Afrovision: rehearsing diasporic Africanism in a Tel-Aviv nightclub

ABSTRACT

During the second half of the 1990s, an extended number of illegal African labor migrants arrived at Israel. Whereas associational life among them was based almost exclusively on their national and tribal social clubs, the Afrovision nightclub was a unique grassroots initiative that crossed these boundaries. Based on studies of festive rituals, and more specifically of the role of music and dance in processes of identity formation among migrants' communities, I show how and why Afrovision enabled African immigrants in Israel to come together and experience a sense of diasporic Africanism as a sort of shared identity beyond the salient sub-divisions within their community. Although this experience was partly a reaction to, or implementation of, common perceptions in Israeli society that view African people as of one fiber, the practical significance of the pan-Africanist option offered by Afrovision in the everyday lives of foreign residents far exceeded purely symbolic aspects.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• Israel
• ethnicity
• labor migrants
• clubbing
• music

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 On the role of festive events in the maintenance and reconstruction of ethnic consciousness among exiles, and how this process feeds back into communities in the homeland, see Leal João (2015). More on the reverberation of music between Africa and the Americas, including political and symbolic dimensions embedded in it, in Savishinsky (1994).

2 The word Kushim refers back to people of the ancient region of Kush, in East Africa, mentioned in the Bible. In extension it is used by Hebrew speakers to refer to all black people in a similar way the word Negro or black is used in English. Whereas using this word can simply refer to one’s geographic or ethnic origin it often carries derogatory associations rooted deep in Jewish tradition (see Melamed 2003). In contemporary Israel, and especially for residents in the poor Tel-Aviv neighborhoods, this term is reloaded once again with negative meanings. Hence, using the term Kushi is an equivalent of the word Nigger, as used by a white-American to refer to African-Americans.

3 The first wave of African migrants consisted mainly of men, many of whom were professionals or educated people who accustomed themselves to living on a new, degraded, status. Although they later brought over friends, relatives, and wives, the African population in Israel as a whole remain characterized by the male majority. Note that not only men’s but also women’s strangeness encoded in visibility is often interpreted as a threat to local order. Whereas masculinity entails potential violence, female laborers’ femininity ‘highlights the anxieties surrounding the fertility of non-Jewish female foreigners in Israel’ (Mazuz 2015, 354).

4 As mentioned in note no. 3 many Africans in Tel-Aviv came from a relative wealthy background (which allowed them to emigrate in the first place). These individuals who experienced degradation in their social status often perceived themselves to be more ‘modern’ than their Israeli neighbors and employers.

5 In fact, as Sabar and Kanari (2006a) explain, the church sometimes hindered certain performers’ aspirations to break out of the spiritual-oriented style.

6 In order to adjust to the Jewish-Israeli schedule, Christian laborers moved their weekend gathering in church from Sunday to Saturday. The secular and permissive atmosphere of Afrovision partly explains the small percentage of African women partygoers. Those who attend the club on a regular basis are sometimes described by men as ‘bad girls’. African men usually preferred to be accompanied to the club by Filipinas or other women.

7 An exception was the Ghanian community, and to some extent also Nigerians, who constituted the majority groups among the African community. In conversations with Ghanians (who had their own separate dance club) they sometime depicted Afrovision as ‘a place for Francophones’. Although this depiction did not prove to be accurate it betrays Ghanians’ image of the club as a place made to include the variety of people that comprised smaller groups within the local African community.

8 On the appeal of reggae to Africans see Savishinsky (1994). Studies on the reception and production of rap in Africa are numerous. Eric Charry’s comprehensive volume (2012) is a good source.

9 Ghanians comprised the majority group among Africans, numbering several thousand, and it was rare to see any of them attending the Afrovision club.

10 This is an estimated number as was given to me by the then-Chair of the AWU (African Workers Union). Sabar and Kanari (2006a) speak of a lower number that ranges between 10,000 and 14,000.