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Tufo dancing : Muslim Women's culture in northern Mozambique

2004; Brill; Volume: 11; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1768-3084

Signe Arnfred,

African studies and sociopolitical issues

t is afternoon in one of the densely populated bairros in Mozambique Island. A group of women gather on the veranda of a small red house in one of the sandy streets, not far from the sea. It is early April, the air is still warm, but not unbearably hot. There seems to be no fixed time for the meeting; some women pass by, others come and go, some settle down in the shade of the veranda. One woman is braiding another’s hair. After a while, some 10 to 12 women have assembled. They move inside, and rehearsals can begin. Inside there is one big room with benches along two walls and no other furniture. The women sit down on the floor learning the words and the music of a new song for their performance on April 7 th for the celebration of the Mozambican Women’s Day. This time the words of the song have been written by the group’s «poet», who is one of the group’s four male drum beaters. The words are written in a cheap exercise book, the kind children use in school. The characters are Arabic but the language is Emakhuwa. Some of the women have never gone to school, but most have attended the Islamic madrasa (the Quran school) and thus they are more familiar with Arabic than with Latin letters. They rehearse the words along with the music, one verse after the other. Later they rehearse the choreography for the dancing. When I ask who invents the music and creates the dancing, the women say they do it themselves, collectively. Sometimes it is also one of the women who writes the words of the song. The women are members of the group Estrela Vermelha of Ilha de Mozambique. Estrela Vermelha – Red Star – is one of the most famous women’s dance groups of northern Mozambique. Their favourite dance is Tufo. Tufo used to be a religious dance, praising the prophet Muhammad in music and words. It used to be danced by men as well as by women – always, however, in separate groups, never together. Nowadays men only dance the Tufo at special festive occasions linked to religious celebrations. * This paper was first presented (in an earlier version) at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Philadelphia, November 1999, then titled: « Female Identity Politics in a Period of Change? Muslim Woman’s Dance Associations in Northern Mozambique ».