Afrilition: A range of dance, By Adéwálé Àjàdí

The most central connection to African life across the world is dance. The vibrations of how dance connects the spirit and physical expressions are one of the ways Africa and the Diaspora remain engaged despite years of separation and the efforts to dislocate us from authentic connection to African expressions.

 Every Saturday I drag my limbs out of bed and take a trek to the other side of my community to the Heart Heartist studio for my Tungba class. Tungba is a kind of Afrobeat expression and dance vibration that enables me to freely express my teenage self without going to a club or party. This last Saturday, I had a dance treat as we danced on an excursion through Kizz Daniel’s tunes, blending Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, and Cuban steps as my teacher, Israel, called them out. No, we did not engage in the Tiv Cat dance, but we also did the Fulani stick dance, blended with Afrobeat and Amapiano moves. After class memories came in waves: that in the 60s in Nigeria, we had a dance called Kpalongo  it came from the Ga people of Accra; it was an alleged source of madness on the dance floor of Lagos. There was also the Bonsue, whose possible roots are in Akan Bosoe. Each dance carried memories of conception, worship, and celebration.  Despite the prominence of polyrhythm, the variety of expressions of dance is fundamental to their characteristics as African.

The travels of African dance were shaped by the drums, which are the backbone of the tempo and timing of the steps along with the movements. The drums that travel from Haiti to Congo Square across the Caribbean waters into Cuba, building cooperatively and distinctly into Son and carrying bata steps into El Cucaracha, but taking the rum-tinged tones of Calypso whilst breezing back to Accra, then Lagos with highlife, but now with the Congolese Rhumba, with a deeper continental expression, building into Soukous and Makossa. The Atlantic carried back and forth influences, bringing steps and expressions together. I carried the moves of Cucharacha into funk breakbeats from my childhood with James Brown song Say it Loud and it became a signature move in the world of Cabbage Patch in the 1980s when I was in university. The ease of being able to understand the Hip Hop Cypher, through memories of the hunter’s Ijala chants of ancestors on their way into the forest. Across time and in generaltions African and the diaspora carried in music, vibe, and dance the essence of how cultures become eternal. They also evolved the spirit and expressions that encompassed the messages and essence of the time.

The journey is replicated across the Sahara with the Goje, the banjo-like chord that is the sound of the Sahel and the desert. The undulating dances that ensured the nomadic and the settled expressed the swirling movements of the sea of sand, along with the melancholic expression of wind instruments, seem to have bottled the blues in generations. It was blowing outside my grandfather-in-law’s rum shop in Calliqua outside Kingstown, SVG, on a late evening in the 1990s as I sat looking at the slow laps of the Caribbean Sea. I could be anywhere in rural Georgia or even coastal Morocco, and as the moon came up, it seemed like I was outside a Shabeen in Gugulethu. This was not because they were solidly the same musical expression but because of the vibe and the choice of dance. Yes! The people with the expression, even when the moon stood out like a cherished pendant over the dark and moody night. They expressed the same Africa in their distinct way as they expressed themselves in song and dance.

There is an African spirit which shows up to capture the distinction that merits full expression of the continent. It has always been there, even in those who have been severely traumatised for embodying or being unable to drop that spirit. It is in Brazilian Ginga, developed to avoid the Europeans who took any contact, even in the sport of football, as an excuse to torture or even to the ultimate punishment. There was no protection from referees. The creations of dance and physical expressions have always been forms of spiritual invocation and fortification in the African world, both on the continent and retained across the Diaspora. The wisdom of these movements across the African world does not only express but tell interlocked stories of our evolution, distinctly yet the same.

Afrilition is part of preparing the incoming generation to understand what is now understood across the African Churches in all guises, from Shakers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Christ Apostolic Church in Nigeria, the AME churches in the US, the Coptics in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and their Pentecostal cousins across many countries. They understand that dance is the most effective form of spiritual warfare as well as the deepest confession of God in us. Like our understanding of ourselves, we must build the space to map out the variety of ways in which the rhythm communicates Africa and what its distinct message is revealed in our movements and vibrations. We have a call to welcome the interlocking variety of the expressions of our best selves in praise and revelation of the excellence in us. This is Afrilition.

Adéwálé Àjàdí, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of the newly released Afrilition: 21st Century African Manifesto, and Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.