Black Combat Arts Institute.
AFRICA · WORLDWIDE
Lamb
A striking wrestling of the Wolof people of Northern Senegal, today the Dakar region, combining punches and wrestling techniques. Victory by a clean fall to the ground or three points of support on the ground other than the feet.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
The wrestling of the Wolof people of northern Senegal, today the Dakar region, grown from village institution into a national spectacle, without ceasing to be the school of honour it always was.
THE GAME
Punches combined with grappling: victory by clean fall, or three points of support on the ground besides the feet.
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
The lamb is the family's great mixed game, strike and wrestling fused, and its Senegalese career, from the sand of the villages to the stadiums, is the family's most visible case of a practice negotiating modernity without surrendering its internal logic: the fall still decides, the drum still opens.
SOURCES
Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984 [Capoeira and the Black combat arts: erased history, invisible techniques (1905–1984)], doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Lamb. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/lamb [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Mbapatt, Senegalese wrestling
→ Kokowa, Striking wrestling to the drums
→ Dambe, Wrestling with the fist, elsewhere
→ Butej, Senegalese confrontation games