From Ghana to Global Superstars: The Dancing pallbearers from Prampram

The Nana Otafrija pall-bearing and waiting service group from Ghana are currently viral TikTok and global superstars and here’s how far their videos have reached.

The ‘Dancing Pallbearers’ or ‘Dancing Coffin’ memes refers to several videos showing Ghanian pallbearers dancing while carrying a coffin.
A report by BBC News Africa which featured the group was uploaded to YouTube on July 27th, 2017 and has since received six million views.

In the report, Benjamin Aidoo, who is the leader of the dancing pallbearers said,

‘‘I decided to add choreography to it so if the client comes to us, we just ask them: “Do you want it solemn or do you want a bit more of a display? Or maybe you want some choreography on it?”

How did a 2017 video blow up in 2020?

A version of the video which was paired with the EDM track “Astronomia” by Tony Igy posted on February 26th, 2020 by TikTok user @lawyer_ggmu as a punchline for a FAIL clip made the group go viral.

The TikTok received over 4.5 million views and 474,700 likes in one month
In the following weeks, the video gained significant popularity on TikTok as a punchline for FAIL clips which implied that the person in the FAIL video has died.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the meme received further spread to Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other online platforms as means of cautioning people to obey preventive measures to stay alive.

The new meme format was featured in VICE. The writer said:

“Ghanaian pallbearers dancing with a casket in a highly choreographed routine, lifting it up and lowering it, pretending to drop it and laying down dead in an homage to James Brown, makes all the horrors of the world easier to handle. It’s not a joyful laugh, but a grim one.“

The group has since been featured through various formats in games and on billboards across the world.

Colombia Police mimicked the viral groups’ performance in an exhibition that sought to encourage its citizens to obey the “Stay At Home” order.

By going viral, the Prampram-based group was also featured by the international news organization, Aljazeera.

They are the new source of joy for many people under lockdown and the current “MEME KINGS” on social media.

In less than a week, the dancing pallbearers new Twitter account went from 5K followers to 26.5K followers.

Here are some favourites.

Let us know your favourite coffin dancing pallbearer meme.