Africa Is a Country

Viral Culture: Matt’s dance

Viral Culture: Matt’s dance

By
Sonja Sugira

A brand of football trickery and showmanship have only reaped bad results on the field for South African teams, but is also a great dance.

Screenshot.

We’ve been going on about Diski, but I couldn’t resist sharing yet another Diski-related video. Earlier this year, no less an authority than The New York Times defined Diski as “… football in township slang.” The site’s editor, Sean, doesn’t like Diski; he says in real life, this brand of football trickery and showmanship have only reaped bad results on the field for South African teams. In any case, this time featuring Matt Harding, of Where the Hell is Matt fame (you know, that guy that got paid to go around the world making ridiculous dance videos?) Not particularly interesting, but precisely the stuff that viral sensations are made of. Well, Matt has resurfaced in South Africa, where he was  apparently invited to come learn the diski dance.

Watch him not (completely) screw it up. Rhythm like you’ve never seen before, indeed.

Further Reading

Writing while black

Percival Everett’s novel ‘Erasure’ raised questions about Black middle-class complicity in commodifying the traumas of Black working-class lives, but the film adaptation leaves little room to explore these tensions.

The Mogadishu analogy

In Gaza and Haiti, the specter of another Mogadishu is being raised to alert on-lookers and policymakers of unfolding tragedies. But we have to be careful when making comparisons.

Kwame Nkrumah today

New documents looking at British and American involvement in overthrowing Kwame Nkrumah give us pause to reflect on his legacy, and its resonances today.