Does Indigenous Training of Ethnic Dances in African Cultures Follow any Inherent Pedagogy?

In February of this year, I was invited to present a paper entitled: “Different Paths, same Destination: Comparison between Indigenous Ugandan Communal-based Dance Pedagogy and Formal/Western Dance Education Pedagogy” during the Dance across the Board conference organized by Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. My presentation dwelled on convergences and divergences between indigenous dance pedagogy in Ugandan cultures and formal/western dance pedagogy. This article is an abridged version of my paper, with specific accent on the pedagogy underlying training of traditional dances in native cultures in Africa.

Dances in cultures in Africa have existed and survived even without archival documentation and Western formal education. Communities in Africa relied on oral tradition as a form of information dissemination and documentation. Suffice it to note that dance is yet to be fully incorporated in the education curriculum in most parts of Africa, and that formal education has not abundantly permeated the geographical fabric of the continent. As such, the thread that has supported the survival and existence of dances even after the advent of colonialism and Christianity in Africa is their strong embodiment of culture and attachment to people. How are communities able to pass on dance skills and knowledge in the absence formal/western education systems? Does absence of western/formal dance education systems in indigenous communities mean nonexistence of dance pedagogy?

Unquestionably, training of dances in cultures in Africa is based on an inherent and set pedagogy, albeit undocumented. Indigenous pedagogy is one of the components that serve and feed the knowledge and value systems that dances are preordained to sustain, enrich, support, and test. Indigenous pedagogy is in tandem with the procedures, ethics, standards, frameworks, policies, practices, values, and the overall philosophy of a people. To deconstruct the pedagogy underlying teaching of dances in African cultures, I will proceed to discuss the training systems, teachers and learners, learning environment and management of training, school and classroom, content delivered and  methods of delivery, teaching and learning aids, evaluation and provision of feedback.

Education/training system

Training of dances in cultures in Africa is based on a set system. The taxonomy of this system starts before a child is born and develops after their demise. Before a child is born, s/he is introduced to rhythm and movement through songs and dances that the mother is subjected to as part of indigenous antenatal care and treatment. The child is exposed to dance and music by extension. The same child is introduced to music as a toddler, child, adolescent, young adult, adult and ancestor (after his/her death). Dance facilitates progressive graduation of a human being at each stage of growth and development. At each stage of human growth there is a set of dances that a person is exposed to.  As such, we can conclude that the indigenous dance teaching and learning system covers pre-birth, post birth, toddlerhood, childhood, post-childhood/’adolescenthood’, adulthood and post-adulthood grades/stages of education. Indigenous dance training follows a clearly laid out chronological and ascending system.

The teacher and learner

The concepts of a teacher and leaner are communally shared and embraced. At any occasion of learning or performing dance, the participants double as teachers and learners. There is a tendency to learn from and teach one another. The communal identity and spirit that is inherent in dances from cultures in Africa is, to a very large extent, a byproduct of individual identities that congregate to form the collective. The shared responsibility of teaching and learning is meant to encourage collective ownership of the dances learned. It also persuades continual metamorphosis and purification of the dances by tapping into the diverse wealth of dance competencies, skills and knowledge that different people posses. Dance is a result of communal consensus between different individuals who contribute to its creation and teaching.

Learning environment and management of learning and teaching

The learning environment is porous and all inclusive, particularly for dances that are not gender, age, sub-lineage or clan specific. But even with dances that are specific to particular populations, there is litheness for entitled persons to play a part. The erudition atmosphere provides room for participants to project their individuality through improvisation, and to learn from one another. Commonly, communal performance, teaching and learning of dance happen simultaneously. The teaching and learning philosophy that is ardently followed is: “do as you learn, and learn as you do.” This philosophy is inspirational in style and transformational in objective. In some instances, the most experienced members of the community “provide leadership” in the teaching, learning and performance processes. I have put provide leadership in inverted commas because these master performers do not impose content on the participants. Rather, they provide support basing on what the learners already know and have. In this context, respect for one another and discipline are highly encouraged.

The school, classroom and studio

The theory of a school and classroom existed before the introduction of western education in Africa. The home and community acted as a school, with the fireplace acting as a classroom. This framework is still alive in communities that have not been fully permeated by western education influence. Open community spaces accommodate communal based performances, which double as teaching and learning avenues. Any available space, whether enclosed or open, is studio space. Participation in the performance, learning and teaching processes is open to all members of the community. In most communities, there is a communally set schedule/timetable for exploration of dance and music performances. Before graduation to a level of community performance, the home acts as a nursery or kindergarten that prepares the person for wider communal experiences - community performances. At this level, the fire place, which is common in extended families, act as the classroom. Therefore, an individual receives orientation into music and dance traditions before they venture out to interact with communities outside their home. Normally, the elders act as guides, mentors, academic advisors, counselors in the process of orienting the young ones into dance practices. Beyond movements, the elders take learners through theories, philosophies, dogmas, procedures, ethics, and ideologies that underpin these music and dance traditions.

Dance content and methods of content delivery

If dance is a microcosm of cultural experiences, where is its content derived? Is this content static (does not change)? Who determines the content to be accepted and ignored in the teaching and learning process? How is this content delivered? At an individual level, the communal process that culminates into dance involves getting compromised by and compromising with fellow participants. As I already mentioned, individuals import their individuality, competencies, creativity, artistic acumen into the learning and teaching experiences.

The performance, learning and teaching venues becomes a bee-hive of dance diversities and activities. This marks the beginning of communal negotiation where different individuals personify movements and techniques that they consider attractive from fellow participants, and ignore those that they deem repellent.  Individuals derive content from their day-to-day experiences that relate and conform to the practices of the community For example, hunters draw from their hunting experiences to inform hunting dances; warriors draw from war experiences to create, teach and learn war dances; agriculturalist borrow from their agricultural lifestyle and experiences to advance harvest dances, etc. The content is communally constituted and so are the methods of delivery. This reciprocal (give and take) approach is so anchored in the participants’ mindset that you cannot have any individual claiming choreography or invention of any indigenous dance techniques. The more a community engages in performance of the dance, the more individuals refine and get familiar with the dance in question.

Before individuals engage in any teaching and learning of dance, they engage in warm up. The way this warm up is applied is different from the ‘warm up’ as it is known in formal/western dance education. The indigenous warm up for dance participants in African cultures is not structured. Because people have to walk and run for long distances to participate in communal dance bonanzas, their bodies are warm by the time they reach the venue of the dance feat, and are ready to dance without any delay.

Teaching and learning aids

Learning and teaching dance is a reminder and reflection of the lived experiences that related to the cultural viewpoint o which the dance is based. In a purely typical indigenous setting, teaching and learning of dance stretches beyond going through movement routines. It is about engraining and cultivating experiences that relay the anthropological, cultural, social, theological, demographic, economic, political, and sociological foundation of the community. It logically follows that the experiences act as learning and teaching aid in this array. Unlike formal dance studios where the mirror is used as a teaching aid, in indigenous dance training the mirror does not exist but mirroring subsists. The learner depends on fellow learners/teachers and the existing performance, teaching and learning experience as the mirror. The experiences stimulate the psyche whereas emulation of other participants smoothes the progress of kinesthetic intelligence and precision. It is worth noting that inter and intra-personal mirroring augments communalism.

Music, whether vocal, instrumental or both is a teaching and learning aid in indigenous dance training in cultures in Africa. Beyond providing accompaniment, music provides the narrative and rhythmic composition that dances personifies. Dance is an extension of music; music facilitates teaching and learning of dance. To this end, competence in music comprehension and how this relates to a dance is fundamental in facilitating the learning and teaching of that given dance.

Evaluation and provision of feedback

Evaluation and provision of feedback in this teaching and learning process is continuous. Peer assessment and collective feedback is common. The performers, who double as teachers and learner encourage and assist each other. Grownups guide young-ones while young-ones help each other especially in children dances. Particularly noteworthy is that for initiation/rite of passage dances and royal dances, the dance masters in a given community monitor the performance of candidates to identify those who are ready for initiation rituals and to perform in the courts respectively. For courtship/moonlight dances, the participating candidates evaluate each other to identify a suitable partner.

Assessment and feedback is meant to invite an individual to a place where they can fittingly contribute to the framing of the group/communal identity. This is well exemplified by the ethnic philosophy of the Luba people of Congo that “I am because we are, and we are because I am.” Native African communities know that without individuals communities cannot stand and without a community an individual cannot survive. This same mentality is captured in the training and performance of indigenous dance.

To wrap up this missive, I assert that training of dances in indigenous communities in Africa is premised in a well articulated and set out pedagogy that covers the teaching and learning philosophy, the teacher and learner, the school, classroom and studio, dance content and methods of content delivery, among others.

African Dilemma and the Post-colonial Experience: A Tale of Colonial Software running Indigenous Hardware

The postcolonial period has witnessed a struggle between African (indigenous) civilization and Western civilization. African is still entangled in colonial legacies, she has not yet moved beyond colonial pasts.  A number of questions emerge from this trajectory: did independence of the state from colonialism translate into independence of the mind of an African? If independence of the state was the answer to the colonial woes, how vague was the question? Did colonialism corrupt us so much so that we are determined to alienate ourselves from our cultural history and identity? Is this a case of colonial software (colonial mindset) running indigenous hardware (native Africans)?

Nobody captures this African predicament than Ali A. Mazrui who has noted that the colonial mindset has stimulated “…the development of Western tastes without Western skills; Western consumption patterns without Western production techniques; urbanization without industrialization; secularization (decline of religion) without scientification (the rise of science); and capitalist greed without capitalist discipline.”

The story of post colonial Africa has been a story of squandered self-determination and surrendered sovereignty, a tale of liberated states being occupied by colonized minds. It is a narrative of forgotten ancestry and eulogized westernization, alienation of indigenous knowledge in pursuit of western knowledge paradigms. It is a contest between Western and African civilizations, a case of cultural ambiguity substituting native identity. 

The continent of Africa has undergone three form of colonialism. The first form ended at the advent of independence of African states while the remaining two are still in full force:

The first form of colonialism was presided over by colonial masters from Europe. This form of colonialism took a form of spreading European civilization - Victorian morality to different corners of the continent, and occupation of some territories. For the first time the colonial master stepped on the African land, ruled over Africans of the soil and blood and acquired native territories. This colonialism set the stage for two other forms of colonialism. Therefore, one can argue that the subsequent two forms of colonialism are an elongation of original colonialism.

The second form of colonialism has been perpetuated and sustained by the Africans of the blood and soil. These Africans see life through the lens of the former imperialists. They want to live like Europeans on African soil. They distance themselves from their native cultural identity. This is synonymous with indigenous new bottles containing colonial wine. Even after decades after independence, the mindset of this breed of native Africans is still under colonial servitude. The indigenous hardware is being run by colonial software.

The third and final form of colonialism is being applied and presided over by ex-colonizers in their respective countries. This can be referred to as offshore colonialism, and is executed by proxy. Under this form of colonialism, economic and political policies are imposed on ‘independent’ African states. These impositions feed into the strategic geo-economic and political interests of the former colonizers and not the native people of the continent. State institutions and systems are ran on models and policies designed and imposed by the West through organisations such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Union, among others. The imposition of neo-liberal economic policies on a number of African countries by the World Bank and IMF in the 1980s and early 1990s gives a clear snapshot into the taxonomy of this colonialism. This form of colonialism has been exacerbated by the aid, humanitarian and charity industry. Political leaders and some native elites are used as proxy agents in this post-colonial.

But how did we get here?  A number of factors have converged to fashion this social, cultural, political and social trend. To understand where we are we need to revisit history. During the colonial rule, Western education was introduced; the school emerged as the centre for knowledge acquisition, production and propagation. The colonialists knew that in order to colonize the natives, they need to imprison and indoctrinate their intellect. The school changed peoples’ perception of life. The school was eulogized as the only base and source of knowledge. Nobody illustrates this eloquently that Mahmood Mamdani in his book Politics and Class Formation in Uganda. He posits thus:

“The political usefulness of missionary education, it should be clear, stemmed from its dual nature: it was technical as well as ideological, that it imparted skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetics [sic] as well as values such as loyalty to the existing order and discipline d self-sacrifice in the interest of that order. This was not education, but training; not liberation, but enslavement. Its purpose was not to educate a person to understand the objective limits to the advancement of individual and collective welfare, but to train a person to accept and even administer the limits in an ‘efficient, reliable and honesty’ way.”

With school came the foreign language and education systems and models. Intellect and academic excellence was determined by how good a person a foreign language. Sadly, this mindset (colonial software) still exists being housed by some indigenous hardware (native Africans). The school distanced the indigenes from their families and communities. The rift between natives and their indigenous value, knowledge and intellectual systems widened. Western oriented books, teachers, subjects, education systems, procedures, pedagogies constituted the basis of education. Consequently, tacit, cognitive, psycho-motor and affective intelligences were all influenced by western education. Cultural identity was eroded, cultural history lost. Colonial software was being developed to run indigenous hardware. The road to colonization of the mind was paved.

As we have seen above, western education is one of the aspects that have determined human existence. Second to education is religion. Nothing in the history of African civilization has ever titled the social, cultural and political dynamic than education and religion.  Many people converge in schools and churches than any other spaces or avenues or occasions in African communities. Whereas education was introduced by colonialists to arrest the intellect, religion was introduced to capture the faith of Africans indigenes. Indoctrination of the intellect and faith completed the installation of colonial software (mindset). Schools and churches acted as installation centers where colonial software was installed into indigenous hardware (African natives). Like the Western school, the church dragged, quite forcefully, indigenous people away from their indigenous knowledge and ways of life. Worst still, the preachers, who were part of the colonial scheme demonized indigenous knowledge. It was a gospel of indigenous cultural defamation. The indigenous software inside the indigenous hardware was crashed, to be replaced with colonial software. The bible, biblical scriptures and dogmas formed the basic for this colonialism configuration.

Western theology and education situated outside indigenous knowledge and cultural systems was always going to alienate continental Africans from their lived existential realities. By constantly pursuing new western oriented knowledge, native Africans were caught in a web of self sabotage and self identity obliteration. But was an act of ingenuousness. An amalgamation of the colonial and indigenous hardware would have been a better option. Indigenous software was disregarded, the people lost track of its anthropological, sociological and theological base.

Foreign Language: A Component of neo-colonialism

In the article Language and the Rule of Law: Convergence and Divergence, Ali A. Mazrui observes that the official language of almost every constitution south of the Sahara is European. Sub-Saharan constitutional law is almost entirely Eurocentric in that sense. Every right, every civil liberty, has to be interpreted in terms of its meaning in the relevant euro-colonial language. But can legislation be rightly and justly interpreted using foreign language as the magnifying glass? How does constitutionalism developed on the benchmarks of foreign language serve the interests of the critical mass, majority of whom are less educated? Is that constitutionalism just to all (including those who cannot read and interpret it)? Within the context of legislation, we again see indigenous hardware (African legal fraternity) being ran by colonial software (Eurocentric legal language).

The story of language as a driver that has facilitated and sustained neo-colonialism stretched beyond legal fraternity that Mazrui posits. In Uganda, for example, English is the official language. Gladly, it is not the national language. Because Uganda does not have a national language, this has enabled local languages to survive, and cross-tribal learning of languages by natives for trade and other social cultural and political purposes.

In most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, foreign languages are used within education systems and official work. Foreign languages as a medium of communication (teaching and learning) in class and lecture rooms concretize the installation of colonial software (colonial mindset) and indoctrination of the native mind. This orientation prepares natives to implement policies, programs and models developed by former colonizers (in their respective foreign languages).

Post-colonialism, globalization and the place of native Africans

The post-colonial and globalization era  has been a period of continued colonialism. This time it is not colonization of the state but the mind. The mindset of the native Africans is under siege from within and without. The gods must be wondering what happened to their descendants. The ancestors must confused about whether this is the world that they set their descendants to inherit. The wave of change is sweeping across the entire continent. This change is taking Africa far away from her cultural and native history. The African is being de-africanized. S/he is not European, neither is s/he American nor Asian, and s/he is not sure whether s/he is still African.

But where does this leave native Africans? There is a school of thought that believes that the colonial mindset has globalized native Africans. That foreign culture and lifestyle that is permeating the demographic walls of Africa has, after all, situated native Africans at the centre of global enterprise. Yet, Africa is yet to claim her place in the global arena. She is still at the periphery of the global enterprise. In fact, the existence of the colonial mindset has prepared native Africans as global consumers of what is produced by the key players in global market. Native Africans are not neither global producers nor entrepreneurs.

In Uganda, for example, after 50 years of political independence, material that is telecast on local television is predominantly foreign, the leading newspapers are published in English; classroom textbooks that are used for academic reference are foreign; most of goods and services consumed are imported (foreign); models, policies, and programs that run local institutions are foreign. The classroom, living room, office, church, shopping store is de-africanised.

The advent of computer digitalization came with hope and excitement that transformation of native Africans was on the horizon. This excitement is slowly being extinguished by the inability of the indigenous people to utilize digital technology for human innovation.  Never in history of global computerization has Africa ever invented any digital application that has influenced modern civilization. Google, facebook, twitter, youtube, myspace, yahoo, etc are all results of Western productivity. Even internet itself is a Western product. These are products that indigenous Africans are happy and proud to consume. The colonial software has successfully dragged the native African/indigenous software into a club of global consumers.

Africa needs to revisit and redefine her postcolonial logic. In indigenous knowledge, Africa has the treasure that can leap her to social, economic, cultural and political excellence. The people of Africa need to look inside before looking outside for economic, social and political progression.