The Globalizer

   When I first started looking at videos for this entry I was having a hard time finding something I was interested in writing about.  Somehow I came across this video about Sabar dancing in the country of Senegal.  The video is a documentary done by a graduate student in the city of Dakar, Senegal.  After watching this video I realized there are a number of other videos about Sabar dancing or Senegal dancers, however I still liked this one a lot.

   A sabar is a traditional drum of Senegal.  At one time the sabar was used as a means of communication between villages.  Sabar is also a style of music that uses the sabar drum, and it is generally danced to.  Now, the Sabar basically refers to an event where the sabar drums are played, people dance and it has the feeling of almost a party per say.  The Sabar is usually a big public event that fills up a city square.  

   The Sabar is an important part of the culture in Senegal.  The people, or for the most part women dress up in exquisite clothing.  Both men, women and children attend this social event.  The men generally play the sabar drums and the women do the dancing, however men also do some dancing.  The men can almost dictate how the women dance by the way they play the sabar drums.  

   The lady who made the documentary talks about how Sabar dancing is a way for women to express their feminine sexuality.  She notes that this is quite odd because it goes against the Islamic religion, which most of these people follow.  Basically the Sabar dancing is fairly modest, but it at times can be immodest.  

   While I was watching this video I really thought the dancing was pretty cool and interesting.  The women sort of have their own style of Sabar dancing and the men also have their own style.  Women generally do most of the dancing, but the men dance and when they do, they consider it their work.  In this video it showed the women dancing to live music and the men mostly dancing to recorded music.  I thought it was cool when the video showed men dancing because they did lots of group dancing that looked similar to some American dancing, but it definitely had its own twist to it.  The men use Sabar dancing as a means to make money, which is very important to them because they might not have any other real means of earning money.  Essentially men have created their own form of Sabar dancing and expanded on how it is done.

   Sabar dancing is very unique to Senegal.  Just about every culture has its own form of music and dancing, and the people of Senegal make a great example of this.