The Africanist Aesthetic in American Dance Forms
by Emily Willette, Smith College
The Africanist Aesthetic and American Dance Forms
The history of globalization and cultural hybridization goes back
through time as long as people from different places have been
interacting with each other. Through trade of all kinds, people all over
the world have been sharing their practices with others and taking in
those of others. Since dance embodies many cultural attitudes, it is one
way to look at the effects of globalization. Through slavery American
dance was influenced by African dance, and in turn the African slaves
were influenced by the dances already performed in this country. This
can be seen in many dance forms created and altered in the United
States.
History
The Africanist Aesthetic, as seen in American dance, is not any
particular aesthetic of any one group of people from Africa, but rather
is a blend of common elements across many different groups. According
to Katrina Hazzard-Gordon, this blending and creation of an
African-American culture came about because of homogenization of slave
life.
[1]
Since the beginning of slavery in the United States, groups of Africans
had been split up. No one group with a common language or cultural
practices were kept together, which lead to cultural hybridization even
in the early history of slavery. With the invention of the cotton gin,
many plantations that had previously grown indigo or tobacco began to
grow cotton because this device made it so much easier to produce. Since
almost all slaves were doing the same work, the shared practices were
the basis for what Hazzard-Gordon calls, “a fairly stable, homogeneous,
dominant cultural variant.”
[2]
The final force that Hazzard-Gordon cites is the outlaw of the slave
trade in the early 1800’s. Since no, or almost no, new slaves were being
brought into the United States and the percentage of slaves that were
born in the United States was becoming the majority, the people were
becoming further and further removed from their home culture with and
had no way to recover what had been lost.
READ MORE.
