“Sound of Kuduro knocking at my door”: Kuduro Dance and the Poetics of Debility

The music and dance style of the electronic based Kuduro has dominated dance floors all over the world since the release of French DJ Frédéric Galliano’s Kuduro Sound System (2005/2008), which featured Angolan artists such as Dog Murras. Kuduro’s upbeat tempo results in frenetic dancing that usually consists of hip hop-inspired moves, traditional Angolan and carnival dance steps, and dramatized everyday movements such as dancing on knees as if lower legs were amputated, or mimicking media images of “starving Africans.” This article traces the relationship between Kuduro dance and racialized disability. Looking specifically at the Kuduro variant of melindro, this article shows how the inclusion of large numbers of Angolan amputees who were victims of foreign and civil wars has created a black urban dance vocabulary via differential embodiment. Not only does Kuduro incorporate disability as part of its movement repertoire but it also includes differently abled bodies without insisting that they move as if able-bodied.