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"'Born in the USA': Dislocation, Disrupted Kinship Networks, and the Transformative Power of Music and Dance in African Immigrant Baby Naming Ceremonies"

Sherri Canon, Los Angeles Trade Technical College
sbaby@mail.utexas.edu

This paper examines the adaptive strategies by Senegalese and Ghanaian immigrants when replicating one of the primary African family ceremonies, the baby naming ceremony, in Los Angeles. In most African societies, the naming ceremony consists of two segments - a religious ritual in the early morning one week after a baby's birth, followed by a cultural celebration featuring music, dance, food, and gift exchange. In Los Angeles, immigrant families, who are restricted by long-distance travel, long working hours, and noise ordinances, adapt their rituals to the limitations of the host society. But, they also transform the foreign surroundings to reproduce the naming ceremony in a style that will ensure the newborn's spiritual protection and introduction into the community. In this paper, I compare two immigrant communities - Ghanaians and Senegalese - who have very different cultures, languages, religious histories, and migration patterns, in a global city, Los Angeles. While their music and dance performance practices differ, they share many aspects of ritual performance and cultural aims during baptisms. Primarily, I will show how Ghanaian and Senegalese immigrants use music and dance at lifecycle rituals to re-inscribe ethnic and national identities, reinforce social relationships, and accentuate the kinship ties between extended families across the Atlantic. The musical genres, song texts, dance styles, and praise singing and drumming are geared towards articulating the family ties in which Africans at home and abroad are enmeshed.