Ethn 2

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Notebook 5

My zine is a counter narrative because it complicates the United States historical perspective of stepping, addresses the transnational nature of Blackness, and highlights the resistance of South African minors under great duress and Dutch oppression. When regarding ‘Blackness’, Black identity, and Black thought- the Black American lived experience and global view tends to take precedent and dominating narrative in all things Black. With pan national ideals already taking on heteropatriarchal structures, the additional silencing that occurs with a single narrative of blackness in a global context is not conducive (to say the least) to goals of liberation for all Black/African diasporic people.

My zine shares the story of South Africans (note South Africans is to refer to Black indigenous folk of southern Africa), who created an art that spoke of their struggles, built community, and rejoices in their agency in resistance. A story that can be similarly found across the diaspora, but is of South Africa and adopted by Black Americans and others (in the way that Blackness becomes consumed by society). It is along this story sharing and adoption of various methods of resistance and cultural arts that Blackness is transnational. Art shared across the diaspora and global conditions of antiBlackness that provoke resistance are all products of and perpetrators of transnational Blackness.

Lastly, the master narrative of South Africa is that of apartheid enforced by Dutch settlers that through international efforts was lifted and the country liberated. My zine has no such ending. It incorporates a timeline with beginnings around the introduction of the gumboot and stepping to nations respectively, and goes on as just a line. Stories and events continue but, there is no mention of any ending or efforts outside of the local contexts of the art developing. My zine focuses of the realities and strengths of South Africans, pinpointing but one moment on a long timeline of struggle and resistance- dismantling and creating. My zine aims to, in simple means share a causal story as not an anomaly but a part of many other stories and narratives that can so easily be lost or made token spectacle by perpetrators of master narratives.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Notebook 5

My zine is a counter narrative because it complicates the United States historical perspective of stepping, addresses the transnational nature of Blackness, and highlights the resistance of South African minors under great duress and Dutch oppression. When regarding ‘Blackness’, Black identity, and Black thought- the Black American lived experience and global view tends to take precedent and dominating narrative in all things Black. With pan national ideals already taking on heteropatriarchal structures, the additional silencing that occurs with a single narrative of blackness in a global context is not conducive (to say the least) to goals of liberation for all Black/African diasporic people.

My zine shares the story of South Africans (note South Africans is to refer to Black indigenous folk of southern Africa), who created an art that spoke of their struggles, built community, and rejoices in their agency in resistance. A story that can be similarly found across the diaspora, but is of South Africa and adopted by Black Americans and others (in the way that Blackness becomes consumed by society). It is along this story sharing and adoption of various methods of resistance and cultural arts that Blackness is transnational. Art shared across the diaspora and global conditions of antiBlackness that provoke resistance are all products of and perpetrators of transnational Blackness.

Lastly, the master narrative of South Africa is that of apartheid enforced by Dutch settlers that through international efforts was lifted and the country liberated. My zine has no such ending. It incorporates a timeline with beginnings around the introduction of the gumboot and stepping to nations respectively, and goes on as just a line. Stories and events continue but, there is no mention of any ending or efforts outside of the local contexts of the art developing. My zine focuses of the realities and strengths of South Africans, pinpointing but one moment on a long timeline of struggle and resistance- dismantling and creating. My zine aims to, in simple means share a causal story as not an anomaly but a part of many other stories and narratives that can so easily be lost or made token spectacle by perpetrators of master narratives.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

https://issuu.com/refiloegqajela/docs/zine

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The enslavement of Africans in America has led to a lasting racial dictatorship that controls all structural aspects of society. The development of this racial dictatorship has developed the American identity as white by default; all others that did not fit into ‘whiteness’ have been racialized as inferior and positioned as subordinate in the American hierarchy. This is the spatial or ‘environmental’ context of the states that host the gumboot as an aspect of Blackness transcending international borders, circulating in Black America as stepping. This is different from the settler colonial relationship South Africans have with the Dutch. South Africans are the indigenous folks who are afflicted with both dispossession of land/culture/freedom and the anti-Black racial hierarchy reflected in the states.

Though the U.S exists as a settler colonial state, the introduction of slavery added complexity to racial constructions and consequently all other identities as informed by race. This variation in racial development may explain how while the gumboot remains predominantly a male expression in representation in South Africa, stepping in the U.S is embraced by Black sororities and fraternities alike. Aside from the binary imposed by institutions of greek life, stepping takes on a less gendered construction in the U.S in which Blackness has already been made queer; that which is considered property does not have a gender.

From the time of slavery when Black people in America were treated as property and their Blackness indicative of their ‘inferiority’, race has been used to add privilege and benefit to whiteness with material possessions that began with Black bodies. Blackness has traveled as Black communities have traveled. While that has meant many exchanges of culture and enriching of societies, as Blackness is broad and Blackness has circulated far before slave trade; Slave trade has lead to the bringing of culture from all across to Africa to many lands as well as communities of slave descendants searching for their history and finding it in their efforts of liberation. Like the bodies that perform it, stepping is a form of resistance, call to action, and demand to be heard; traveling from one oppressive environment to another, in need of the work it does.  

The gumboot is loud and demands to be heard. While it is known in the U.S the many triumphs if the Civil Rights movement as a result of active and mobilized Black communities, lesser known is the many trial and errors of strategy and organization. As much can be said for anti-apartheid efforts. Some methods the various anti-apartheid groups used to protest the government were large scale peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns. Both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) organized large but intentionally peaceful and uneventful protests, though they each went about gathering the protesters differently. Campaigns served the purpose of getting the attention of the government, though they each called for different actions from the people. The most successful were the campaigns and the boycotts. Unfortunately, the protests invoked to much paranoia from the authorities to have done much good. With some efforts towards freedom having both success and setbacks, community, communal means of resistance, and counter spaces where the gumboot dance took place prove to be both timeless and free of the restrictions of colonial borders.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine page 1 Draft

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/african-gumboot-dance-a-heritage-of-ingenuity/

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/before/6201_pan.htm

[blacademicstuff-blog]

One of societies attacks on Black women and their expression I see in today’s media is the growing popularity of Iggy Azalea, who has blatantly and disgustingly been a puppet perpetuator appropriation of Black culture; disregarding not only the the history and relevant background of the art but, disrespecting the very people that have and continue to make that art authentically possible. This appropriation only goes to disempower Black women as they are told everything they have and the culture to which they belong and have built, are best in the hands of others. This form of misogynoir is perpetuated by those that support and glorify the caricatured minstreling ethnic tourist that is Iggy Azalea.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Through mediums such as graphic art and design, social media, and blogging Black people have made their virtual presence a part of the internet interface and have successfully established communities and culture around this claimed virtual space. This cultural labor resonates significantly in the history of Black bodies’ covert yet widely consumable and appropriated societal contributions. Black people have been able to create an accessible, multidimensional, and intersectional inclusive space virtually that interacts fluidly enough outside of that platform to have material effects in physical space. This development not only serves to transform and pave the way for Black space but, challenges the ways in which Black labor has been packaged as ownership and ability to lay claim to anything has been denied to Black bodies in the same vane that Black bodies were denied agency to have self determined space.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The enslavement of Africans in America has led to a lasting racial dictatorship that controls all structural aspects of society. The development of this racial dictatorship has developed the American identity as white by default; all others that did not fit into ‘whiteness’ have been racialized as inferior and positioned as subordinate in the American hierarchy. This is the spatial or ‘environmental’ context of the states that host the gumboot as an aspect of Blackness transcending international borders, circulating in Black America as stepping. This is different from the settler colonial relationship South Africans have with the Dutch. South Africans are the indigenous folks who are afflicted with both dispossession of land/culture/freedom and the anti-Black racial hierarchy reflected in the states.

Though the U.S exists as a settler colonial state, the introduction of slavery added complexity to racial constructions and consequently all other identities as informed by race. This variation in racial development may explain how while the gumboot remains predominantly a male expression in representation in South Africa, stepping in the U.S is embraced by Black sororities and fraternities alike. Aside from the binary imposed by institutions of greek life, stepping takes on a less gendered construction in the U.S in which Blackness has already been made queer; that which is considered property does not have a gender.

From the time of slavery when Black people in America were treated as property and their Blackness indicative of their ‘inferiority’, race has been used to add privilege and benefit to whiteness with material possessions that began with Black bodies. Blackness has traveled as Black communities have traveled. While that has meant many exchanges of culture and enriching of societies, as Blackness is broad and Blackness has circulated far before slave trade; Slave trade has lead to the bringing of culture from all across to Africa to many lands as well as communities of slave descendants searching for their history and finding it in their efforts of liberation. Like the bodies that perform it, stepping is a form of resistance, call to action, and demand to be heard; traveling from one oppressive environment to another, in need of the work it does.  

The gumboot is loud and demands to be heard. While it is known in the U.S the many triumphs if the Civil Rights movement as a result of active and mobilized Black communities, lesser known is the many trial and errors of strategy and organization. As much can be said for anti-apartheid efforts. Some methods the various anti-apartheid groups used to protest the government were large scale peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns. Both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) organized large but intentionally peaceful and uneventful protests, though they each went about gathering the protesters differently. Campaigns served the purpose of getting the attention of the government, though they each called for different actions from the people. The most successful were the campaigns and the boycotts. Unfortunately, the protests invoked to much paranoia from the authorities to have done much good. With some efforts towards freedom having both success and setbacks, community, communal means of resistance, and counter spaces where the gumboot dance took place prove to be both timeless and free of the restrictions of colonial borders.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine page 1 Draft

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/african-gumboot-dance-a-heritage-of-ingenuity/

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/before/6201_pan.htm

[blacademicstuff-blog]

One of societies attacks on Black women and their expression I see in today's media is the growing popularity of Iggy Azalea, who has blatantly and disgustingly been a puppet perpetuator appropriation of Black culture; disregarding not only the the history and relevant background of the art but, disrespecting the very people that have and continue to make that art authentically possible. This appropriation only goes to disempower Black women as they are told everything they have and the culture to which they belong and have built, are best in the hands of others. This form of misogynoir is perpetuated by those that support and glorify the caricatured minstreling ethnic tourist that is Iggy Azalea.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The enslavement of Africans in America has led to a lasting racial dictatorship that controls all structural aspects of society. The development of this racial dictatorship has developed the American identity as white by default; all others that did not fit into ‘whiteness’ have been racialized as inferior and positioned as subordinate in the American hierarchy. This is the spatial or ‘environmental’ context of the states that host the gumboot as an aspect of Blackness transcending international borders, circulating in Black America as stepping. This is different from the settler colonial relationship South Africans have with the Dutch. South Africans are the indigenous folks who are afflicted with both dispossession of land/culture/freedom and the anti-Black racial hierarchy reflected in the states.

Though the U.S exists as a settler colonial state, the introduction of slavery added complexity to racial constructions and consequently all other identities as informed by race. This variation in racial development may explain how while the gumboot remains predominantly a male expression in representation in South Africa, stepping in the U.S is embraced by Black sororities and fraternities alike. Aside from the binary imposed by institutions of greek life, stepping takes on a less gendered construction in the U.S in which Blackness has already been made queer; that which is considered property does not have a gender.

From the time of slavery when Black people in America were treated as property and their Blackness indicative of their ‘inferiority’, race has been used to add privilege and benefit to whiteness with material possessions that began with Black bodies. Blackness has traveled as Black communities have traveled. While that has meant many exchanges of culture and enriching of societies, as Blackness is broad and Blackness has circulated far before slave trade; Slave trade has lead to the bringing of culture from all across to Africa to many lands as well as communities of slave descendants searching for their history and finding it in their efforts of liberation. Like the bodies that perform it, stepping is a form of resistance, call to action, and demand to be heard; traveling from one oppressive environment to another, in need of the work it does.  

The gumboot is loud and demands to be heard. While it is known in the U.S the many triumphs if the Civil Rights movement as a result of active and mobilized Black communities, lesser known is the many trial and errors of strategy and organization. As much can be said for anti-apartheid efforts. Some methods the various anti-apartheid groups used to protest the government were large scale peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns. Both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) organized large but intentionally peaceful and uneventful protests, though they each went about gathering the protesters differently. Campaigns served the purpose of getting the attention of the government, though they each called for different actions from the people. The most successful were the campaigns and the boycotts. Unfortunately, the protests invoked to much paranoia from the authorities to have done much good. With some efforts towards freedom having both success and setbacks, community, communal means of resistance, and counter spaces where the gumboot dance took place prove to be both timeless and free of the restrictions of colonial borders.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine page 1 Draft

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/african-gumboot-dance-a-heritage-of-ingenuity/

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/before/6201_pan.htm

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The enslavement of Africans in America has led to a lasting racial dictatorship that controls all structural aspects of society. The development of this racial dictatorship has developed the American identity as white by default; all others that did not fit into ‘whiteness’ have been racialized as inferior and positioned as subordinate in the American hierarchy. This is the spatial or ‘environmental’ context of the states that host the gumboot as an aspect of Blackness transcending international borders, circulating in Black America as stepping. This is different from the settler colonial relationship South Africans have with the Dutch. South Africans are the indigenous folks who are afflicted with both dispossession of land/culture/freedom and the anti-Black racial hierarchy reflected in the states.

Though the U.S exists as a settler colonial state, the introduction of slavery added complexity to racial constructions and consequently all other identities as informed by race. This variation in racial development may explain how while the gumboot remains predominantly a male expression in representation in South Africa, stepping in the U.S is embraced by Black sororities and fraternities alike. Aside from the binary imposed by institutions of greek life, stepping takes on a less gendered construction in the U.S in which Blackness has already been made queer; that which is considered property does not have a gender.

From the time of slavery when Black people in America were treated as property and their Blackness indicative of their ‘inferiority’, race has been used to add privilege and benefit to whiteness with material possessions that began with Black bodies. Blackness has traveled as Black communities have traveled. While that has meant many exchanges of culture and enriching of societies, as Blackness is broad and Blackness has circulated far before slave trade; Slave trade has lead to the bringing of culture from all across to Africa to many lands as well as communities of slave descendants searching for their history and finding it in their efforts of liberation. Like the bodies that perform it, stepping is a form of resistance, call to action, and demand to be heard; traveling from one oppressive environment to another, in need of the work it does.  

The gumboot is loud and demands to be heard. While it is known in the U.S the many triumphs if the Civil Rights movement as a result of active and mobilized Black communities, lesser known is the many trial and errors of strategy and organization. As much can be said for anti-apartheid efforts. Some methods the various anti-apartheid groups used to protest the government were large scale peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns. Both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) organized large but intentionally peaceful and uneventful protests, though they each went about gathering the protesters differently. Campaigns served the purpose of getting the attention of the government, though they each called for different actions from the people. The most successful were the campaigns and the boycotts. Unfortunately, the protests invoked to much paranoia from the authorities to have done much good. With some efforts towards freedom having both success and setbacks, community, communal means of resistance, and counter spaces where the gumboot dance took place prove to be both timeless and free of the restrictions of colonial borders.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine page 1 Draft

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The enslavement of Africans in America has led to a lasting racial dictatorship that controls all structural aspects of society. The development of this racial dictatorship has developed the American identity as white by default; all others that did not fit into ‘whiteness’ have been racialized as inferior and positioned as subordinate in the American hierarchy. This is the spatial or ‘environmental’ context of the states that host the gumboot as an aspect of Blackness transcending international borders, circulating in Black America as stepping. This is different from the settler colonial relationship South Africans have with the Dutch. South Africans are the indigenous folks who are afflicted with both dispossession of land/culture/freedom and the anti-Black racial hierarchy reflected in the states.

Though the U.S exists as a settler colonial state, the introduction of slavery added complexity to racial constructions and consequently all other identities as informed by race. This variation in racial development may explain how while the gumboot remains predominantly a male expression in representation in South Africa, stepping in the U.S is embraced by Black sororities and fraternities alike. Aside from the binary imposed by institutions of greek life, stepping takes on a less gendered construction in the U.S in which Blackness has already been made queer; that which is considered property does not have a gender.

From the time of slavery when Black people in America were treated as property and their Blackness indicative of their ‘inferiority’, race has been used to add privilege and benefit to whiteness with material possessions that began with Black bodies. Blackness has traveled as Black communities have traveled. While that has meant many exchanges of culture and enriching of societies, as Blackness is broad and Blackness has circulated far before slave trade; Slave trade has lead to the bringing of culture from all across to Africa to many lands as well as communities of slave descendants searching for their history and finding it in their efforts of liberation. Like the bodies that perform it, stepping is a form of resistance, call to action, and demand to be heard; traveling from one oppressive environment to another, in need of the work it does.  

The gumboot is loud and demands to be heard. While it is known in the U.S the many triumphs if the Civil Rights movement as a result of active and mobilized Black communities, lesser known is the many trial and errors of strategy and organization. As much can be said for anti-apartheid efforts. Some methods the various anti-apartheid groups used to protest the government were large scale peaceful demonstrations, boycotts, and campaigns. Both the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and African National Congress (ANC) organized large but intentionally peaceful and uneventful protests, though they each went about gathering the protesters differently. Campaigns served the purpose of getting the attention of the government, though they each called for different actions from the people. The most successful were the campaigns and the boycotts. Unfortunately, the protests invoked to much paranoia from the authorities to have done much good. With some efforts towards freedom having both success and setbacks, community, communal means of resistance, and counter spaces where the gumboot dance took place prove to be both timeless and free of the restrictions of colonial borders.

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

Zine cover 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

http://www.southafrica.net/za/en/articles/entry/article-southafrica.net-gumboot-dancing

http://greek.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-Yard-Newsletter-Issue-2.pdf

http://dancehistorygumbootdancing.weebly.com/narrative.html

http://natashakangunit19.weebly.com/music-used-for-communications.html

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The representation for the gumboot dance has largely been that of masculine presenting individuals and men. Around the time of development, the miners who would perform the gumboot were a community of men; South African women were put into other gendered areas of work as dictated by the Dutch colonizers, as enforcing gender binaries was a key component of the white supremacist classification system that was apartheid. This group of men banded together having shared similar lived experience and relying on one another in shared resistance and would ‘step’ as the culmination of this. 

As time went on and the gumboot dance became stepping in the United States it to was taken over by Black fraternities first; communities of Black men in shared resistance and under systems of white supremacy. As Black sororities emerged along with the fraternities they too would share in this culture of stepping. Complicating the gendered separation of which it came. 

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one’s own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/

[blacademicstuff-blog]

[blacademicstuff-blog]

The ‘object’ I’d like to focus on, as it relates to Circulations of Blackness is stepping. Stepping is an art of drumming, singing, and chanting using nothing but one's own being and interacting with the community around. Stepping is communal and communicative. The beats and rhythm are produced and maintained whilst simultaneously sharing story and/or song with an audience. Stepping is both acapella and drum circle. Composed of soldiers and choir.

Stepping originates from the mines of South Africa in the 1880’s. Then referred to as the ‘gumboot dance’, South African miners would use their bodies as instruments making both rhythm and dance. During the time of apartheid in South Africa, South Africans faced many restrictions on their agency as people, forced into cataloged segregated communities in homeland ghettos, and various other consequences of settler colonialism. The Dutch occupation of South Africa lead to many new means of navigating life, including communication and entertainment. Miners used their bodies in place of the drums they would be penalized for having, and resisted through their dance. They built community with their dance. Found joy with their dance.

Many, many years later in the 1920’s this dance would carry on. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington D.C at Howard University, the Gumboot dance of South African miners would be called stepping. Stepping was utilized by Black college students that were members of what were developing greek letter organizations. Black sororities and fraternities used stepping as a part of their identities, each organization coming up with ‘steps’ amongst their members and performing these steps. The 1920’s, like 1880’s South Africa, was also a time of segregation in the United States. Black people were (are) systemically disenfranchised and give alternate liberties as opposed to their white counterparts. Howard University itself, the site of the gumboot turn step, is a product of this history and Black Americans creating their own academic spaces in society. While in South Africa the gumboot carried with it secret, knowledge, and community as means of survival and forced silence. U.S Black college greek organizations made secret a choice, protecting their history and making exclusive their community; while simultaneously not being silenced but very actively loud. Loud through their service and loud through their step. The spets in both contexts hold the weight of Black resistance and ingenuity.

In the gumboot and step, culture is cultivated. These dances, chants, and performances are of separate lands and far away people. However, the colonial and white supremacist systems that produced the conditions of antiBlackness for both communities to resist are not so far apart. These conditions imposed on Black people and the response of resistance, survival, and joy can be seen demonstrated in and contributing to many circulations of Blackness.

Sources:

http://www.artofstepping.com/about-a-o-s/history-of-art-of-stepping/

http://www.stepafrika.org/company/what-is-stepping/