Dancing Pallbearers is the informal name given to a group of

pallbearer A pallbearer is one of several participants who help carry the casket at a funeral. They may wear white gloves in order to prevent damaging the casket and to show respect to the deceased person. Some traditions distinguish between the roles o ...

s from Nana Otafrija Pallbearing and Waiting Service who are based in the coastal town of Prampram in the

Greater Accra Region The Greater Accra Region has the smallest area of Ghana's Regions of Ghana, 16 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of 3,245 square kilometres. This is 1.4 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. It is the List of Ghanaian re ...

of southern

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, although they perform across the country as well as outside Ghana. The founder and leader of the group is Benjamin Aidoo. Locally, they are referred to as Dada awu (meaning "Daddy's dead"). The group initially gained worldwide attention through a BBC News feature story in 2017. In March 2020, the group became an

internet meme An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manif ...

when the videos were paired with EDM song " Astronomia" by

Tony Igy Anton Aleksandrovich Igumnov (; born 6 June 1985), professionally known as Tony Igy, is a Russian electronic dance music disc jockey and producer. He is best known for his hit " Astronomia", which was originally released in 2010. A 2015 Vicetone r ...

, and gained popularity in video edits.

Origin

The Dancing Pallbearers are led by Benjamin Aidoo, who started the group as a regular pallbearer service in 2003. He later had the idea of adding choreography to their pallbearing work. Extra fees are charged for dancing with the coffin during a funeral. The oldest of the reused clips is from

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

by Travelin Sister from January 22, 2015, though the Dancing Pallbearers first rose to wider prominence in 2017 when they were featured in a

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

report. The third video, which depicts pallbearers accidentally dropping a coffin during their dance, was first posted by Facebook user "Bigscout Nana Prempeh" on May 2, 2019, and gained over 2,900 reactions, 4,600 shares and 350,000 views in one year.

Rise

The video and with similar material gained significant popularity on

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

as a punchline for fail clips in a manner similar to

To Be Continued A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious situation, facing a difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction or be ...

and We'll Be Right Back memes, implying that the person in the fail video has died. For example, on March 6, 2020, TikTok account Trickshots posted a version of the meme that received over 2.9 million views and 237,000 likes. On March 30, 2020, a YouTuber named DigiNeko "Matthew Ordrick" uploaded a video to YouTube elevating the trend on the Internet, through mainly being associated with the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, which was ongoing when the meme became popular, receiving over 400 million views. Since the trend, it has been popular on social media, widely uploaded to platforms such as

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

and

. furthering its use for darkly comedic

s, videos of people suffering various mishaps, followed by clips of the pallbearers dancing with coffins (implicitly the victims of the preceding clips). The clips are generally paired up at least since February 26, 2020 with the song " Astronomia" by Russian musical artist

and remixed by Dutch duo

Vicetone Vicetone is a Dutch electronic music production DJ duo formed by Ruben den Boer (; born 22 January 1992) and Victor Pool (; born 9 July 1992) from Groningen. The duo began as a DJ act, and in 2013, they were voted into the ''DJ Mag'' Top 100 DJ ...

, although others use either "You Know I'll Go Get" by Indonesian DJ Haning and Rizky Ayuba (a remixed version of

Enrique Iglesias Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler (; born 8 May 1975) is a Spanish singer and songwriter. He started his recording career in the mid-1990s on the Mexican label Fonovisa where he released three Spanish albums ''Enrique Iglesias (album), Enrique ...

's song " Finally Found You") or

Lenka Lenka Eden Kripac (born 19 March 1978) is an Australian singer-songwriter and actress best known for her song " The Show", from her debut album, ''Lenka''. "The Show" has been used in numerous advertisements, most notably for Old Navy, as well ...

's "

Trouble Is a Friend "Trouble Is a Friend" is a song by Australian recording artist and actress Lenka from her debut studio album, '' Lenka'' (2008). It was released on 1 September 2009 as the album's second and final single. The song was written by Thomas Salter an ...

" as an alternate song. In May 2020, the BBC revisited the pallbearers interviewing them about their rise to fame.

Other appearances in media

The Dancing Pallbearers made appearance in internet memes. For example, an

easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian holiday of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are commonly used during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The ...

in '' Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War'' references the meme. In addition, the meme experienced a revival on social media following the

White House COVID-19 outbreak The White House COVID-19 outbreak was a cluster of SARS-CoV-2 infections that began in September 2020 and ended in January 2021 that spread among people, including many U.S. government officials, who were in close contact during the COVID-19 ...

in early October 2020, in which then-president

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

tested positive for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

. The Pallbearers was also used for campaigning for COVID-19 prevention. For instance, in Brazil, in May 2020, the city government of

Caldas Novas Caldas Novas () is a Brazilian municipality in the state of Goiás. It is the largest hydro-thermal resort in the world. Location Caldas Novas is located 170 km south of state capital, Goiânia. It belongs to the Meia Ponte Microregion, ...

, in the state of

Goiás Goiás () is a Brazilian States of Brazil, state located in the Central-West Region, Brazil, Central-West region. Goiás borders the Federal District (Brazil), Federal District and the states of (from north clockwise) Tocantins, Bahia, Minas Ge ...

, installed two billboards showing the coffin dancers and the caption "stay at home or dance with us", to encourage

social distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious dise ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. The virus was confirmed to have spread to Brazil on 25 February 2020, when a man from São Paulo who had traveled to Italy tested positive for the virus. ...

. Soon after, the group released a video where they capitalized on the phrase, encouraging viewers to 'stay home or dance with us'. In

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

and

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

policemen A police officer (also called policeman or policewoman, cop, officer or constable) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, ''police officer'' is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of t ...

imitated the group's dance carrying a coffin on their shoulders, encouraging the community to stay home to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The group also have seen use in politics, when the leaders of

New Political Center — Girchi New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 ** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995 * "New" (Daya song), 2017 * "New" (No Doubt song), 1 ...

, a political party in Georgia, dressed up in chokhas and made their own version of the video.

References

Notes

Citations