https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9502-5168
![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The partner dance kizomba became fashionable in the eighties in Portuguese-speaking Africa and its European diasporas. Its commodification in Portugal in the late nineties turned it into a global craze, supported by a linear story: Angola is the source of kizomba, and Lisbon, its international capital. This essay moves beyond the methodological nationalism and the post-imperial geographical concept, lusofonia, that supports this narrative. Examining instead the circulation of people and practices through sites conceptualized as “hubs,” I present kizomba as a transnational field of practices deriving from deep histories of transoceanic, inter-African connections. Presenting Lisbon as the main hub for kizomba during the eighties and nineties, I develop the idea of the transnational dance floor, webbed across cities and connected through transnational ties that challenge post-imperial and linguistic geographies. Thus, despite the essay's ostensible Lisbon-centrism, I propose building collaborative geographies whereby transnational phenomena such as kizomba may best be examined.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Livia Jiménez Sedano works at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, UNED (National Distance Education University) where she teaches Symbolic, Cognitive and Linguistic Anthropology. Between 2013 and 2019 she worked on her postdoctoral project “Dancing ethnicities in a transnational world” at INET-MD (Institute of Ethnomusicology-Centre of Music and Dance Studies, New University of Lisbon). She holds an M.A. in migrations studies, an M.A. in Berber studies, and an M.A. in Islamic religion and culture. Her main areas of research are ethnicity, migrations, dance anthropology, parenting cultures, childhood and social exclusion.
ORCID
Livia Jiménez Sedano http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9502-5168
Notes
1 Glick Schiller and Meinhof, “Singing a New Song?,” 34.
2 See Jiménez, “Ritual Roles.” A number of ethnonyms such as “Angolan,” “African,” “Cape Verdean,” and “Portuguese” appear in this text. They are considered emic expressions. As several authors have stated, they are objects of analysis and not scientific categories, and readers are alerted to consider them in this manner. See Brubaker, “Ethnicity without Groups”; Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making; Díaz de Rada, “En el nombre”; Jiménez, “Etnicidad.”
3 A full description of the dance movement goes beyond the purposes of this essay. For a more detailed description, see Jiménez, “From Angola to the World,” and Kabir, “Decolonizing Time,” 3–5. For a visual example, see the following Youtube video widely shared by aficionados https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29DT-71bk-M.
4 Jiménez, “From Angola to the World.”
5 Jiménez, “Kizomba Dance”; Kabir, “Decolonizing Time,” 3–6.
6 Velasco, Cuerpo y espacio.
7 See Buckland, “Dance, Authencity, and Cultural Memory”; Hanna, “African Dance”; Giurchescu, “Power of Dance”; Grau, “Dance, Identity and Identification.”
8 Mitchell, Kalela Dance; Banks, Ethnicity.
9 Wimmer and Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism.”
10 See Soares, “Entre Luanda,” 42. See also Kizomba teacher Petchu's declarations on Angolan-ness and authenticity of kizomba, discussed in Kabir, “Decolonizing Time,” 3.
11 Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 4.
12 Rivera, Marshall and Pacini, “Introduction.” See also Djebbari, this volume, for the “Creole Atlantic” as another explicatory model for similar connections manifested in salsa.
13 Goertzen and Azzi, “Globalization and the Tango.”
14 Washburne, Sounding Salsa.
15 Kiwan and Meinhof, “Music and Migration”; Glick Schiller and Meinhof, “Singing.”
16 Almeida, “Portugal's Colonial Complex.”
17 De la Barre and Vanspauwen, “Musical Lusofonia.”
18 Ibid., 129.
19 Marcon, Jiménez and Raposo, “Introdução”; Almeida, “Portugal's Colonial Complex.” Lusotropicalismo signals the tendency to celebrate “Portuguese colonialism and postcolonial society as exceptionally ‘congenial’ and ‘open’ to difference among, particularly, black African subjects (Pardue, Cape Verde, Let's Go, 8).”
20 See Mignolo, “Introduction”; Quijano, “Coloniality.”
21 Glick Schiller and Meinhof, “Singing,” 6–7.
22 Kabir, “Oceans, Cities, Islands.”
23 Kabir, “Plantation, Archive, Stage.”
24 Royce, Anthropology.
25 Kabir, “Afro-Latin Africa,” 234–235.
26 See Manuel, “Introduction”; Quintero Rivera, Cuerpo y cultura; Madrid and Moore, Danzón; Kabir, this volume.
27 White, “Congolese Rumba,” 73, Djebbari, this volume.
28 Kabir, “Afro-Latin-Africa,” 236.
29 See Cidra, “Música, poder e diaspora” for a detailed analysis.
30 Ibid.
31 Intervention of Don Kikas in the debate over kizomba part I, organized by DJ Carlos Pedro for DNA Kizomba (21 July 2014).
32 Intervention of Belito Campos in the debate over kizomba part I, organized by DJ Carlos Pedro for DNA Kizomba (21 July 2014).
33 Moorman, Intonations, Djebbari, “Guerre froide.”
34 Guilbault, Zouk.
35 Ibid.
36 Collective interview by Ananya Kabir, Brenna Daldorph, Elina Djebbari and myself at King's College London (January 2015), within the frame of the ERC-funded Modern Moves project. I would like to thank Ananya Kabir for allowing me to use this material here.
37 Hoffman, “Diaspora Networks.”
38 Cidra, “Zouk.”
39 The word “kizomba” is a Kimbundu term, with Kimbundu the language spoken by one of the three biggest ethnolinguistic groups of Angola, the Ambundu people (Moorman, Intonations, 34–35). In general terms, it means “party” and “social encounter” (Cidra, “Kizomba,” 674). Therefore, it can be translated as “party music” in this context.
40 Accessible on line: http://www.opais.net/pt/dossier/?det=21059
41 Moorman, Intonations.
42 Jiménez, “From Angola to the World.”
43 Kabir, “Decolonizing Time.”
44 Rumford, “Introduction”; Castells, End of Millenium.
45 Following Itzigsohn et al., “Mapping.”
46 Moorman, “Luanda Hums and Buzzes,” 17.
47 Debate on kizomba part I, organized by DJ Carlos Pedro for DNA Kizomba (21 July 2014).
48 Debate on kizomba part II organized by DJ Carlos Pedro for DNA Kizomba (22 July 2014).
49 Interview with Hernani Lagrosse, 13 June 2015. All translations from Portuguese into English are mine.
50 Interview with Dinah Correia, 5 March 2015.
51 Jiménez, “Ritual Roles.”
52 For an example, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nspNiJwI93E.
53 Fieldwork Diary, 31 January 2014.
54 Cidra, “Kizomba.”
55 Ibid.
56 Intervention of Juvenal Cabral in the debate over kizomba part II, organized by DJ Carlos Pedro for DNA Kizomba (22 July 2014).
57 Cidra, “Zouk.”
58 Jiménez, “Ritual Roles.”
59 Ibid.
60 Belito Campos, debate on kizomba organized by DJ Carlos Pedro part I.
61 Interview with DJ Turbo, 22 May 2015.
62 Silva, “Vidisco”; Nunes, “Diversity and Synergy.”
63 Cidra, “Kizomba.”
64 De La Barre and Vanspauwen, “Musical Lusofonia.” In fact, Canal Africa, the former channel that would later become RTP Africa, originally broadcast only in Africa. It was only on 1 April 1997, when it was converted to RTP Africa, that broadcasting for Portugal started.
65 Moorman, “Luanda,” 348.
66 Kabir, “Decolonizing Time,” 3; Hutchinson, Salsa World.
67 Jiménez, “From Angola to the World.”
68 Hoffman, “Diasporic Networks;” see also Steil, “Socialités, prestiges, et jeux.”
69 Soares, “Entre Lisboa”; Jiménez, “From Angola to the World.”
70 See Jiménez, “From Angola to the World.”
71 See Moorman, Intonations.