Theme: 12. ‘Africa-Asia’ in an Entangled World: Migrations, Diasporas, Creolities

Mapping Martial Arts Genealogies on the Swahili Coast

Roundtable Convenor(s)

• 

  Derek Sheridan

  Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Roundtable Chair(s)

• 

  Derek Sheridan

  Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Roundtable Participant(s)

• 

  Derek Sheridan

  Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
• MR

  Mohamed Yunus Rafiq

  New York University Shanghai, China
• AH

  Ally Issa Hassan

  Bagamoyo Film and Martial Arts (BAFIMA), Tanzania
• AL

  Authmani Litunu

  Alliance for Women, Children and Youth Survivors Bagamoyo, Tanzania
• AJ

  Alessandro Jedlowski

  Sciences Po Bordeaux, France
• WL

  Wen Lei

  Huaqiao University, China

Roundtable Abstract:

The promotion of the Chinese Martial Arts (wushu) through China’s cultural diplomacy has attracted renewed attention to East Asian martial arts histories and popular culture in Africa. However, these practices are not limited to the recent China moment, but involve a longer, complicated, and diverse history of Afro-Asian connections made through migrations, film, and the innovations of African martial artists. In this roundtable, we bring together a diverse set of speakers who have practiced and/or studied martial arts in Tanzania: Sempai Ally Issa Hassan, the founder of Bagamoyo Film and Martial Arts (BAFIMA) and a healer based in Bagamoyo, Mohamed Yunus Rafiq and Derek Sheridan, two of Sempai Ally’s students who are anthropologists based in Shanghai and Taipei, Authmani Litunu, a community health worker and researcher based in Bagamoyo, and Wen Lei, an anthropologist based in Quanzhou who has studied the transformation of Kung Fu into Wushu in Tanzania, and Alessandro Jedlowski, an anthropologist based at Sciences Po Bordeaux who has studied the influence of martial arts in African popular culture. The roundtable considers our work with BAFIMA and other martial arts histories as lens for discussing alternative methods for studying Afro-Asian cultural histories. Based on oral histories, Sheridan and Litunu attempt to trace the histories of a style called “Combat” through a martial art practiced in the Tanzanian military, but involving North Korean military instructors during the Cold War, Chinese migrants, and an array of teachers, practitioners, and innovators from Zanzibar. Lei, based on fieldwork with Tanzanian practitioners of Chinese martial artists, analyzes the transformation from a folk tradition of “Kung Fu” to officially backed “Wushu” which has produced a new Global South martial arts culture in the process. Based on both his own training in these martial arts and his ongoing studies (masomo) into the relation between humans and spiritual beings (jinn), Sempai Ally offers another way of thinking about the history of the martial arts and their origins in the worlds of the angels (Malaika) and Jinn. Based on his experience working with BAFIMA to produce films concerning community health, Rafiq reflects on his own experience with BAFIMA from the perspective of collaborative knowledge production. Finally Alessandro Jedlowski considers the histories of martial arts in Tanzania from the comparative perspective of martial arts films in West Africa. In featuring these different perspectives, we hope to open and engage the complexity and multi-vocality of even small-scale research projects. What have we learned? What are the challenges? Finally, how do cases like BAFIMA and Wushu challenge how we think about Afro-Asian cultural exchange, blurring the boundaries in ways exemplary of both martial arts and Swahili cultural histories, and offering new sites for creative Afro-Asian cultural exchange?

If you have selected Institutional Roundtable above or if your Strategic Roundtable is sponsored by an Institution, please type the institution's name below.: