West African Traditions Research Articles

Research into West African oral traditions: from the scientific society to the traditionist approach

Research into West African oral traditions: from the scientific society to the traditionist approach

From Syncretism to Hybridity: Transformations in African-derived American Religions: An Introduction

Abstract In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered – that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the “fundamental” transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a “glocalized” world.

Deep Knowledge; Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions, written by Ogunnaike, Oludamini

Deep Knowledge; Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions, written by Ogunnaike, Oludamini

Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery ed. by Sean Morey Smith and Christopher D. E. Willoughby

Reviewed by: Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery ed. by Sean Morey Smith and Christopher D. E. Willoughby Nora Doyle (bio) Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery. Edited by Sean Morey Smith and Christopher D. E. Willoughby. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2021. Pp. 240. Cloth, $45.00.) Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery continues the conversations begun during a symposium on medicine and healing in the age of slavery that took place at Rice University in 2018. The essays in this collection center the knowledge and experiences of enslaved people in a range of Atlantic world contexts, while also revealing how state and medical authorities used medical knowledge and practice to shape ideas about race and to assert control over enslaved bodies. Spanning the early sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century and considering such locations as West Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States, the essays offer an exciting glimpse into new directions in the history of slavery and medicine. Inspired by the work of such scholars as Sharla Fett, whose epilogue concludes the volume, this collection decenters Western medical traditions [End Page 243] and emphasizes the ways in which healing practices were embedded in the social dynamics of slave societies and communities of enslaved people. There were many traditions of health and healing that defined the Atlantic world between 1500 and 1900, and often these traditions contained unexpected similarities. The transmission and exchange of knowledge and practice created new contexts of cooperation and contestation, contributed to the formation of new identities and new concepts of race, and allowed enslaved people to develop creative strategies of self-healing. The volume is organized thematically around the concepts of knowledge, experience, and profession, further reinforcing the ways in which histories of healing traverse more traditional boundaries of geography and periodization. The three essays that constitute the first section, on knowledge, explore healing traditions that were indigenous to Africa and the Americas and the ways these traditions persisted and evolved in the face of colonization and slavery. These essays highlight the roles that Africans and Native Americans played as healers and purveyors of knowledge. Mary E. Hicks’s essay centers the practices of Black barbers and Brazilian sangradores, who drew on West African healing traditions to develop “adaptive strategies of bodily restoration” (64). The practice of bloodletting was particularly significant in that it drew on West African traditions, but also shared important similarities with European healing practices, giving the practitioners significant credibility in the eyes of European colonial and medical authorities. This relationship changed over time, however, and by the late eighteenth century, European physicians began to insist on the superiority of their medical knowledge and to minimize other healing traditions as superstition rather than science. The essays in this section highlight the diverse traditions of knowledge that sometimes converged and sometimes competed in the Atlantic world, giving rise to distinctive practices and social relations of healing. The three essays in the second part of the volume focus on enslaved people’s experiences of illness and healing and highlight the contested nature of the medical archive. Beginning with a meditation on methodology by Deirdre Cooper Owens, the essays point to new interpretations and new approaches that recover the lived experiences of enslaved people and the strategies they used to control their own health and medical care. Elise A. Mitchell’s essay reexamines cases of feigned illness among enslaved women to recover their very real experiences of illness and injury. While previous scholars have interpreted accusations of feigned illness as instances of resistance, Mitchell argues that enslaved women in particular were often falsely accused of feigning illness because of slaveholders’ [End Page 244] racialized and gendered beliefs about deception and suffering. She suggests that these cases were defined by real suffering (and sometimes healing), and she calls on scholars to focus on “the crucial quotidian work of survival, self-reliance, and self-advocacy that happened in the thick of slavery” (112). The essays in this section emphasize the emotional and physical experiences of enslaved people and, as Brandi M. Waters writes, explore the many strategies enslaved people used to “pursue healing on their own...

I’m Free Because I’m a Fugitive—I’m a Fugitive Because I’m Not Free

I’m Free Because I’m a Fugitive—I’m a Fugitive Because I’m Not Free

Sustaining Colorful Technologies of Resistance and Joy in T&T Carnival

In this work, I journey into the memory archive of carnival, propelled by my own love of the culture, and the curiosity conjured up by storytellers like my ancestors who made and who resisted. I explore the ways that Caribbean people have been involved in acts of resistance. What is it to resist? What are the technologies and outcomes of resistance? Through two forms of expression that I categorize broadly as subversive rage and joy, I discuss the history of Trinidad carnival that frames and shapes the modern carnival. I argue that carnival is an ancestral festival: it draws linkages from West African traditions, incorporates elements of the contemporary social and political space, and intentionally places Africans in the archive. Importantly, carnival provides a mechanism for resistance and escape through performance and rhetoric of rebellion, alongside acts of beautiful joy. The strategies and innovation of carnivalists signal to those terrorized by slavery and colonialism, as well as to their oppressors, that Black people exist in the future. Black people have always known this, and <em>mas</em> is a signifier to remind future generations.

Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana

Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana

Relating to the Whole Community in Akan and East Asian Ancestral Traditions

Ancestors play crucial roles in the cultural consciousness of diverse traditions, many maintaining ritualistic practices related to commemorating the dead. Ancestor commemoration reinforces cohesion within traditional as well as modern societies, directing a group’s focus to past accomplishments of its cultural heritage whilst providing a unifying narrative of the values that bring and hold a community together. The West African Akan tradition values those who honor their ancestors and, by leading a moral life, seek to become ancestors themselves: persons whose lives enjoy standing in the community beyond their own death. This short paper explores ideas about the role of ancestors as (symbolic) constituents of enduring moral communities by comparing traditional Akan belief to traditional East Asian conceptions of ancestors. The aim is to consider the metaphysical, social, and moral dimensions related to ancestors, highlighting continuity and communal concerns.

Review of West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals: History, Memory, and Transnationalism by Raphael Chijioke Njoku

Review of West African Masking Traditions and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals: History, Memory, and Transnationalism by Raphael Chijioke Njoku

The Immigration of Tradition: A Qualitative Study on Gender Differentiation and Cultural Parenting in West African Immigrant Households

In recent years, there has been an influx of West African immigrants into the United States and European countries. By the end of the twentieth century, 1 million African immigrants were living in the United States, of which 50 percent arrived and settled between 1990 and 2000. By 2004, 35% of the total African immigrant population were West African immigrants. As more West Africans migrate away from their native lands, a new challenge arises in adapting to life within a different, less traditional environment—the Western society. This research focuses on the extent to which West African culture and tradition impact the way these immigrant families build their family structure and incorporate their cultural identities into these new environments. I examine the historical construction of gender-differentiated parenting in West African culture and how it has shaped familial, societal, and political structures over time. Through this historical framework, I then analyze the influence of traditional values in West African immigrant households and how they shape the continuation and discontinuation of certain West African practices in the new society. I also examine how these families carry aspects of their culture through their adaptation journey and their cultural parenting practices as a way to keep the West African identity from dying out and as a way to secure stability in Western society. From my research I have found that by leaving certain traditional values of their culture back home, such as certain marriage practices or gendered education, West African immigrants work to find a balance between their native culture and the cultural expectations of Western society. As Western society becomes more progressive and less accepting of traditional gender roles, as depicted in media and entertainment, being true to one's identity conflicts with the ability to "start new" in a foreign community in the face of different societal norms.

Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions. By Oludamini Ogunnaike

Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions. By Oludamini Ogunnaike

“Race”, Belonging and Emancipation: Trajectories and Views of the Daughters of Western Africa in Spain

Young Spanish Black people born to migrant parents continue to be either invisible or problematized in public discourses, which project a monocultural and phenotypically homogeneous Europe. Research in countries with a long immigration history has shown that in the process of othering minorities, gender ideologies emerge as ethnic boundaries and feed the paternalistic treatment of women while accusing their families and communities of harming them through atavistic traditions. However, little research has focused on girls’ and young women from West African immigration and Muslim tradition in Spain, a country where they represent the first “second generation”. In order to gain a deeper insight into their processes and views, this paper describes and analyses the educational trajectories and transitions to adult life of a group of young women with these backgrounds who participated in a multilevel and narrative ethnography developed in the framework of a longitudinal and comparative project on the risk of Early Leaving of Education and Training in Europe (ELET). In the light of the conceptual contributions of the politics of belonging and intersectionality, the responsibilities regarding the conditions for gaining independence are relocated while assessing the role of the school in the processes of social mobility and the development of egalitarian aspirations in the labor market and in the family environment. The findings show how the limits encountered by these young women in their trajectories to an independent adult life are mainly produced by processes of racialization conditioned by class and gender, ironically in key spaces of social inclusion such as schools and the labor market rather than, or mainly by, an ethnic community that subjugates them.

Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire by Sarah J. Zimmerman

Reviewed by: Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire by Sarah J. Zimmerman Dahlia El Zein Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire By Sarah J. Zimmerman. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2020. "African and colonial epistemologies are mutually constitutive" (22), Sarah J. Zimmerman argues in the tour de force that is her book, Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire. Although this is not a new formulation, as scholars of colonial history have long understood (and debated) the messiness of colonialism and its various proxies and intermediaries render useless, rigid binaries of colonized/colonizer, colony/metropole, and the like. What is novel in her argument is the foregrounding of women—wives, conjugal partners, and families of West African soldiers as essential interlocutors in the expansion of French empire, and the vulnerabilities, violence, discrimination, and sometimes benefits that came with that. Today, the families of West African soldiers are still fighting for pensions and adequate recognition for their service from the French state. West African soldiers, known by their misnomer tirailleurs sénégalais were recruited or conscripted into the French colonial army from 1857 until the last tour of duty in French Algeria before the dissolution of France's empire in 1962. In the scholarly literature, historians have written a fair amount about the presence of African soldiers in the French army during the world wars, the discrimination they faced in the metropole, and the intense efforts by the French to prevent miscegenation and whitewash their armies on European battlefields. This was not specific to France either. African-American soldiers faced similar experiences in the United States army, Germany also recruited and conscripted African soldiers from their colonies in East Africa, and the British army did the same with soldiers from their South Asian and African colonies. The experiences of tirailleurs sénégalais in colonial settings across the French empire is less studied and particularly absent in the literature is the role of conjugal partners. Filling this lacuna, Zimmerman's book spans six countries, twenty archival units, and oral histories conducted in the homes of fifty West African veterans. This rich, multi-sited transnational work follows tirailleurs sénégalais and their conjugal relationships, emphasizing the gendered aspects of colonial rule layered on top of its racialized and classist hierarchies. In an introduction, six chapters, and an epilogue, Zimmerman tracks the continuities and changes in West African soldiers' conjugal traditions over time and space, across the French empire from the 1880s in the initial conquests of West African hinterlands to the violent expansion of French colonial rule into Congo and Madagascar to North Africa and Southeast Asia into the mid-twentieth century. The book is organized chronologically and regionally, spanning from 1857 to 1962. Zimmerman uses "conjugal partner" to refer to the women in West African soldiers' heteronormative households because the French word "femme" could mean wife, sex worker, domestic partner, enslaved female or concubine also denoting a range of consent and violence enacted on, and experienced by these women's bodies. At the core of her argument is how West African soldiers and their households were instrumental in shaping colonial law, inventing new traditions of French empire through their cross-colonial encounters that located military households at the intersection of West African, French and military traditions of marriage. In Chapter 1, "Marrying into the Military: Colonization, Emancipation and Martial Community in West Africa: 1880–1900," Zimmerman shows how precolonial African states and the French colonial state relied on enslaved and/or formerly enslaved men for their armed forces. For women this meant that "colonial agents obscured the distinction between female slave and wife in colonial African military households" (30). The presence of tirailleurs sénégalais and their ability to successfully expand France's colonial holdings into West Africa and acquire households on campaign (read: forced conjugal attachment) set the stage for their expansion as a violent colonizing force into further desirable territories for French empire. Chapter 2, "Colonial Conquest 'en famille'" takes us to Congo and Madagascar where we see the instrumentalization of the tirailleurs sénégalais as transnational agents of empire and what...

From Venus to “Black Venus”: Beyoncé’s I Have Three Hearts, Fashion, and the Limits of Visual Culture

In 2016, Lemonade was lauded as “Black girl magic” for the ways the hour-long HBO special (and subsequent album) celebrated Black women and the Southern gothic tradition. It also was the first hint of Beyoncé paying homage to West African Yoruba traditions. At the 2017 Grammys, her performance was both an invocation of the sacred in Western art history and further homage to Yoruba. The performance opened with poetry by Warsan Shire, and snapshots of her daughter, Blue Ivy, but the highlight was Beyoncé’s gold gown, and crown, and gold accessories, all of which symbolized the African goddess Osun. Released just before her Grammys performance, the I Have Three Hearts photo-series circulated as pregnancy images (she was pregnant with twins), but it also functioned as a repository of Beyoncé’s invocation of the sacred in Western culture, as embodied in Venus, and the African goddess, often labelled as “Black Venus.” This article is an examination of three images in the I Have Three Hearts series, taken by Awol Erizku, and the series’ accompanying poetry by Shire. I argue that it raises important questions about the role of visual culture in fashion and popular culture. Is Beyoncé the Venus of the twenty-first century? Does this photographic series remap Western visual culture to reimagine Black womanhood in the discourse on sexuality? Or, it is an example of pastiche in postmodern culture wherein truncated information is authorized, making everyone an expert without the demand for historical context?

Невольничьи песни: особенности и скрытые смыслы афроамериканских спиричуэлс

The African American spiritual is one of the most significant forms of American folklore which have made lasting contributions to global culture. It is considered to have laid the groundwork for the musical genres such as gospel, blues and jazz. African Americans are largely the descendants of slaves who were taken from their African homelands by force to work on plantations in the American South. Coming from hundreds of different tribes, mainly from Western Africa, they brought with them rich West African musical traditions. Away from their roots and torn out of their own cultural heritage, they sought solace in music. It helped them remain hopeful and resilient during the most difficult times. Music was a way for slaves to express their feelings: longing for freedom and home, joy, sorrow. Spirituals were created as a result of the coexistence of African and European cultures. They represented a unique combination of various elements of Puritan hymns, Anglo-Celtic ballads, African folklore and performance style. The author analyzes several songs associated with the Underground Railroad and argues that Black spirituals were regarded not only as expressions of religious faith, but also as a veiled form of resistance. The article presents some results which illustrate that some of the lyrics had a double meaning and coded messages. Spirituals were the means by which slaves could protest against slavery, transmit secret messages and encourage the fight for freedom. The article covers the main themes of spirituals and defines the key characteristics of their origin and history.

Cemetery hoodoo: Culture, ritual crime and forensic archaeology

In 2012 and 2014 the author was a consultant to law enforcement regarding crime scenes of a ritualistic nature in the American Southeast. These ritual activities were expressions of folk magic spells linked to certain West African traditions. These spells were used for magico-religious, curative, and ‘justice’ (i.e. revenge) practices known as hoodoo, conjure or rootwork.The ritual activities were conducted at gravesites in a public cemetery. When standard investigative police procedures failed to produce anything substantive with which to solve, prevent, or even understand the motive beyond one of ’vandalism,’ or ‘kids fooling around,’ the author was approached to contribute forensic archaeological and anthropological insights that had thus far proved elusive. This article is an examination of how cultural anthropological understanding and a forensic archaeological “eye” to an outdoor crime scene can re-define crime scene investigative methodology and interpretation.

Black Muslimness Mobilized

The Mustafawi Tariqa is a transnational Sufi Order that was initiated in 1966 by the late Cheikh Mustafa Gueye Haydara (d. 1989) in Thiès, Senegal. Yet, only since 1994 has this specific Sufi network reached westward across the water, bringing American Muslims—many of whom are converts—into the larger network. In the United States, the majority of students who have entered the Tariqa and have declared allegiance (bayah) to Shaykh Arona Rashid Faye Al-Faqir are African-Americans who have inserted themselves religiously, culturally, and pedagogically into a West African Sufi tradition which emphasizes religious study and the practice of dhikr (remembrance of God). Shaykh Arona Faye is a Senegalese religious leader who relocated to the southeastern region of the United States from West Africa to spread the religion of Islam and expose American Muslims to the rich West African tradition of spiritual purification and Islamic piety. At the same time, many of those who are African-American members of this tradition have made it a point to travel to Senegal themselves to strengthen transatlantic ties with West African compatriots and visit sacred burial sites in the small city of Thiès. I examine how two sites of pilgrimage for the Mustafawi—Moncks Corner, South Carolina and Thiès, Senegal—play a part in the infrastructure of Black Atlantic Sufi network. Moncks Corner is the central site in which access to the Tariqa’s most charismatic living shaykh, Shaykh Arona Faye, has worked for the past two decades teaching and mentoring those on the Path. On the other hand, Thiès is the location where the Tariqa’s founder is buried and travelers visit the town in order to pay homage to his memory. I show how these sites catalyze mobility and operate as spaces of spiritual refuge for visitors in both local and regional contexts by looking at how a local zawiyah produces movement in relation to a broader tariqa. By looking at pilgrimage and knowledge transmission, I argue that the manner in which esoteric approaches to spiritual care and the embodiment of higher Islamic ethics via the West African Sufi methodology of the Mustafawi informs the manner in which Muslims of varying African descent inhabit a broader diasporic identification of “Black Muslimness.”

Hidden Voices and Gothic Undertones: Slavery and Folklore of the American South

African American folklore embodies themes of the Tropical Gothic. It has an air of mystery as it has a deeper meaning underneath the different layers of plot. Folklore of the American South represents the darkness of the slavery period and its implications for African Americans. This article discusses two folklore collections: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk lore of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler Harris, and From My People: 400 Years of Folklore by Daryl Cumber Dance. Both collections illuminate the ways in which West African oral tradition became a source of empowerment, courage and wisdom for the enslaved African Americans. Folk stories served as a means of silent resistance and preserved the cultural heritage of African Americans.

Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean by Randy M. Browne

Reviewed by: Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean by Randy M. Browne Matthew Blake Strickland (bio) Browne, Randy M. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017, 279 pp. ISBN 978-08122-490-8. Randy Browne states, "The basic premise of this book is that the struggle to survive was at the center of enslaved people's experience." Enslaved people lived in a milieu between the violence of white masters, harsh labour conditions, and the dictates of colonial administrators, all of which held considerable control over them. Taking the reader to the oft-ignored Berbice on the South American coast, Randy Browne uses an amazing treasure trove of documents to illuminate many of the actions and motivations of enslaved black people as they struggled to survive their bondage. Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean is a welcome instalment in the historiography of slavery, British Empire, and Caribbean history. Although he does not challenge the historiography of resistance and rebellion by enslaved people, Browne does indicate that his work is meant to add more nuance to the lived experiences of enslaved people living in the British Caribbean. Abstract ideas of "freedom" were not the primary thoughts held by enslaved people; day-to-day struggle often involved coping with their current situation as chattel. The institution of slavery shaped actions and relationships. As enslaved people made decisions and connections, survival was often the foremost thought. Because of this, Browne's research examines actions and relationships in a new and intriguing way. Particularly, Surviving Slavery examines the lives of enslaved people during a period of amelioration in the British Empire. This was a time marked by greater metropolitan debate and intervention regarding the treatment of enslaved people living and working in the British Caribbean. In six chapters, Browne shows the ways and the multiple arenas in which enslaved people attempted to survive their enslavement in Berbice during amelioration in the 1820s. In chapter one, Browne provides background information about Berbice. A large number of books written about the British Caribbean have [End Page 177] tended to focus on Jamaica and Barbados. Berbice, a Dutch colony until the late 1790s, had a unique legal system that provided a few more protections to enslaved people than the British legal system. The fiscal and protector of slaves were colonial officials tasked with hearing and investigating complaints made by enslaved people, primarily against their masters. Because of these offices, Berbice holds a unique place in the study of slavery in the British Caribbean. With these offices present in the colony, white planters were often the subject of complaints made by enslaved people. As he elucidates in chapter two, Browne shows that enslaved people and their masters were at odds about the way in which black people were treated. This included complaining to the protector about physical abuse, neglect, and overwork. Working on plantations was immensely harsh. However, complaining to the protector was not the only way to escape some of the more terrible conditions on plantations. Continuing into the third chapter, one means by which enslaved black men could increase their standing in the eyes of their masters was to take on the role of a driver. Drivers were enslaved black men who helped maintain control of other slaves on plantations. Black men chose to become drivers even though it put them at odds with other slaves because there were certain perks and advantages to having a leadership role on a plantation. In the sources used by Browne, black drivers were often the subject of contempt for their role in doling out violent punishments. Chapter four turns to the more personal connections formed between enslaved people by examining marriages and sexual relationships formed between enslaved people. Monogamous marriage was not prevalent among enslaved people in British slave societies. Polygamy–primarily polygyny–flourished among the enslaved population and was a clear West African tradition that survived the dreaded Middle Passage. In forming sexual relationships, men had fewer options for finding a partner than women. The demographic in Berbice and many other plantation societies found more males than females. For this reason, women often left relationships they considered to be abusive. Browne has also found...

Fodiology: African American Heritage Connections to West African Islam

Abstract By the miracle of poetic time-travel, West African Shehu Usman ’dan Fodio (1754–1817) and his daughter Nana Asma’u (1793–1864) arrived in Pittsburgh, PA, at the end of the twentieth century, and settled into the Muslim Light of the Age (Zaman Nur) community by the beginning of the twenty-first century. Nana Asma’u was more than just a legend in her own time (nineteenth century) and place (Sokoto, Nigeria): her high regional profile and contemporary notoriety in Pittsburgh—two centuries and an ocean away from her home—attest to her prominence among contemporary Muslim American women, who revere her ethics and study her poetic works. Their revival of Asma’u’s leadership is part of the greater community’s intentional emulation of the Qadiriyya Sufi Fodio family of northern Nigeria. This study documents how a group of American Muslims frame, practice, and understand West African Qadiriyya Islam by following the religious and cultural traditions of the scholarly Fodio family in the areas of scholarship, service, attire, and artistry. In doing so, they are preserving West African Islamic traditions of their heritage by adapting these practices to the needs of their contemporary American community.