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A Supplemental Survey of African History and Performance
This guide will provide additional background information
concerning Africa, in general, and West African history, as well as
insights into the relationship between performance and culture in Africa.
Also included are some sample exercises for the classroom and further
references in the form of books, CDs, videos, and websites.
General
There are many reasons to include Africa as an area of study
for people in North America. In one sense, we are all Africans who can
trace our roots to the earliest human ancestors whose remains have been
found  there.
For many Americans, the links are more recent, primarily as a result of the
massive influx of people during the slave trade. Despite the brutal living
conditions and cultural and social deprivation experienced by these
unwilling immigrants, they have greatly influenced the language, music,
religion, cuisine, and many other cultural and social practices in all the
Americas.
As the world becomes more connected by technological advances in
transportation and communication, many of the links between Africa and
North America are being recovered, along with many appealing differences.
Africa is the worlds second largest continent, occupying 11,667,159 square
miles. This is about three and a half times the size of the continental
United States. It measures roughly 5,000 miles from north to south and
4,600 miles from east to west at the widest points. It is not surprising,
then, that there is a tremendous diversity in people, cultures, and environments
in Africa. The continent contains more than fifty countries, including
several island republics off the coast, and more than two thousand
languages. The regions of Nigeria and Cameroon, known as the fragmentation
belt, present an extreme example of this there are several hundred
languages spoken in these two countries alone.
There are also great differences in economic levels and activities in
various parts of the continent. There are cities where investment and
advanced technology are quite evident, while many rural areas lack both.
There is also a broad diversity of environments and climates
in Africa. The equator cuts through the center of the continent, making
Africa the most tropical of all the continents. However, there are
significant climatic differences that can be attributed to proximity to the
equator and altitude as well as many other factors, particularly the amount
and seasonality of rain. The continent can be broadly divided into six
large climatic or biophysical regions:
1. Mountain regions, including parts of Ethiopia, East Africa,
South Africa, and the Northwest region along the Mediterranean coast;
2. Desert regions include the Sahara in the north, the Namib
and Kalahari in the south, and the Horn of Africa in the east;
3. Temperate regions to the extreme north and south of the
continent with a Mediterranean-type climate;
4. Humid and sub-humid regions close to the equator, at the
center of the continent and along the southern part of the west coast
include dense rainforests with well over fifty inches of annual rainfall;
5. Savanna areas, covering almost fifty percent of Africa,
where most of the grains are grown and which also support herds of wild and
domesticated animals;
6. The Sahel region entails the vast southern edge of the
Sahara, with some rainfall; it is more populated than the desert, but due
to climatic and human influences, it has experienced severe droughts and
famine, notably in the past twenty-five years.
7. Major waterways, while not constituting a climatic zone,
have a significant impact on occupational activities and settlement
patterns in various regions.
Knowledge of these biophysical regions is important for several reasons.
Most importantly, they dictate the primary occupational activitiy for the
majority of societies throughout Africa, agriculture being the primary one.
Herding, fishing, and hunting, along with artisans working with iron, wood,
clay, or leather, provide important complements to farming. Many of these
activities are carried out by social and cultural groups who are identified
by their occupations. All of these activities, particularly agriculture,
are dependent on the seasons, which in turn are dictated by regional rain
patterns. These climatic differences also restrict the kinds of flora and
fauna (including domestic varieties) found in a region and encourage the
transportation of goods grown, manufactured, or found in one region to
others. Root crops, such as yams and caffeine-rich kola nuts, are grown in
the forest regions, while millet and sorghum, as well as rice, are grown in
the river flood plains, and cattle, sheep, and goat herds are more common
in the savanna. Other prized resources, such as gold, iron, or salt, are
found in select regions. In West Africa, main trade routes move north and
south, passing through the climatic zones that run east and west.
History
The history of Africa extends back to the emergence of the
earliest humans and the subsequent migrations that populated the rest of
the world.
The first of many migrations moved not only people but their languages,
technologies, ideas, religious beliefs, music, and other cultural forms to
various parts of the continent due to changes in environment, population,
and political or military considerations. For the most part, this history
was unwritten except in areas where Arabic traders and Muslim clerics
recorded the accounts of past events or travelers observations. In the last
few decades, historians have begun to unravel the wealth of knowledge
contained in the extensive oral traditions, many of which recount the
exploits of key figures and crucial events that make up the history of
certain states or ethnic groups. To understand these oral epic traditions
or other kinds of performances, people have to stretch beyond the limits of
their own cultural experiences and biases.
 The
early empires found in Egypt and Nubia are among the more well-known early
complex states of ancient Africa. Large cities, trade, agriculture, and
extensive political entities existed in many parts of Africa long before
they were found in most of Europe. In West Africa, the long history of
empires and prominent cities dates back as early as 400 B.C. to the early
trade centers of the region such as Jenne, in the heart of modern-day Mali.
These vast empires established control of the trade routes, providing
security for the traders who moved prestige goods north and south across
the climatic zones of forests, savannas, and deserts. These trans-Saharan
trade routes linked these empires with the Mediterranean and the Middle
East, thereby increasing the flow of goods which, in turn, translated into
greater wealth and power for those empires controlling this region. The
empires of Ghana (A.D. 400 -1240), Mali (1240-1500), and Songhai
(1400-1600) in the savanna regions of central and western West Africa
developed through control of these trade routes and provided access to the
gold that flowed toward the Mediterranean and the Middle East as well as
kola nuts, ivory, and slaves. Salt was mined in the desert and moved to the
south along with metal goods, books, and silk cloth.
The presence of large cities along major trade routes,
extensive farming and fishing communities, and the patterned movement of
cattle, sheep, and goat herds define the complex occupational and social
relations that contributed to the cultural diversity of that region and
that continue to exist to this day. Long distance traders moved the luxury
goods along the main arteries (overland, rivers, ocean) while artisans
manufactured the iron and leather goods used by local residents. To this
day, the weekly market day continues to be a major event throughout West
Africa as people from the rural areas flock to nearby towns to buy and sell
foods, textiles, iron, leather, wooden goods, and all types of imported
products. There continues to be frequent movement between rural and urban
communities and weekly contact in the marketplace. The seasonality of the
life-sustaining rains determines the cycle of yearly activities, not only
for the farmers but for herders, fishermen, artisans, and traders as well.
For this reason, most of the cultural activities are c lustered around the beginning
and the end of the growing season. As traders from North Africa moved along
the trade routes to the south, major trading centers sprang up along the
edge of the desert in the region of the Sahel, a term derived from the
Arabic word for coast, which in this instance refers to the broad expanse
running between the Sahara and the savanna immediately to the south.
Following Mohammeds death in A.D. 632, Islam had rapidly moved
across North Africa. The subsequent increase in long distance trade
resulted in the establishment of Arabic Muslim quarters in the major cities
along the trade routes. Although most of West Africa maintained local
religions, particularly outside the main cities, Muslim clerics could be
found in the courts of many West African rulers, whose power and prestige
were dependent on long distance trade. In the case of the empire of Mali,
which at its peak extended from the Atlantic coast of Senegal as far east
as Gao along the eastern bend of the Niger, many of the rulers (or mansa)
converted to Islam. During Mansa Musas well-documented hajj, or Muslim
pilgrimage to Mecca, in the early part of the 14th century, he carried
along over 12 tons of gold in a caravan of camels. He spent so much gold on
the way that the currency of Cairo was depressed for ten years after he
passed through Egypt.
With the evolution of sea-faring
technologies from the late 15th century on, the major trade routes shifted
from large trading centers of the interior to coastal ports largely
developed by Europeans. This trade was dramatically affected by the
development of plantation farming systems in the New World by various
European powers, particularly in the growing of sugar cane. The decimation
of local Caribbean populations and the inability to coerce them to provide
labor on these extensive estates resulted in the development of the
transatlantic slave trade. This had a devastating affect on large portions
of Africa, and, inparticular, West Africa. With the demise of the great
empires that were built around the control of the trans-Saharan trade
routes, new states emerged whose power base was built and maintained by
providing slaves to European traders in exchange for guns. Over the course
of three centuries, until the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the
early part of  the 19th century, some
10 million Africans were forcibly transported as captives to work on
plantations in the Americas. Many people died in the course of the slave
raids, in pre-voyage captivity, or during the voyage west. The loss in
human life, labor, and skills was overwhelming and destabilized much of
West Africa.
One result of the coerced diaspora brought about by slavery was the spread
of African culture to the Americas. The slave holders did whatever they
could to eliminate the cultural bond that brought meaning to the lives of
the slaves, such as depriving them of their music (especially drums),
language, religion, and other forms of communication and social solidarity
that might be used as a means of resistance to the harsh conditions and
authority imposed on them. Despite these repressive efforts, the slaves,
through cunning and determination, tried to maintain or adapt their
cultural expressions to these conditions. Africans from many different
cultures and language groups found themselves together in unfamiliar places
and circumstances. In the face of the immediate hardships, they developed
new cultural forms that brought them together. The various rituals that
were expressed in these New World settings were not all the same.
Differences between them can be attributed to the specific situations in
which they arose, including the affiliations of the settlers controlling
them or the preponderance of one African ethnic or language group in a
particular region.
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