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Groovin’ Griot is a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. The term “griot” comes from the West African tradition of oral and embodied storytelling. Griots are traveling poets, musicians, genealogists, and historians who preserve and tell stories via a variety of modalities.
On Groovin’ Griot, we are centering the African Diaspora, honoring the legacies of the griot by talking to the storytellers in our communities who help us understand the role of dance in remembering and reimagining the lessons embedded in these stories. We’ll talk roots, rhythm, rituals, recommendations, and much more.
Episodes released bi-weekly. Email us at groovingriot@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @groovingriot!
And I think that's kind of what this is about in that, yes, it's about dance. Yes, it's about storytelling, but we are coming from a space of we're social scientists. We're researchers. We do empirical work, we work with communities. And so how does that how does our approach as people who think a lot about movement inform those different spaces?
OreOluwa:Welcome to Groovin' Griot, a podcast about how we use dance to tell stories. I'm OreOluwa Badaki.
Azsaneé:And I'm Azsaneé Truss. Let's get groovin'.
OreOluwa:On this episode, we're doing something a little different and sharing some of the highlights from the first season of Groovin' Griot.
Azsaneé:That's right. As we bring season 1 to a close, we wanted to take the time to connect some dots, highlight some themes that came up throughout the season, and generally tie a bow on things.
OreOluwa:This season, we talked to some incredible guests, all of whom use dance to unpack the complexities of human experience and pathways for collective action.
Azsaneé:We explored dance through various fields, theater studies, civics, anthropology, history, health, and of course, dance studies.
OreOluwa:And we learned a lot about the differences traditional dance systems of the Mandinka and Ewe peoples of West Africa, to the folkloric and spiritual dances of Cuba and Brazil, to the social and improvisational genres among Black Americans here in the US.
Azsaneé:This season has taken us on quite a journey, and 1 of the core threads tying together our conversations was this idea of dance in the African diaspora as a way to bring about healing and restoration. Our first guest, Doctor. Jasmine Blanks Jones, articulated this through her discussion of reparative arts.
Jasmine Blanks Jones:So thinking through the reparative arts as a way to, not just challenge but to center the the types of knowledge that come out of collective processes, that come out of embodied experiences, and that come out of a real desire by actual people to change their circumstances in ways that they have reason to value. Thinking about humans, all humans, regardless of their background and I say or their ethnic group of their culture of their race, as people who are reasonable who can operate from a place of making decisions because they have sense making that occurs not just through what we're told makes sense, not just through what our academic canons say, knowledge is, but sense making that comes through the body, that comes through our ancestry, and that comes through our being together.
OreOluwa:So doctor Blanks Jones talks about reparative arts as a way to center the types of knowledge that comes out of collective processes and specifically embodied collective processes. And one of my favorite parts about putting together this podcast with you, Azsaneé, was being able to talk to people in our communities, in our spaces about these conversations. And I ended up having this really great conversation with somebody I go to dance class with. His name is Jonathan. Shouting out Jonathan.
OreOluwa:Hey, Jonathan. Listening. But I bring him up because Jonathan actually studies dance movement therapy and is an incredible dancer and mover, but also has just a wealth of knowledge about how some of these topics we bring about in the show are taken up in this field of dance movement therapy. Doctor Blanks Jones, you know, was coming at this from theater, from civics, from, public policy and public health as well. And so I think listening to Jonathan talk about his work in public health or his work in mental health, and how he brings in his dance practices, his movement practices, was really, really eye opening for me.
Azsaneé:I think that's really interesting because 1 of the things that a lot of folks in my life and, you know, professionally and personally, reflect on has been this idea of kind of moving through trauma and how the body remembers and and how we can, like, take stock of our wellness via the various places in our body and everything. And I think it's really interesting to think about how we can disrupt notions of, like, time as linear by accessing those bits of trauma, like, that the the periods of time that we were, you know, experiencing something via movement and then kind of, like, repaying it, like, reshaping, I guess, kind of how we experienced that time period. And another 1 of our guests spoke a lot about how dance helps us to disrupt notions of linear time and progress, and that was doctor Deb Thomas.
Deborah Thomas:And so I've been thinking about that with respect to Kumina, that, you know, in Maya, the body is unbounded temp temporally and also materially. You know, you hear all these stories about what people do when they're in Myel or you see them do it.
Deborah Thomas:You know, things that cannot be done in, like, ordinary relations of time and space and cause and effect. Like, no way are you swallowing fire and not burning your mouth. You know, or no way are you walking on glass and not cutting your feet, you know, these things that people actually do. So in a way, in my eye then, in that space of unbounded body ness,
OreOluwa:the This notion This notion of disrupting linearity was something doctor Afosua Abiola also talked about. She extends this point to highlight the ways that traditional West African dances have never just been about the dance or about specific codified movements. They've always existed within a collection of different mediums and modes, and they've supported people across the African diaspora in facilitating social cohesion.
Ofosuwa Abiola:I speak of dance systems because the dance does not exist by itself. Within the dance, you're going to have singing, which is how the oral historians conveyed their their histories. You're going to have the attire and within the attire that's a whole nother narrative. There are colors that the attire represents and there are, particular materials that the attire is made from. You have your musicians who speak with their drumming or the ballophone or whatever instruments they're using, but they also are wearing particular attire that also has a message.
Ofosuwa Abiola:And all of these messages that are conveyed through, the attire the singing the location where the dance is to occur in the time of day, who does the dance. All of this is centered around the dance and therefore, really makes the dance a holistic, modality.
Azsaneé:Dr. Abiola's discussion of how dance us to integrate multiple modalities makes me think a lot about our backgrounds and that kind of being the impetus for this podcast.
OreOluwa:Part of what we were thinking about you know, this came directly out of the, Camera Archives podcast, which came directly out of the What Your Body Knows podcast, which was when we think about multimodality, there's an emphasis on the modes. Right? Sometimes it's like this this is visual. This is oral or auditory. And then this is material.
OreOluwa:And this is but all of that is mediated through the body. So even if you aren't somebody who thinks of themselves as a dancer or a mover, you know, how do we acknowledge the body in in that that's the that's the medium through which we experience everything.
Azsaneé:I think it's really cool to reflect on how that is what brought us to this podcast in the first place, thinking about how movement is a way of knowing, about how it's a a valid way of understanding the world. Embodiment is just as valuable as the written word. It's it's how we make sense of the world around us in a really immediate way.
OreOluwa:What I find pretty innovative in your approach as in your work is that you also are a visual artist. You also do collages. You have podcasting experience.
Azsaneé:You have Moon lighting.
OreOluwa:Moon lighting. You're kind of you're doing it. When I mean, that's what grad school kind of asks you, like, forces you to do in
Azsaneé:some ways.
OreOluwa:But you like that way of thinking probably is part of your way of thinking when you're sitting down to write your disc, for instance, or when you're sitting down to write a proposal.
Azsaneé:Wow, you made the connection to my work for me.
OreOluwa:And I think that's kind of what this is about in that, yes, it's about dance. Yes. It's about storytelling, but we are coming from a space of we're social scientists. We're researchers. We do empirical work.
OreOluwa:We work with communities. And so how does that how does our approach as people who think a lot about movement inform those different spaces?
Azsaneé:Yes. I love that. And also, it is time for another movement break. Whoop whoop. Ara and I have spent a lot of time traveling for our own projects this year, separate but not unrelated to this podcast.
Azsaneé:And we also spend a lot of time grooving in the process. Mhmm. This compilation includes audio from some of our travels this year, including a second line in New Orleans, audio from an African dance festival in New York, a night in Rio de Janeiro, and a party right here in Philadelphia. See if you can match the sounds to the place.
OreOluwa:Welcome back. We hope you enjoyed that Movement Break. Coming back to the different themes we talked about this season, 1 that came up quite a bit was how we value different styles of dance depending on the context.
Azsaneé:We talked a lot about how we can't assume Western dances are the real deal and African diasporic dances are just about vibes or about dances from the, quote, unquote, global south more broadly. But doctor Leila Ayesha Jones also reminded us that these dance forms don't exist in a vacuum nor are they mutually exclusive. It's just a matter of how we allow both to exist and thrive in our bodies and in our societies.
Lela Aisha Jones:So I have people in the company who, if you looked at the the company dancing, you would never know they were not a modern dancer. Right? They had only studied West African and Afro Cuban, but they did the movements of modern fine because they were so comfortable. There's something so deep about knowing your body. You know, it is more important than technique.
Lela Aisha Jones:Like, having a sense of your bones and your cells and your muscles and how each part of it flows with the other, you know, from a very visceral place not a cognitive thinking place, but a trusting of muscle memory and cell memory, you know, and blood memory. So if I you know, I can notice when you're doing Guinea Fade or when you're doing Oshun or when you're doing but many people, when they see a choreography, they can't. You know, if you haven't danced those forms, you haven't studied those forms, that's a beautiful thing about studying in the diaspora. Now you've got a whole wide range of global vocabulary or embodied, sensation that many people totally miss when they see these these kind of pieces that are contemporary works. You know, people can say, oh, that's African.
Lela Aisha Jones:I see some African in there, but they can't say it's Mali. You know? That's that's lamban. And even if I say it's lamban, I know it's 10 other things. So I think that that's the beauty of Fly Ground is that we were able to validate a house and hip hop, whatever you trained in.
Lela Aisha Jones:And there were a lot of modern dancers, but they were they the other things that they had been a part of weren't validated in choreographic practice.
Azsaneé:Thinking about what doctor Leila Ayesha Jones is talking about here, I think this is 1 of the most personally resonant themes from this season. Mhmm. As I've mentioned more times than I probably care to count, I'm a classically trained ballerina, and I've spent so much of the past few years, actually. I was gonna say this year, but I really think been ongoing since starting this PhD. So much of the last few years unlearning so much of what that taught me.
Azsaneé:I think we've talked a lot about this. Like, I'm really proud of a lot of what that gave me, the the discipline, the kind of you know, the ability to, like, really focus and hone in on something and and try to get really, you know Yeah. Technically good at something.
OreOluwa:I mean, we know we we took a jazz class together. We didn't feature that on on this season. Maybe it'll come up on the next season. Mhmm. But 1 thing that was also really helpful for me as somebody who could get the movement quick pretty easily. But
Azsaneé:Very easily.
OreOluwa:I mean, thankfully, that was helpful. But since you were right next to me, I could look at what it should look like as it was given to me Mhmm. What aesthetically is is prominent. But that didn't mean I had to do that, but it's helpful for me to know what it looks like.
OreOluwa:And then I can go off of, like, okay, whether or not I wanna adjust. It's not a sin, right, to be able to do something precisely and exactly how it's given to you. But it's when you don't have a choice or when you're forced into forced to conform into a certain mold, that's when it feels a little Very predatory. Yeah.
Azsaneé:Yeah. Exactly. No. And I think, I am also, yeah, very proud of my technique. I spent forever developing it.
OreOluwa:And a lot of money probably. And a lot of resources. Yeah.
Azsaneé:And so much time, I'm like, there's all of my teen years, on the studio floor.
OreOluwa:Yeah. Blood, sweat, and tears.
Azsaneé:Seriously. Yeah. But, I think I really have enjoyed learning to improvise. I've really enjoyed, learning be free in, even just in a class space. I if you put me on the dance floor in the middle of a club, in the middle of, you know, a barbecue, whatever, I can I can dance?
Azsaneé:But if you put me in a class space, the technique turns on, and my brain is, like, short circuiting, trying to figure out, you know, how to how to get rid of that and maybe to just, like, move a little bit more freely. And learning to move freely in a space that's, you know, formal has been really, really healthy, and really generative for me.
OreOluwa:Right. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And this actually brings us back to our last connecting thread, the role of improvisation in these diasporic dance forms. I loved how doctor S. Ama Wray talked about this as both an ancient and as a future technology.
S Ama Wray:Yes. Well, actually, I believe that the drum and and polyrhythm is a technology that has not yet been we haven't yet gotten to that place where we are able to translate. But I believe, I strongly believe there is a coding, like a 4 dimensional, it could even be 5 dimensional system that is within African musics because of the way they interlock and because they're based on patterns and because they are connected to language and the the orality And of course you're talking about not just notes, you're talking about pitch and tone. Now thinking about that into a future where there is a a way for multiple drummers, people articulating rhythm in in these dimensions, that would then produce some, if you will call it, a digital effect.
Azsaneé:I think this is a really powerful place to close this conversation, really considering how we look back to move forward, sort of invoking the account principle of Sankofa.
OreOluwa:I think so too. And before we go, I think we should also ask each other the same thing we ask all of our guests. So, Azsaneé, what are you grooving to these days?
Azsaneé:Okay. Lately, I have really been grooving to, the new Kaytranada album. Mhmm. I love some good house music. Yeah.
Azsaneé:I've been exploring house music throughout my travels. Oh, and then this isn't music, but I am waiting for House of the Dragon to come back. Is it House of the Dragon? Yeah. So the House of Dragons.
OreOluwa:House of
Azsaneé:I I always, like, give it, like, a little ballroom flare, and I'm like, House of the Dragon.
OreOluwa:House of the Dragon. I said, House of the Dragon. That's your new theme song, House of the Dragon. If that's even your name, we don't know. We don't know.
Azsaneé:But yes. Yes. The Game of Thrones spin off.
Azsaneé:I've been waiting for that to come back. But yeah. Oh, I've also been grooving to Yaya Bay. I went to her concert a couple weekends ago. And, yeah, since then, I've just been feeling her.
Azsaneé:Perfect. Mhmm. Okay. A little a little alt R & B, some, you know, neo soul vibes. It's good.
OreOluwa:Very cool.
Azsaneé:What about you? What are you going to?
OreOluwa:I recently had a performance at Odunde, the big festival here in Philly. And 1 of the songs that was part of the piece is a song by Daymé Arocena called Madres, and it's a song about Oshun and Yemonja. Mhmm. And the piece itself was talking about the different Yoruba, Orishas, and it's just she's a incredibly soulful singer, vocalist, improvisationist. And, yeah, the song is just like liquid.
OreOluwa:And the the percussion too, I was yeah. It was a really easy song to want to move to. So I was really glad that we got to do a bit of movement, to that song. And I think everything I'm grooving to recently has to do with water, and maybe I'm just dehydrated. Maybe I'm just dehydrated.
OreOluwa:Who knows? But the other song that I came across recently is a song called Lady Blue by Emily Wurramara, I think. And she's a young indigenous Australian singer and songwriter. And the song itself talking about kind of her relationship with with the river, with the waters, with, you know, her ancestors. So it's really lovely storytelling.
OreOluwa:And then the last song, Drink Water by Jon Batiste, is just really fun. It's really fun. It's a good reminder to drink water and settle down, you know? And I always love love bopping around whenever it comes on. So those are all my water themed, river themed, ocean themed songs I'm grooving through recently.
Azsaneé:So I think that brings us to the end. Thank you to all of our fantastic guests this season for taking the time to talk with us and share your insights.
OreOluwa:And thanks to all of you for coming along for the ride.
Azsaneé:That's a wrap on Groovin' Griot Season 1.
OreOluwa:Woo hoo. We did it, folks.
Azsaneé:We did.
Azsaneé:This episode of Groovin'Griot was a production of the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was produced and edited by me, Azsaneé Truss, and my co host, Ore Badaki. Our theme music is Unrest by Elephant and can be found on directory dot audio.
OreOluwa:You can email us at groovingriot@gmail.com. That's gr0ovingr i0t@gmail.com. And you can continue to listen to episodes of Goovin' Griot wherever podcasts are found. Thanks for Goobin' with us. Oh, are we ready?
OreOluwa:Are we recording this? Yeah. Excellent. Blooper reel. Because we're all about ideas on Groovin with Griot.
Azsaneé:We're an idea podcast.
OreOluwa:But we groove to ideas. That's the whole point.
Azsaneé:Yeah. Yeah. Groovy ideas.
OreOluwa:I know you're in your houses right now. Grooving with us. Grooving with ideas.
Azsaneé:Us that these dance form dance forms. Dance forms. Dance. Dance. Dance.
Azsaneé:These dance forms.
OreOluwa:Alright, Dan. This one's for you. Who's Dan? Dan. Dan.
OreOluwa:Dan. Dan. Hey. Dan. Why are you on the desk?
OreOluwa:To a song about a dupe
Azsaneé:named Dan. Who are you? Help me with this narration.
OreOluwa:Okay. Sorry.
Azsaneé:Okay.
OreOluwa:Sorry, Dan. Okay. Done done with Dan. Okay. Done with Dan.
Azsaneé:Everybody.
OreOluwa:Okay. Yeah. No. I agree. That's that's really great.
OreOluwa:And I'll try another 1. Take 2. Here we go.
Azsaneé:That sounded very Mario Kart?
OreOluwa:It did. Why?
Azsaneé:Why? You turn into a British man sometimes, an Italian
OreOluwa:I do.
Azsaneé:Cartoon character. All these
OreOluwa:characters is Does it
Azsaneé:live inside of you?
OreOluwa:And ready to come out very
Ofosuwa Abiola:I know. At any at any opportunity.
Azsaneé:That is so funny.
OreOluwa:Okay. Okay. Okay.
Azsaneé:Let's go to lunch.
OreOluwa:Grabbing. But what do you wanna use? That's gonna be part of the montage. Yeah. What do you wanna use?
OreOluwa:What do you wanna use? Into. Oh, yeah. Good into. Come on, Christina.
OreOluwa:Okay, Harmony. Extina. Extina. Oh,
Azsaneé:no. Anyways, okay.