Madiba’s swing and sway

An old Irish blessing goes:

Celebrating the completed life of Nelson Mandela is an affirmation of the vigor of his living rather than sorrow over his demise. People in South Africa gather outside his home to sing all day and dance all night, with nary a tear unless with delight!

As a 10-day wake for the hero is observed, noticeable videos of Mandela swinging, fists clasped and elbows crooked to the sway, are played. I never took Mandela in motion seriously as an act of personal choice as well as a blessed part of his genetics. Now it gives me pause. I went to school in the U.S. southwest where Uncle Tom’s shuffle in vaudevillian caricature was portrayed. The stereotype was and is pejorative: Afro-Americans do not walk; they shuffle in deference to the superiority of the whitest!

In the Blue Mountains of Jamaica in the ’80s, I noticed folks did not quite walk the same way I did; they sauntered to an internal beat with the fingers snapping like those in the alleyways of Chicago’s Uptown where I once hung out. “We don’t walk, we dance,” Bob Marley’s followers intoned.

It was not until I made it to Ijede by Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria that I understood the dance beats and formations. We were singing Zambia’s Tiyende pmodzi ndi mtima umo (let us live together in harmony) song when African colleagues started moving all parts of their bodies, with angular bending of arms, legs and torso, moving the shoulder and the hip, with stamping, scuffing, and hopping steps. While there is asymmetrical use of the body, there is fluid movement on all parts. A West African colleague blurted: “We dance when the Spirit moves.” It moved a lot!

I watched Anthony Quinn’s rendition of Kazantzakis’ Zorba the Greek in the movie version. This was at a time when Protestants were reclaiming their emotive tradition of the Lord of the Dance. Zorba was my quintessential male dancer. Dancing in the face of adversity was not foreign to me. The Pinoy’s tinikling chronicles two birds caught in a bamboo grove in the middle of fierce wind and turbulent storm, and their only option to keep out of danger is to dance!

The West African dance bends the body slightly toward the earth, flattening the feet against it in a wide, solid stance in contrast to the European ballet’s upright posture; even Zorba’s arms are lifted upward, with feet raised on tiptoes. Pinoy’s tinikling also does the same; the toes dip into and in between the clashing bamboo poles. In contrast, the slightly bent body and bowed head of the African dance is unmistakably earthbound! The planet Earth is home!

While there are solo performances in circle dances, it is always supported by the communal spirit of hand clapping, shouting, and singing. Patterns established by traditions are permitted individual creativity. Fresh interpretations of familiar gestures are allowed. Individual moves are encouraged. Madiba’s swing is at once an existential expression of his being and that of his social context. I call it universal democracy, a long way from the Afrikaners’ apartheid!

Those familiar with jazz know improvisation and polyrhythms. It comes from the sub-Saharan African dance where several beats are simultaneously drummed. The hip swings to a beat, while the shoulder lifts to another, and the knees bend and the feet stamp to others.

I visited West Africa in the ’80s where anthropologically the drum is said to have become the leading instrument in guiding dance moves. Enslaved in America, the African body rhythm created a broad range of percussion instruments, even as the gestures of hand clapping, foot tapping, and flesh patting were sources of percussive sounds.

In the shadows of the Africa’s rainforests and savannahs, the drumbeat was the mode of communications as smoke signals were used in the open prairies of the Americas. Dance movements came to imitate animal behavior like the slithering of the snake and the elephant walk. The Spirit swirls one step and a hop at a time—forward, backward, and sideways. Humanity flowers and blooms in dance!

Copernicus and Galileo pointed their instruments to the sky; Newton lounging under a tree noticed force in the falling of an apple. It is this earthbound quality of our time that makes Madiba not just a man of the ages but a contemporary wayfarer in the chaotic dance of our secular-scientific-urban era. Indeed, the signs of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls, as they are in Soweto (South Western Townships) and the rest of the living settlements of South Africa, the backdrop of a journey taken by one named Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela of the Madiba clan of Xhoza.

The last time the world gathered in the magnitude of Madiba’s funeral was at JFK’s. Jack Kennedy had us looking at the moon. Of Irish origins, he fitted the blessing of “living heaven on earth.” Now we see beyond the Transvaal that Mandela is strictly earthbound. He danced life in the Bantu earthiness of his ancestry, with compassion and grace. It will serve us well to be likewise.