Dance in Steelband Performance and its Connection to Decoloniality

Abstract

Discarded 55-gallon oil barrels were used for music making in 1930s colonial Trinidad and Tobago; a period deeply shaped by discrimination of its performers. Large ensembles consist of over 500 drums played by 120 musicians, who all move as one. Analysing large ensemble performances, this chapter examines dance as a decolonial aesthetic and epistemology, discussing how dance enables performers to regenerate the communal and thereby transgress the colonial matrix of power. It explores the potential of the performing body for broader understandings of decoloniality. This chapter seeks to understand the moving body in musical performance as a historical and current practice of transgressing and (re-)existing beyond coloniality. It asks: how does music enable people to (re-)exist beyond the colonial matrix of power and its working in the epistemic realm, which is crucial to understanding subjectivity, the control of knowledge, and personal and political consciousness. The performing body is socio-political because it generates space for the receipt and exchange of emotions and experiences, bringing about feelings of joy, love, and communion, thereby enabling a way of being that transgresses coloniality.