Dancing Africa-Asia: The Reverse Globalization of Kizomba

Paper Abstract: The dance "kizomba” is now practiced in some form throughout Africa, Europe, some of the US and now major metropolises in East Asia like Tokyo and Hong Kong often via dance festivals. Originally from Angola (commercialized in Cabo Verde), the name comes a word from Kimbundu for a dance from the 80s derivative of semba, sung in Crioulo or Portuguese.



Semba in turn is linked to the history of decolonisation in Luanda, when Angola's urban musseque residents in the late colonial period (1945-74) transformed the music into “an experience of cultural sovereignty that served as a template for independence” (Moorman, 2008), while later emigres danced as a means of working through hardships abroad. The health benefits of the dance are known as well as a means of collective socialization taught even in schools under Neto in Angola and Cabral in Cabo Verde.



My paper seeks to trace a sociological history, both of semba/kizomba as indigenous knowledge and of kizomba in the present day in the axis of African and Asian global cities, popularized yet obscured as "authentically African." The diffusion of kizomba in postcolonial centers like Lisboa and then Paris, where it metamorphosed with zouk-konpa from French colonies, follows a "reverse globalisation" and “contra-flow” (Thussu, 2007) moving from the Southern Hemisphere to Europe and now East Asia with interjection by Asian producers. It traces the pathway of kizomba as a living product of cultural métissage in the 21st century with the potential to be a “universal” language and political metaphor.