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Dance Rooted in the Movements of Bedford-Stuyvesant: Two Choreographers, One Aesthetic Tradition

Indira Etwaroo

in Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities

Reinterpreting the works of choreographers Kariamu Welsh and Ronald K. Brown as ethnographies of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Indira Etwaroo situates Welsh’s and Brown’s ... More

Reinterpreting the works of choreographers Kariamu Welsh and Ronald K. Brown as ethnographies of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Indira Etwaroo situates Welsh’s and Brown’s respective bodies of work from two historical periods as artistic expressions shaped by the Great Migration, the Black Arts and Black Power movements, and the daily realities of mid and late 20th Century African-American urban life. As examples of “Neo-traditional African dance,” Etwaroo explores how Welsh and Brown recalibrated traditional African dance aesthetics for North American and European performance contexts that were quite distinct from those rooted in traditional African societies. As Welsh and Brown addressed current African-American political events in their works, they secured a contemporary relevance for the historically rooted dance aesthetics they pioneered. Etwaroo also places Welsh and Brown within a long tradition of African-American dance choreographers and explores Welsh’s influence on Brown as evidence of an established neo-traditional African dance ethos in the United States, which constitutes a tradition in its own right.Less

The African Choreographer’s Envisioning

Naomi Gedo Johnson Diouf

in Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities

In Kariamu Welsh’s essay, “The ‘Gospel’ of Memory; Memory as ‘Trace’,” the foundational understandings of African dance in the U.S. are dissected and analyzed. Welsh’s emphasis straddles two ... More

In Kariamu Welsh’s essay, “The ‘Gospel’ of Memory; Memory as ‘Trace’,” the foundational understandings of African dance in the U.S. are dissected and analyzed. Welsh’s emphasis straddles two objectives, one historical and one theoretical. She unpacks terminology for African dance from her long-term, dual perspective of both researcher and performer; she names and records the African dance/music masters who have contributed to the implantation and dispersal of African dance and gives her explanations regarding notions of Africa and the African Diaspora. Then, she proceeds philosophically to offer a “Gospel of African dance,” that is, fluid and malleable interactions of memory and ‘trace’ in their crucial positions, which affects the collective energy of Africa, both past and future.Less

Recording to Hard Drive: Producing Digitally, 1991–2013

Michael Jarrett

in Pressed for All Time: Producing the Great Jazz Albums from Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday to Miles Davis and Diana Krall

When digital audio workstations (DAWs) do not multiply recording options to unthinkable levels of over-choice, they have simplified and automated tasks that were exceedingly difficult and time ... More

When digital audio workstations (DAWs) do not multiply recording options to unthinkable levels of over-choice, they have simplified and automated tasks that were exceedingly difficult and time consuming to execute on analog tape. But they have informed jazz production most profoundly in the smallest sorts of ways. Fixing the little stuff that once marred, otherwise stellar, performances is now very quick and easy. A number of jazz recordings discussed in this chapter were not recorded digitally, and when they were, many of their producers merely treated digital tape and hard drives as the new, perhaps "improved," analog tape. Much of the time, in the world of jazz production a potentially revolutionary technology is just added to—and conceptualized in terms of–what was already available.Less

African Chiefs and the Post–Cold War Moment: Millennial Capitalism and the Struggle over Moral Authority

Peter Geschiere

John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff (eds)

in The Politics of Custom: Chiefship, Capital, and the State in Contemporary Africa

In chapter two, Geschiere argues that, in contemporary Africa, customary law and chiefly authority are best understood as “neo-traditional.” Neither strictly customary – although their legitimacy ... More

In chapter two, Geschiere argues that, in contemporary Africa, customary law and chiefly authority are best understood as “neo-traditional.” Neither strictly customary – although their legitimacy lies in claims to the sanction of custom – nor wholly constructed anew in the present, they are a blend of both, a fusion that has emerged in the post-Cold War moment dating back to the late 1980’s. Making the point that the so-called “return” of chiefship has varied greatly across the continent – it has not occurred at all in some countries -- Geschiere relates recent transformations in traditional authority to the effects of structural adjustment policies; policies, imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, that resonated with the neoliberal tendency in a rising global economy to favor decentralization, deregulation, and devolution away from the state to “the local,” thus to empower those who appeared to enjoy legitimate sovereignty over indigenous communities.Less