The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas

The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas

Author: Brenda M. Greene

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2010-05-11

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1443822426

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The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas, an interdisciplinary collection of essays by scholars and writers whose disciplines include but are not limited to literature, languages, linguistics, history, sociology and psychology, reflects the complexity and diversity of the historical and cultural legacy of the African diasporic reality and provides a critical perspective for examining the persistence of African cultural traditions in the Americas. These writers and scholars explore the ways in which people connected by moments in history and the common legacies of racism, classism, colonialism and imperialism, have used literature, music, dance, religion and cultural rites and rituals to survive and resist. The poetry and prose of Afro-Cuban icon, Nicolás Guillén and Afro-American literary legend, Gwendolyn Brooks provide a context for exploring these themes. Guillén and Brooks symbolize the triumph of the human spirit and the “Africanisms” present amongst people who share a common legacy originating in Africa. Building on the themes in the work of these poets, the scholars and writers in The African Presence and Influence on the Cultures of the Americas examine the nature, persistence and impact of these themes in literature, language, music, dance and religion. The scholarship generated in this collection has implications for the ways in which we read, study and teach cultural studies, literature, history, language, African American Studies, Caribbean Studies and Africana Studies.


African Roots/American Cultures

African Roots/American Cultures

Author: Sheila S. Walker

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780742501652

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This multidisciplinary volume highlights the African presence throughout the Americas, and African and African Diasporan contributions to the material and cultural life of all of the Americas, and of all Americans. It includes articles from leading scholars and from cultural leaders from both well-known and little-known African Diasporan communities. Privileging African Diasporan voices, it offers new perspectives, data, and interpretations that challenge prevailing understandings of the Americas. Visit our website for sample chapters!


They Came Before Columbus

They Came Before Columbus

Author: Ivan Van Sertima

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2003-09-23

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13:

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"The African presence in ancient America"--Jacket subtitle.


Hidden in the Mix

Hidden in the Mix

Author: Diane Pecknold

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2013-07-10

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0822351633

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Country music's debt to African American music has long been recognized. Black musicians have helped to shape the styles of many of the most important performers in the country canon. The partnership between Lesley Riddle and A. P. Carter produced much of the Carter Family's repertoire; the street musician Tee Tot Payne taught a young Hank Williams Sr.; the guitar playing of Arnold Schultz influenced western Kentuckians, including Bill Monroe and Ike Everly. Yet attention to how these and other African Americans enriched the music played by whites has obscured the achievements of black country-music performers and the enjoyment of black listeners. The contributors to Hidden in the Mix examine how country music became "white," how that fictive racialization has been maintained, and how African American artists and fans have used country music to elaborate their own identities. They investigate topics as diverse as the role of race in shaping old-time record catalogues, the transracial West of the hick-hopper Cowboy Troy, and the place of U.S. country music in postcolonial debates about race and resistance. Revealing how music mediates both the ideology and the lived experience of race, Hidden in the Mix challenges the status of country music as "the white man’s blues." Contributors. Michael Awkward, Erika Brady, Barbara Ching, Adam Gussow, Patrick Huber, Charles Hughes, Jeffrey A. Keith, Kip Lornell, Diane Pecknold, David Sanjek, Tony Thomas, Jerry Wever


Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance

Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance

Author: Brenda D. Gottschild

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1996-05-28

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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This ground-breaking work brings dance into current discussions of the African presence in American culture. Dixon Gottschild argues that the Africanist aesthetic has been invisibilized by the pervasive force of racism. This book provides evidence to correct and balance the record, investigating the Africanist presence as a conditioning factor in shaping American performance, onstage and in everyday life. She examines the Africanist presence in American dance forms particularly in George Balanchine's Americanized style of ballet, (post)modern dance, and blackface minstrelsy. Hip hop culture and rap are related to contemporary performance, showing how a disenfranchised culture affects the culture in power.


The African Presence in Black America

The African Presence in Black America

Author: Jacob U. Gordon

Publisher: Africa World Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 9781592210787

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Accepting the basic premise that Africa is the ancestral homeland of black Americans raises questions as to how much, if any, of African cultural heritage remains within that community. Some claim that the severity of the plantation system and the acculturation process of the slaves could not have left any Africanism in the New World, while others argue that African cultural heritage can still be seen today in many aspects of American life and thought. This volume revisits the debate, examining the ways in which this alleged cultural heritage manifests itself.


Kongo Across the Waters

Kongo Across the Waters

Author: Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780813049458

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Explores the transatlantic connections between Central Africa and North America over the past 500 years in the visual and performing arts of both cultures.


Black in Latin America

Black in Latin America

Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0814738184

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12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage. While just over 11.0 million survived the arduous journey, only about 450,000 of them arrived in the United States. The rest-over ten and a half million-were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America. This astonishing fact changes our entire picture of the history of slavery in the Western hemisphere, and of its lasting cultural impact. These millions of Africans created new and vibrant cultures, magnificently compelling syntheses of various African, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish influences. Despite their great numbers, the cultural and social worlds that they created remain largely unknown to most Americans, except for certain popular, cross-over musical forms. So Henry Louis Gates, Jr. set out on a quest to discover how Latin Americans of African descent live now, and how the countries of their acknowledge-or deny-their African past; how the fact of race and African ancestry play themselves out in the multicultural worlds of the Caribbean and Latin America. Starting with the slave experience and extending to the present, Gates unveils the history of the African presence in six Latin American countries-Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Peru-through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion, but also the very palpable presence of anti-black racism that has sometimes sought to keep the black cultural presence from view.


Afropean

Afropean

Author: Johny Pitts

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2019-06-06

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 0141984732

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Winner of the Jhalak Prize 'A revelation' Owen Jones 'Afropean seizes the blur of contradictions that have obscured Europe's relationship with blackness and paints it into something new, confident and lyrical' Afua Hirsch A Guardian, New Statesman and BBC History Magazine Best Book of 2019 'Afropean. Here was a space where blackness was taking part in shaping European identity ... A continent of Algerian flea markets, Surinamese shamanism, German Reggae and Moorish castles. Yes, all this was part of Europe too ... With my brown skin and my British passport - still a ticket into mainland Europe at the time of writing - I set out in search of the Afropeans, on a cold October morning.' Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities. Here is an alternative map of the continent, taking the reader to places like Cova Da Moura, the Cape Verdean shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon with its own underground economy, and Rinkeby, the area of Stockholm that is eighty per cent Muslim. Johny Pitts visits the former Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, where West African students are still making the most of Cold War ties with the USSR, and Clichy Sous Bois in Paris, which gave birth to the 2005 riots, all the while presenting Afropeans as lead actors in their own story.