Music as Dance and Dance as Music: Interdependence and Dialogue in Baganda Baakisimba Performance

Abstract

The integration of music and dance among African people is a well-articulated phenomenon both within and outside of ethnomusicology (e.g., Blacking 1973; Hanna 1973; Nketia 1974; Stone 1998; Mans 2002; Gilman 2009; Mason 2012:5). As Ruth Stone reports, “African performance is a highly wrapped bundle of arts that are sometimes difficult to separate, even for analysis. Singing, playing instruments, dancing, masquerading and dramatizing are part of a conceptual package that many Africans think of as one and the same” (1998:7). Despite the ubiquity of this conceptual packaging, African performance arts are realized in very particularized ways and contexts throughout the continent. In his study of the vimbuza healing ritual among the Tumbuka of Malawi, for example, Steven Friedson concludes that music and dance in vimbuza are not independent, but “multilayered and complexly interrelated” (1996: 131). In fact, “without drumming there would be no dancing, and without the dancing, the vimbuza [ancestral spirits] would be unable to ‘play with their children‘” (ibid.: 129). Friedson's observation goes beyond the basic acknowledgement that people who create and view dance experience it as sound too; as a practitioner, he found the very act of drumming to be “dancelike” (ibid.: 131–32). Similarly, in the specific cases of Ugandan kizino, kimandwa, maggunju, and gaze. Alfdaniels Mabingo argues that “to embody these dances is to personify the music that accompanies them. Music represents, frames and influences the corporeal bases, capabilities, performance and choreographic sensibilities of the dances” (2015: 13; see also Makubuya 1995). In both of these cases, music not only helps to define the choreographic movements, but also determines the speed and vigour of the dancers.

Broadening research in gender and music practice

“…Research conclude that musicians identifying as women have been actively prohibited from playing instruments that have emphasised their sexuality in both the Global North and South, during different time periods (cf. Essex 1772; Basso 1989; Koskoff 2014; Nannyonga-Tamusuza 2015). In the Western contexts in focus in this article, it is possible to argue that currently informal discouragement rather than active prohibition is more common (cf.…”

Music as a pedagogic tool and co-teacher in African dances: Dissecting the reflections and practices of teachers of cultural heritage dances in Uganda

“…With reference to dances in Uganda, Nannyonga-Tamusuza (2015) has argued that dance is simply music seen and not heard. She used Benesh notation to reveal the dialogic interaction between music and dance movements in the Baakisimba dance of the Baganda people of central Uganda.…”

“…The relationship between music and dance has been considered as one of the key characteristics of African artistic practices. Nannyonga-Tamusuza (2015) has noted that “music not only helps to define the choreographic movements but also determines the speed and vigour of the dancers” (p. 82). A convergence of music and dance frames the aesthetic, functional, and semiotic taxonomy of cultural experiences; it defines people’s identities; unveils the historicities of civilizations; reflects socio-cultural continuities and changes; and cultivates community connections (Nketia, 1965; Nannyonga-Tamusuza, 2005).…”

Teaching African Dances in the Caribbean: Horizontal Interpenetration and Afrocentricity in Jamaica

“…In the process of teaching music as dance and dance as music (Nannyonga- Tamusuza, 2015), I declined to write down songs on the white board as one of the dance participants had requested. Deconstructing dances through songs and rhythms aimed to allow the dance participants to access the esthetic qualities of the dances through vocal agency.…”