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Aesthetics, African

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The African-Jamaican Aesthetic explores the ways in which diasporic African-Jamaican writers employ cultural referents aesthetically in their literary works to challenge dominant European literary discourses; articulate concerns about racialization and belonging; and preserve and enact cultural continuities in their new environment(s). The creative works considered provide insight into how local and indigenous Caribbean knowledges are both changed by the transfer to new, diasporic locales and reflect a unified consciousness of African-Jamaican roots and culture. The works surveyed also reveal significant connections with a ‘past’ Africa. Indeed, Africa is treated as a central source of aesthetic influence in these writers’ expression of local cultures and indigenous knowledges. Aspects covered include language (Jamaican Patwa), religion, folklore, music, and dance to identify the continuities in an African-Jamaican aesthetic, which is understood here as an ongoing dialogue of cultural memory between the Caribbean, Africa, and diasporic spaces. Writers discussed include Claude McKay, Una Marson, Louise Bennett, Afua Cooper, Lillian Allen, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lillian Allen, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Makeda Silvera, and Joan Riley

Aesthetics, African. --- Authors, African. --- Authors, Jamaican --- Aesthetics.

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The African-Jamaican Aesthetic explores the ways in which diasporic African-Jamaican writers employ cultural referents aesthetically in their literary works to challenge dominant European literary discourses; articulate concerns about racialization and belonging; and preserve and enact cultural continuities in their new environment(s). The creative works considered provide insight into how local and indigenous Caribbean knowledges are both changed by the transfer to new, diasporic locales and reflect a unified consciousness of African-Jamaican roots and culture. The works surveyed also reveal significant connections with a ‘past’ Africa. Indeed, Africa is treated as a central source of aesthetic influence in these writers’ expression of local cultures and indigenous knowledges. Aspects covered include language (Jamaican Patwa), religion, folklore, music, and dance to identify the continuities in an African-Jamaican aesthetic, which is understood here as an ongoing dialogue of cultural memory between the Caribbean, Africa, and diasporic spaces. Writers discussed include Claude McKay, Una Marson, Louise Bennett, Afua Cooper, Lillian Allen, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Lillian Allen, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Makeda Silvera, and Joan Riley

Aesthetics, African. --- Authors, African. --- Authors, Jamaican --- Aesthetics.

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Since the beginnings of African cinema, the realm of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by directors and critics alike. James S. Williams explores an exciting new generation of African directors, including Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Régina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Newton I. Aduaka, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mati Diop, who have begun to reassess and embrace the concept of cinematic beauty by not reducing it to ideological critique or the old ideals of pan-Africanism. Locating the aesthetic within a range of critical fields - the rupturing of narrative spectacle and violence by montage, the archives of the everyday in the 'afropolis', the plurivocal mysteries of sound and language, male intimacy and desire, the borderzones of migration and transcultural drift - this study reveals the possibility for new, non-conceptual kinds of beauty in African cinema: abstract, material, migrant, erotic, convulsive, queer. Through close readings of key works such as Life on Earth (1998), The Night of Truth (2004), Bamako (2006), Daratt (Dry Season) (2006), A Screaming Man (2010), Tey (Today) (2012), The Pirogue (2012), Mille soleils (2013) and Timbuktu (2014), Williams argues that contemporary African filmmakers are proposing propitious, ethical forms of relationality and intersubjectivity. These stimulate new modes of cultural resistance and transformation that serve to redefine the transnational and the cosmopolitan as well as the very notion of the political in postcolonial art cinema.

Motion picture industry --- Aesthetics, African. --- Industrie du cinéma --- Esthétique

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"African dance has a long history in the United States: Asadata Dafora, a Sierra Leonean, had a successful run on Broadway with "Kykunkor" in 1934, and he was one of many artists who, in the 1920s to 1940s, concertized and stylized what we have come to know as African dance. Many African dance specialists remained in the States and taught dance, which began a renaissance in African Dance across the Americas in the 1960s, particularly in the U.S. As a result, the last fifty years have seen an explosion of African performances, choreography and courses in academic institutions and cities across North America, South America, and Europe. Still, there is little information available on African dance per se and some artists and teachers, while well intentioned, disseminate within performative information, myths and falsehoods that continue to characterize African dance as undisciplined, ahistorical, and with scant technical skills. This collection brings indelible stories of African dance as it exists within major cities across the United States, demonstrating the power and considerable influence it has in awakening identity, self-worth, and diverse community respect. It alerts readers to the revealing research that dance investigators have completed and are pursuing--for example, analyses of the aesthetic components within African dance movement, the relationships between the musical and movement elements of African performance practices, or the differences between African and Diaspora usage of improvisation. And it represents traditionalsts, neo-traditionlists, artists, teachers and scholars as they tell their stories"--

Aesthetics, African. --- Dance --- Dances --- Dancing --- Amusements --- Performing arts --- Balls (Parties) --- Eurythmics --- African aesthetics --- Social aspects --- History. --- Aesthetics, African --- History