Goddess Files: The Original Juk

Here I am on a Sunday morning re-activating my Goddess by taking a fat burning belly dance class. It was good because I sweated my tail off, but I needed some more funk.

So I switched to some Soukous Dancing videos. Soukous is a music and dance from the Congo that is a mixture of African traditional music, with some Cuban & Haitian, and South American Rhythms. It is an upbeat tempo that was named after dances of peoples in the Congo, as well as some indigenous nations in Tanzania and Kenya. The dance centers around hip movement and is an excellent dance for women who suffer from fibroids, endometriocis, back problems, and issues with getting pregnant. The 15-minute songs that invoke you to move your hips in intricate circular rhythms works the center or core of your body. This is an excellent supplementary to Bellydancing and burns fat faster, especially around the mid-section.

I came across these videos and though I liked them I thought is was very interesting how lighter-skinned African women are featured in the videos. Not hating on the sisters, but for every light-skinned sister, there are thousands of brown-skinned hues. This disporportionate represenation is a rapidly growing trend in African videos and film, and there is an element of Black Hollywood-ism of the light, bright BS that reverberates throughout movies in the US that have definitely played a part in how contemporary global black media produces their material. Also, the European aesthetic that is repeatedly played in mainstream and celebrated by bourgeois and elite Africans, has also ripped black female self-esteem up in some areas. Just look at the First Lady of Cameroon, Chantal Biya, who looks like a Drag Queen version of Beyonce.
As well, some of these videos had me saying, "hmm-hmm-hmm" because I thought I just stepped into the African-hood version of a Luke show. Though I know that we as black women are so goddamned sexually repressed and oppressed that we do not have a healthy space to explore and express our sexuality, the videos were interesting. However, I ain't hating, I winin' and grindin' on the other side participating. Just something to look at.