In the summer of 1976, I returned to the University of Washington to finish the final 15 credits left for me to receive my B. Mus. One of the courses I took was an ethnomusicology survey which covered Native American music for half the semester and African music for the other half. Typically, I had left most of my required listening until right before the test. So I was cramming five hours of African music listening into one session. After I was through, I danced and gyrated my way down the hall to a practice room and wrote the tune for "African Dance". I also like the 7/8 hemiola section in the middle of the work.