A Traditional Dance From Zambia That Reminds Me Of Fraternity Stepping

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post showcases a traditional dance performed by young men in Zambia, South Africa.

The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

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With considerable regret, I have disabled the comment feature on this blog (and on my other blogs except for https://pancocojams.blogspot.com, because of the large number of spam comments that I received on those blogs.

Comments for those blogs can be sent to my email address azizip17 dot com at yahoo dot com for possible inclusion in a specific post on those blogs.

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FEATURED VIDEO: Muganda Dance



Mwizenge Tembo, Uploaded on Jul 12, 2008 [The dancing begins at 2:20]

Muganda Dance of the Tumbuka people of Lundazi District in Eastern Zambia in Southern Africa. Muganda is a culturally gende-specific dance for young men. Kamzati Village Dancers in Chief Magodi in the North-Western region of Lundazi.
-snip-
The young men dance in a line. One young man's shirt has blue & red fringe while the other members have red. Much of the time that man, who appears to be the group's leader, either dances to the right side of the other members or in back of them.

Here's a comment from that video's viewer comment thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v47kNLyxlxY
"Am a tumbuka 4rm northern malawi, we used to dance this as well! we ve same language n culture, TITEMWANENGE WANGANYA,TILI WAMOZA
-gampha80, 2009

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My Editorial Comment:

This traditional African dance very strongly reminds me of the performance movement art of stepping ("Steppin").

Stepping' was developed by and is still closely associated with historically Black (African American) university based fraternities and sororities. However, since the late 20th century there are numerous other step teams in universities, schools, and churches. The United States army even has a step team.

I wish that some step masters [choreographers for step routines] would check out this video of these Zambian brothers, and incorporate into their step routines some but not all of these traditional moves. Of course if they did so, I would hope that those step teams would give the originators of those steps their due respect and acknowledgement.

Click http://cocojams.com/content/fraternity-sorority-step-stroll-related-videos for videos of step shows and the African American orginated performance activity of "strolling" (also known as "party walks").

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