serval:BIB_337AB46DC1ED
Dancing an Open Africanity: Playing with “Tradition” and Identity in the Spreading of Sabar in Europe
10.1515/culture-2019-0030
http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0030
Aterianus-Owanga
Alice
author
article
2019-01-01
Open Cultural Studies
2451-3474
journal
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>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.</jats:p>
eng
60_published
SNF/Careers/
true
University of Lausanne
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