F H 4: Music and Dance

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Music & Dance are a big part of African life

In Africa you cannot separate music from life.  Every event...a birth, a wedding, catching a fish, the end of day, a death, anything, everything, is celebrated with music.  African rhythms have spread around the world enriching many musical genres.


 

Musicians

Man With Drum

"We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians and poets," wrote Olaudah Equiano in his autobiography published in England in 1789.

Olaudah was from the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria in West Africa. He described how every great event in his village was celebrated with public dances, songs and music suited to each occasion.

Man With Talking Drum

H13 W11  D10" 1996   P#195

But drums have also served another purpose in Africa. Long before the cell phone, long before the telegraph my people had wireless communications.

For untold centuries we used code to send messages from village to village with our "talking" drums.

Dogon Dancer

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Pende Dancer (detail) 

N'Kele ©1995, Wire/Alum, 26x48x11"


Dancers, many on tall stilts, elaborate costumes woven from raffia palm, drummers and other musicians all contribute to the excitement of the Pende celebrations. The Pende people live in the Bandundu region of Congo.

Musicians I

1991, 15x13x11" (Kenneth Holmes Collection)

The artist plays a Kalimba (Thumb Piano) he made from pieces of a broken street light and some bicycle spokes. 

Click on images to enlarge

Ancient Sudanese ram statues recently discovered at el Hassa in Sudan with engraved ancient language.

In one of rare discoveries showing a written African language, French archeologists have unearthed three ram statues in Sudan engraved with an ancient Sudanese language,according to a news report by the BBC."It's an important discovery ... quite an achievement," said Vincent Rondot, head of the French Section of the Directorate on Antiquities of Sudan, who excavated the statues.

 

The statues were discovered three weeks ago closer to an archeological site, which is home to some of the numerous Sudan's ancient pyramids. Dating back to the Sudanese Meroitic period from 300BC to AD450, the inscriptions on the ram statues describe the oldest written sub-Saharan African language."Meroitic language is one of the last antique writings that still waits for its understanding... and it is the most ancient (sub-Saharan)African language written in script," said Vincent Rondot.

The inscriptions on the ram statues are expected to shed more light on King Amanakhareqerem, which has been the subject of archeological studies in the area. The statues were excavated in front of an ancient temple...