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

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... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Aterianus-Owanga Alice
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
Reihe/Periodikum: Open Cultural Studies, Vol 3, Iss 1, Pp 347-361 (2019)
Verlag/Hrsg.: De Gruyter
Schlagwörter: sabar / migration / tradition / identity / africanity / Social sciences (General) / H1-99
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27248434
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0030

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.