Critical African Studies, 2019

Vol. 11, No. 1, 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2019.1669474

Introduction: dance in Africa and beyond: creativity and identity in a

globalized world
Hélène Neveu Kringelbacha* and Carine Planckeb
a
University College London, UK; bGhent University, Gent, Belgium
(Received 16 September 2019; accepted 16 September 2019)

In this introduction to the special issue on dance in Africa and beyond, we review the
anthropological study of dance in Africa since the 1920s and introduce the seven
contributions, organized around the key themes of transformed identities (both
contemporary and historical), decoloniality, new media, morality, and the problematic
representations of African diasporic identities in contemporary Europe. With this special
issue, we argue that the study of dance and music provides an important window into the
myriad creative ways in which people in Africa and in the African diaspora deal with
problematic situations, generate new artistic forms, engage with questions of ethics, and
carve out spaces in which they experiment with novelty and reinvigorate their lives.
Keywords: anthropological study of dance; postcolonial Africa; multiple identities; African
diaspora

More than any other region, Sub-Saharan Africa is portrayed as a disaster area enduring famine,
disease, conflict and poverty (Kiarie Wa’Njogu 2009). Images of epidemic outbreaks, terrorist
attacks and political violence due to undemocratic elections or ongoing rebel wars and divisionist
political strife dominate the screen. This portrayal of Africa as a region of trouble and suffering
extends to the African diaspora, even when young people of African descent have become citi-
zens of European countries. The media treatment of Islamic fundamentalism and illegal immigra-
tion often involves youngsters of African descent being portrayed in a negative light. The notion
of ‘Afropessimism’ has been employed to refer to this overwhelmingly negative coverage as it
suggests that Africa has little or no prospect of positive development and is a failed continent
in need of outside intervention (de B’béri and Eric Louw 2011).
In recent years, however, the international media has started to tell positive stories about sub-
Saharan Africa (Nothias 2014; Bunce 2017). The 2011 cover of The Economist entitled ‘Africa
Rising’ (The Economist, 3 December 2011) is a sign of this change. The cover depicts a black
child running in the savannah and pulling a rainbow-coloured kite in the shape of Africa,
which rises high in a clear blue sky. The message of hope it conveys contrasts sharply with the
gloomy picture of the 2000 issue ‘The hopeless continent’ (The Economist, 15 May 2000),
wherein a young black man carries a shoulder-fired missile embedded in the shape of the
African continent on a plain black background. Besides a new international willingness to

*Corresponding author. Email: h.neveu@ucl.ac.uk

© 2019 Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh

2 H. Neveu Kringelbach and C. Plancke

promote a positive message of Africa’s economic development and technological innovation,

Africa-grown information flows have multiplied, which have opened up new visions of the con-
tinent (Bunce, Franks, and Paterson 2017). The amount of content produced in Africa, for
example by youths and religious groups using local media, has led to the emergence of a diversity
of voices and of new ways to communicate, producing new worlds of experience and imagination
(Njogu and Middleton 2009).
Performance is at the heart of inventiveness, renewal and cultural creativity as they emerge
locally. For many in Africa, music and dance are crucial means of dealing with problematic situ-
ations and are often central in fashioning a cultural identity that is self-enhancing. This issue
explores this creativeness as it relates to a variety of political, religious and cultural topics. The
aim is to present African dance expressions in their plurality, showing how they creatively
shape social realities within and beyond Africa.
In the editorial of a special issue of Africa Today, Daniel Reed (2001) notes how African cul-
tural expressions, notably in the domain of music and dance, have proven both resilient and open
to creative adaptation and innovation. The essays in the Reed volume explore the way people take
local performances and modify them to meet new social and expressive needs. They show how,
faced with sometimes tremendous social changes, actors employ performative strategies in order
to comprehend, modify and capture the effects of those changes on their lives.
This issue situates itself in continuity with the focus on African agency developed in the Reed
special issue, but it also expands beyond. Among other themes, our issue investigates the role of
dance in shaping new identities, the space it provides for African diasporas to gain visibility in
societies in which they are often denied equal citizenship, and the contested moral discourses
in which dance is embedded, and which it reconfigures. Furthermore, it takes a specific look at
flows of choreographic genres, both North–South and South–South, as a crucial means to
shape local, national or even pan-African identities, highlighting herein the growing role of
digital media. As such, globalization is a recurring topic in this volume. In line with Appadurai’s
(1996) seminal work and following a growing interest in global–local interactions (Kearney 1995;
Hannerz 1996; Eller 2016), rather than stressing the unilateral impact of western influences,
dances are approached as local expressions that creatively respond to and emerge from
complex and manifold inter- and transcultural exchanges. Embedded in new digital-scapes of
encounter and hybridization between artistic genres and sociocultural environments, perform-
ances are constantly recreated with new rhythms, new moves and new media. Lastly, the issue
also seeks to better understand creativity as such, and asks how it is conceptualized and realized
in a diversity of choreographic contexts.

The study of dance in Africa

With the exception of a few early contributions (e.g. Evans-Pritchard 1928), the anthropological
study of dance did not begin in earnest until the 1960s (e.g. Kurath 1960; Kaeppler 1978; Spencer
1985a). Despite a considerable growth of interest in the anthropology of the body in the 1990s, the
study of moving bodies remained on the periphery (Farnell 1999), and the need for serious scho-
larship on the subject was still called for in the early 2000s (Williams 2004). Dance is a significant
component of social life in Africa (and elsewhere), yet until fairly recently the study of dance on
the continent was equally neglected.
Exemplified by Evans-Pritchard’s (1928) discussion of the Azande funeral beer dance, early
discussions of dance in Africa followed a functionalist approach (e.g. Leynaud 1953). Much later,
Mitchell’s (1956) study of the Kalela, a competitive marching dance performed weekly by miners
in the towns of the Zambian Copperbelt, illustrated transformations of ethnicity in contexts of
rural–urban migration. But for Mitchell and other anthropologists at the Rhodes-Livingstone
 Critical African Studies 3

Institute, the focus was on social transformations in late colonial, urban Africa, and Mitchell did
not linger on choreographic description. Nevertheless, the study provided inspiration for later
studies, and Ranger’s (1975) historical work on the beni ngoma, for example, showed how, in
colonial East Africa, dance associations helped to maintain a sense of continuity with older
Swahili hierarchies while also acting as an ironic commentary on colonial society. Further
South, Blacking (1967) drew on his fieldwork with the Venda of Southern Africa to suggest
that music and dance were central aspects in the socialization of children and that they expressed
the group’s creative potential.
An important and often overlooked milestone in the study of dance on the continent was art
historian Thompson’s (1974) African Art in Motion. Unusually for its time, the book featured a
wealth of photographs and still shots from video recordings. Thompson’s concern was with the
aesthetics of dance, particularly the shared aesthetic and ontological principles underlying both
dance and art works, rather than with dance as a sociological phenomenon. But Thompson’s
reflections on aesthetics and art criticism in West and Central Africa remain highly innovative.
With the rise of structuralist and symbolic approaches in anthropology, the ways in which
dance upholds or challenges social structure became a core interest in the 1980s, with studies
mainly focused on ‘traditional’ dances in rural settings (e.g. Hanna 1979; Blacking 1985;
Spencer 1985b). Drewal and Drewal’s (1983) important work on the Yoruba Gẹlẹdẹ genre
demonstrated how, in West African societies with specialized groups of performers, dance
often interacts with drumming, oral poetry, dress and the use of space to create very real forms
of power – in this case female power.
From the 1990s onwards, the impact of poststructuralism as well as a growing interest in the
embodied nature of social life fostered studies that showed how dance in Africa was often impli-
cated in gender and power dynamics, and had a political dimension (Blakely 1993; Heath 1994;
James 2000; Nannyonga-Tamusuza 2005; Castaldi 2006; Argenti 2007; Edmonson 2007;
Andrieu 2008; White 2008; Gilman 2009; Djebbari 2011; Neveu-Kringelbach 2013; Coving-
ton-Ward 2016; Plancke 2017). Anthropologists working in hunter–gatherer societies have
shown the crucial role played by music and dance in the maintenance of distinct identities and
of an egalitarian ethos (Kisliuk 1998; Lewis 2013). A recent and exciting strand of scholarship
is looking at the multiple ways in which the circulation of dance styles in migration contexts
foster new identities and new forms of sociality while simultaneously, at times, strengthening
older ones (Bizas 2014; Reed 2016).
Some of these studies are marked by the increasingly reflexive positionality of the dance scholar
and by a deliberate inclusion of the researcher–performer in the writing (e.g. Kisliuk 1998). Phe-
nomenological approaches have also developed, highlighting the lived experience of dance, both
in Africa and in diasporic contexts (e.g. Friedson 1996; Daniel 2005; Plancke 2014). In addition,
challenging the continuing construction of the ‘other’ in scholarly literature as well as in represen-
tations of Africa more generally has meant questioning the very notion of ‘African dance’. For Gore
(2001), the fact that many West African languages do not have a specific word for dance underlines
the Eurocentric character of the category ‘dance’. Lassibille (2004) found that the WoDaaBe of
Niger used three different terms to speak of dance: fijjo (play), gamol (dance) and bamol (dance
or braid). These interventions have been crucial in highlighting the need to redefine our object of
study in every context and to begin with local epistemologies.
In a different vein, the booming interest in global–local connectedness since the early 1990s
has led to the study of globalized dance genres and their appropriation in African contexts, and
also to the study of how African artists have contributed to the renewal of genres such as contem-
porary dance (Neveu-Kringelbach 2013, 2014; Bourdié 2013; Despres 2016).
A specific strand of studies, carried out mainly by anthropologists and art historians, and
largely indebted to the early work of Tonkin (1979), Drewal and Drewal (1983) and Picton
4 H. Neveu Kringelbach and C. Plancke

(1990), has focused on the resilience of masquerade practices in Western and Central Africa (Gore
2007, 2008). Although not always framed as studies of ‘dance’, they often highlight the choreo-
graphic dimension of masquerade. These studies linked dancing masks to many aspects of social
life, from the memory of past violence as it relates to contemporary intergenerational politics
(Argenti 2006, 2007) to the politics of secrecy (de Jong 2007, McGovern 2013) and youth
claims to new forms of power (Pratten 2008). We believe that research on performance in
Africa would benefit from a conversation between the two strands.

Dance and multiple identities

This special issue explores historical continuities and new choreographic genres, paying special
attention to local agency and the creativity of dancers. In studying the military drum performance
beni ngoma, Terence Ranger (1975) has convincingly argued that the colonial experience was
uneven and complex, and did not simply deprive Africans from any agency to creatively deal
with and accommodate novelty and change, even under conditions of oppression. In a similar
way, in this special issue Cécile Bushidi’s article on the spread of close partner dancing among
Luo and Kikuyu youth in interwar Kenya shows how dance helped to forge multiple identities
in a colonial context of heavy control and radical social change. She extends this argument
beyond the urban areas explored in previous work (Mitchell 1956; Ranger 1975) to the rural
hinterlands and to rural–urban migrant youth. There are resonances here with the more
recent work of Sarró (2009), who showed how, in the Baga-speaking rural areas of the
Upper Guinea Coast in the 1950s, elders attempted (unsuccessfully) to resist the emergence
of couple dances which they thought represented a challenge to their authority by young
Baga men and women.
Drawing on rich archival material and interviews, Bushidi shows how the European presence
in rural Kenya expanded the nature of sociocultural interactions and spurred African creativity.
Whilst imitating European settler dance in the close embrace between male and female partners,
the new dance genres also drew on an older local repertoire. In Bushidi’s view, the new dances
helped to foster cosmopolitan identities in rural Kenya and shaped new communities of self-
imagination as they enabled dancers to acquire distinct visibility by wearing ostentatious
fashion while performing both couple and ceremonial dances. The dances also allowed for
new forms of negotiation with the colonial authorities. Youths not only developed practices of
seduction and consumption that created spaces of autonomy from traditional structures but
they also resisted attempts at regulation of what the colonial regime framed as ‘leisure activities’.
Dancing in 1930s’ rural Kenya became a daily practice that extended far beyond the confines of
the weekend, the colonial framework for ‘leisure’.
In postcolonial Africa, the negotiability of subject positions and the constant revision of
multiple identities have become central ways of navigating shifting power dynamics
(Mbembe 1992; Werbner and Ranger 1996; Simone 1998). In her article on dance groups in
Gabon, Alice Atérianus-Owanga argues that dance was a means for different groups of
actors, notably cultural animation groups and the national ballet, to negotiate their own
version of a national identity during the one-party rule. Rather than a unilateral imposition
of the single party’s ideologies, dance was a tool of agency, enabling performers to challenge
conventional perceptions of dance and to insert themselves into local power hierarchies. To be
sure, the cultural animation groups reinforced the dependency of female dancers on their male
political patrons, but these groups also expanded the women’s opportunities for professional
promotion and allowed them to meet influential male partners. At the same time, political
patronage did not prevent the women from expressing subtle forms of criticism. With regard
to the national ballet, Atérianus-Owanga highlights the impact of individual initiatives in
 Critical African Studies 5

shaping a genre of multi-ethnic dance that integrated local dances and contemporary choreo-
graphic techniques. She describes how the status of ‘initiate’ was used strategically to deal
with a range of prohibitions in the staging of ritual.
Atérianus-Owanga’s study reveals the dialectic of flow and closure that is the characteristic of
our increasingly globalized world (Meyer and Geschiere 2003). Whilst the performances of the
national ballet entailed creative mixing and the breaking down of boundaries between the ‘tra-
ditional’ and the ‘modern’, there were also efforts to fix older identities, to make them more
bounded than they had been in the past. Furthermore, the insertion of local practices into transna-
tional scenes did not necessarily erase local codes, but sometimes invigorated them. When pro-
gramming dances that included masked performances, director Geneviève Isembe met with
strong resistance from initiated men, who reaffirmed their control over ‘proper’ notions of
tradition.

Contemporary dance and decoloniality

Further illumination of the complexity of local–global interactions is found in Amy Swanson’s
article, which examines the development of the Acogny Dance Technique, a pan-African
dance style which developed in reaction to Western domination in professional dance. The
article reveals the persistence of views of cultural distinctiveness which inhibit decolonizing
efforts at transcending essentialist notions of Africanness. It was in order to combat racist
ideas of African dance as innate and simplistic that Acogny created a codified technique that inte-
grated Western classical and contemporary dance forms alongside ‘traditional’ African dances.
Despite its mixed roots, it is now taught as a pan-African form transcending local variabilities.
Yet, as Swanson argues, the decolonial potential of this initiative is currently curtailed as non-
African participants at the school manifest a distinct desire for reaffirming colonially rooted
ideas about a ‘traditional’, exotic African distinctiveness located outside of the contemporary
world. In their effort to retain this ‘market’ of participants, trainers comply with these desires,
albeit with some ambivalence. Nevertheless, Swanson points out the opportunity the school
offers to African dancers to access affordable professional training on the continent. Furthermore,
the value placed on their African identities in this context is a crucial asset for the dancers and
leads to further local reappropriations.
In a similar vein, Andrieu and Sieveking show in their article that the development of pro-
fessional spaces and options for dance in Burkina Faso offers access to the locally valued identity
of professional dancers, even though it is modelled on the norms and standards of the international
contemporary dance scene. Participation in workshops acquaint dancers with choreographic
experiments and improvisations that entail a trend towards artistic individualization has
become the new proof of professionalism on global art markets. But access to transnational net-
works also allows dancers to forge their own local contemporary dance style and to move away
from stereotypes of ‘African folklore’. This operates a shift from an ethnic identity into a valued
professional identity. The strong emphasis on the need to transmit these new dance practices and
the urge to acquire state recognition also reveal, in Andrieu’s and Sieveking’s view, the dancers’
desire to open up professional possibilities that do not necessarily entail emigration.

Dance, new media, morality and diaspora

One of the most exciting developments in African musical scenes in the past couple of decades
has been the popularization of music videos. Music is now consumed to a large extent through
videos on TV, computer screens and on mobile phones. This is largely a youth phenomenon,
6 H. Neveu Kringelbach and C. Plancke

but older generations consume images of music and dance on screen, too, and these often generate
intense debates about the appropriateness of particular dance styles. Increasingly, it is when
dance is brought to the screen that the reputations of women dancers, in particular, are truly at
stake.
In her article in this issue, Elina Djebbari draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Mali and Benin
to investigate the making of contemporary music videos and their influence on social dance prac-
tices. The creation of new dance routines and their diffusion through new media and screens in
dance venues has had a distinct influence on social dance forms. Specifically, the article examines
the interactions between dancing bodies, music videos and pre-recorded dance routines in
Cotonou and Bamako, respectively. As such, the article confronts dichotomies of represen-
tation/embodiment, global/local and screen/live, and analyses the role of intermediality and reme-
diation in social dance practices in Africa today.
Lesley Braun takes a rather different historical view on how dance in the Democratic Republic
of Congo has been controlled by different actors, from missionaries to postcolonial political
leaders. In particular, women’s dances have been portrayed as morally ambiguous, especially
on stage. Braun argues that a woman’s social position is negotiated through her public perform-
ances, and as such dancing women all too easily invite criticism. Discourses on the morality of
dance performances build on multiple historical layers, each adding new anxieties on the place
of women in public spaces, which have shaped contemporary attitudes towards dance. Specifi-
cally, the article considers how new dance forms emerged in the historical context of colonial Léo-
poldville, and how this shaped the social position of postcolonial Zairian, then Congolese women
who danced for the nation, as well as those of concert dancers, professional women dancers who
perform with popular music bands.
The moral ambiguities associated with young women dancing are not restricted to the conti-
nent and also appear in relation to dances performed in African diasporic contexts. In her article,
Laura Steil analyses the ‘politics of appropriateness’ to which young French Black women are
subjected in public spaces. To characterize their performance of urban popular dances, these
female dancers have used the term boucan, meaning ‘loud noise’. The term captures forms of
bodily expression associated with ingenuity, boldness and flamboyance. The article investigates
how this visual boucan is supplemented by real sonic noise, which renders young French Black
women from the banlieues both visible and audible and affirms their presence in urban spaces.
Focusing on a moral panic around Black female ‘gangs’ arising at the end of the 2000s, the
paper poses the question of how these women make their presences felt, occupy space and
claim a social place for themselves that is different from both the trope of the (loud) ‘angry
black woman’ and that of the (silent) ‘traditional’ woman. Central to this discussion is the
notion of boucan, loud noise that is also manifested visually, which Steil links with dominated
and racialized groups too often viewed in terms of danger, and with the associated in/visibility
of blackness in France.

Conclusion
Overall, this special issue seeks to expand and update notions of African agency within creative
domains. This issue specifically investigates the role of dance in shaping new, and sometimes
multiple identities, as well as some of the moral discourses associated with these, both on the con-
tinent and in African diasporic contexts. The dynamics emerging from the seven articles in this
special issue show that dance in Africa and beyond has long undergone constant renewal, bene-
fitting from local–global influences as well as more localized dynamics of innovation. Overall,
these articles provide new clues to how creativity itself may emerge in the encounter between
individual creativity, collective identities, moral discourses and power dynamics.
 Critical African Studies 7

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

References
Andrieu, Sarah. 2008. “La Mise en Spectacle de L’identité Nationale. Une Analyse des Politiques Culturelles
au Burkina Faso.” Journal des Anthropologues 5: 89–103.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Argenti, Nicolas. 2006. “Remembering the Future: Slavery, Youth and Masking in the Cameroon
Grassfields.” Social Anthropology 14 (1): 49–69.
Argenti, Nicolas. 2007. The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence and Belated Histories in the Cameroun
Grassfields. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bizas, Eleni. 2014. Learning Senegalese Sabar: Dancers and Embodiment in New York and Dakar.
New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Blacking, John. 1967. Venda Children’s Songs: A Study in Ethnomusicological Analysis. Johannesburg:
Witwatersrand University Press.
Blacking, John. 1985. “Movement, Dance, Music and the Venda Girls’ Initiation Cycle.” In Society and the
Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance, edited by Paul Spencer, 64–91.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blakely, Pamela. 1993. “Performing Dangerous Thoughts: Women’s Song-Dance Performance Events in a
Hemba Funeral Ritual (Republic of Zaire).” PhD diss., Indiana University.
Bourdié, Annie. 2013. “Art Chorégraphique Contemporain D’Afrique, Enjeux D’une Reconnaissance.”
Marges 16: 73–86.
Bunce, Mel, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson. 2017. “Introduction: A new Africa’s Media Image?” In
Africa’s Media Image in the 21st Century. From the “Heart of Darkness” to “Africa Rising”, edited
by Mel Bunce, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson, 1–13. London: Routledge.
Bunce, Mel. 2017. “The International News Coverage of Africa. Beyond the “Single Story.” In In Africa’s
Media Image in the 21st Century. From the “Heart of Darkness” to “Africa Rising”, edited by Mel
Bunce, Suzanne Franks, and Chris Paterson, 17–29. London: Routledge.
Castaldi, Francesca. 2006. Choreographies of African Identities. Négritude, Dance, and the National Ballet
of Senegal. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Covington-Ward, Yolanda. 2016. Gesture and Power. Religion, Nationalism and Everyday Performance in
Congo. Durham: Duke University Press.
Daniel, Yvonne. 2005. Dancing Wisdom. Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and
Bahian Candomblé. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
de B’béri, Boulou Ebanda, and P. Eric Louw. 2011. “Afropessimism: A Genealogy of Discourse.” Critical
Arts 25 (3): 335–346.
de Jong, Ferdinand. 2007. Masquerades of Modernity: Power and Secrecy in Casamance, Senegal.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Despres, Altair. 2016. Se Faire Contemporain. Les Danseurs Africains à L’Epreuve de la Mondialisation
Culturelle. Paris: Sorbonne.
Djebbari, Eline. 2011. “Musique, Patrimoine, Identité: le Ballet National du Mali.” In Territoires Musicaux
mis en Scène, edited by Monique Desroches, Marie-Hélène Pichette, Claude Dauphin, and Gordon E.
Smith, 195–208. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.
Drewal, Henry J., and Margaret T. Drewal. 1983. Gẹlẹdẹ: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Edmonson, Laura. 2007. Performance and Politics in Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Eller, Jack David. 2016. Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives. New York: Routledge.
Evans-Pritchard, E. 1928. “The Dance.” Africa 1 (4): 446–462.
Farnell, Brenda. 1999. “Moving Bodies, Acting Selves.” Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 341–373.
Friedson, Steven. 1996. Dancing Prophets. Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Gilman, Lisa. 2009. The Dance of Politics. Gender, Performance and Democratization in Malawi.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Gore, Charles. 2007. Art, Performance and Ritual in Benin City. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gore, Charles. 2008. “Masks and Modernities.” African Arts 41 (4): 1–5.
8 H. Neveu Kringelbach and C. Plancke

Gore, Georgiana. 2001. “Present Texts, Past Voices: the Formation of Contemporary Representations of
West African Dances.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 33: 29–36.
Hanna, Judith L. 1979. “Dance and Social Structure: The Ubakala of Nigeria’.” Journal of Communications
29 (4): 184–191.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge.
Heath, Deborah. 1994. “The Politics of Appropriatness and Appropriation: Recontextualizing Women’s
Dance in Urban Senegal.” American Ethnologist 21 (1): 88–103.
James, Wendy. 2000. “Reforming the Circle: fragments of the Social History of a Vernacular African Dance
form.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13 (1): 140–152.
Kaeppler, Adrienne. 1978. “Dance in Anthropological Perspective.” Annual Review of Anthropology 7:
31–49.
Kearney, Michael. 1995. “The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and
Transnationalism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1): 547–565.
Kiarie Wa’Njogu, John. 2009. “Representation of Africa in the Western Media: Challenges and
Opportunities.” In Media and Identity in Africa, edited by Kimani Nnogu, and John Middleton, 76–
83. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Kisliuk, Michelle. 1998. Seize the Dance! Baaka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Performance.
New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kurath, Gertrude. 1960. “Panorama of Dance Ethnology.” Current Anthropology 1 (3): 233–254.
Lassibille, Mahalia. 2004. “’La danse africaine’, un catégorie à déconstruire: une étude des danses wodaabe
du niger.” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 44 (175): 681–690.
Lewis, Jerome. 2013. “A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Significance of Music and Dance on Culture and
Society: Insight From BaYaka Pygmies.” In Language, Music and the Brain: A Mysterious Relationship.
Strüngmann Forum Reports, vol. 10, edited by Michael Arbib, 45–65. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leynaud, Emile. 1953. Aspects Religieux de la Danse Dans les Civilisations Archaïques de L’Afrique du
Sud-Est. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie.
Mbembe, Achille.1992. “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony.” Africa 62 (1): 3–37.
McGovern, M. 2013. Unmasking the State: Making Guinea Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Meyer, Birgit, and Peter Geschiere. 2003. Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Mitchell, Clyde. 1956. The Kalela Dance: Aspects of Social Relationships among Urban Africans in
Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia. 2005. Baakisimba: Gender in the Music and Dance of the Baganda People of
Uganda. New York: Routledge.
Neveu-Kringelbach, Hélène. 2013. Dance Circles. Movement, Morality and Self-Fashioning in Urban
Senegal. New York: Berghahn Books.
Neveu-Kringelbach, Hélène. 2014. “Choreographic Performance, Generations and the Art of Life in Post-
Colonial Dakar.” Africa 84 (1): 36–54.
Njogu, Kimani, and John Middleton. 2009. Media and Identity in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Nothias, Toussaint. 2014. “‘Rising’, ‘Hopeful’, ‘New’: Visualizing Africa in the Age of Globalization.”
Visual Communication 13 (3): 323–339.
Picton, John. 1990. “What’s in a Mask?” Journal of African Languages and Culture 2 (2): 181–202.
Plancke, Carine. 2014. Flux, Rencontres et Emergences Affectives: Pratiques Chantées et Dansées Chez les
Punu du Congo-Brazzaville. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.
Plancke, Carine. 2017. “Dance Performances in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Remaking Identity, Reconnecting
Present and Past.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 11 (2): 329–346.
Pratten, David. 2008. “Masking Youth: Transformation and Transgression in Annang Performance.” African
Arts 41 (4): 44–60.
Ranger, Terence. 1975. Dance and Society in Eastern Africa 1890-1970: The Beni Ngoma. London:
Heinemann.
Reed, Daniel B. 2016. Abidjan USA: Music, Dance and Mobility in the Lives of Four Ivorian Immigrants.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Reed, Daniel. 2001. “Old Music and Dance for New Needs: Local Performative Responses to New African
Realities.” Africa Today 48: 1.
Sarró, Ramon. 2009. The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast: Iconoclasm Done and
Undone. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Simone, Abdoumaliq. 1998. “Urban Social Fields in Africa.” Social Text 56: 71–89.
 Critical African Studies 9

Spencer, Paul. 1985a. “Introduction: Interpretations of the Dance in Anthropology.” In Society and the
Dance: The Social Anthropology of Process and Performance, edited by Paul Spencer, 1–46.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spencer, Paul. 1985b. “Dance as Antithesis in the Samburu Discourse.” In Society and the Dance: The Social
Anthropology of Process and Performance, edited by Paul Spencer, 140–164. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Thompson, Robert F. 1974. African Art in Motion: Icon and Act. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. 1979. “Masks and Power.” Man 14 (2): 237–248.
Werbner, Richard, and Terence Ranger. 1996. Postcolonial Identities in Africa. London: Zed Books.
White, Bob. 2008. Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaïre. Durham: Duke University
Press.
Williams, Drid. 2004. Anthropology and the Dance: Ten Lectures. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press.
Copyright of Critical African Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.