Older Tiv Dances: Ibyamegh, Ange, Ingyôugh, Diga and Girinya

The Tiv have many dances, and each tells a story. Scholars list, among others, gberichul, takera, ange, dasenda, ingyôugh, anchanakupa, manyi, ihinga, kuza, girinya, gbanyi and swange. Several of them record history: according to studies quoted in a 2021 paper by the dance scholar Awuawuer Tijime Justin, dasenda was created to mimic and mock the colonial police, and kuza recalls the forced recruitment of Tiv youths as cheap labour for the tin mines of Jos. The 2013 book Tiv Swange Music and Dance arranges the older forms in generations, from the folktale songs of kwagh-alom to the songs of the biamegh rite, then from ange to ankeredede, before gbanyi and swange. Ibyamegh Biamegh was a great Tiv rite. Akiga Sai, writing in 1935, describes how a man seeking initiation installed the big tree drum at his village, and how those to be initiated gathered at night to practise the songs while the young people made merry. The music and dance of the rite took its name, ibyamegh, and its songs, imo biam, were songs of greatness: the 2013 book calls biamegh songs the parent stock of most Tiv praise songs, and names among their composers Anche Igbaaze, Akile Bende, Madza Nomhwange and Amee Jorpo. Ange Akiga calls the ange "the great dance of yesteryear". At a marriage feast, he writes, "it was by dancing the ange that the old men got a name for themselves", while the young men leapt in the agbaga. The 2013 book credits the ange songs to Utuku Agire, in the Kunav area, and describes their purpose as moral: singers exposed wrongdoing in songs of challenge (asôngu) so that shame would bring offenders back into line, and, unlike biamegh, ange was danced by everyone, not only by wealthy initiates. The scholar Iyorwuese Hagher, by contrast, saw ange as songs of slander, in which two quarrelling parties broadcast each other's vices. Ingyôugh Ingyôugh means kwashiorkor, the disease of severe malnutrition that leaves a child thin with a swollen belly. According to the 2013 book, people with the disease, cared for by traditional healers, formed a group that danced to overcome the shame of their condition; spectators who laughed at them had to pay a fine or, it was said, catch the disease themselves. The dance was turned into a comic art by Anshira Akuji, about 1902, and popularised by Izua Gbe in the early 1950s. Hagher describes it as a vigorous men's dance of deliberate distortion: keeping time with the music, the dancers suddenly throw their limbs into disarray, sink their eyes, let their tongues hang, and push out their stomachs, "as if they are walking corpses". Other scholars, quoted in the same 2021 paper, read it as a re-enactment of the epidemics that swept Tivland and of the hunger of the depression years of the 1930s. Ingyôugh dancers performed at the Negro arts festival in Dakar in the 1960s. Diga Diga comes from the English word "digger", the heavy hoe. Hagher describes it as a mimetic dance for men and women created when the colonial government organised forced labour to build the railways and mine tin on the Jos Plateau in the 1930s; dancing the work was a way of releasing its strain. Veterans interviewed in 1995 said it was conceived in June 1929 by Viashima Alô of Mbausu and others. Ankeredede Hagher records ankeredede as a song and dance that mocked lazy young men who contributed nothing to the household but demanded choice meat from their wives. Girinya Girinya is the dance of warriors. According to the 2013 book, it was a cult dance for men and women of proven valour: to be initiated one had to have killed an enemy in war, or a great beast such as a lion or an elephant in an organised hunt (biem). Citing the scholar Nyitse, the book says girinya did not begin in Tivland but was borrowed from the Kwa-speaking peoples of Ogoja in the late nineteenth century by the Tiv of Gaav and Kunav, and used to rally warriors; it depends on drum language that only initiates can read, and few women were initiated. It is played on horns (korugh), drums (gbande) and rattles (bibi), and its dancers took fearsome stage names. Two studies explain what girinya means today. Ama Doki Gowon (2007) describes it as a ritual dance performed to honour departed and fallen warriors. Jacob Agaku (2008) explains that the girinya cults used dance to train and sharpen the skills of war, with a ranked order like an army; now it is performed on important occasions, including the funerals of prominent people, and speaks of continuity and renewal rather than battle. Sources: Akiga Sai, History of the Tiv (1935), translated by Bergsma and Akiga, Africa 85(4), 2015, chapters three and seven; Richard A. Tsevende, Tim C. Agber, Don S. Iorngurum and Nancy N. Ugbagir, Tiv Swange Music and Dance (2013), citing Hagher, Nyitse and Akpede; Awuawuer Tijime Justin, International Journal of Political Science and Governance 3(1), 2021, citing Iorapuu; Ama Doki Gowon, African Performance Review 1(2), 2007; Jacob M. Agaku, International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 2008.