Ancestral Journeys and Diasporic Connections

This chapter explores African-Caribbean music and dance as political activism. If the Abasindi Black Women’s Cooperative was focused primarily on transforming systems of inequality at home within its local communities, the reach of the organisation’s drumming and dance group was unbounded. Here, we discuss the political significance of African dance; we show how we used dance and drumming to engage with our mis-remembered enslaved African ancestors. This takes us into a discussion of the function of the drum as a communication tool within slavery and the role of dance in African societies more widely. We relate this to the current struggle for reparations and move on to talk about the development of Black dance groups in the UK as a means of reclaiming representations of self and celebrating black culture. The chapter concludes with a description of two most memorable events—our participation in the Pan-African festival in Ghana (PANAFEST) and in the Crop Over Festival in Barbados.