Saturday, July 17, 2010

Sudanese Bridal Dancing_ From history to present

It has always been a beautiful tradition for Sudanese weddings. In the Past, even men used to watch as a woman wore certain types of head gold, special hooped stamped earrings , a nose ring, and mainly red shining garments..... dress and the traditional toob_ a material about 4 metres in length.


as time entered modernity, women became more artistic, more fashionable , more unique, and always more daring to wear sexier and beautiful clothes. Some old songs remain the same but new 'girl' ones developed ones that can be added to the directory of sudanese wedding dance but others ones have been counted as lame and are not that respectable in terms of words and meaning.

Girls who become women on their wedding days as such, used to love this tradition, they are happy to have this special moment where they are cheered, where they become queens where they reach stardom , where they look like stars in front of their husbands, relatives & friends

where they use this once in a life time chance to do something to be remembered forever.

I remember since I was a child begging to go this part of the sudanese wedding , each different bride became a famous person for me, a token , a gift like something I could never touch, like a dream I wanted to be
I loved how she opened her arms and swayed her neck or when the music got faster how she flipped her hips and everyone clapped and 'zagrat' ( unique whistling sounds Sudanese women are famous for)

The atmospheres where incredible, like a sold out concert, a place where you were lucky to be invited to, Women chatted and ate, drank and had such a good time, and without knwoing forming part of everlasting history by having came

Then as I grew up i discovered that people got less traditional, This scared me and I started instead of choosing from all the weddings I could go to, to practically starving to find a bride who had a dance as part of her wedding. When I asked why suddenly the dancing was getting less, the answers became hotter, quicker and more and more explainable but unexplainable at the same time

Money

Time not available

Trust in people was drastically failing - Society had rising bad thoughts, more women used cameras to tape and download on the internet this private show and other disallowed males became more spying
Simply put - families starting to see society eyes as a jinx of happiness

The dancing tradition in general instead of being now seen as a beautiful old safe tradition was starting to be sold as a bad behaviour, women who danced were seen as Atypical brides.

More men and families became extra religious and misunderstanding of what is converted as an extremity - more and more people started seeing bridal dance as more a sinful act and contained no other benefits

I was always suprised. The last time I've been to a dance has been in an exctinct time. Honestly I Can't remember..... it could be 4 years now or more . My chances areless and less as i don't live in Sudan.

I wish I could revive it - I wish I could revive people & dreams of shining that stardom a woman feels for one night once again.

yes

If i ever got married I think I would dance.
What i mean is
even though I really want to dance I know that I must hope for chance to give me the correct circumstance and the correct destiny to do so


I have placed a couple of famous songs by a famous singer and drum beater (Gisma
some slow, some old , some new, but mainly all are a part of sudanese history now...

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What it is...

I see Life like a rose in the ice... beautiful but with cold settings - There are so many incredible things out there - but we always need to fight and perservere against the hardships too... otherwise the cold will win ... and we will wither away.

My imagination has led me to believe in something called 'Sudan Fairytale' -
The fantasy that My country will one day be independant and proud, never selfsish to provide its people with its needs, give freedom and success to all, be forever committed to achieve a prosperous inhabitance to every Sudanese in their own country-

My eyes fail me and I see the truth which I call - 'Khartoum Heartbreak' - This is a theme running through the blog under the 'Khartoum Heartbreak' Poems and whatever else about Sudan conveying broken down love, poor streets and cut off electricity along with a lot of other decays and problems in Khartoum city Life.

But I love my country and so I have no choice but to merge the Pain and the Love as one.

Faith is my heart and I could never do without it hoping in my prayers that I can be someone better always and that God forgives me as I fall in Mistakes through that frozen path of Life...

Sometimes I feel under control with all the too many emotions that run to colour my days and nights - Books, movies, music, dreams, friends, family, strangers, travel, - reality - the 10 O' Clock news -Most of the time I'm very Lost in trying to understand - whatever happens becomes tangled into writing this confusing memoir -

It's a really odd combination of air - not sure whether it is refreshing or suffocating - stabilising or maddening - But I breathe and
so it is
'Memoirs of a Sudanese breath' as I am 'Lost but under control' -