Tribal Confusion

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I’m milling around a dance studio with twenty other barefoot women, but the minute the drums start, we line up like soldiers. Rink-a-dink-a-dink-dink goes the break, the signal that the West African rhythm sinté is about to be begin. Dinka-dink-dink! goes the djembe, a round drum played with slapping hands. Ka-doon-chuk-chuk! booms the big dundun under mallets the size of hammers. My arms and legs know just what move goes where in the complex syncopation: I’ve danced this one before.

I wasn’t always so familiar with the dig-a-doon of tribal music. In the strip mall culture where I grew up, it was Bell Biv Devoe, Motley Crue or Garth Brooks, each with a wardrobe to match. I never quite fit into just one clique, and instead drifted around to all of them, wearing striped tights under my cheerleading uniform, smoking cigarettes with the kids on the curb on my way to AP biology class. Five years at a huge state university didn’t bring any more sense of belonging, though I did “hippie,” “coffeeshop poser,” and even “sorority girl” for a few months each. After graduation I set off in my VW van to keep looking for something that felt real, that felt like me.

A few weeks after the van broke down in near San Francisco, I stumbled into an African dance class – literally. I had taken ballet since I could tie my shoes and thought I grooved pretty well under a disco ball, but good lord, that first class I was a complete spaz, sliding left when everyone else was hopping right, ending up on my ass a few times. Looking like a fool’s never stopped me from much, and I kept going back, leaving every class sweaty and overjoyed. The live drumming had ignited something deeper than any music ever had, and those ancient rhythms eventually worked their way down into my muscles so I hardly had to think about the choreography anymore. The more I learned, the more I felt I belonged.

After class, the drummers and dancers would meet up for hummus at the local falafel joint – a merry band tapping out funky meters with the salt shakers. I studied with master teachers, men and women who grew up in Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, the Congo. I learned the steps but also the meaning behind them – kuku is the dance we do to celebrate, yankadi is only for the women, soli is for the boys’ circumcision. I dressed in colorful fabrics and jingly belts, decked myself in jewelry made from cowrie shells - powerful talismans according to African lore.