Rhythms Of The Afro Atlantic World

Collected essays exploring the origins and evolution of music and dance in Afro-Atlantic culture

A colossal, panoramic, much-needed appraisal of the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories across six centuries Afro-Atlantic Histories brings together a selection of more than 400 works and documents by more than 200 artists from the 16th to the 21st centuries that express and analyze the ebbs and flows between Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe. The book is motivated by the desire and need to draw parallels, frictions and dialogues around the visual cultures of Afro-Atlantic territories--their experiences, creations, worshiping and philosophy. The so-called Black Atlantic, to use the term coined by Paul Gilroy, is geography lacking precise borders, a fluid field where African experiences invade and occupy other nations, territories and cultures. The plural and polyphonic quality of "histórias" is also of note; unlike the English "histories," the word in Portuguese carries a double meaning that encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, personal, political, economic and cultural, as well as mythological narratives. The book features more than 400 works from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as Europe, from the 16th to the 21st century. These are organized in eight thematic groupings: Maps and Margins; Emancipations; Everyday Lives; Rites and Rhythms; Routes and Trances; Portraits; Afro Atlantic Modernisms; Resistances and Activism. Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, Emma Amos, Benny Andrews, Emanoel Araujo, Maria Auxiliadora, Romare Bearden, John Biggers, Paul Cézanne, Victoria Santa Cruz, Beauford Delaney, Aaron Douglas, Melvin Edwards, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Ben Enwonwu, Ellen Gallagher, Theodore Géricault, Barkley Hendricks, William Henry Jones, Loïs Mailou Jones, Titus Kaphar, Wifredo Lam, Norman Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama, Edna Manley, Archibald Motley, Abdias Nascimento, Gilberto de la Nuez, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Dalton Paula, Rosana Paulino, Howardena Pindell, Heitor dos Prazeres, Joshua Reynolds, Faith Ringgold, Gerard Sekoto, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Rubem Valentim, Kara Walker and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

In Crossing Traditions: American Popular Music in Local and Global Contexts, a wide range of scholarly contributions on the local and global significance of American popular music examines the connections between selected American blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop music and their equivalents from Senegal, Nigeria, England, India, and Mexico. Contributors show how American popular music promotes local and global awareness of such key issues as economic inequality and social marginalization while inspiring cross-cultural and interethnic influences among regional and transnational communities. Specifically, Crossing Traditions highlights the impact of American popular music on the spread of sounds, rhythms, styles, and ideas about freedom, justice, love, and sexuality among local and global communities, all of which share the same desires, hopes, and concerns despite geographic differences. Contributors look at the local contexts of Chicago blues, early rock and roll, white Christian rap, and Frank Zappa alongside the global influence of Mahalia Jackson on Senegalese blues, the transatlantic character of the British Invasion’s relationship to African American rock, and the impact of Latin house music, global hip-hop, and Bhangra in cross-cultural settings. Essays also draw on a broad range of disciplines in their analyses: American studies, popular culture studies, transnational studies, history, musicology, ethnic studies, literature and media studies, and critical theory. Crossing Traditions will appeal to a wide range of readers, including college and university professors, undergraduate and graduate students, and music scholars in general.

The Transformation of Black Music includes a full spectrum of black musics from four continents as it argues for a re-codification of black musics and performers. Framed by a call and response argument, the authors present not only a more holistic and historically accurate understanding of musics in the African Diaspora, but also an intellectually robust future for the field of black music research.

This volume demonstrates how, from the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, enslaved and free Africans in the Americas used Catholicism and Christian-derived celebrations as spaces for autonomous cultural expression, social organization, and political empowerment. Their appropriation of Catholic-based celebrations calls into question the long-held idea that Africans and their descendants in the diaspora either resignedly accepted Christianity or else transformed its religious rituals into syncretic objects of stealthy resistance. In cities and on plantations throughout the Americas, men and women of African birth or descent staged mock battles against heathens, elected Christian queens and kings with great pageantry, and gathered in festive rituals to express their devotion to saints. Many of these traditions endure in the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume draw connections between these Afro-Catholic festivals—observed from North America to South America and the Caribbean—and their precedents in the early modern kingdom of Kongo, one of the main regions of origin of men and women enslaved in the New World. This transatlantic perspective offers a useful counterpoint to the Yoruba focus prevailing in studies of African diasporic religions and reveals how Kongo-infused Catholicism constituted a site for the formation of black Atlantic tradition. Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas complicates the notion of Christianity as a European tool of domination and enhances our comprehension of the formation and trajectory of black religious culture on the American continent. It will be of great interest to scholars of African diaspora, religion, Christianity, and performance. In addition to the editor, the contributors include Kevin Dawson, Jeroen Dewulf, Junia Ferreira Furtado, Michael Iyanaga, Dianne M. Stewart, Miguel A. Valerio, and Lisa Voigt.

Rather than reserving the teaching of Black history to Black history month, Black narratives deserve to be seen and integrated into every aspect of the school curriculum. A unique yet practical resource, Global Black Narratives for the Classroom addresses this issue by providing primary teachers with a global outline of Black history, culture and life within the framework of the UK’s National Curriculum. Each topic explored in this essential book provides teachers and teaching assistants with historical, geographic and cultural context to build confidence when planning and teaching. Full lesson plans and printable worksheets are incorporated into each topic, alongside tips to build future lessons in line with the themes explored. Volume II of this book explores the following parts: Part 1 guides teachers through planning and delivering lessons focused on Africa. Pupils will benefit from developing a diverse and accurate understanding of the changing nature of Africa throughout history, linking the continent’s social history with its geographical features. Part 2 ‘The Caribbean’, builds upon the lesson plans of Part 1 to further highlight the interconnectedness of diaspora cultures in influencing the musical, visual and religious practices of the Caribbean and Central America. Part 3 begins by addressing the incorrect assumption that the history of Black people in the Americas begins and ends with plantation slavery. Instead, this section proposes a range of in-depth lesson plans on the diverse histories, cultures and experiences of Black people within the United States. Created by BLAM UK, this highly informative yet practical resource is an essential read for any teacher, teaching assistant or senior leader who wishes to diversify their curriculum and address issues of Black representation within their school.

How Afro-Peruvian music was forgotten and recreated in Peru.

Key voices in the African world discuss differences and similarities in African culture.