Dancing Through Time and Space: African Dance and the Géwël Tradition of Senegal at Suffolk University

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores educational benefits of bringing African dance, specifically Sabar of Senegal, into university curriculum. It presents two educational models - Academic/Experiential Model and Gewel Tradition Model - that are used in teaching this particular African class. The article integrates words of students who have taken class between 2005 and 2012 into text to illustrate, represent, and explain efficacy of educational models and impacts of educational experience. Hence, article is based on a class titled Sabar: The Music and Dance of Senegal taught at Suffolk University in Boston, MA during spring semesters in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012, as well as during fall semester in 2009. The class met twice a week with each class being one hour and twenty minutes in length. The class was developed by Gewel Tradition Project to share knowledge of Gewel tradition with interested university students (I come to as a historian and a drummer, but due to close relationships between and music in African performance arts, learning about was necessary and thus allows me to introduce students to basic Sabar movements, taught by expert practitioners). 'This class wasn't just a class, but a step into Senegalese world twice a week.' (Student paper, spring 2005)IntroductionBringing African into university is much more than an exercise in multiculturalism. Learning about body and how it moves involves a myriad of concepts and ideas including beauty, music, community and history. So to teach African in university is to expose students to an African worldview and an African aesthetic sensibility. These are, at very least, a challenge to worldview and sensibilities that are found in western epistemology that university curriculum is built upon.In West Africa, music and are inseparable (Green, 2011). And, most traditional dance, even in its modem manifestations, is danced to live music. There is a strong relationship between and music because they are bom in a particular social context where they develop together and instantly shape and inform each other (Monroe, 2011). The Sabar tradition of Senegal, which is under consideration here, is a perfect example of interrelationship between music and found in West Africa. The word Sabar has multiple meanings. It refers to family of drums that play traditional rhythms; it refers to dances that are performed in conjunction with those rhythms; and it refers to event in which drums are played and dances performed. (Bellinger, 2013, pp,65-66). The drums and are mutually interdependent and event cannot exist without presence of both drum and dance. It is this close interrelationship that has caused African music to be referred to as the language of dance (Green, 2011). In West Africa, sound and movement are parts of whole and to have one without other is incomplete. To teach in an America university therefore requires a class structure, and instructors, that are capable of making connections between movements, drum music, and cultural setting in which they are seated. This creates a holistic learning environment that gives students an opportunity to learn much more than mechanics of this form.To provide a clear understanding of what is involved in bringing African into traditional American (western) educational spaces, it is best to look at it in framework of critical postcolonial theory and practice, (Banks, 2010, p. 26) developed by educator Ojeya Cruz Banks (2010). For Banks (2010), African involves not only a set of steps or movements, but it is also a repository of knowledge, history and philosophy (p. 26). It is important to understand the way music and house not just physical information in human body but also theoretical, emotional, aesthetic, and spiritual information in a mode (Banks, 2010, p. …

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