Episode 6

OreOluwa: [00:00:00] And I think that's kind of what this is about in that, yes, it's about dance, yes, it's about storytelling, but we are coming from a space of, we're social scientists, we're researchers, we do empirical work, we work with communities.

And so how does that, how does our approach as people who think a lot about movement inform those different spaces?  

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OreOluwa: Welcome to Groovin' Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. I'm OreOluwa Badaki.

Azsaneé: And I'm Azsaneé Truss. Let's get groovin'.

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OreOluwa: On this episode, we're doing something a little different and sharing some of the highlights from the first [00:01:00] season of Groovin' Griot.

Azsaneé: That's right. As we bring Season 1 to a close, we wanted to take the time to connect some dots, highlight some themes that came up throughout the season, and generally tie a bow on things.

OreOluwa: This season, we talked to some incredible guests, all of whom used dance to unpack the complexities of human experience and pathways for collective action.

Azsaneé: We explored dance through various fields; theater studies, civics, anthropology, history, health, and of course dance studies.

OreOluwa: And we learned a lot about the differences and similarities in how dance has been taken up across the African diaspora; from the traditional dance systems of the Mandinka and Ewe peoples of West Africa, to the folkloric and spiritual dances of Cuba and Brazil, to the social and improvisational genres among Black Americans here in the U. S.

Azsaneé: This season has taken us on quite a journey, and one of the core threads tying together our conversations was this idea of dance in the African diaspora as a way to bring about healing and restoration.

Azsaneé: Our first guest, Dr. Jasmine Blanks Jones, articulated this through her discussion of reparative arts.

Jasmine Blanks Jones: So, thinking [00:02:00] through the reparative arts as a way to, uh, not just challenge, but to center the, the types of knowledge that come out of collective processes, um, that come out of embodied experiences and that come out of a real desire by. Actual people to change their circumstances in ways that they have reason to value thinking about humans, all humans, regardless of, uh, their background and I say, or their ethnic group of their culture, of their race, um, as people who are reasonable, who can, uh, operate from a place of making decisions because they have sense-making that occurs not just through what we're told makes sense, not just through what our academic canons say, uh, knowledge is, but sense-making that comes through the body, that comes through our [00:03:00] ancestry and that comes through our being together.

OreOluwa: So, Dr. Blanks Jones talks about reparative arts as a way to center the types of knowledge that comes out of collective processes, and specifically embodied collective processes. And one of my favorite parts about putting together this podcast with you, Azsaneé, was being able to talk to people in our communities, in our spaces, about these conversations.

And I ended up having this really great conversation with somebody I go to a dance class with, his name is Jonathan. Shouting out Jonathan, if you're out there listening. Um, but I bring him up because Jonathan actually studies Dance Movement Therapy, and is an incredible dancer and mover, but also has just a wealth of knowledge about how some of these topics we bring about in the show are taken up in this field of Dance Movement Therapy.

Um, Dr. Blanks Jones, you know, was coming at this from theater, from civics, from, public policy and public health as well, and so I think, listening to Jonathan talk about his work in public health, or his work in mental health, [00:04:00] um, and how he brings in his dance practices, his movement practices, was really, really, eye opening for me.

Azsaneé: I think that's really interesting because, one of the things that a lot of folks in my life and, you know, professionally and personally reflect on, has been this idea of kind of moving through trauma and how, the body remembers and, and how we can, like, take stock of our wellness via the various places in our body and everything.

And I think it's really interesting to think about how we can disrupt, notions of, like, time as linear by accessing those bits of trauma like that, the periods of time that we were, you know, experiencing something, via movement and then kind of like re -pairing it like re, um, you know, shaping, I guess, kind of how, we experienced that time period.

Um, and another one of our guests, spoke a lot about how dance helps us to disrupt notions of linear time and progress. And that was Dr. Deb Thomas.

Deborah Thomas: [00:05:00] And so I've been thinking about that with respect to Kumina, that, you know, in Myal, the body is unbounded temporarily and also materially, you know. You hear all these stories about what people do when they're in Myal, or you see them do it. You know, things that cannot be done in like ordinary relations of time and space and cause and effect, like no way are you swallowing fire and not burning your mouth, you know, or no way are you walking on glass and not cutting your feet, you know, these things that people actually do.

So, in a way, in Myal, then, in that space of unbounded, the unbounding is temporal and it's also material, right? The bodies can do things they can't do within the sort of normative structures of modern time and space,

OreOluwa: This notion of disrupting linearity was something Dr. Ofosuwa Abiola also talked about. She extends [00:06:00] this point to highlight the ways that traditional West African dances have never just been about the dance. or about specific codified movements. They've always existed within a collection of different mediums and modes, and they've supported people across the African diaspora in facilitating social cohesion.

Ofosuwa Abiola: I speak of dance systems because the dance does not exist by itself. Within the dance, you're going to have singing. which is how the oral historians conveyed their, um, their histories.

Um, you're going to have the attire, and within the attire, that's a whole nother narrative. There are colors that the attire represents and there are, um, particular materials that the attire is made from.

Um, you have your musicians who speak with their drumming or the balafon or whatever instruments they're using, but they also are wearing particular attire that also has a message. And all of these [00:07:00] messages that are conveyed through, um, the attire. The singing, the location where the dance is to occur and the time of day, who does the dance, all of this is centered around the dance

 and therefore, um, really makes the dance a holistic, uh, modality.

Azsaneé: Dr. Abiola's discussion of how dance helps us to integrate multiple modalities, makes me think a lot about our backgrounds and that kind of being the impetus for this podcast

OreOluwa: Part of what we were thinking about, you know, this came directly out of the CAMRA Archives podcast, which came directly out of the What the Body Knows podcast, which was, when we think about multimodality, there's an emphasis on the modes, right?

Sometimes it's like; this, this is visual, this is oral or auditory, and then this is material, and this is, but all of that is mediated through the body. Um, so even if you aren't somebody who thinks of [00:08:00] themselves as a dancer or a mover, you know, how do we acknowledge the body in in that that's the that's the medium through which we experience everything.

Azsaneé: I think it's really cool to reflect on how that is what brought us to this podcast in the first place. Thinking about how, movement is a way of knowing about how it's a valid way of understanding the world, embodiment is just as valuable as the written word. It's, it's how we make sense of the world around us in a really immediate way.

What I find pretty, innovative in your approach, as, in your work is that you also are a visual artist, you also do collages, you have, podcasting experience. You have all... moonlighting, you’re kind of all, you're doing it when... I mean, that's what grad school kind of asks you, like, forces you to do in some ways. But you, like, that way of thinking probably is part of your way of thinking when you're sitting down to write your Diss, for instance, or where you're sitting down to write a proposal.

Azsaneé: Wow, you [00:09:00] made the connection to my work for me.

OreOluwa: Um, and I think that's kind of what this is about in that, yes, it's about dance, yes, it's about storytelling, but we are coming from a space of, we're social scientists, we're researchers, we do empirical work, we work with communities.

And so how does that, how does our approach as people who think a lot about movement inform those different spaces?

Azsaneé: Yes, I love that. And also, it is time for another movement break. Okay. Ore and I have spent a lot of time traveling for our own projects this year, separate but not unrelated to this podcast, and we also spent a lot of time grooving in the process.

This compilation includes audio from some of our travels this year, including a second line in New Orleans, audio from an African dance festival in New York, a night in Rio de Janeiro, and a party right here in Philadelphia. See if you can match the sounds to the place.

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OreOluwa: Welcome back, we hope you enjoyed that movement break. Coming back to the different themes we talked about this season, one that came up quite a bit was how we value different styles of dance depending on the context.

Azsaneé: We talked a lot about how we can't assume Western dances are the real deal and African diasporic dances are just about vibes, or about dances from the quote unquote global south more broadly.

But Dr. Lela Aisha Jones also reminded us that these dance forms don't exist in a vacuum, nor are they mutually exclusive. It's just a matter of how we allow both to exist and thrive in our bodies and in our societies.

Lela Aisha Jones: So, I have people in the company who [00:12:00] If you looked at the company dancing, you would never know they were not a Modern dancer, right?

They had only studied West African and Afro Cuban, but they did the movements of Modern fine because they were so comfortable. There's something so deep about knowing your body. You know, it is more important than technique. Like, having a sense of your bones and your cells and your muscles and how each part of it flows with the other, you know, from a very visceral place, not a cognitive thinking place, but a trusting of muscle memory and cell memory, you know, and blood memory. So, if I, you know, I can notice when you're doing Guinea Fare' or when you're doing Oshun or when you're doing, but many people, when they see a choreography, they can't.

You know, if you haven't danced those forms, you haven't studied those forms. That's a beautiful thing about studying in the Diaspora, now you've got a whole wide range of global vocabulary or embodied, uh, sensation [00:13:00] that many people totally miss when they see these, these kinds of pieces that are contemporary works. You know, people can say, "Oh, that's African.

I see some African in there," but they can't say, it's Mali, you know, that's, that's Lamban. And even if I say it's Lamban, I know it's 10 other things.

So, I think that, that's the beauty of Flyground is that we were able to validate a House and Hip Hop, whatever you trained in. And there were a lot of Modern dancers, but they were, they, the other things that they had been a part of weren't validated in choreographic practice.

Azsaneé: Thinking about what Dr. Lela Aisha Jones is talking about here, I think this is one of the most personally resonant themes from this season. Um, as I've mentioned more times than I probably care to count, Um, I'm a classically trained ballerina. Um, and I've spent so much of this season the past few years, actually, I was gonna say this year, but I really think it's been [00:14:00] ongoing since starting this PhD, um, so much of the last few years, unlearning so much of what that taught me.

Um, I'm, I think we've talked a lot about this. Like, I'm really proud of a lot of what that gave me, the, the discipline, the kind of, you know, the ability to like really focus and hone in on something and, try to get really, you know, technically good at something.

OreOluwa: I mean, you know, we took a jazz class together. We didn't feature that on, on this season, maybe it'll come up on the next season, but one thing that was also really helpful for me as somebody who could get the movement quick, pretty easily, but…

Azsaneé: …very easily

OreOluwa: I mean, thankfully that was helpful, but since you were right next to me, I could look at what it should look like, as it was given to me, what… aesthetically is…is prominent. And that didn't mean I had to do that, but it's helpful for me to know what it looks like. And then I can go off of like, okay, whether or not I want to adjust.

Um, it's not a sin, right? To be able to do something precisely and exactly how it's given to [00:15:00] you. But it's when you don't have a choice, or when you're forced into, forced to conform it's a certain mold. That's when it feels a little very constraining. Yeah, yeah.

Azsaneé: No, and I think, um, I am also, yeah, very proud of my technique. I spent forever developing it…

OreOluwa: …and a lot of money probably, resources…

Azsaneé: …and a lot of money and so much time. I'm like, there's all of my teen years, um, uh, on the studio floor. No, um…

OreOluwa: …blood, sweat and tears.

Azsaneé: …seriously, but, um, I think I really have enjoyed learning to improvise. I've really enjoyed, um, learning to be free in a, even just in a class space. I, if you put me on the dance floor in the middle of a club, in the middle of, you know, a barbecue, whatever, I can, I can dance.

But if you put me in a class space, the technique turns on and my brain is like short circuiting, trying to figure out, you know, how to, how to get rid of that and maybe to just like move a little bit more freely. And, learning to move freely in a space that's, you know, formal has been really, really healthy, [00:16:00] um, and really generative for me.

OreOluwa: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And this actually brings us back to our last connecting thread, the role of improvisation in these diasporic dance forms. I loved how Dr. S. Ama Wray talked about this as both an ancient and as a future technology.

S. Ama Wray: Yes, well, actually, I believe that the drum and polyrhythm is a technology that has not yet been...we haven't yet gotten to that place where we are able to translate. But I believe, I strongly believe there is a coding, like a four dimensional, it could even be five dimensional system that is within African musics because of the way they interlock. Um, and because they're based on patterns and because they are [00:17:00] connected to language and the, um, the orality.

And of course you're talking about not just notes, you're talking about pitch and tone. Now, thinking about that into a future where, there is a, a way for. multiple drummers, people articulating rhythm in, in these dimensions, that would then produce some, if we will call it a digital effect.

Azsaneé: I think this is a really powerful place to close this conversation, really considering how we look back to move forward, sort of invoking the Akan principle of Sankofa.

OreOluwa: I think so too, and before we go, I think we should also ask each other the same thing we ask all of our guests. So, Azsaneé, what are you groovin' to these days?

Azsaneé: Um, okay. Lately I have really been grooving to, uh, the new [00:18:00] Kaytranada album. I love some good house music. Yeah. I've been exploring house music throughout my travels.

Oh, and then, this isn't, music, but I am waiting for House of the Dragon to come back Is it House of the Dragon? Yeah, House of Dragons. I, I always like give it like a little ballroom flair You're like, House of the Dragon, ka ka ka!

OreOluwa: House the Dragon. I said, ah House of the Dragon! That’s your new theme song. House of the Dragon, if that's even your name. We don’t know.

Azsaneé: We don't know, but yes, yes. Um, the Game of Thrones spinoff. I've been waiting for that to come back.

But yeah, oh, um, I've also been groovin’ to Yaya Bey. I went to her concert a couple weekends ago. And yeah, since then I've just been feeling her. A little, a little alt R& B, some, you know, neo soul vibes. It's good.  What about you? What are you grooving to?

OreOluwa: Um, I recently had a performance at Odunde, the big festival here in [00:19:00] Philly. and one of the songs that was is the song by, Daymé Arocena, called “Madres” and it's a song about Oshun and Yemoya, um, and the piece itself was talking about the different, Yoruba, Orishas, and it's just, she's a incredibly soulful singer, vocalist, improvisationist. And, yeah, the song is just like liquid, and the, the percussion too, I was, yeah, it was a really easy song to want to move to, so I was really glad that we got to do a bit of movement, to that song.

And, I think everything I'm groovin’ to recently has to do with water, and maybe I'm just dehydr… maybe I'm just dehydrated, who knows? Um, but the other song that I came across recently is a song called “Lady Blue” by Emily Wurramara, I think. And, she's a young, indigenous, Australian singer and songwriter and, the song itself is talking about, kind of, her [00:20:00] relationship with, with, the with the waters, with, you know, her ancestors, so it's really lovely storytelling,

And then, the last song, “Drink Water” by Jon Batiste is just really fun. It's really fun. It’s a good reminder to drink water and settle down, you know? And I always love, love bopping around whenever it comes on. Um, so those are all my water themed, river themed, ocean themed songs I'm groovin’ to recently.

Azsaneé: So, I think that brings us to the end.

Thank you to all of our fantastic guests this season for taking the time to talk with us and share your insights.

OreOluwa: And thanks to all of you for coming along for the ride.

Azsaneé: That's a wrap on Groovin Griot Season 1.

OreOluwa: Woop woop! We did it, folks!

Azsaneé: We did.

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Azsaneé: This episode of [00:21:00] Groovin' Griot was a production of the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was produced and edited by me, Azsaneé Truss. And my cohost, Ore Baddaki. Our theme music is Unrest by ELPHNT and can be found on Directory. Audio.

OreOluwa: You can email us at groovingriot@gmail. com. That's g-r-o-o-v-i-n-g-r-i-o-t at gmail. com. And you can continue to listen to episodes of Groovin' Griot wherever podcasts are found. Thanks for groovin' with us.

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