Censorship in music is not an unfamiliar or foreign concept. If not for the sexual content of Miami, Florida music legends Luke and Too Live Crew we wouldn’t know the internationally acknowledged parental advisory sticker as we know it today.
Even in more recent years, Nigerian acts such as Zule Zoo (of “Kerewa” fame) and rapper Edris Abdulkareem experienced censorship issues for the messages their music was accused of promoting.
Now today we are faced with the reality of how that censorship could be creating a ripple effect into dance culture.
For as long as we have danced to music there have been many styles of dancing that have been frowned upon and deemed as offensive as well as accused of corrupting young people.
From the days of Fela’s female dancers (famously known as The Afrobeat Queens), indecency has clouded the art form of dancing, especially within Africa.
However, the major difference between then and now is that if one were to expose themselves of their children to what they deemed as “indecent” they would have to physically take themselves and their children to see it.
Most recently, Nigerian rapper Naira Marley was criticized and condemned by Nigerians for the Soapy dance that he created to accompany his song of the same title.
The dance step mimics the the hand movement of male masturbation.
With the popularity of the use of social media to share anything and everything, it wasn’t hard for the masses to get hold of the dance steps and quickly begin to imitate it and share themselves doing the dance within their choreographed Instagram videos.
Nigerian Dancer Kaffy especially used her platform to disapprove of the dance steps saying, “This is a no. #myopinion As dancers we should also speak for what is right. We shouldn’t encourage this for the sake of trend, especially when it’s not even censored away from kids. As an adult self it is offensive. #rubbish”.
This poses the question, how to do we create more formal means of censorship around African music and how it is consumed by all ages?
One of the major responses to what Kaffy said from those who disagreed with her and sided with Naira Marley was, where was your condemnation when the indecency “One Corner” created was making the rounds all over the place.
A dance in which people would take off to the corners of the dam floor or the room to begin humping the air.
If we agree that there should be censorship in African music and the dance steps that accompany them, we can’t pick and choose.
Another criticism came when people mentioned twerking and people’s arguments that within African cultural dances there is a lot of shaking of the waist and backside, therefore making twerking more acceptable.
Whatever the case may be and where you stand in this argument, censorship is something that is needed to create clear boundaries on what people choose to be exposed to and more importantly what they choose for their children to be exposed to.
Do you believe censorship is possible in these times of social media and technological advancement? If yes, how?
