Kizomba dance: From market success to controversial national brand

‪Interrogating the close connection between expressive culture and ethnic identity, this article examines the practice and polysemy of the traditional Assyrian line dance and song genre ‪‪sheikhani‪‪ in the performance context of a community twice made transnational — first in the homeland, second in diaspora. Such an expressive embodiment is integral to the articulation of a stateless national identity of the modern Assyrian peoples — an ethnic and religious minority that is indigenous to the border nexus of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. As a result of violence and conflict, the majority of Assyrians have fled their homeland through processes of forced migration and refugee flight, resulting in a transnational diaspora with significant populations in the global north. This article considers ‪‪sheikhani‪‪ as a topographical and historical articulation of both Assyrian ethnic and national identity that is composed through the body politic.‪