Afrovision: rehearsing diasporic Africanism in a Tel-Aviv nightclub

ABSTRACT

During the second half of the 1990s, an extended number of illegal African labor migrants arrived at Israel. Whereas associational life among them was based almost exclusively on their national and tribal social clubs, the Afrovision nightclub was a unique grassroots initiative that crossed these boundaries. Based on studies of festive rituals, and more specifically of the role of music and dance in processes of identity formation among migrants' communities, I show how and why Afrovision enabled African immigrants in Israel to come together and experience a sense of diasporic Africanism as a sort of shared identity beyond the salient sub-divisions within their community. Although this experience was partly a reaction to, or implementation of, common perceptions in Israeli society that view African people as of one fiber, the practical significance of the pan-Africanist option offered by Afrovision in the everyday lives of foreign residents far exceeded purely symbolic aspects.