Swange is the best-known Tiv music and dance today. A swange band plays in almost every Tiv town, and the music accompanies occasions from social gatherings to religious ceremonies wherever Tiv people live in numbers. In Tiv thinking, song (imo), dance (amar) and instrumental music (kwaghkuhan) are not separate arts but parts of one performance, and swange brings all three together. Where swange came from The fullest account of swange's history is the 2013 book Tiv Swange Music and Dance by Richard Tsevende, Tim Agber, Don Iorngurum and Nancy Ugbagir. They describe it as the latest stage in a long line of Tiv music: from the folktale songs of kwagh-alom and kikya, through the songs of the biamegh rite and the ange dances, to gbanyi, and finally swange. The step before swange takes its name from an object. Gbanyi means a basin: the enamel basin introduced under British rule became a prized household item, and women raised money to buy one by holding a gbanyi u mirin, a fundraising feast with beer, food, music and dancing, at which guests competed to give the largest gift. The authors trace these feasts to Dio Nenda in Ukum in 1922. Music groups that played at them merged into gbanyi music, and from 1946 the singer, dancer and drummer Yamuel (Yanmoel) Yashi Agbatar Gyur reshaped it with new dance steps. His new way of moving, sange, was hard for non-Tiv speakers to say, and according to the authors it came to be pronounced swange around 1948 in Gboko, which is how the dance got its name. Others date it differently. The scholar Saint Gbilekaa (1993) wrote that swange started as gbangi in Makurdi in the 1940s, had spread to Gboko by the 1950s with Yanmoel Yashi as its chief exponent, and grew out of urban life as an outlet for young people who felt unfairly treated. Writing in 2025, the dance scholar Tijime Awuawuer accepts that swange began as gbangi but questions the Makurdi origin, pointing out that gbangi was a rural dance long before Makurdi became a town of any size and that none of swange's pioneers came from Makurdi; in its early days, he notes, it was danced at drinking places where locally brewed burukutu was sold. A commentator quoted in a 2019 report on the Kyegh Sha Shwa festival said swange "was only introduced in the 30s and 40s", and the 2013 book itself also mentions gbanyi groups forming as early as about 1913. Whatever the exact year, the sources agree that swange took shape in the middle decades of the twentieth century, in the towns that grew up under colonial rule. The musicians Yamuel Yashi is remembered as the biggest name in swange history as composer, singer, dancer and drummer. The 2013 book gives chapters to other leading swange musicians, among them Tyô Ulaga, Soom Anikpa, Orshio Ada Kever, Mike Mbatyelevde, Ajas Anula, Ature Hom and Udoo Mbalagh, whose 1974 recording with "the pioneer swange band" was issued by EMI in Enugu. In 1974 Solomon Doki, known as King One Abua, brought guitars and new percussion into swange. The band Swange is played on drums (gbande), the gong (kwen) and the trumpet (gida). Quoting the scholar Jenkwe, the 2013 book describes the original band as three drums, a low-pitched bass lead drum (ngo gbande) and two smaller high-pitched drums, together with a two-way metal gong and an alagaita (a wind instrument). Bands today may use anything from three to ten drums, electric guitars, amplifiers and other percussion. See the article on Tiv musical instruments for how these are made. Swange songs are built on the Tiv pattern of a lead singer (who "raises" the song) and a chorus that answers, and they carry commentary on everyday life. Writing in 2021, the dance scholar Awuawuer Tijime Justin argues that swange has become a vehicle for social and political comment in Nigeria, and quotes a swange song calling for the Tiv to be given a state of their own. Reputation Swange has not always been respectable. The 2013 book notes that some writers have treated it as indecent, and that one claimed the Tiv Native Authority in Gboko condemned it for its sexual symbolism; the authors dispute this, saying the authority's objection was to a different dance, kpingi. They quote the scholar Saint Gbilekaa (1993), who argued that the support swange receives from public and private organisations shows it is not an immoral dance, and that its songs are used to correct bad behaviour. A Tiv commentator quoted in the 2019 festival report put it simply: swange, once scorned, is "today a major cultural identity of the Tiv man globally". Swange movements also appear in other Tiv arts: kwagh-hir puppet theatre draws on swange, gberichul and girinya dances. Note on sources: Akiga Sai's History of the Tiv (1935) uses the word swange for something quite different, an akombo believed to whiten patches of the skin; the 2013 book says some people argue there is no Tiv word swange at all and explains it as a form of sange. Sources: Richard A. Tsevende, Tim C. Agber, Don S. Iorngurum and Nancy N. Ugbagir, Tiv Swange Music and Dance (Midan Press, 2013); Tijime Awuawuer, International Humanities Studies 11(1), 2025, citing Gbilekaa (1993); Awuawuer Tijime Justin, "Understanding Swange dance of the Tiv people of central Nigeria within the perspective of socio-political changes", International Journal of Political Science and Governance 3(1), 2021; Denen Achussah, The New Times (2019); Wikipedia, "Kwagh-Hir"; Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Bergsma and Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015.