“It started as a conversation between the two of us” secretary of the society Lwazi Tshetshe reminisced on a Teams call with society president Priscilla Agom Jarigbe. “We were actually just thinking, you know what, there's a gap, let's fill it kind of thing”. Reaching out to their friends, a committee was formed and Roots & Rhythms began to take shape.
Roots and Rhythms have their feet firmly planted in culture and community.
Filling a niche that hadn’t been recognised was a main goal for the society, as Lwazi and Priscilla were keen to highlight. “The genres that we dance to aren't really seen much on campus” stated Lwazi, pointing out the university’s diversity both on campus and in dance, but that the committee felt “like there was no sort of representation of anything African related or Caribbean. And so that's the gap that we were filling.”
On a campus as sport obsessed as Newcastle, it can be difficult to find your niche amongst the crowd, but Roots & Rhythms have their feet firmly planted in culture and community. “I think that a lot of the dance societies that already exist on campus are quite filled with people who know how to dance, who've been dancing for the past however many years, whereas we wanted to create a space where people who felt like they couldn't dance could just come and join” says Lwazi, highlighting the desire for joy and movement that motivates the society.
But how do these sessions run? Stretching takes precedence for the first section, before getting the ball rolling with a “word of the week” segment. Lwazi recalls that “in our first session, the genre of dance we did was Amapiano, and that's a genre specifically from South Africa, so we did a South African word of the week where people can take that home with them. Or yesterday we did Afrobeats, which is primarily built up from Nigeria, so we did a Yoruba word, which is one of the Nigerian languages.” Following this, the committee teach the choreography of the week. “We want to make sure that everyone feels like they can add a bit of their swag”, Priscilla adds, “culture wise, race wise, everything wise.”
Community is undoubtedly the heart of Roots & Rhythms, as Priscilla points out the way the society “try to emphasise that we are a family, like we're here for you”, stating that the committee are “here to help, here to teach”. Lwazi adds that “we specifically have a good like 20 to 30 minutes in each session where we just allow people to socialise and to get to know each other”, ensuring that no one feels ill at ease. Priscilla highlights the committee’s aim “to make everyone feel included in the warmups and just every single thing we do, we try to carry people along. And I think that's really the point of like family and community, just to have someone there to help you.
"...and I think that's really the point of family and community, just to have someone there to help you.”
This family culture doesn’t stop at the door – Roots & Rhythms make sure that all participants are safe following the sessions, making sure no one leaves the sessions alone and people who live in similar directions can walk home together. Lwazi points out that in such a vast university “you often find yourself like drowning just in this big ocean”, making it even more important to look out for each other.
Where does the future of Roots & Rhythms lie? Priscilla shared her hopes that “we come back in 10 years and there's people still interested in leading the club on. Obviously, we're not going to be here forever, but we do want to build like a really strong foundation that could turn into something way, way, way greater and bigger than just a Newcastle thing. We want it to feel as though it's for everyone. It literally is for everyone. And I think once we have that foundation, right, like the sky's our limit”.
You can find Roots & Rhythms every other Thursday from 6:30pm – 8:00pm. If you’d like more information on the society, you can find them on Instagram @roots_riddimz.ncl and on TikTok @roots.riddimz_ncl. For memberships, click the link below!