From the Introduction:
Note: Footnotes in the original are indicated herein by Roman numerals.
The primary purpose of this book is to help people locate videos showing aspects of African or African-related performance. Hopefully it will serve other purposes as well, perhaps catalyze further research, projects, or activities that cannot be foreseen at present. Unlike previous filmic bibliographies, however, only videos are included - videos that can be purchased - and the key word is "performance." For these reasons alone the book is a "first."
In my long search, I managed to find qualifying videos that spanned the entire continent of Africa, its islands, the Americas, from Nova Scotia to Brazil, and several European countries - 1,396 entries in all. But these videos only scratch the global surface. As Ali Mazrui put it, "The sun never sets on the descendants of Africa."
Initially, after several ideas converged and I was about to write a unified reference book on Africa and the African Diaspora, on videos (for reasons to be elaborated later), and on performing arts - the primary subject - I was at a loss to know what to call these arts in an African context.
In the West, the "performing arts" generally are dance, drama, and music presented before an audience, on a stage, and most frequently, indoors. Performances tend to be formal - at least so-called "high art" is formal - and audience and performers are distanced from each other as much by their roles, as by the physical space between them. Audiences are expected to be essentially passive except for prescribed times meant for applauding, laughing, or crying (as deemed appropriate), and there is seldom any exchange between audience and performers beyond this.
Although generalizations can be risky, especially when considering the enormous diversity of African countries and cultures (not to mention those in the West) still it is not unreasonable to say that in much of traditional Africa, life and art are one: "Art is not set aside from `real life' - it cannot be among a people who do not make such distinctions."I
In Africa, art forms are combined not only with each other, but with other aspects of culture, ritual and religious expression figuring prominently. Emphasis is placed on function, and there is a strong communal component. As for audiences, they usually play such an active part in a performance that it is difficult to distinguish them from performers, resulting in spontaneous and improvisatory elements that enliven events and provide a sense of immediacy. As Ghanaian musicologist, J.H. Kwabena Nketia says, it is "expected" that audiences show "outward, dramatic expression of feeling."II
He mentions that performance is more apt to take place outdoors than indoors. Unlike the Western stage, this can be "any spot suitable for collective activity. It may be a public place, or a private area to which only those intimately concerned with the event are admitted; a regular place of worship, such as a shrine, a sacred spot, a grove, a mausoleum; the courtyard of the house where a ceremony is taking place, or the area behind it; the scene of communal labor, the corner of a street habitually used by social groups for music and dancing, a market place, or a dance plaza."III
Considering such fundamental differences in aesthetic between Africa and the West (differences elaborated in Roger D. Abrahams' essay of some years ago,IV in Robert Farris Thompson's book,V and by many other scholars, past and present) I knew that there had to be a better term for the main focus of my book than "performing arts." I turned to the dictionary.
Here, as might be expected, the words "performing" and "performance" differed somewhat from one book to another, but I was pleased to see that in general, "performance" allowed for far more variation in interpretation, and also did not seem limited only to the West.
The particular dictionary definition I latched onto was: "Performance: 1. a musical, dramatic, or other entertainment. 2. the act of performing a ceremony, play, piece of music, etc. 3. the execution or accomplishment of work, acts, feats, etc. 4. a particular action, deed, or proceeding. 5. an action or proceeding of an unusual or spectacular kind. 6. the act of performing. 7. the manner in which, or the efficiency with which, something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose."VI
I was starting to become encouraged, and this was reinforced when I came upon an insightful, analytical essay on African performance,VII by Margaret Thompson Drewal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University. The many ideas in it spoke directly "to my condition," and I knew that "performance" - all by itself - was the exact word I was looking for.
PERFORMANCE
Before then, I had already begun to think of performance as extending beyond mere artistic expression, but it was Drewal's essay that finally gave credence to what had been for me until then, merely a nebulous groping for what I intuited was a larger concept.
"In the broadest sense," Drewal says, "performance is the praxis of everyday social life; indeed it is the practical application of embodied skill and knowledge to the task of taking action. Performance is thus a fundamental dimension of culture as well as the production of knowledge about culture. It might include anything about individual agents' negotiations of everyday life, to the stories people tell each other, popular entertainments, political oratory, guerilla warfare, to bounded events such as theater, ritual, festivals, parades, and more." This was all the sanction I needed.
But she also describes performance as a "contested concept" with "no precisely agreed upon definition," and quotes Strine, Long, and HopKinsVIII on performance, "...its very existence is bound up in disagreement about what it is, and that disagreement over its essence is itself part of that essence." I began to feel that I too had a right to embellish the word according to my own thinking.
Drewel stresses the temporality of performance, and pertinent to this, one statement was particularly relevant to me: "[Performance] privileges process." I realized that I was indeed interested in process or action - not just the results of action. I was not concerned with masks in museums, but with masks being made, masks being used. Robert Farris Thompson wrote about African Art in Motion...IX I wanted to show "performance in motion," or, to put it another way, "culture in motion." All of these ideas - process, action, motion - were important concepts, and so, perhaps a more accurate description of what has become the book's encompassing subject is, "Africans doing" - or perhaps even, "Africans doing in cultural ways."
INCLUSIONS AND EXCLUSIONS
Although in a sense, all life might be regarded as "performance," I did not go quite that far, but I had at least been freed to go beyond an initially limited view. As a result, not only did music, dance, and drama, in all their assorted manifestations, get special attention, but so also did religion, carnivals, rituals, folklore, daily life, healing practices, food preparation, hunting and gathering, ceremonies, pageantry, games, oral tradition, child care, work activities, women's activities, athletic activities, storytelling, building, processing, making of "goods," ad infinitum......By the end of the compiling, most African countries had at least one entry - often many more - and a good number of well-known and lesser-known African ethnic groups had been featured.
With regard to the African Diaspora, videos showing connections to African ways of doing got top priority. This meant inclusion of an abundance of entries on the numerous music and dance forms created by people of African descent in the New World, along with musicians, dancers, and entertainers, recent and past, who excel/excelled in performance of these forms. Videos concerning African-influenced religions, folklore, celebrations, healing practices, pageantry, work activities, carnivals, and arts and crafts, to name but a few topics, were also incorporated.
VIDEO
Video is an important medium and one quite distinct from film in a number of ways. Although film is probably a finer and more artistic medium, videos are more economical to make and easier to market. Producers and cinematographers must be well aware of this. Moreover, videos are growing in significance daily.
For the researcher who wishes to record field work, there is the same advantage of economy plus the relative ease with which a video camera can be used. For the consumer, videos can be purchased at affordable prices, are readily accessible, and do not require a special technician, facility, projector, or screen. They are convenient to store, and can be shown as easily in the classroom, library, or museum, as at home, and depending upon the size of the VCR screen, be viewed by both small and larger audiences.
More modest libraries, or schools with limited budgets or facilities - or even larger ones - are finding it expedient to emphasize and develop a video library. Certainly, a video library is an important adjunct to any library. (Gary Handman, Director, Media Resources Center, University of California/Berkeley, has published a comprehensive book that serves as an excellent guide for setting up such a library.)X
Because of these same features of economy and ease, videos are consequently important disseminators of scholarly or artistic works, and hold out special hope for developing nations eager to extend their educational resources. California Newsreel, an important distributor in the United States of high quality Africana videos, speaks of "the videocassette revolution," saying that "the growing pervasiveness of video equipment is causing a gradual but ineluctible `paradigm shift' in the way audiovisual materials are used - a shift from the theatrical film to the video book."XI They outline new instructional opportunities that are opening up in conjunction with increasing access to video. Videos offer a plausible and realistic opportunity for information to be made universally available to a world that is continually becoming smaller.
AFRICAN RETENTIONS
In this book, almost all videos that do not directly concern Africa or its islands can be assumed to have been selected because they demonstrate something about African retentions, whether initially discernible, or requiring background information to understand or appreciate. In former times, those who doubted the validity of "Africanisms" - especially when it came to the United States - had erroneously focused on measurable quantities, rather than on the far more significant and ubiquitous African-derived qualities. But today this argument no longer needs dignifying. Africanisms do indeed exist all over the Americas and elsewhere, and the so-called Herskovits-Frazier debate can be put to rest once and for all.
It should be remembered, however, that there are many people of African heritage who do not manifest traces of Africa in any way at all. Retentions are about the force of culture not genes. It is also important to remember that whereas the influences of Africa are manifold, Africa too has been - and still is - affected by many cultural forces other than indigenous ones.
Similarly, in the Americas, where many forms created by people of African descent show dominant Africanisms that give them their identifying character, these forms too often contain European and other cultural elements in varying degrees. Moreover, the peoples responsible for creating the forms have often added their own individual creative stamp, not just served as "conveyers" of African culture.
Highly recommended are the essays in Joseph E. Holloway's book, Africanisms in American Culture.XVI Particularly informative is the one by musicologist, Portia Maultsby, herself an African American, who makes the important statement, "African retentions in African-American culture...exist as conceptual approaches - as unique ways of doing things and making things happen - rather than as specific cultural elements." (Italics added)
There is also the fascinating concluding essay by John Edward Philips, "The African Heritage of White America," that deserves serious thought, and points the way to future research, not only in the United States, but in other areas of the world wherever there is - or was - an African presence.
...
CONCLUSION
Although I had originally thought to save the best for last, and try to write an eloquent summation of all I had in mind when I undertook this book, I have recently changed my mind. Discerning people who have worked with the book for any length of time, and noticed my occasional personal remarks, will understand my value system anyway - why I might have chosen to write the book, the purposes I hoped it might serve, and above all, recognize my abiding admiration, respect, and gratitude to African people and people of African descent for all they have given the world. Perhaps this is all that needs to be said.