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ETD Abstract Container

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"It's the Real Thing": The Marketing of an African Identity in a West African Dance Class

Rosner, Elizabeth
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1336761459

Abstract Details

2012, Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, Music Ethnomusicology.
In this paper I will analyze the construction of a homogeneous African identity in the context of a West African dance class in Toledo, Ohio. The dance classes are taught by members of the ALMA Dance Experience, a folkloric ensemble that promotes itself as the only professional West African dance troupe in northwest Ohio. Through ethnographic research, I investigate how the instructors of the dance classes represent African culture. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, I focus on the ways in which the instructors imagine, maintain, commodify, and market essentialized perceptions of African identity. As a Seneglese musician, one of the instructors is seen by the students as a culture bearer. Perceptions of “authentic” Africa thus become mapped on him. It is crucial to understand how ideas of Africa as an exotic “other” persists in representations by privileged parties, and also how these perceptions are negotiated by participants. I argue that the creation and performance of an authentic African identity serves to reinforce notions of difference and otherness. I examine this through an analysis of how authenticity is constructed through folkloric repertoire, liveness, the physicality of dance, and an African instructor. Issues surrounding race and racial ownership over African music and dance are a necessary part of the discourse surrounding African authenticity. The questions of African authenticity and representational politics are relevant within community dance classes, university African ensembles in the United States, study abroad programs to Africa, and other forms of African musical representation and dissemination; my work therefore has implications beyond this immediate case study and serves as a broader commentary on the performance and representation of African music.
Sidra Lawrence, PhD (Advisor)
Katherine Meizel, PhD (Committee Member)
Music
Ethnomusicology; Music; West Africa; Senegal; Folkloric Dance; Exercise; Identity; Race; Africanity; Authenticity; World Music Ensembles

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rosner, E. (2012). "It's the Real Thing": The Marketing of an African Identity in a West African Dance Class [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1336761459

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rosner, Elizabeth. "It's the Real Thing": The Marketing of an African Identity in a West African Dance Class. 2012. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1336761459.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rosner, Elizabeth. ""It's the Real Thing": The Marketing of an African Identity in a West African Dance Class." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1336761459

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.