The Dance of Politics: Gender, Performance, and Democratization in Malawi by Lisa Gilman (review)

In The Dance of Politics, Lisa Gilman calls upon her background as a scholar of African dance, gender, and performance studies to explore the embodied practices of women song leaders (alternatively referred to as "praise performers") in Malawi. In this ethnographic and historical project, the author theorizes that the practices of women song leaders have had an enduring impact on women's political participation and issues of gender parity and power relations in the Southeast African nation. She ultimately argues that women's political dancing serves to challenge the state through its embodied critique of formal political actors while at the same time working to reaffirm the marginal political status of women in Malawi. Creative acts that began as an explicit critique of and form of resistance to British colonial rule became a vehicle through which women praise performers offered both criticism and support for political party leadership and state practices. Gilman traces how the songs and dances of the women praise performers were co-opted by party leaders in order to be deployed for their use. She presents a complex narrative that exposes how women's political dancing, as a tool of an underrepresented and marginalized group, functions to initiate conversations between the nation's poorest citizenry and formal political agents, and suggests that the songs and dances of women praise performers act as an informal politics to facilitate women's participation in the public sphere while raising complicated questions of agency and power along the way.

Gilman's emically organized text reveals an awareness of the nuanced history of pre- and postcolonial politics in Malawi and is informed by oral histories/interviews from song leaders, local citizens, party members, and community leaders. This information is supplemented by thorough descriptions of songs and dances as enacted at political rallies (known as msonkhanos). Additionally, the author uses her own observations, reflections, and content gleaned from informal conversations on the topic of women praise performance as source material for this well-researched project.

In Chapter 1, Gilman provides an overview of how she began this project in 1999 in Malawi, and presents a detailed observation of the practice of women praise performers as witnessed at a political rally for the nation's United Democratic Front (UDF) party. The chapter flashes back to trace the emergence of song leaders' practices out of traditional Malawi song and dance culture and resistance to British rule in the country, known then as Nyasaland. She relates how this resistive practice was later co-opted by Dr. Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), which ran the nation through dictatorial-style, single-party governance from 1964—the year Malawi won its independence—until 1994. Under Banda and the MCP, women were required—without concern for age, interest, ailments, or abilities—to dance at political rallies on behalf of the party. Importantly, while Gilman focuses on the context of this practice in Malawi, she is careful to point out its pan-African nature, noting that similar political dancing can be observed in other places on the continent; I myself have witnessed it in the Republic of the Gambia and know of similar practices in Kenya's history. By asserting the "pan-Africanness" of political dancing, the author provides a broader context for thinking about these practices while maintaining her focus on Malawi.

Gilman asserts that the willingness on the part of the women to use music and dance as a space for political resistance was particularly important in the colonial period because it presented a stark contrast to European cultural codes and politics. At its core, it asserted the importance of traditional cultural practices in the face of European dominance. Gilman ties the use of song and dance as a way to resist colonial control to similar happenings across the African continent. She cites...