Dancing

Little else can make you appreciate the United States like spending 2 years in Africa. A nation of so many thoughtful and practical individuals, individuals of soaring vision and ambition, with an unshakable belief in the importance of a basic level of fairness. Americans have a lot to be proud of.

And yet—it doesn’t make me proud to say—we are profoundly bad dancers.

But wait, what about these people?

Sure there are exceptions, most notably these dance specialists we train to become spectacularly good at dancing, then make movies and TV shows about. But it seems to me that that’s just America covering a weakness (dancing) with one of its most formidable strengths: we are really, really good at producing individuals who are really, really good at a thing.

Of course some sub-cultures in the U.S. perform better than others, but as a herd of people I’d say, we’re pretty bad dancers. In any group of 20 random individuals, probably no one is winning any awards. In the U.S., the word party doesn’t even necessarily imply dancing, which is strange enough by the standards of a lot of countries. A good chunk of those dancing at the party are wondering if they’ve put in enough of an appearance on the dance floor to be mercifully allowed to sit down. In a world where people go to discotheques, Americans go to clubs.

I think at the heart of the problem is this idea that the thing about dancing is whether you are good or bad at it. In countries where almost everyone dances really well, the thing about dancing is just that people really love dancing. It doesn’t occur to people that they might be dancing well or badly, it just occurs to them that the next song has a really…good…beat…

I think that how well a culture dances is an indication of how comfortable people feel in their own skin, and how unselfconscious they feel. It’s about losing yourself in the music and shutting off your higher brain. Americans tend to be more cerebral and self-conscious.

I’m sure I’m overstating the case a bit here, but the fact remains that America is not a place with a strong dance culture, or more generously, whatever dance cultures that do exist are very fragmented.

Mozambique stands in contrast. Its culture is one of extreeeme unselfconsciousness, and not surprisingly people here are good at dancing. Most Mozambicans I know have been losing themselves in the joy of dancing regularly from a very young age. And so, I want to use this post to show off some of the cool dancing that pervades the region.

And now, here are two videos that make me happy.  :)  The first showcases a bunch of moves that are typical in Mozambique. This video should give you a good feel for the style of dancing you’d see if you went to a party in Mozambique (party = dancing!). The musical style is called marrabenta, and it’s definitely popular in Mozambique by its own right.

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I wish I had videos to show from parties I have personally been to where we would see dancing almost as good as in this music video above, but trust me that people know how to move like this all over. The same goes for this second video, but I gotta say these kids are reeeally good—a cut above the rest. The musical style is Chinguere, and the music and the dance have roots among the Shona people of neighboring Zimbabwe.

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At a typical party in Chimoio you’ll see people dancing like in both of these videos depending on the song, plus a few other styles. There is a big emphasis on footwork in general, I’d say. There is also a more generic style of dance I commonly see here that I can only describe as spiderlike.

I want to end with a disclaimer: these dance generalizations about Mozambique probably don’t apply to a lot of the folks up in the northern regions of the country, where I understand dancing isn’t permitted in the Islamic communities.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos as much as I do. Until next time!