Rescuing African Dances from Citadels of Annihilation: a Pentagonal Paradigm

The colonial era opened a new phase for deterioration of African dances by compelling (and in some cases coercing local people to lose trust and confidence in these cultural practices). This absurd trend has extended through the postcolonial period. The fears that African dance practices are enmeshed in palisades of profligacy are not a hyperbole. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that some dances have been condemned to the chasm of extinction.  For example, kifuule dance among the Baganda people is no longer performed.  ones that are have managed to survive are struggling to find sanctuary in the ever evolving local and global convolution. This is not want to create an impression that attempts have not been made to preserve and revive some of these art forms. Various efforts have been made by arts organisations, academic institutions, artists, and museums to keep the spirit of these dances alive.  But in most cases, these endeavors have done all but shambled.

The detachment of these art forms from the people (that are supposed to preserve them) has gravely hastened their entombment. The architects of these artistic practices knew that the best library is the people. They entrusted communities to create, preserve and disseminate these practices through performances that organically existed within these communities. Wo/man coexisted with dance and music. The principle was that wherever there is a wo/man there is music and dance; wherever there is dance there is life. Every woman has two beings, her own and the creative being. Every man has two minds, his own and the artistic mind. Every society has two souls, the souls of the community and the soul of art. Every woman carries two wombs, the baby’s womb and the womb of music and dance.

A group of women performing dance in rural Africa. African dances are caught between revisiting their roots or taking unknown new directions. Photo by Holly Mann

The African society has gradually digressed away from this principle. What went wrong? Should we just keep singing requiem songs as this artistic richness is being condemned to mass burial? Can these dance forms be pulled out of the maxillae of degeneration and tendered back to humanity? Or, to paraphrase the African adage, does the calabash on the water even know where the river is heading?

All is not lost. Hope is still looming large. Mother African can still reclaim her womb - dance. This hope borrows legitimacy from a pentagonical model proposed by Mazrui and Ostegard (2002) to address Africa’s challenges in a global age. This model covers five key processes: ‘indigenization, domestication, diversification, horizontal interpenetration, and vertical counter penetration.’ which, if applied to African dance practices, can frontally expedite the revival, survival, and relevance of these dances within globalized contexts. It is to the applicability of these five processes to the revival and survival of African dances that I now turn.

African dances are in search for their indigenous soul. The road to this search is painted with tears of the lost glory. And I say to African dances: ‘Relax, African dances. Relax! For you cannot put on the bones of your former self. But you can gather some flesh for a shadow of your earlier persona.” For African dances to reclaim their earlier persona, indigenization process of dance practices has to be set in motion. Indigenization process for this case will “include greater utilization of indigenous techniques, personnel, and approaches to purposeful change” (Mazrui and Ostegard, 2002, p. 2002). As I noted earlier, communities have left dances to waste away. The process of resurrecting dances should take place in communities where these people live with a people as active players. The different needs these dances once served still exist. Festivals, ceremonies, competitions, and other home-based and community-based occasions need to be rejuvenated. For as long as dance is part of Africa’s histories, stories and heritage it can be indigenized. For as long as communities have histories and heritage they can still indigenize their artistic practices.

Westernization and globalization have tended to overlap in Africa. Be it in social, political, cultural and economic spheres, the two influences have taken foot on the African soil. Should African dances be hostage to westernization and globalization? Domestication of artistic practices can free African dances from this inimicalness. Domestication entails using/applying foreign ideas, paradigms, institutions, and approaches for the benefit of the local communities. University, school, church, dance company, government ministry are all foreign ideas and institutions in Africa. But these institutions can play a pivotal role in stimulating the centrality of African dances in social, cultural, economic and political development. What does a university, school, church, government ministry, Dance Company, tourism center lose by integrating native dances into its core activities? Is it intellectually sacrilegious for an African scholar to study, research about, and teach and wribe about native African dance? Domestication of imported knowledge, concepts and ideas has been done, albeit remotely.  In a number of cases it has played to the gallery of where it is imported from than where it is applied.

Relatedly, we cannot talk of African being part of the global cobweb and ignore diversification as a global process. Diversification involves embracing foreign ideas, knowledge, concepts and institutions and allowing them to exist along side the native ones. African dance scene needs to open up its echelons to other dance forms and artistic experiences. Most importantly, the African dance artist, scholar, learner, educator must learn from these fronts of exposure, with aim to deepen their artistic base. New dance forms have made inroads in Africa, but these dance forms have either been thoughtlessly embraced at the expense of the native ones, or they have been ascetically snubbed in protection of the native ones. Obviously, other dance forms are different in philosophy, structure, purpose, and assumptions underpinning their artistry, but this should not be perceived as a threat to local artistic orientations. Strength is when two forces pull in opposite directions. Global discrepancies whether in favour of ‘Westphilia’ or against Africa can be addressed through co-existence of diverse dance forms and artistic experiences.

The area that should concern all Africans – dance artists and non-dance artists alike is the lack connectivity and artistic corresponded between different African communities. This is a sign that horizontal interpenetration is yet to appear on the African horizon. Even in case of neighbouring countries, there is little or no understanding, exchange and appreciation of dance forms from cultures in these countries. Scanty crossovers exist at the border, and that’s it! Individuals have cross-crossed borders but dance forms have not. The spirit of pan-Africanism has not reverberated in African dance artistry. There is no East Africanisation of West African dance artistry and vice versa. In dance terms, central Central Africa, which lies between East Africa and West Africa, is not even aware that these two neighbors artistically exist. Dance artistry has so far failed to connect Alexandria with the Cape of Good Hope. Is regionalization and continentalization of African dance artistry under siege from globalization and Westernization? Have we drunk too deep of the Western malt and tested too little of African spring?  Arts organisations, academic and research institutions, government ministries, and civil society organizations can stimulate horizontal interpenetration through dance. A university in Malawi can introduce a course in Zambian dances. A South African dance researcher can conduct research and write about dances from the Congos; A Ghanaian national television can host a program about Ethiopian dances; an Egyptian dance company can have Cameroonian dances as part of its repertory.  Dances can be traded in spite of the demographic differences. This will open new frontiers of intra-continental artistic re-organization and new cultural conformations.

Since the colonial period, Africa has been on the receiving end of Eurocentric and Anglo-centric hegemony. It is not farfetched to say that the process of globalization has so far showed signs of one sidedness. The West has penetrated Africa, with very little offered in return. It is not disputable that Africa has experienced some form of modernization. Mazrui and Ostegard (2002) define modernization to “mean change which is consistent with the present stage of human knowledge, which seeks to comprehend the legacy of the past, which is sensitive to the needs of future generations, and which is responsive to its global context” (p. 214). Has African modernization sought to comprehend the legacy or the past? Has it been sensitive to the needs of future generations? Has it responded proportionately to the global context? The dance practices do not seem to suggest so. An analysis of the dance sector reveals that African is still limping in as far as using dance to globalize African experiences is concerned. There is urgent need for vertical counter-penetration. 

African dance practices have to stamp their presence at the courtyards of western and Eastern artistic bastion. The route to globalization should be littered with African dance artistry in areas such as dane research, education, performance, and scholarship. The shadowiness of African dance artistry in the Western and Eastern worlds is a challenge that needs to be urgently and frontally confronted. Where efforts have been made to support, encourage and promote African dance artistry, they need to be buttressed. But mostly importantly, Africa needs to be understood for what it really is. African dances need to be appreciated as dance forms that are deeply grounded in human philosophy and science. These dances firmly rest on a well systematic platform whose pillars are deeply held in human thought and human conscience. African dance stretch beyond just having hunters gather and jump around a dead elephant in the middle of the forest or tribesmen and women just moving and shouting around a very big heap of food harvest.

African dances have been part of African cultures. If culture is a “lens of perception, means of communication, basis of stratification, spring of motivation, standard of judgment, pattern of production and consumption and foundation of identity” (Mazrui and Ostegard, 2002, p.214), then the dilemma of African dances is indubitably a predicament for African cultures. A polygonal approach to salvaging African dances from chains of debauchery is possible for Africa – provided the calabash on the  water gets to know where the river is heading.