Alkayida (''also spelt'' Ashanti tw, Alkaida), also known as Akayida, is a Ghanaian dance with an emphasis on side to side moves, incorporating upper and body gestures, and encouraging group routines as well as individual competition. Alkayida

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

is intensively relaxed, intensively free-form, intensively involves footwork, and incorporates vast arrays of hip-life dance moves. It involves the swaying of the body along with

hand A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each "h ...

and

shoulder The human shoulder is made up of three bones: the clavicle (collarbone), the scapula (shoulder blade), and the humerus (upper arm bone) as well as associated muscles, ligaments and tendons. The articulations between the bones of the shoulder mak ...

movements in a certain pattern. According to hiplife artist Guru who had a key role in popularizing the dance, the name of the dance should be written "Akayida"

Choreography

The dance, spelt Alkayida, began as a slower dance with moves that seemed to be replicating the extremist group and more recently, the dance and rhythms have picked up pace and delivered colourful

choreography Choreography is the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which Motion (physics), motion or Visual appearance, form or both are specified. ''Choreography'' may also refer to the design ...

and the “Alkayida”—often misspelled “Al Qaeda”—not only vies in unseating the

azonto Azonto is a dance and music genre from Ghana. Ghana News Agency cites their study which found out the dance is connected to the traditional Ga dance Kpanlogo, associated with the coastal towns in the country such as Chorkor, James Town, Tesh ...

, but it inadvertently embeds the Ghanaian hip-life culture levity into the name of the terrorist group

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

Viral hit

The Alkayida dance craze has been associated with hip-life music icon Guru after he popularized the term in his hit song "Akayida (Boys Abrɛ)". "Brɛ" in the

Ashanti language Asante, also known as Ashanti, Ashante, or Asante Twi, is one of the principal members of the Akan dialect continuum. It is one of the four mutually intelligible dialects of Akan which are collectively known as Twi, the others being Bono and Aku ...

means "tired". In Guru’s song titled Alkayida, the response to the word Akayida is "boys abrɛ", and this catch phrase has gradually crawled its way into the vocabulary of the

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan *Central Tano languages, a language group w ...

youth.

Asamoah Gyan Asamoah Gyan ( ; born 22 November 1985) is a Ghanaian professional footballer who last played as a striker for Legon Cities FC and is the former captain of the Ghanaian national team. Gyan began his career in 2003 with Ghanaian Premier Leag ...

and the Black Stars squad were scheduled to showcase the "Alkayida" dance on the global stage at the

2014 World Cup The 2014 FIFA World Cup was the 20th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for men's national football teams organised by FIFA. It took place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014, after the country was awarded the hosting righ ...

. Gyan and the rest of the team danced after scoring a goal in the Germany vs. Ghana group stage match. It was, however, an

Azonto Azonto is a dance and music genre from Ghana. Ghana News Agency cites their study which found out the dance is connected to the traditional Ga dance Kpanlogo, associated with the coastal towns in the country such as Chorkor, James Town, Tesh ...

dance and not Alkayida. During 2014,

Panamanian Panamanians (Spanish: ''Panameños'') are people identified with Panama, a transcontinental country in Central America (a region within North America) and South America, whose connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For mo ...

dancehall deejay Japanese alongside Honduran dancehall artist AlBeezy released the song "La Caída" (, "The Tumble"), using a similar instrumental to Guru's track but with unrelated lyrics (a common practice among Panamanian dancehall songs, which are often modeled after existing Jamaican dancehall songs. This is sometimes discouraged and deemed

plagiarism Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...

), and featuring the same dance moves. This gave the dance a brief, minor raise of popularity in Panama and, to a much lesser extent, Guru's music and Azonto music overall.

References

External links

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Can you dance the ‘Al Qaeda’
{{Akan topics Ghanaian dances Ashanti dances Akan dances Hip hop dance