Whose Heritage? – The Communities of West African Dance and Music in Finland

Beskrivning

This paper focuses on the communities of people that are connected by the practice of West African dance and music traditions in Finland. The idea of intangible cultural heritage as defined in, for example, the 2003 UNESCO Convention, is commonly understood to link an ICH item with a specific place and with a specific group of people, when the UNESCO definition emphasizes the transmission of cultural heritage “from generation to generation”, similarly to other resources a person might inherit from their progenitors. Accordingly, people often assume that traditional West African dances and music would be practiced in Finland primarily within diaspora communities, who would aim at passing on these practices from their West African homelands to their children. However, such activities seem to be quite rare in West African diaspora communities. While traditional dances and musical performances are often part of celebrations, there are many West Africans living in Finland who do not take part in dancing and there are only a few who play traditional instruments. Traditional West African dances and music are, therefore, more commonly transmitted – typically in dance and drumming classes – to white Finnish enthusiasts than to children of West African descent. Alongside West African professionals living in Finland, there are also white Finnish dancers and musicians involved in this transmission as teachers and performers. In this paper, I look at the “cultural formations” (Turino 2008) of the practitioners of traditional West African dance and music in Finland: Can such multiethnic communities function as heritage communities? How are these dances and musical styles taught and performed in Finnish contexts? Is ethnicity (or nationality) a factor that affects the transmission or performance of West African dance and music? Who can claim ownership of this heritage in Finland?

Period	27 maj 2025
Evenemangstitel	Conference of the ICTMD Nordic-Baltic Network: Cultural Self-Determination
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Konferensnummer	2
Plats	Riga, LettlandVisa på karta
Omfattning	Internationell