Alkayida
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alkayida (also spelt Ashanti Twi: 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.[1] Alkayida dance is intensively relaxed, intensively free-form, intensively involves footwork, and incorporates vast arrays of hip-life dance moves.[1] It involves the swaying of the body along with hand and shoulder 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".[2]
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 and the “Alkayida”—often misspelled “Al Qaeda”—not only vies in unseating the azonto, but it inadvertently embeds the Ghanaian hip-life culture levity into the name of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda.[3]
