What Dance Means to a Child in Africa

In African ethnic cultures, dance and music are primarily meant to prepare an individual for life, not for a job or career. A mother produces three babies: the actual baby, music and dance. Before and after a child is born, music and dance act as an umbilical cord that links the child to the environment and people around him/her. Whereas dance practices have considerably changed in urban areas, majority of communities especially in sub-urban and rural areas have preserved and retained authentic aspects of dance practices. In this article, I explore how dance is an integral part of child growth and development, and the implications of this artistic, creative and performative experience to children and the wider community in sub-urban and rural areas.

To begin with, dance is part and partial of each and every stage of human growth and development. a person interacts with dance before they are born until after they pass on (fertility dances, birth dances, children dances, rites of passage dances, wedding dances, ritual dances, religious dances, funeral dances). Dance is the link that connects the emotional, spiritual, mental, social, political, physical, intellectual, affective and philosophical beings that reside in each person. But for dance to play this role in a person’s life, how s/he interfaces with, assimilates, and gets oriented into it plays a key role. For that matter, pre-birth and toddlerhood encounter with dance forms the foundation in which subsequent artistic experiences are anchored.

African mothers are not into the stroller culture.  A child picks the pulse, rhythm, and movement while at the back of the mother or any caretaker.

Before giving birth, expectant mothers are encouraged to participate in music and dance performances. By participating in  performances, an expectant mother invites the unborn child to be a passive participant in the performance. This child gets both music and physical mobility by extension. The baby virtually experiences every moment that its mother produces. This means that at the earliest stages of life, through a child development, a baby is apart of all dancing and drumming that its mother experiences (Nzewi, 1996). The pre-birth artistic encounter gives the baby a glimpse into the world that they later join. Most importantly, artistic and physical activities enable the unborn child to develop physical strength that they later use to participate in their birth. 

This interaction with music and movement continues after the child is born. There is hardly any birth in a typical African setting that is not accompanied by dance. Once a child arrives (is born), they are surrounded by an ocean of music, dance, and rhythm.  Any given day in a baby’s life is spent, for the most part, tied to its mother’s [or any person’s] back by a piece of cloth (Nzewi, 1996). Through lullabies and other songs, the child is encouraged "to learn standing, balancing, and walking" (Nzewi). Among the Baganda people of central Uganda, the song Ttengerere, sirikawo baby, …(name of the child) alitambula ddi, etc. are very common. In all the songs mentioned above, the caretaker sings and the child moves (translates music into movement). The same practice is common in other tribes.

In Africa, children will always create opportunities to play, socialize and develop their artistry.

What is important to note about this practice is that it teaches the child how to interact with the environment inside and around them, how to negotiate rhythm and space, how to interact with other human beings, and how to participate in not only consumption but also production of music and dance. It is at this stage that the child starts on their journey to explore the environment around them. Some songs and dances that children are exposed to relate to work, family history, ethics and morality, compassion, spirituality, endurance, among others.

From this point on, a child is challenged to explore more artistically, socially, physically, and culturally enriching experiences. Because typical African families are extended, the child ventures out through children games, songs and dance to interact with family relatives, and, later, community peers. This encounter demands creative input from a child. The simplicity of this experience depends on how, together, children negotiate their diverse artistic interests, competences, complexities, and orientations.  The creative processes are based on active participation that is required of every member. Creative performances punctuate the activities such as fetching water and firewood, tending to gardens, harvesting, etc., which children are expected to do. Children always enjoy the freedom to create together without interference from adults. The African understanding is that "Freedom is not about being isolated and alone. It is about knowing who you are and understanding the way that you fit in with those around you. It is about trusting those near to you to be a part of you" (Nzewi, 1996).

Children performing dance in South Africa. Patterns like this are common in sub-urban and rural areas in Africa

Through music and dance, a child discovers and forms his/her identity in relation to the communal identity of other people, for “identity is a "negotiated experience" in the sense that it is largely defined by the ways in which the self is experienced while participating in a community of practice and by the ways the self is presented in those communities (Wenger, 1998). Therefore, for an African child “identity is grounded in "community membership. It is relational, and children define themselves relative to others in the community of practice as well as relative to those who do not belong” (Danielewicz, 2001). Dance and music integrate the child into the family, community, clan and tribal culture and practices. It prepares the child for and facilitates their understanding of the earthly, divine and ancestral worlds and universes.

The potency of dance and music in nurturing an African child lies in its ability to invite, encourage, and allow a child to actively participate in production, appreciation, sharing and consumption of artistic experiences. A child’s body acts as a candle from which the flames of music and dance artistry immortally glow. In return, dance and music act as a pillar that prevents a child mind, soul and body from stumbling.

Alfdaniels Mabingo is a Fulbright Fellow at New York University

Whose Anti-homosexuality bill?

On December 20, 2013, the parliament of Uganda passed the anti-homosexuality bill that had been on the floor of parliament since 2009. The bill will become law if the president of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, assents his signature to it. This private member bill, among other things, provides for a sentence of life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality, which covers gays and lesbians. This article explores the politics of the bill other than its morality, il/legitimacy, ethics and legality.

Since the bill was passed, there has been extensive debate about its moral, ethical and legal standing. On the one hand, human rights activists across the world have condemned the bill saying that if it is passed into law, its implementation and enforcement will amount to blatant abuse of human rights.  On the other hand, proponents of the bill and a wide section of Ugandans have applauded the passing of the bill, and reiterated its necessity and importance in upholding and fostering cultural and religious values.

Resistance against homosexuality in Uganda and other parts of Africa is part of European religious colonial legacy and a result of deeply entrenched cultural and traditional beliefs and practices. In a bid to spread Victorian morality in Africa, European missionaries through religious movements, teachings and crusades preached against homosexuality and sodomy. This formed the foundation on which the currents faiths were built. Uganda's population is highly catholic (33%), Anglican (33%) and Muslim (16%), and most followers of these religious faiths still view homosexuality as a practice that is against their religious values, norms, procedures and biblical teachings. As a matter of fact, ever since the bill was passed, the archbishops of both the catholic and Anglican churches in Uganda have come out to condemn acts of homosexuality, and have called for redemption and of homosexual individuals in society.

This lack of acceptance of the gay community is compounded by very conservative cultural beliefs that are rooted in the philosophy of continuity of life.  Uganda’s tribal communities are founded on clan system, genealogical lineage, and ancestral history. The three form the tenets on which social and cultural identity is built and sustained. The sense of being is not only derived from individual existence but also through procreation, having a wife or wives and a husband or husbands, and getting subjected to cultural rituals such as rites of passage. Patrilineage, which is common in most African societies has roots in procreation and vice versa. An African clan or tribe cannot imagine that their son or daughter can live ad grow up with having biological children. Reproduction ensures this continuity of life and orientation into earthly and ancestral life and worlds. Any practice that threatens this belief is vehemently resisted, fought, and discredited.

Whose anti-homosexuality bill?

Debate about anti-homosexuality bill has focused on the ethics, morality, legitimacy, and legality of the bill. Yet, the bill seems to be serving political interests than the purpose for which it is purportedly drafted (to preserve the cultural and religious values of the people). Because the bill appeals to the cultural and religious sentiments of majority of Ugandans, politicians and legislators are using it to mobilize political support among Ugandans as we move towards the 2016 general elections. Ever since the bill was passed by parliament, a largest percentage of Ugandans have come out to show their full contentment with the bill on social and electronic media. The approval rate for legislators has drastically increased.

The government of Uganda is also using the bill to divert attention away from continued abuse of human rights, collapse in rule of law, and violent political harassment of members of opposition that Uganda has witnessed in the recent past. The international media and Western government seem to be obsessed with the bill each time it is debated in parliament and have not given other pressing human right abuses the attention that they deserve. this serves the current Kampala regime well. With this bill in their hands, the government of Uganda has added another weapon to their arsenal (in addition to having military troops in Somalia) to keep Western government, media, and organisations in check.

Is homosexuality a western imposed practice?

There is a popular belief among sections of Uganda's population that homosexuality is a foreign practice imposed on local communities to serve the ulterior motives the West (Europe and north America). This is contrary to the reports that homosexuality existed in pre-colonial African society. In fact, while appearing on BBC and CNN in 2012, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, acknowledged that homosexuality has always existed in Africa, but people never had debates about it in public (he calls this exhibitionism).  The more Western governments and human rights organisations directly intervene to ensure that the rights of sexual minorities are observed, the more the belief that homosexuality is a Western imposition gets entrenched within the local community. LGBT activists whose local campaigns are funded by western organizations also vindicate this suspicion. The west has also turned  blind eye on other forms of human rights  abuse in Uganda. Hesitancy by Western government and human rights organization to come out and strongly condemn other forms of human rights abuse is seen as betrayal, playing double standards and being insensitive to the plight of other many Ugandans who suffer grave injustices, abuses and violence. As one of the Ugandans commented in one of the debates about the bill: “The proponents of gay rights are as wrong as the proponents of anti gay law, when political opponents are killed and persecuted, those bazungus [people from the West] are silent. Are gay rights more important than other human right?” 

Uganda's armed forces breaking up a meeting of unarmed protestors. Such abuses are rarely condemned by Western governments and human rights organisations.

Western governments and organizations making mistakes

Ever since the bill was tabled before parliament, western governments and organizations have been calling for cuts in foreign aid to Uganda with aim to mount pressure on the Ugandan government and parliament to shelve the bill. By tying human rights to aid money and handouts, the West is making three mistakes and disservices to the gay community in Uganda and beyond: 1) the West is creating an impression that human rights can be bought or negotiated using financial and logistical resources and handouts. Human rights are human rights. Using money and other resources to gain them is setting a wrong precedent that if these rights can be commoditized and negotiated using money they can be taken away; 2) they are putting the gay community at risk in cases where countries may decide to do away with aid, mobilize local resources and continue to enforce and implement laws against sexual minorities; 3) the West is confirming the longstanding suspicion that homosexuality is a Western idea that is being imposed on local communities using threats to cut aid, and financial and logistical facilitation of gay right movements and campaigns.

The proponents of the anti-homosexuality bill are making the Ugandan society more homophobic. Those who are challenging the bill (both locally and internationally) are radicalizing local homophobia. Advocacy, publicity and activism for and against homosexuality will only leave the gay community in a more precarious position. Local politicians will continue to front this bill to cover up for their legislative and political failures as we move towards 2016 general elections. The anti-homosexuality has a lot to do with local politics than the moral, ethical and legal status of the people of Uganda. 

Dance and internationalization of African Experiences

The Francophone wit once noted:

Africa has its feet in the Neolithic and its head in the thermonuclear age. Where is the body? It is managing as best it can.

How is the body managing as best it can? To answer this question, I will hazard a few questions and conjectures. Is the African body still in the ancestral world sucking the clairvoyant ancestral breast that once fed it? Is it lying somewhere in the Kalahari or savannah or Sahara waiting for a Good Samaritan to wake it up? Is it licentiously rotting on fringes of the global nub? Providentially, all answers to the above questions point the other way. Putting the current global phenomenon into perspective can help us locate where the African body is. From the existing worldwide inclination, it is not lucid that the African body is either in the ancestral world enjoying the clairvoyant ancestral breast, or is it lying somewhere in Africa waiting for a Good Samaritan to wake it up.

It is conceivable that the African body is in dance, and dance is the African body – it lives in this body. This African body is on a global epic, incredibly busy rolling back the carpet of ethnocentrism (my village is the world; the people of my clan/tribe are my people), and concurrently opening the gates for cultural universalism (the world beyond my village is my world; the people of the world are my people; my culture is part of global culture). The African body is actively purifying the global ocean with African experience, with dance being the purifier in this internationalization progression. It is to this universalization of the African experience through dance that I devote my proceeding discussion.

Dance is the most superlative ambassador that any community/country can ever have. It penetrates any obstructions, ameliorates social taxonomy, stitches cross-cultural chinks, and bridges cross-border and cross-continental demographic crevices.  The most valuable send overseas that Africa has continually had is dance. Dance has proliferated the African experience. Watching dances from cultures in Africa is interacting with native African cultures from where the dances emanate, performing dances from cultures in Africa is embodying the cultural experiences of the native communities that perform these dances, understanding dances from cultures in Africa is understanding the native people that perform them.

The universalization movement of the African experience through dance started with the African Diasporas. A number of phenomena have given birth to a wide range of African Diasporas. The Diaspora of slavery (descendants of the slave ship) was singularly a byproduct of trans-Atlantic slave trade. The Diaspora of colonialism was a result of imperial penetration, counter-penetration and assimilation colonial predispositions that integrated African people and their cultures into the winter temperate. This was widespread in the Francophone colonies. The Diaspora of African brutalities came as a result of harsh post-colonial economic, political and social post-colonial conditions that compelled native Africans to flee their ancestral territories to seek sanctuary in the northern hemisphere. The Diaspora of globalization is a result of open, genial, and mutual interface that has connected the Far East, West, north and the south. All these Diasporas have intensified cross-oceanic exodus of native Africans to the North, Far East and West.

One commonality between all these Diasporas is that they have all carried with them cultural practices (such as dance and music) to these new areas. It is only cultural practices that do not need immigration clearance to migrate from one location to another. The Diaspora of slavery pioneered and perpetuated African dance and music practices in the new territories, albeit with some alternations. It is discernible in the chapters of history that the Diaspora of slavery is solely responsible for creation of jazz, hip-hop, and a number of Caribbean and South American art forms and cultures, and their ensuing anthropological experiences. Performing or watching jazz and hip-hop cultural practices is interacting with African experience. This experience is enveloped in the techniques, style, histories, objective, pasts, mood, purpose and atmosphere that forms and informs the practice of these art forms. 

The settlement of the Diaspora of slavery into the Americas was not mere integration of people into these new areas. It marked the advent of incorporation of cultural practices into the global hodgepodge, and universalization of the African experience into the global bubble. There are a number of cases where the Diasporas of colonialism, African brutalities and globalization have had a strong say in using dance to integrate the African experience into global configuration. A number of native African communities and individuals are practicing their cultural musics and dances in the areas where they settled, hence intermingling with other cultures in these locales.

In rolling back the carpet of ethnocentricism, the African people have helped the African body use dance to situate the African experience at the center universal nucleus. Native African performing artists and groups have made a number of trips to Europe, the Americas and the Far East to show-case and share dance traditions from different cultures in Africa. Like the African body that the Francophone wit mused about, native Africans are not lying somewhere in the Savannah nor Sahara nor Kalahari waiting for a Good Samaritan to wake them up, neither are they seated helplessly staring at and enjoying warm rays from the equator. They have taken matters into their hands, with cultural universalism being on top of their existential agenda. They are effusively sentient that time for ‘my village is my world’ is long gone. Just this year (2012) alone, three performing groups: Children of Uganda, Watoto Children’s choir, and Spirit of Uganda toured the US for series of dance performances in different States. Through dance, these native performing groups and other sole artists have been able to let the African experience infiltrate the global demographic fabric. Dance has kept the fire of universalization of the African experience burning, the only case where fire has swept across the entire globe without smoke being seen or felt.

The African ancestors may not have dreamed of a world with worldwide webs; they may not have visualized life with intense cyberspace excitement; they may not have envisaged a digitalized age. Terminologies such as skype, facebook, myspace, google, yahoo etc may not exist in their ancestral encyclopedia. Certainly, the ancestors do not know how to use ipads, tune itunes, carry laptops, and charge iphones. But in Africa, we believe that the ancestors live through the ones living - the dead are still living. The beginning of life is not the beginning; the end of life is just the beginning. As the living generation owes much to its ancestry, the ancestral world owes much to its descendants. Their digital illiteracy notwithstanding, the African ancestors must be jubilating, wining and dining that their progenies have not disappointed them. 

Native Africans have invaded the internet to share their dance traditions, they have populated the media with their artistic and cultural voices. A simple click can enable a person in Europe, Asia, or the Americas to interact with any African experience through dance. As I noted earlier, watching dances from cultures in Africa is interacting with the African experience; performing dances from cultures in Africa is embodying African experiences. Recordings about dances from cultures in Africa are accessible through a number of cyber channels and other electronic media outlets, although extra work needs to be done to have more dances published on these spaces. If internet has narrowed the globe to just a village, then dances from cultures in Africa have contributed tremendously to the villagization drift of global communities and experiences.

And that is not all. Dances from cultures in Africa have claimed a place in the global academic curriculum at college and other levels of education. Moreover, private studios and arts related organisations are slowly but steadily importing dances from cultures in Africa into their institutional frameworks. If education is the mother of knowledge and experiences, then dances from cultures in Africa have a hatchery in academic and non-academic establishments that have welcomed these dances aboard their internal and outreach processes. Native African dance scholars, educators, performers, researchers and teaching artists have grabbed this opportunity with both hands with aim to entrench the African experience through dance education, training, and other scholarly and artistic activities. Again, these different institutions have become birth places where dance has displayed its persuasive capability in universalization of the African experience. Studying of dances from cultures in Africa (whether in academic or non academic setting) cannot be negated from sowing the seed of globalisation of African experience. If African is the placenta that feeds the baby (global community) with food nutrients (African experience), then dance is the umbilical cord that links the two.

Has universalization of African experience through dance been a one way proclivity (from Africa to the rest of the world)? The answer is in the negative. It is abundantly obvious that a number of people from the winter temperate have crossed the oceans seeking the African experience through dance. It has been a two-way traffic. Instead of embodying the African experience away from the African soil, these people have chosen to engross themselves in the African experience on the African soil, in the midst of African ancestors. Through a number of programs such as the study abroad programs and other cultural exchange projects, a number of people from Europe, the Americas, the Arabica, and the Far East have been hosted in Africa. A case in point, for example, is the New York University Dance Education study abroad program that has witnessed students from New York University visit Uganda every January to learn, share and build global communities through dance and music.

The multiplier and spill-over effect of this alliance has seen dances from cultures in Uganda claim space in North Eastern and other parts of the US. The rays of Ugandan dances are penetrating the geographical heart of North America; the Ugandan experience is repatriated to the American communities. It is just a matter of time before butterflies from the walls of New York buildings whisper to us that Kizino, Maggunju, Gaze, Naleyo, Baakisimba, Agwara,and Kitaguriro are household dances in New York City. My grandfather always reminded me to taste the food, the music, the language, the beer, and dances of any community that I visit.  Quite clearly, African visitors have mastered my grandfather’s call. For how do you visit Africa and you do not dance?  In the bodies of these offshore visitors, learners, researchers, and performers lies the confluence that merges the African and the global experiences, a nexus where the native experience shakes hands with the global experience.

Dances from cultures in Africa have intruded more significantly on the network of global experiences. Like a bride’s father, dance has held this daughter (African experience) by hand and walked her down the aisle of globalization. The entire global congregation is touched by this motif. The African ancestors are jubilating, wining, and dining that their daughter (Africa) is being led to the altar of cultural and social universalism. The ensuing age band of Africa has not disenchanted.  Dance has switched on all the global lights!    

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