[Tango-L] Kizomba, tango's African cousin

[Jeff Gaynor]

Oleh Kovalchuke wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kizomba
>
> "Kizomba is one of the most popular genres of dance and music from
> Angola. Sung generally in Portuguese, it is a genre of music with a
> romantic flow mixed with African rhythm. The kizomba dancing style is
> also known to be very sensual.
>
> Kizomba is native to Angola, derived directly from zouk music with
> influences from other Lusophone countries."
>   
It doesn't sound like African music to my ears. It sounds like 
Portuguese music with some African drumming.
Lusophone = Portuguese speaking, BTW and has nothing to do with Africa.  
Quite pleasant and a good deal of fun. From what I can read about 
Angolan music, it is very, very heavily influenced by Western types 
(such as salsa, merengue, rumba and others). Just because it is from 
Africa does not mean it is African. Most of Portugal's former colonies 
(e.g. Brazil) have similar music.


> --
> Oleh Kovalchuke
> http://www.tangospring.com
>
>
> On Jan 31, 2008 7:00 AM, Tango Society of Central Illinois
> <tango.society at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On 1/29/08, Oleh Kovalchuke <tangospring at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> How can anyone deny African roots of tango after watching this clip?
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRw62Ouq-0A
>>>
>>>       
*Sigh* One more time people... A trend in US academia has been to 
redress past injustices to Blacks by accepting Afrocentrism and 
Melanism. This has been catching on outside of the US too, but for those 
of you who are unfamiliar read here:  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrocentrism (especially the subsection on 
"Criticisms") and here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin_Theory#Melanin_Theory. "Political 
Correctness" is just revival tent moralizing made respectable enough for 
yuppies and mostly the supporters of the more extreme ends of these 
movements do so on strictly moral grounds, which in their estimate 
excuses any other shortcomings.

[OK, I'm at a University and feel strongly that scholarship is both 
craft & calling. Bad work should not be excused.]

There have been several books written (such as Black Athena)  that try 
hard (and with often astonishingly poor scholarship) to support various 
claims. The recent "Tango, An Art History of Love" is pretty much in 
this vein too: The author, an art historian,  knows virtually zilch 
about dance or music but writes a corrective tome demonstrating that 
Tango is almost wholly African and broadly hints at systematic 
oppression to hide the fact (ok, you Argentines tell me if you're a 
bunch of racists since that's what he called you.) Now, certainly there 
are diverse influences in Tango and doubtless there are bona fide 
African roots to many of the musical gestures but this is not the way 
uncover these. Just because the claim is at least partially valid does 
not excuse slovenly scholarship, the introduction of identity politics 
and ideology.

Cheers,

Jeff G