Times Literary Supplement (London)
The author efficiently sets out the various theoretical debates that have been raging since E. Franklin Frazier and Melville Herskovits first argued the possibilities of survival of African culture during and after the Atlantic crossing, and neatly summarizes the positions, indicating how authenticities, rather than authenticity, can be recognized. The tenacity of African music and dance culture is then elaborated, showing how African dance forms, especially the shout, developed in the New World.Then, in a chapter of particularly enlightening close reading, King-Dorset looks at two sets of reproductions of black dancers in London in the nineteenth century. This is the core of the book, and his analysis is both rigorous and sympathetic, elaborating the dichotomy of the London black communities' adherence both to their African/creole history and their openness to their new British life. King-Dorset persuasively argues that in these images dance is used as a tool of social enjoyment, as a way of bonding and, especially, as a way of satirizing the dominant community, which in turn gives the dancers a sense of collective identity, and also a way of covertly commenting on the white majority.
