US weekly said Miley Cyrus is the “Empress of Twerking.” Let me tell you something. If anybody was the Empress of Twerking, it was the talented and world renown Josephine Baker.
Or perhaps these amazing Ugandan dancers I had the privilege of seeing perform live outside of Kampala.
Maybe these Nigerian women (and men!) dancing at a wedding while elders shower them with money
Or the myriad beautiful black teenagers and women I have seen putting in WERK at house parties and clubs right here in these United States.
(the Twerk Team, the ACTUAL people who brought twerking to popular attention, but happened to not be blonde and white and make millions off of doing so)
There is no fundamental difference between any of these people except that a racist dominant culture has convinced us to not celebrate the latter, and made us ashamed of things We created by projecting hypersexualization and deviance onto them.
And to make things worse, “twerking” (among MANY other aspects of black culture) has been appropriated by white artists who want to use blackness and black bodies as props and tools to express their “edginess” or rebellion or whatever. Artists who want to play at “ratchet” by shaking their booties and flaunting grills while black teenagers like Trayvon Martin who play at ratchet in the exact same way, who text an innocuous, braggadocious pic to their friends, have their lives deemed troubled and unworthy of protection. Artists who want to perform blackness while enjoying protection from all the actual challenges and stigma of being black in America. Artists from Elvis Presley to Miley Cyrus.
Many people have declared that Miley’s ridiculous VMA performance “killed twerking”; it is dead and over now. I want to make clear that Miley Cyrus cannot kill twerking, because she did not give it life. I will not give her the power to turn a version of an ancient form of black cultural expression into a fad and render it obsolete. Black people have been dancing variants on this theme for millenia, and tomorrow black people from ceremonial circles to da club will continue doing the same exact movements we been doing whole time. You can colonize, stigmatize, and appropriate black culture but you cannot kill it or sweep it under a rug when you are through with it and expect it to quietly wither away.
I refuse to affirm the appropriation. I refuse to participate in the demonization of Us. I will celebrate. I will keep twerking.
Thank you for sharing those performance videos.
Yeah, those Ugandan dancers were great!
Same bullshit as the “harlem shake” videos. Cultural appropriation. The colonial attitude is not dead.
Also same as lindy hop. But that’s a different can of worms.
I’m automatically defensive after this statement. Links?
Well, here’s a start: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/07/05/race-appropriation-lindy-hop-how-to-honor-our-heroes/
Basically, it’s a dance form that started with black people dancing to their music. And now if you go to a lindy-hop dance, you’ll notice they’re pretty damn white. Even in places like DC. And they host their dances in historically-segregated areas like Glen Echo Park. And they dress up like they’re nostalgic for the segregated, racist 1920s or 30s, with fedoras and vests. So I think there are some appropriation issues there.
Didn’t know Glen Echo was historically segregated. That’s an interesting bit of info. Thanks, Dave!
Yeah, this has been something that’s interested me for a while. I know lindy hop is considered appropriative (when danced by white people) by many POC. I also know it’s extremely popular within the DDP community and in other smart, feminist, *white* circles. I would be very interested to see a discussion of that at some point re: the evolution of lindy hop/intersectionality/cultural appreciation vs. appropriation.
What’s really been turning my brain recently (RE: partnered dance and cultural appropriation) is the emergence and popularity of Fusion Dancing.
Elaborate on that please.
My thoughts are far from fully formed on the subject, but essentially we consider that lindy hop and blues dancing are potentially appropriative because white people have now normalized something that was demonized when it was created as an extension of black culture, and that is when it’s taught and danced in the traditional form/style (as far as we can re-create) to traditional music. Essentially as respectful of the culture/history as you can get while still appropriating.
Now consider fusion (again, white-dominated) which hand-picks techniques and music from many different styles of dance and mixes them all together until they are unrecognizable without real consideration for the complex cultural and historical traditions of those individual dances. To me it feels potentially really problematic but I don’t have any anecdotal evidence to support my feelings.
@..”, but happened to not be blonde and white and make millions off of doing so)…”>>WHY are any of us shocked about this??? It is what it has been, always, here in our country. The comment I’m going to make is NOT racist; it IS factual..For eons and eons (and yep, Elvis was very BIG on stealing our moves..)our creativity and bits & pieces of OUR culture(come on braids was looked down upon here until Bo Derek..pfft!) has been stolen and TONS of money made from it..With very little going into our pockets and/or community..I’m sorry but Miley Cyrus can’t kill anything except her OWN reputation..She looked AWFUL attempting to mimic something that she doesn’t even have the body for! OMG..It was like watching a flat-chested/flat -butt/no hip little girl trying to dance like a grown woman..Because she looks like such a little young girl; I didn’t even find it provocative..I found it a sad, SAD maladjusted exhibit of what that young lady THINKS makes her look grown..Sad and shameful she’s not the confidence in herself to ride alone on just talent..IF she has any at all. But I think the antics of Gaga are just as retarded..To each his/her own because I didn’t even watch the show..I do hate that I missed Timberlake & NSYNC..Dig them alot! NO ONE can take pieces of OUR culture; IF we were to practice proudly our traditions from the Motherland right here in our birthplace..The US of A..We are the only people who don’t! Blacks. Also known as African-American Blacks..Africans however? They proudly practice tradition here, no matter how long they’re American citizens..We could learn a thing or two from them, from Jewish folks, from Latino, from Chinese, from Korean..the list goes on & on & on…Until we do? Keep sitting back in the cut tripping on other folks stealing our “stuff. 2 thumbs UP for your write…
Could you please refrain from using “retarded” as an insult? It’s a word that comes from a place of misunderstanding and hate; many people with disabilities find it triggering.
Clearly wasn’t referring to anyone with disabilities(matter of fact didn’t infer or refer to anything remotely close to speaking about anyone with disabilities..No different than when people say someone is acting wild or crazy..But no problem..Peace
I know you weren’t. But when people say things like “That’s so gay” or “That’s so ghetto” they aren’t usually referring to things that are actually gay or actually from the ghetto, and they’re still offensive.
Oranges and apples..But enough is enough..Take care.
Reblogged this on bookedtilllater and commented:
Check this out…real issues right here. Just stop trying to take this, Miley
Great post, love all these videos. Thank you for sharing those.
Reblogged this on ibujethethird.
Um… maybe I am not clear on what “twerking” is because I only just started seeing this word (20x a day on FB) a week or two ago… but according to Wikipedia, twerking is an up-and-down hip motion. I watched the Miley Cyrus VMA performance before and after reading this article and Miley doesn’t twerk at all in the video, according to that definition. I mean… *maybe* for like 1.5 seconds total, but it’s not really clear to me. She does other hip motions, like thrusting her pubic area at the audience… she certainly doesn’t seem to do much resembling what the black people in the above videos are doing. It seems like it’s more just that the (predominantly white) U.S. media is choosing inaccurately to describe what she did as twerking. I didn’t see anywhere that Miley described her own dancing as twerking.
That being said, I am glad you made this post and shared the videos. I particularly like the last one! I also am disturbed by a lot of the media response to the VMA performance… I think I definitely had the sense that Miley was using that performance to appear “edgy” and primarily for the shock/commercial value, so I can understand people thinking the performance was bizarre and distasteful, and especially given that her dancing doesn’t even remotely compare to the beauty of the dancing in the above videos. My initial response to the VMA performance was discomfort and otherwise being unsure what to think of it! It is sad that Miley gets to be up there dancing nonsense instead of the talented black women in the above videos. THAT might actually advance the cause of sex positivity and feminism in addition to actually giving representation to minorities and people who have talent. The fact that Robin Thicke was the one she was dancing on indicates by itself that the performance was nothing progressive. Shock value in itself is not helpful – just look at PETA!
Anyway, the above videos made me think of this awesome belly dancing video danced by black Africans to a fun Swahili song:
Pingback: Celebrate Twerking; Don’t Demonize It | TheJusticeTeam
Pingback: Celebrate Twerking; Don’t Demonize It |
…except that the Twerk Team girls and every one of their imitators DOES intend it as a sexual dance.
and that’s bad?
All of the versions of the dance across the Diaspora are “sexual.” These are women shaking secondary reproductive organs. But only when African Americans do it is it hypersexuaLIZED- imbued with deviant intent and a negative connotation. And that’s not on the dancers, that’s on the people watching it and the way they perceive it. I fail to see the difference between twerk team videos and these women doing the mapouka dance to music for a camera http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c3ECEyBvnNk .
Hi. I linked to this article since it was shared on TheRoot.com Face Book page. I must disagree with the analogy that this “twerking” is derived from the black culture and experience. Point in fact it is not. These dancers you have posted are just that Dancers expressing their specific culture. Polynesians and some middle eastern cultures have movements similar. belly dancers for example. No. This twerking movement in my view is just plain go-go dancing. Do you see these dancers gyrating against their men or each other? No.
It’s not an “analogy” or thought experiment it’s a factual observation of the omnipresence of this form of dance through the African diaspora. Why is it that if Nigerian women do a dance they are “dancers expressing their specific culture”, but if I an African American woman descended from people enslaved in the United States do the exact same moves, it cannot possibly be an “expression of my specific culture”? What is the logic underlying that- the myth that African Americans have “no culture”? Have I no culture? Is my culture not descended directly from West African countries like Nigeria?
(Footnote: Actually if you watch the videos, you will see that in both the Ugandan and Nigerian videos, people are in fact dancing on each other. The entire group of Ugandan dancers assembles in a line and booty dances on one another. The Nigerian wedding attendees are throwing money on each other. Funny how you chose to not see those parts.)
My sentiments exactly. The only thing other example I think that could have been included is HBCU dance line choreography. Twerking at its bougie best.
Last checked this is America not Africa. The culture is different stop using excuses for Twerking. Why celebrate the exploitation of women in American culture.
Last I checked African Americans are African descended people with an culture descended from African cultures who live in America. As soon as some elements of that culture crosses over to North America the exact same thing that was beautiful suddenly becomes raunchy and exploitative? No. That is the whole point of the article. No one is exploiting me when I twerk. I’m not going to look down upon, or stop doing, something that is clearly a part of my cultural heritage just because some people have deranged ideas (ideas from an oppressive white supremacist American society) about the sexuality of African American women. I will not allow what people now call “twerking” to be stigmatized through my body; I will continue doing what it for what it is, a fun, expressive, and benign dance. What deviance other people project onto it with their minds is their problem, not mine.
Pingback: Miley Cyrus’ imitation of black life adds insult to injury | Creatively Brown
Although we are descendants… African Americans are so far removed from Africans and their culture by 300 + years. A true comparison of the two cultures can no longer be made, used or defended. Most Black Americans have absolutely no concept of Africa or its culture. Glorifying twerking as our African culture is hogwash.
That’s a common myth. The idea that slavery existed for such a long time and was so traumatic that it wiped out all elements of African cultures from African Americans was widely assumed to be true even in the field of sociology until it was thoroughly debunked in the 1950s and 1960s. Although many African Americans (and Africans for that matter) are unaware of the connections, continuations of West African cultures abound in African American culture. You can easily see it in a cross comparison of almost any cultural category.
The most simple ones are categories like food- from types of food like okra and yams that were physically carried over the ocean by uprooted African peoples, to entire dishes like the “hoppin john” eaten by many black families on New Years Eve, which is literally the same thing as West African dishes like Ghana’s “waakye”.
There’s language- the field of linguistics has firmly established that what people used to call Ebonics is actually African American Vernacular English (AAVE), a full fledged dialect of English that borrows heavily from West African grammatical patterns, just like the patois of Jamaica does. In some African American communities, like the Gullah Geechee of South Carolina and northern Georgia, entire West and Central African words survive in the in the dialect, like “nyam” for “eat” and “oonah” for “you” and “nanse” for spider.
There’s music- ethnomusicology has firmly established that many of the elements that distinguish African musical traditions from European musical traditions (elements like polyrhythms, syncopation, call and response, and open tones) are also consistently present in musical genres created by African American communities (such as jazz, gospel, and hip hop).
Dancing is just another one of these categories where African cultural elements continue to evolve across the sea through African American people. With this context it is quite clear that what we are calling “twerking” is just the African American version of West African fertility dances like the Ivorian dance “mapouka” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFreEmMiaqA&list=PL10AA0A0EA529055F&index=1.
In the evolution of culture, physical separation is just a permeable obstacle and 300 years is just a blink of time. I’m sorry you feel there are no connections between African and African American cultures, and I encourage you to research it. Here is a study I authored that partly explores the connection between African American and West African environmental culture; the sources I used may be helpful if you are interested learning more about the topic: http://repository.wellesley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=thesiscollection
Peace =)
Wow, all this sociological history is amazing and interesting to hear about, thank you for sharing it!
I’m a little bit overwhelmed by the fierceness of your intellectual might right now.
I can’t wait to read your paper!
This comment can be an article in its own right.
Pingback: The My-Stery: Dance Apocalyptic By Shaking Your Groove Thing! | Aker: Futuristically Ancient
Pingback: Not Black, Just Hood: Classism is Not a Good Argument for Why Appropriation Is Ok | Disrupting Dinner Parties