African Consciences is a Parisian based initiative of artistes from the `Black Atlantic' and Africa. They use music to shape a discourse on their identity in relation to Africa, strongly bound to consciousness. The musical itinerary provided by reggae and hip hop constitutes what they see as a means for action to bring alive a "global African network". In this chapter I will reconsider the practice of repatriation, and the meanings it conveys now. I will try to analyse it through African Consciences' "Door of no Return" where they intend to travel back the road of the trans Atlantic trade in Africans. African Consciences has a mediated relation to Africa through roads that join their musical practice to their understanding of African history and tradition. It also carries an ideological intent to bring forth a global Africa through the articulation of routes and roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR].
"These talented writers are about to embark on 14 wholly different and fascinating itineraries, from exploring ancient scrolls in Timbuktu, to the Anglican Church in Uganda, to Somaliland's elections, to name a few," says Tom Burke, the Achebe Center program manager. "It is a landmark project, and our partners - large and small - across the continent have lent enthusiasm and support. It's an exciting time to watch these pilgrimages unfold, and it will be quite something to read these books once their pages are written."
The use and abuse of alcohol is prevalent in many nations across the globe, but few studies have examined within-group differences found in people of African descent in the United States, in Africa, and in the Caribbean. A review of current research about alcohol use, abuse, and treatment in people of African descent is presented, including information about risk factors and contributors to alcohol use.
Euba,Akin (Editor) and Kimberlin,Cynthia Tse (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Pt. Richmond, CA: MRI Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
202 p., Includes Tan Sooi Beng's "African music in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Asia meets Africa: cross-cultural communication through the Rainforest World Music Festival, Sarawak."
Animan Akassi,Clément (Editor) and Lavou,Victorien (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Language:
Spanish, English, and French
Publication Date:
2010
Published:
Perpignan: Presses universitaires de Perpignan
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
358 p., Contents include "The africans and afrodescendants who constructed Veracruz and the jarocho ethos 1521-1778" by Marco Polo Hernàndez-Cuevas; (Re)presentacién afro-panameria en pensamientos del negro cubena: pensamiento afro-panameûo de Carlos Guillermo 'Cubena' Wilson" by Laverne M. Seales-Saley; "Mâs allâ del 'folklore': bunde y bullerengue, ritmos africanos de liberacién en Panamà" by Xiomara Aldeano-Bolton; "Repensando los movimientos sociales afrodescendientes en las Américas y el espacio Caribe" by Jesiis "Chucho" Garcia; "Negrismo and négritude: reflection on two poetics of Caribbean cultural identity" by Mamadou Badiane; "Politicas culturales, la formacién de la identidad hispano-africana y el hombre y la costumbre" by Elisa Rizo; "Movimientos culturales y politicos Afroperuanos entre los arios 1980-2000" by Alexis Rossemond;
178 p., This dissertation is about the role that conservative religious notions of racial ideology played in the historical origins of black nationalism and pan-Africanism. Focuses on the writings of an African Caribbean, Edward Blyden, as the centerpiece of the study. Blyden, a native of Saint Thomas (Virgin Islands) and considered one of the "fathers" of both pan-Africanism and African nationalism, was a particularly complex diasporic intellectual. Traveling first to the United States in the pre-Civil War period, then to Africa and Britain at the height of the European imperial venture - and Christian missionary efforts - Blyden served as a conduit between the West (the United States and Britain) and both a traditional and a Muslim Africa. He saw his role as one of mediating (critiquing/translating) these divergent voices and ideologies with the object of constituting a "modern," pan-African subject.
For most Ghanaians, the tenets of Pan-Africanism are remote principles that bear little relevance in daily life, in which kinship, linguistic, ethnic, and national affiliations are primary markers of identity. This presents challenges for repatriated Rastafarians from the Caribbean, United States, and Europe, who attempt to establish a home and a place within Ghanaian society while retaining Rastafarian ways of living and spiritual philosophies drawn from a Pan-African ethos.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
273 p., Explores the iconography of Cuban rumba--a unique AfroCuban dance and music complex that represents the foundation of contemporary Cuban popular culture--and argues that rumba constitutes an essential part of a greater African-based ontology. Rumba dance performance is conceptualized as knowledge embodied, an avatar of nonverbal cultural communication and consciousness, which plays a central role in the organization of daily life and formation of identity. This dissertation demonstrates that concrete continuities exist between the diaspora and mainland Africa through close scrutiny of rumba and parallel performance art traditions in north, west and central Africa. Also attempts to identify specific African-based stylistic conventions as exemplified by Sahara's Imazighen (also known as Berber) peoples, Mali's Mande (known as Gangá in Cuba) and related groups, and the Kongo civilization establishing that although ethno-cultural boundaries exist, they tend to be permeable.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
259 p., Explores the many aspects of Negritude - both as a concept and as a movement. Provides an account of its historical origins and examines the sociological and ideological background of themes that have preoccupied French-speaking black writers and intellectuals.
