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This abundantly illustrated anthology brings together sixteen essays by artists, scholars and ritual experts who examine the sacred arts of Haitian Vodou from multiple perspectives. Among the many topics covered are the ten major Vodou divinities: Vodou's roots in the Fon and Kongo kingdoms of Africa and its transformation in the experiences of slavery, and the encounter with European spiritual systems; Vodou praxis, including its bodily and communal disciplines, the cult of St. James Major (Ogou), and the cult of twins.In the final section, essays by Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick Polk, Tina Girouard, and Randall Morris look at Vodou arts and artists, Oleyant, and the legacy of ironworker Georges Liautaud.The Envoi, by Donald J.Cosentino, is devoted to the Gedes, spirits of death and regeneration.
Pierrot Barra and his wife Marie Cassaise are the most astonishing artists that the author of this fascinating book has encountered in more than a decade of researching Vodou in Haiti. Inspired by dreams and psychic visions of Vodoun divinities, the couples' sculptures combine distant memories of Africa, the imagery of Catholic saints, Masonic regalia, and Hollywood Kitsch. 48 full-color photos.
Issued in connection with an exhibition held September 16, 2012-January 20, 2013, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, California.
The domei is a popular narrative art form among the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Although it is a traditional form, the narratives are not remembered or retold, but on each occasion the performers recreate out of a common stock of characters and plots domeisia, which are singular and sometimes brilliant expressions of a singular, and often brilliant, culture. In this book Donald Cosentino presents a large selection of these narratives, as he collected them in dramatic performance on the verandahs and around the cooking fires of a Mende village. The domei is told to please, and Dr Cosentino details the various elements that constitute the pleasure of an oral performance. But beneath the surface glitter of these ironic, horrifying, bawdy and haunting narrative performances, there is an intellectual hardness of argument and debate which shines through the domeisia included here. Dominating these performances, and emblematic of the entire artistic tradition, are the 'everywoman' figure of the Defiant Maid, Yombo, and the 'everyman' Stubborn Farmer, Kpana.
This abundantly illustrated anthology brings together sixteen essays by artists, scholars and ritual experts who examine the sacred arts of Haitian Vodou from multiple perspectives. Among the many topics covered are the ten major Vodou divinities: Vodou's roots in the Fon and Kongo kingdoms of Africa and its transformation in the experiences of slavery, and the encounter with European spiritual systems; Vodou praxis, including its bodily and communal disciplines, the cult of St. James Major (Ogou), and the cult of twins.In the final section, essays by Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick Polk, Tina Girouard, and Randall Morris look at Vodou arts and artists, Oleyant, and the legacy of ironworker Georges Liautaud.The Envoi, by Donald J.Cosentino, is devoted to the Gedes, spirits of death and regeneration.
This scholarly study demonstrates “that while post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans is changing, the vibrant traditions of jazz . . . must continue” (Journal of African American History). An examination of the musical, religious, and political landscape of black New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, this revised edition looks at how these factors play out in a new millennium of global apartheid. Richard Brent Turner explores the history and contemporary significance of second lines—the group of dancers who follow the first procession of church and club members, brass bands, and grand marshals in black New Orleans’s jazz street parades. Here music and religion interplay, and Turner’s study reveals how these identities and traditions from Haiti and West and Central Africa are reinterpreted. He also describes how second line participants create their own social space and become proficient in the arts of political disguise, resistance, and performance.
Amid the modern-day complexities of migration and exile, immigration and repatriation, notions of stable national identity give way to ideas about cultural "hybridity". The authors represented in this volume use different forms of performative writing to question this process, to ask how the production of new political identities destabilizes ideas about gender, sexuality, and the nation in the public sphere. Contributors use forms such as the essay, poem, photography, and case study to examine historically specific cases in which the notion of hybridity recasts our ideas of identity and performance: the struggle for Aboriginal land rights in Australia; Bahian carnival; the creolization and pidginization of language in the Caribbean world; queer videos; and others.
In this book, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the intersection of art, risk and creativity in early African arts from the Yoruba center of Ife and the striking ways that ancient Ife artworks inform society, politics, history and religion. Yoruba art offers a unique lens into one of Africa's most important and least understood early civilizations, one whose historic arts have long been of interest to local residents and Westerners alike because of their tour-de-force visual power and technical complexity. Among the complementary subjects explored are questions of art making, art viewing and aesthetics in the famed ancient Nigerian city-state, as well as the attendant risks and danger assumed by artists, patrons and viewers alike in certain forms of subject matter and modes of portrayal, including unique genres of body marking, portraiture, animal symbolism and regalia. This volume celebrates art, history and the shared passion and skill with which the remarkable artists of early Ife sought to define their past for generations of viewers.
This landmark work of ethnography explores the enduring, global worship of the African god of war—with five new essays in this new, expanded edition. Ogun—the ancient African god of iron, war, and hunting—is worshiped by more than forty million adherents in Western Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. This rich, interdisciplinary collection draws on field research from several continents to reveal Ogun’s dramatic power and enduring appeal. Contributors examine the history and spread of Ogun throughout old and new worlds; the meaning of Ogun ritual, myth, and art; and the transformations of Ogun through the deity’s various manifestations. This edition includes five new essays focusing mainly on Ogun worship in the new world. “[A]n ethnographically rich contribution to the historical understanding of West African culture, as well as an exploration of the continued vitality of that culture in the changing environments of the Americas.” —African Studies Review
The worship of the orisha (god) Eshu continues to this day across the Black Atlantic in Brazil and the Caribbean, and statues of him can also be found in towns and cities across the Americas. In Brazil, Eshu is a national icon: every carnival begins with