Dancing an Open Africanity: Playing with “Tradition” and Identity in the Spreading of Sabar in Europe

Alice Aterianus-Owanga

doi:10.1515/culture-2019-0030

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes one of the constructions of African identity that occur through the spreading of sabar in European cities. Basing on a multi-sited fieldwork between Dakar, France and Switzerland, this paper traces the local roots and transnational routes of this Senegalese dance and music performance and presents the “transnational social field” (Levitt and Glick-Schiller) that sabar musicians and dancers have created in Europe. It analyses the representations of Africanity, Senegality and Blackness that are shared in Sabar dances classes, and describes how diasporic artists contribute to (re)invent “traditions” in migration. In this transnational dance world, “blackness” and Africanity are not homogenous and convertible categories of identification, on the contrary, they are made of many tensions and arrangements, which allow individuals to include or exclude otherness, depending on situations and contexts.

Highlights

This paper describes one of the constructions of African identity that occur through the spreading of sabar in European cities
Basing on a multi-sited fieldwork between Dakar, France and Switzerland, this paper traces the local roots and transnational routes of this Senegalese dance and music performance and presents the “transnational social field” (Levitt and Glick-Schiller) that sabar musicians and dancers have created in Europe
It analyses the representations of Africanity, Senegality and Blackness that are shared in Sabar dances classes, and describes how diasporic artists contribute toinvent “traditions” in migration

Summary

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Other sabar teachers develop different conceptions of sabar transmission and pedagogy: some dancers insist more during their classes on fun, and inclusion of new dance moves which are popular among Dakar’s youth, such as musicale or fass, considering that Yama takes the risk of being cut from Dakar’s current sabar life; others who adhere to bayefall religion may favour in their teachings the promotion of bayefall dances and rhythms, that they include as part of the traditional sabar repertoire Beyond these distinctions, most part of sabar dancers rely in their teachings to European students on the same discourse about tradition, considered as a main criterion for their legitimacy as teachers and for the value of their knowledge. Contrary to models which tend to locate the “pure tradition” in an original locality, and as proved by many studies about the transnationalisation of music or religions, sabar tradition is (re)invented out of its initial space, through global mobility, connections and interactions

Conclusion

Works Cited