Get em’ black
Just listened to the long version of a TikTok song. Get em black. It’s apparently by Kodak black if you are interested in destroying your ears.
The reason I listened to it was that I watched a black man dancing to the song and I thought. “Why do we dance like this?” The way “black people” dance versus our white counterparts is distinctly different. I bet you have a caricature in your mind of a black man using his whole body, dancing centre stage whereas his white friend is doing the Hokey Cokey solo in the corner. So why do we (as a black woman) do it? Why do we dance like this?
I believe the answer is simple. This is merely my opinion. My opinion is we as black people are closer to our roots than white people. When you think of that black man dancing I’m going double or nothing to say you are thinking of either a Nigerian or at best a West African.
First because we’re the coast closest to the USA. And African Americans are almost entirely descended from there (lol my autocorrect said descended from royalty)
Secondly because Nigeria is the most populated African country and is the dominant culture in West Africa. Pre slavery there would have been dozens of states but now even when we are talking about “Nigeria” really we’re talking about “Yuroba”
Sure as hell you weren’t thinking of an Igbo.
I have no idea if the Yuroba people made up the majority of the slaves. But the post slave culture? They dominate.
Anyway, back to this man. He was dancing in a way I hope his ancestors were proud of. In a way they’d recognise I hope.
The reason I think this is because I am Creole, we don’t dance differently as decedents from slaves to those who were never enslaved. The Native Americans also dance like us and so do the Polynesians. The way we dance is sensual, hips, arms, legs, it’s joyful, it’s all encompassing. Meanwhile our stereotypical “white person” has internalised enough “Roman Catholic body shaming” to last another 7 generations. The truth is that white people (Europeans) danced like us too.they were just as savage as they tell us we are, either explicitly or implicitly.I listened to the British history podcast and I believe the host (Jamie) was describing a chieftain’s funeral where he described there being a woman who essentially would volunteer to be killed to accompany the chief into the afterlife, but not before she went to everyone’s houses, was feted by them and had ritualistic sex with all the men. Only after she’d “done the rounds” said a few words was her throat cut and was placed beside her chief to be his “playmate” in the afterlife. Enough said, so don’t give me shit for using the same hips we both have when I dance.
Let’s also not forget that the Victorians ate Egyptian mummies, which is literally cannibalism as Egyptian mummies we’re made from dead human people. Yet whenever they described Africa “the bush” “oooh there’s cannibals there” erm… please clear out your own garden first before looking into mine?
Next we have “Juju” which is witchcraft. As small children we were taught it was evil. Wrong. It was not Christian. Different. Juju. I believe is the vestiges of ancient African religions. We kept the witchcraft because we believed it would give us the best chances of “defeating white people” our slavers and colonisers at the time, because why wouldn’t you keep the curses? But remember any mouth that can curse you can bless you. And we see it in the traditional marriages (less so because the girls can be pre-pubescent and may have been victims of FGM) and definitely births. Traditional “pull na doe,” “to take outside” has been “Christian-ified” but the core tradition is there. There’s a universality to religions. All human religions have ways of welcoming new life into the world, praying to our deity of long life, prosperity, and joy.Ways of creating new families (marriage.) Then ways of saying goodbye to the dead.
Black people I believe live more purely, more true to ourselves. We’re passionate people, loud, vibrant welcoming, loving. Also intelligent, articulate, precise introverted and nomadic. There is no one way to describe “black people” we are as wide a spectrum as the tone s of our skin. However there are some truths. We’ve not had comfort destroy our faith. We have no comfort. We only have God. And our ancestors, who I pray look down from Alaifiah (heaven) and smile.
Get em’ black
Grace and Courage
Annetta Mother-Smith