Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances

Figure F: Phrase cloud of judgements about dances in Chibale.1Survey 2004.

Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances. What do people in Chibale care for most in music and dance?

In this article, we will discuss the judgements about dances in the 1980s and the 2000s. That is, the reasons for the preferences for dances presented in the article on musical preferences. We start with the judgements given in the 1980s and then follow those of the 2000s. We conclude with a comparison of the two.

For dances, the differences between a more consuming and a participative attitude are much larger than for songs.2Most people readily came up with a different favourite song to listen to than to sing, and also gave another reason to favour it. Nevertheless, it turns out that only minor differences exist between favouring a song to sing or a song to listen to. We assembled the two to make Lists 10. That is why we distinguish the evaluation of dances that one watches and that of dances that one dances oneself. We will look at both lists of judgements.

In Lists 12, we see that there are also many reasons for preferring a certain dance type.
An important issue with dances in the 1980s was the aversion they evoked with a part of the population, notably the act of dancing oneself. Almost half of the ones interviewed claimed to have no favourite dance to dance. More than half of them explained this by adding that they did not dance themselves.

Groups of judgements about dancing

Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances. We are going to place the reasons to favour a dance to watch or to dance oneself in the same six groups of judgements that we discerned in the article about the evaluation of songs: Properness, Excellence, Effect, Feeling, Structural features and Changeable features.

Table D: Groups of judgements when preferring dances in 1985/86.

Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances. In the 1980s, dancing is preferred more for Structural features, Effect and Feeling reasons. And, dances watched are preferred more for Feeling, Changeable features and Structural features. Feeling and Structural features are the judgement categories used in comparable proportion for both. Whereas big differences exist for Effect and Changeable features.

This seems to indicate the following. When people evaluate dancing and dances to watch, they are concerned with the feeling it evokes and the structure of the dance. When dancing the effect that the dance will have on them is important. And, when watching a dance, the interest is in the freedom that the dancer manages to take in her movements and attitude.

Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances. In the 1980s, the differences between evaluating dances to dance and to watch parallel those found between judging songs from memory and in real time though in case of the dances all judging was from memory. This seems to indicate that the memory of dances was less abstract than that of songs. Dances were experienced as more concrete than songs and the images they evoked were more easily remembered in formulable detail.

To sing is to inform/teach (kufunda). Dancing is to attract people to receive the text. Everybody will say: “We’ll go to see the possessed dance”. Not: “to hear them sing their texts”, no. The picture of a famous medium’s dancing stays in the head while his tunes and texts could be forgotten.
Mika Mwape Chungwa personal communication, 1986.

Evaluating dances: comparing the 1980s with the 2000s

Evaluation of music in Zambia: judgements about dances. The main changes are that in the 2000s the number of judgements referring to the effect of the dance and the feelings it evokes has increased and that there are less judgements referring to structural features and hardly any referring to changeable features. Furthermore, the differences in judgements about dances to dance and about dances to watch have nearly disappeared.
For Effect and Structural (as well as Changeable) features, the same holds as mentioned with Judgements about songs.
In the 2000s, dances are much more expected to evoke a feeling of happiness than in the 1980s. This may be related to the more consumption oriented attitude towards dance found in the 2000s. The latter may also relate to the decrease of the differences in judgements about dances to dance and dances to watch.

Table M: Groups of judgements when preferring dances in 1985/86 and 2004.

Evaluation of music in Zambia: 2000s & 1980s C

Footnotes

  • 1
    Survey 2004.
  • 2
    Most people readily came up with a different favourite song to listen to than to sing, and also gave another reason to favour it. Nevertheless, it turns out that only minor differences exist between favouring a song to sing or a song to listen to. We assembled the two to make Lists 10.

IJzermans, Jan J. (2024) Amalimba. Music and related dance, text & ritual in one African region. https://amalimba.org/evaluation-of-music-in-zambia-judgements-about-dances/

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