Cultural Officer Cam

First published 7th July 2023 on the Sugarfoot Stomp Facebook Community Group.

Hey everyone! This is my second post of my thoughts on a fascinating book I've been reading: "The Power of Black Music" by Samuel Floyd. Last week, I described African religion and legends/songs. In this post, I'll focus on the second chapter, which explores how Africans practised their religion and told legends through ritual rhythm and dance. In future posts, I'll discuss how African religion, song, and dance transformed themselves in the plantations of the South and the cities of the North.

African Rituals and Dance

African religion was primarily practised in the ring – a circle of singers/audience members, with a ring of drummers inside, and finally dancers in the middle. As we will see later in the book, the African ring is the direct ancestor of the Jam Circle and Big Apple that Lindy Hoppers practice to this day.

Here is a video of an African circle – notice how similar the dancing looks to today’s solo jazz - Akwaaba Ensemble. The role of the dancers was to “increase or generate ache or life force in the individual” by acting out being possessed by the gods and common spirits, “becoming the mediums of their gods” and “miming their character in highly stylized and controlled theatrics, through dance, speech and song,” “dancing the distinctive steps revelatory of their gods.” The book also emphasises that individual skill, expressiveness, and innovation were celebrated for their ability to honour the musical tradition and improve the ring as an overall experience.

We dancers can take inspiration from the ring ritual – by understanding the lyrics of songs, we can begin to embody the stories they tell, and by understanding the meaning of the steps we dance, we can incorporate them mindfully into our dancing. We should aim to honour the dances as historical traditions by faithfully learning the steps, while using these skills to make the best dance possible for ourselves and our partners, as well as innovating on top of these traditions.

African Rhythms and Dance

The Power of Black Music places great emphasis on three parts of African rhythm and dance that we can learn from –polyrhythm, pelvic movement and call and response. African dance is designed to “educate boys and girls for their adult sexual roles in a polygynous world.” As a result, African dance is characterized by “bodily polyrhythm, in which the trunk and the pelvis of the dancer and the hands and sticks of the drummers steadily maintain two separate and conflicting meters.” This video has lots of great ways of incorporating more polyrhythm into your Lindy Hop with some groovy footwork - Rhythm Variation Follow Along - Laura Glaess. If you want to learn more about hip movement in dance, absolutely go and talk to Kara. Call and response is fairly easy to integrate into our partnered dancing – in this historical social Lindy Hop video, notice how each couple breaks away and exchanges some solo moves, often in a call and response pattern along with the music, and then reconnects - Spirit Moves 2.

Key Takeaways

African religion and its related legends/songs, dances, and rituals are the root of the art forms we enjoy today. We can improve our dancing and honour these traditions by understanding the meaning behind songs, learning the steps and innovating on them, while integrating more bodily polyrhythm, pelvic movement and call and response into our dance.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed it and learned a thing or two! Next time I’ll cover how African song, rhythm and dance were transformed through slavery in the new world to form the spiritual, field cries, and secular song/work song, which the rest of Black American music descends from.

Cam