Africa is a vast continent, consisting of many countries and hugely diverse cultures. African dance mainly refers to the collective dance type of the Sub-Saharan Africa, which is the African tribal dance. There are many aspects that affect the African dance types. Here are some glimpses of African dance types...
African dance types are distinct from each other because of the diversity, of the nomadic groups and the indigenous tribes, that practice them. The African dances symbolize social structure and traditional values of the people related to them. These dance types help the African people to praise, criticize and even work with each other. African dances heavily rely upon the African music, which is a very interesting form of music, despite the fact that in many African tribal languages, there is no particular word for 'music'.
African Dance Characteristics
In most African countries, music is an essential part of people's daily life. The two basic and very important musical components in African culture are human voice and the drums. It is also true that many African tribal dance forms, such as the Masai, don't use the African drums. In native language African drums, known as Djembe symbolize people's day-to-day life. The drum beats explain the mood of the tribal people and evokes the deepest emotions.
African dances tend to explain the lives and feelings of an African individual, a couple or an entire community. The African dances are classified on the basis of gender and deeply reinforce certain community structures like age, status, context and kinship. In African dance, men usually expend jumps and leaps while women dancers perform crooked knee positions and bent body postures. The most recognized dancing method is a group of dancers dancing in a circle with a drummer in the middle.
The African attitude towards music is said to be "two dimensional", the tribal Africans supposedly follow the "three against the two" beats