communities in post war areas need lifelong skills that will aid localized and grassroots-based productivity and competitiveness at a national, regional and international level.

We cannot talk about revamping the education system for communities in post war areas without creating space for the arts within the mainstream curriculum. Education models developed for different levels of education in these areas need to be hyper local. Indigenous knowledge, which is richly imbedded in the arts and other cultural practices, should form the basis for the broader education sector. The arts should have a place in the curriculum, the classroom, and within community-based education paradigms. 

It is worth noting that performing arts from ethnicities in post war areas carry educational and informative messages and knowledge. Systems within the education sector must be established to tap into this rich resource, encourage cross-cultural awareness, and cultivate intra-cultural consciousness.

Programs developed to resettle people back into villages and communities from internally displaced persons camps (IDPs) need to incorporate the arts for community building, therapeutic purposes, intra-ethnic reconciliation, and cultural receptivity. People should be supported to participate in arts related activities that aim to address pressing issues such as health, education, agriculture, environment, sanitation, reconciliation, among others. The best way to empower these communities is by allowing them to partake and own processes that are set to achieve social, cultural, political and economic transformation.  

The arts can be used as a service in the rebuilding and recovery course in post armed conflict areas. We stand to lose a lot if we stick to the mentality that restricts the arts to the stage.

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University