Curt Sachs was a musicologist whose book was originally published In German in1933. He also wrote books on the world history of music and musical instruments.
In his introduction he elaborates a number of general theories about the dance. He says it predates other art forms because the medium is the human body, but it is more than an art form, it is also a mystico-religious experience which is of vital importance to early civilisations and primitive cultures. He says it has many different functions in different cultures other than those of display and festivity with which we associate it.
Sachs defines dance as "life on a higher level", but admits that this is not a suitable definition on which to base scientific studies. He has difficulty finding a definition that includes all dance forms but excludes other forms of rhythmic movement. He eventually settles on a definition of dance as "all rhythmic motion not related to the work motive".
He says that in higher cultures, when dance becomes an art form, divorced from its spiritual context, it disintegrates into separate activities such as drama, sport, social dance and religion.
In his first chapter, "Movements", Sachs says that human dance has its origins in the dances of animals, e.g. birds and chimpanzees, but unlike animal dance, which is purely innate and instinctive, dance in humans develops into many different, culturally determined forms. It is thus an important area of study to anthropologists and social historians.
Sachs then uses descriptions of dances from a variety of cultures, taken from various written sources, to erect a classification of dance according to type of movement. His two main categories are dances out of harmony with the body, and dances in harmony with the body. He sub-divides the former into pure convulsive dances, (which he links with primitive, shamanistic cultures), weakened convulsive dances, and wrench or contortion dances. The latter he divides into the two subclasses of expanded dances, which are vigorous and expansive in execution, and close dances which are opposite in character.
He characterises close dances as female and expanded dances as male. He also says that expanded dances are associated with hunting cultures while close dances are found in planting and tilling cultures.
There are some good points in this work, such as the attempt to formulate an objective definition of the word dance, and the emphasis on its culturally determined variety of form and function, but they are obscured by a large amount of highly emotive conjecture and unsubstantiated generalisation.
The author's frequent descriptions of cultures as primitive, and his negative value judgements of some of their dances, illustrate both his marked ethnocentricity and his adherence to the now discredited theory of unilinear, progressive cultural evolution.
His system of classification according to the generalities rather than the specifics of dance movement is not very useful, since it leads to the grouping together of unrelated dance forms.
The information on which Sachs based this study came from a variety of second-hand sources. It is lacking in context, insufficiently detailed and of dubious reliability.
Most of the information for this paper was gathered in 1951 while the author was Senior Sociologist at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute. He later became director of this institute and was also a research fellow in the department of Social Anthropology at Manchester University. At the time of publication he was Professor of African studies at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
Following the example of Gluckman, he uses a study of the popular urban tribal dance form called Kalela as a vehicle for understanding social structure in the copper mining area of Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His field research methods include personal observation, local informants and sociographic questionnaires, from which he tabulates data. He also refers to historical records and the work of other researchers.
Mitchell describes the Kalela dance, and its associated songs, as he has seen them performed by a particular team of Bisa tribesmen, and says that although it is tribal in organisation and function, its language, idiom and dress are features derived from urban culture, which tends to submerge tribal differences.
He explores this paradox by investigating the origins of Kalela in the older Mbeni dance form, which was popular in British garrison areas in the 1920s. The main feature of this was an imitation of a British military band, complete with mock military ranks and uniforms. This pantomime of the perceived elements of colonial hierarchy allowed the dancers to participate vicariously in the "European" social prestige system from which they were excluded.
In the Kalela dance, which replaced Mbeni, and was introduced to the Copperbelt after The Second World War, the emphasis on immaculately correct European clothing remains, but the smart clothes of a European businessman or professional have displaced the military uniforms. These still have the same function as symbols of social aspiration because, in the emerging urban African class system, high prestige is associated with the "European way of life".
He then discusses various aspects of urban tribalism and its relationship to the socio-economic class system. He says that both systems are important in the social interactions between Africans but are completely irrelevant in Africans' dealings with their white colonial bosses. Due to the transient and multi-ethnic nature of the population, he says that "tribe" is more important than "class" in the Copperbelt. He describes joking relationships between formerly hostile tribes, which allow them to interact peacefully in the urban environment, and says that Kalela teams set up a unilateral joking relationship with their spectators which enables them to mock other tribes in their songs without causing bad feeling.
He explores "social distance" between tribes using a questionnaire, and comes to the preliminary conclusion that the main factors involved are cultural similarity and geographical closeness, but says that other factors such as a reputation for prowess in fighting, association with low rank occupations, or past tribal contact can be significant. He says that in towns "tribe" does not signify a social system, as it does in the country, but is merely a category of cultural identity, and only in that sense can Kalela be considered a tribal dance.
This study has shown the interaction between tribal and class social categories within the Kalela dance. While the team members are recruited from people of similar socio-economic status, they are also all members of one tribe. Although the songs emphasise and promote Bisa tribal solidarity, the dancers' smart European clothes are a symbol of their social class aspirations.
Although he is associated with British colonial institutions, Mitchell's relatively non-patronising, non-ethnocentric attitude is a great improvement on the evolutionists' notions of primitive savages.
His use of fieldwork and his introduction of quantitative analytical methods are to be commended.
However, since the results are based on people's opinions, the samples are unrepresentative and he gives no evidence for assuming the normal distribution of ranks over all occupations, I would be dubious about the validity of calculating results to four decimal places.
Although this paper is ostensibly about the Kalela dance, he devotes less than half a paragraph to the actual movements of the dance. What he does tell us about the dance and its associated activities is inconsistent and poorly observed. This is probably due to lack of expertise about dancing.
While telling us little about the dance as such, this is quite a good and interesting piece of sociological research, involving work in the field, quantitative analysis and literature studies. The author has been honest enough to point out weaknesses in his own methods and to note several areas in which further research is necessary.
Anne Wafer MA Ethnochoreology, University of Limerick 1999 - 2000