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The Egungun society is one of the least-studied and written-about aspects of African diasporic spiritual traditions. It is the society of the ancestors, the society of the dead. Its primary function is to facilitate all aspects of ancestor veneration. Though it is fundamental to Yoruba culture and the Ifa?u/Oriss?ua tradition of the Yoruba, it did not survive intact in Cuba or the US during the forced migration of the Yoruba in the Middle Passage. Taking hold only in Brazil, the Egungun cult has thrived since the early 1800s on the small island of Itaparica, across the Bay of Saints from Salvador, Bahia. Existing almost exclusively on this tiny island until the 1970s (migrating to Rio de Janeiro and, eventually, Recife), this ancient cult was preserved by a handful of families and flourished in a strict, orthodox manner. Brian Willson spent ten years in close contact with this lineage at the Candomble temple Xango Ca Te Espero in Rio de Janeiro and was eventually initiated as a priest of Egungun. Representing the culmination of his personal involvement, interviews, research, and numerous visits to Brazil, this book relates the story of Egungun from an insider's view. Very little has been written about the cult of Egungun, and almost exclusively what is written in English is based on research conducted in Africa and falls into the category of descriptive and historical observations. Part personal journal, part metaphysical mystery, part scholarly work, part field research, and part reportage, In Search of Ancient Kings illuminates the nature of Egungun as it is practiced in Brazil.
Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect the hardships as well as the advances of African Americans in the artistic and social developments of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Dixon Gottschild uses Brown's career as the fulcrum to leverage an exploration of the connection between performance, society, and race, beginning with Brown's predecessors in the 1920s and a concert dance tradition that had no previous voice to tell its story from the inside out. Brown's background and richly contoured biography are object lessons in survival--a true American narrative.
Founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect both the hardships and the accomplishments of African Americans in the artistic and social developments through the twentieth century and into the new millennium. Dixon Gottschild deftly uses Brown's career as the fulcrum to leverage an exploration of the connection between performance, society, and race-beginning with Brown's predecessors in the 1920s-and a concert dance tradition that has had no previous voice to tell its story from the inside out. Augmented by interviews with a score of dance professionals, including Billy Wilson, Gene Hill Sagan, Rennie Harris, Milton Myers, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and Ronald K. Brown, Joan Myers Brown's background and richly contoured biography are object lessons in survival-a true American narrative.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as the citizens of New Orleans regroup and put down roots elsewhere, many wonder what will become of one of the nation's most complex creole cultures. New Orleans emerged like Atlantis from under the sea, as the city in which some of the most important American vernacular arts took shape. Creativity fostered jazz music, made of old parts and put together in utterly new ways; architecture that commingled Norman rooflines, West African floor plans, and native materials of mud and moss; food that simmered African ingredients in French sauces with Native American delicacies. There is no more powerful celebration of this happy gumbo of life in New Orleans than Mardi Gras. In Carnival, music is celebrated along the city's spiderweb grid of streets, as all classes and cultures gather for a festival that is organized and chaotic, individual and collective, accepted and licentious, sacred and profane. The authors, distinguished writers who have long engaged with pluralized forms of American culture, begin and end in New Orleans-the city that was, the city that is, and the city that will be-but traverse geographically to Mardi Gras in the Louisiana Parishes, the Carnival in the West Indies and beyond, to Rio, Buenos Aires, even Philadelphia and Albany. Mardi Gras, they argue, must be understood in terms of the Black Atlantic complex, demonstrating how the music, dance, and festive displays of Carnival in the Greater Caribbean follow the same patterns of performance through conflict, resistance, as well as open celebration. After the deluge and the finger pointing, how will Carnival be changed? Will the groups decamp to other Gulf Coast or Deep South locations? Or will they use the occasion to return to and express a revival of community life in New Orleans? Two things are certain: Katrina is sure to be satirized as villainess, bimbo, or symbol of mythological flood, and political leaders at all levels will undoubtedly be taken to task. The authors argue that the return of Mardi Gras will be a powerful symbol of the region's return to vitality and its ability to express and celebrate itself.
In this generously illustrated book, world-renowned Yale art
historian Robert Farris Thompson gives us the definitive account of
tango, ""the" fabulous dance of the past hundred years-and the most
beautiful, in the opinion of Martha Graham."
The Egungun society is one of the least-studied and written-about aspects of African diasporic spiritual traditions. It is the society of the ancestors, the society of the dead. Its primary function is to facilitate all aspects of ancestor veneration. Though it is fundamental to Yoruba culture and the Ifa?u/Oriss?ua tradition of the Yoruba, it did not survive intact in Cuba or the US during the forced migration of the Yoruba in the Middle Passage. Taking hold only in Brazil, the Egungun cult has thrived since the early 1800s on the small island of Itaparica, across the Bay of Saints from Salvador, Bahia. Existing almost exclusively on this tiny island until the 1970s (migrating to Rio de Janeiro and, eventually, Recife), this ancient cult was preserved by a handful of families and flourished in a strict, orthodox manner. Brian Willson spent ten years in close contact with this lineage at the Candomble temple Xango Ca Te Espero in Rio de Janeiro and was eventually initiated as a priest of Egungun. Representing the culmination of his personal involvement, interviews, research, and numerous visits to Brazil, this book relates the story of Egungun from an insider's view. Very little has been written about the cult of Egungun, and almost exclusively what is written in English is based on research conducted in Africa and falls into the category of descriptive and historical observations. Part personal journal, part metaphysical mystery, part scholarly work, part field research, and part reportage, In Search of Ancient Kings illuminates the nature of Egungun as it is practiced in Brazil.
Hailed as the seminal study of spray can art of the 1970s and
1980s, "Aerosol Kingdom" explores the origins and aesthetics of
graffiti writings. From a vast array of inherited traditions and gritty urban
lifestyles talented and renegade young New Yorkers spawned a
culture of their own, a balloon-lettered shout heralding the coming
of hip-hop. Though helpless in checking its spreading appeal, city
fathers immediately went on the attack and denounced it as
vandalism. Many aficionados, however, recognized its trendy
aesthetic immediately. By the 1980s spray-paint art hit the
mainstream, and subway painters, mostly from marginal barrios of
the city, became art world darlings. Their proliferating, ephemeral
art was spotlighted in downtown galleries, in the media, and
thereafter throughout the land. Not only did the practice of
"public signaturing" take over New York City, but also, as the
images moved through the neighborhoods on the subway cars, it also
grabbed hold in the suburbs. Soon it stirred worldwide imitation
and helped spark the hip-hop revolution. As the artists wielded their spray cans, they expressed their
acute social consciousness. "Aerosol Kingdom" documents their
careers and records the reflections of key figures in the movement.
It examines converging forces that made aerosol art possible--the
immigration of Caribbean peoples, the reinforcing presence of black
American working-class styles and fashions, the effects of
advertising on children, the mass marketing of spray cans, and the
popular protests of the 1960s and 1970s against racism, sexism,
classism, and war. The creative period of the movement lasted for over twenty years, but most of the original works have vanished. Official cleanup of public sites erased great pieces of the heyday. They exist now only in photographs, in the artists' sketchbooks, and now in "Aerosol Kingdom."
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