African Martial Arts

It’s been a minute, huh?

Don’t worry, I haven’t died. Just getting caught up on being an adult. It’s harder than i’d been lead to believe.

That being said, I wanted to touch very briefly on African martial arts, since the fighting techniques of Africans play heavily in my most recent WIP.

One character is a Dambe practitioner, twisted to my own, [slightly nefarious] ends. Dambe is a striking and semi-grappling art developed by the Hausa people. I like the  one-handed style and they way the striking arm is wrapped.

I also have fallen in love with Laamb Wrestling, or Lutte sénégalaise, a traditional form of wrestling practiced by groups in Senegal. One of the protagonists in the WIP (give you guys a sneak peek, His name is Kantala. It means “Guard”) is a practitioner of this style.

One of the things that I think Sword and Soul should accomplish is shed some light on more realistic aspects of African and African American culture in a fantastic way. Since we’re all writing about warriors and werewolves and hyena-men, we should stretch the boundaries as much as possible without doing the source material a disservice.