Tribal > Articles > San Trance Dance

Bom is a Bushman. He is old (exactly how old he doesn’t know), skinny as a hat-stand, and semi-naked. Despite the fact that it’s near freezing in the Kalahari tonight, he is dressed only in a scrap of goatskin — one that barely covers his withered genitals, which are as ancient and hairless as the rest of him. Not that any of this bothers him, because right now Bom is in an altered state, a profound hypnosis brought on by three hours of rhythmic dancing and hyperventilation. Bom is deep in the trance dance.

The trance dance is one of the oldest religious rituals known to mankind, going back some 20,000 years, when the Bushmen, or San, were among the first humans to inhabit southern Africa. The more you learn about the San, or “The Real People” as they sometimes call themselves, the more remarkable they seem.

Legendary for their tracking skills, Bushmen can gauge the speed and direction of passing animals by examining their spoor; by calculating the time it takes termites to rebuild a trampled nest or a spider to repair its web. They can tell the sex, weight and age of their quarry by examining its droppings: the more roughage, for example, the less efficient its digestion and the older the animal.

The ultimate survivors, they have weathered invasion by Bantu tribes and whites alike, together with one of the harshest climates on earth, not to mention government re-locations, deracination policies and straight out attempts at genocide. (The last license to hunt Bushmen was reportedly issued in Namibia by the South African government in 1936.) Having no chiefs as such, Bushmen govern themselves by group consensus, resolving disputes through lengthy discussions — something which has made them the subject of various Western studies into mediation and conflict resolution.

Tonight, my guide and I, together with our young translator, Kwete, settle around a huge campfire in a clearing in the Kalahari thorns scrub, some two days’ drive from the nearest village. We are watching and waiting for Bom’s trance to fully take hold. Around us a group of women are chanting, a mesmeric ensemble of harmonies and clapping that gets more intense as the night progresses.

As the principal dancer, Bom has strapped his ankles with rattles made from pupa casings filled with seeds. In one hand he holds a horsehair whisk, in the other his digging stick, a metre long piece of finely honed, rock-hard wood. “When I dance,” he told us previously, “my ancestors enter my body and give me the power to see what makes people sick.”

As a shaman, Bom’s tasks vary according to the needs of the group. Sometimes he enters the trance to heal people, sometimes to protect them from evil spirits, sometimes to foretell the future or control the weather. Trance dancers can also be asked to bring rain, or to visit other camps using out-of-body travel. Kwete, who is half bushman, half Bantu, says Bushmen like Bom can even control animals; he claims his parents told him of Bushmen being able to summon lions to share their night fires. Because of their reputed powers, many Bantu remain suspicious, even fearful, of the San.

“Usually, I enter the trance to heal,” says Bom. “Once I know why someone is ill, I must exit that dance and begin another, one which is named after an animal, say a giraffe, eland, gemsbok, or lion. This dance, together with certain herbs, helps me to cure.”

The rhythms deepen, and Bom circles the flames, shuffling and jigging and swaying, his eyes closed, his breathing laboured. His heels pound the earth, stirring up dust that hangs about us in a thick orange cloud. As the dance progresses, Bom’s breathing becomes more intense, to the point where he is sucking back sharp gulps of air, fast and deep and hard.

Then, almost imperceptibly, he slips into the trance. It’s a subtle thing, and I would have missed it had Kwete not pointed it out. Bom’s footing suddenly becomes less sure, his breathing more erratic. His moaning now betrays a hint of pain, a response to suddenly being possessed by thousands of spirits.

At this stage, one of the younger men rushes up and stands behind Bom, monitoring the old man’s every step. So intense is the trance that dancers have been known to fall into fires or walk into thornbushes. Indeed, the images the shaman see may stay with him for months afterward, recurring in flash-backs that last from a few seconds up to a few minutes. Bom then circles the fire, placing his hands on all of us. As there are no particular ills to treat, this is really just a gesture of healing.

Suddenly, however, Bom falls to his knees. Tears and mucus stream down his face. Agitatedly, he begins throwing handfuls of dirt over himself. Rising to his feet, he then stumbles over the women, into the blackness beyond the light of the fire. Kwete follows him, returning after a moment to report that he has collapsed beside a nearby tree. “He’ll stay there till he exits the trance,” says Kwete.

Shortly, I go looking for Bom, eventually finding him curled around the base of the tree. His chest is heaving. Bending down, I hear him wheezing and mewling like a run-over cat.

The Bushmen keep dancing till dawn. I go to bed but their singing continues, coursing through the night like a current. Now and then it wakes me, accompanying my thoughts as I lie staring at the moon.

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