In this Issue: Arts in West Africa
2015-2016 Newsletter This edition of the WARA newsletter presents recent directions in the growing scholarship in the arts as expressed through the disciplinary diversity of the authors of the lead articles contained in the issue. Each conceptualizes the aesthetic particularity of the art world in West and northwest Africa and provides rich analyses of its local forms and ever changing dynamism as a discipline that is in constant dialogue with urban, rural environment and global reach. In this issue, the theme of constant change and dynamism, on both on local and global levels, is expressed from Cape Verde to Ghana, through Senegal to Morocco. Joanna Grabski, who theorizes Dakar as an “art world city” illustrates this theme by examining its creative local economy, its urban environment and most importantly interplay with globalized art world. Sara Stranovsky looks at Raiz di Polon, a Cape Verdean dance theater company, and its ability to use contemporary dance to unite many of the island’s fractured identities, local languages, and class lines. Lea Woods’ article on Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins in New Hampshire demonstrates the global reach of this craft. Cynthia Becker uses visual clues tied to Bambara identity, gnaoua and its musical performance and brings historical depth to her analysis of the politics belying identity construction, especially among the Tamazight-speaking population of settled nomads in Southeastern Morocco. By using Bambara visual clues to assert representation of Africanness among Ismkhan, this piece brings attention to how untold legacies of the trans-Saharan slave trade are expressed. This issue also includes a profile of Yelimane Fall, the Senegalese artist and social activist, who is internationally renowned for his exquisite work on Senegalese Calligraphy.
From the Roots of the Tree to the National Ballet: Updates and Challenges by Dr. Šara Stranovsky In 2012, I conducted research in Praia Cabo Verde with the help of a pre-doctoral fellowship from WARA. Cabo Verde’s location at the cultural and geographic crossroads between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas, provided an ideal place to examine creolization through dance theater. By thinking of dance as a language and using linguistic ideas of cultural borrowing and creation, I called this process, “corporeal creolization.” Since completing my research and dissertation in 2012 and working in the field of community engagement, I have had time to reflect upon my research and plan for the next stages in my research. RAIZ DI POLON My dissertation was about the nation’s primary contemporary dance theater company, Raiz di Polon, led by Cabo Verdean choreographer Mano Preto. Juggling financial constraints, inter -island cultural conflicts, and a constant stream of various dance technique influences, the company has risen to become a recognizable avant-guard group that blends island-specific dances from the eclectic archipelago with other forms of contemporary dance. What makes Raiz di Polon’s work such a strong case study for research related to creolization, dance, African history, and globalization, is how the group’s interpretation of contemporary dance seemed to resolve and
Continued on page 30
— The Newsletter Committee West African Research Association
www.bu.edu/wara