|
Art,
Africa and Progress
An
Anthropological Viewpoint
By Peter Ezeh
Proem
Art was one of the effective instruments used in
fighting colonialism in Africa. And why not? Nearly
everything in traditional Africa was art. From birth
through all activities in life, to mortuary events, art
featured prominently.
Those irrepressible nationalists that led the struggle
for independence of our various nation states and led
the foundation for its post-traditional governments
recognised the importance of art as a social tool,
besides its inherent aesthetic and economic utility.
In Nigeria, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the spearhead of
anticolonial struggles was a poet, among his numerous
other professional accomplishments. As a poet Sedar
Senghor, his counterpart in Senegal, was even better
known. The talents of Julius Nyerere in the literary
sphere led him to translate Shakespeare into Swahili. A
comprehensive list of such people will make a full
seminar paper on its own.
Visual artists based on the continent began to
rediscover and re-present the beauty of autochthonous
genres, giving rise to the contributions of the Zaria
school in Nigeria, for example, and the rejuvenation of
such forms as uli, ona, and so on. Happily, such
pioneering efforts have been sustained in a few serious
quarters where new dimensions have even been added to
them. El Anatsiu, for instance, has gone on to integrate
some Ghanaian and Nigerian forms in the engaging exotic
melange he names adinsibuli, after the originally ethnic
adinkara, nsibidi, and uli varieties.
Among artists and intellectuals of the quondam Paris
circle, parallels to this strategy began even earlier.
Art could be a quick and effective way of healing the
psychic wounds of colonisation. To the assimilation
policy of the French colonizer and the paternalism of
his Portuguese counterpart both of which sought to
replace the African cultural personality with European
one, Etienne Léro, the poet from Martinique, responded
with the formulation of the self-rediscovery philosophy,
negritude. He used his journal, Legitime defence, to
pursue the aini But it was Alioune Diop, using the
Presence africaine, the journal with the avowed
objective of propagating cultures of the Black people
that carried the message a lot further. Such were the
accomplishments of Presence africaine in this direction
that many may be forgiven who credit Diop with
formulation of the negritude concept. The
English-speaking Africans due to a slightly different
colonial experience had a less centralised philosophical
approach to the identity- reconstruction strategy.
The relevance of visual arts as such had an early
recognition too in post-contact Africa. By 1959 when the
second Congress of Negro Writers and Artists took place
in Rome those scholars had already made recommendations
on harnessing of visual arts for the development of
post-colonial Africa. I will return to this point. At
this stage, one may just add that the first of those
congresses took place three years previously in Paris.
The culmination of their efforts was the holding of the
first World Festival of Arts and Culture in Dakar,
Senegal, in 1966.
In terms of post-contact African arts, the decades of
1950s and 1960s were particularly fruitful. It was the
period such writers as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka,
Sedar Senghor, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah,
Christopher Okigbo, Mongo Beti, Okot p'Bitek, Dennis
Brutus, Ezekiel Mphalele, without the slightest
pretension of attempting to produce an exhaustive list
here, emerged. That was also the era for re-assertion of
the relevance of autochthonous African visual arts in
contemporary times. From Accra through Brazzaville to
Cairo, Africans taught the world some basic lessons in
making of good music. It was the heyday of Ramblers, 1K
Dairo, OK Jazz, Rex Lawson, and uncountable number of
other authentic singers sweating it out to create
immortal tunes and messages.
One interesting fact is that the first half of 1 960s
was also Africa’s golden era in terms of economic
progress. One American study in early 1960s rated
Eastern Nigeria “the fastest industrialising economy in
the world” (Anya 1995), and reports and projections were
generally good for many other newly independent
countries (Royal Institute of International Affairs,
1960).
Decline
I do know that minds that value arts are also usually
the most productive minds. Beyond this the social
scientist part of me will be reluctant to make a
categorical statement on statistical correlation between
the two phenomena until more studies have been focused
on them.
Another clue I can only point to is the fact that the
deterioration of Africa’s social and economic conditions
appear to coincide with the rise in cultural self-doubt
that has also affected production in the domains of art.
With due respect to a few such as PACAin the visual art
domain and MASA (Marché des Arts du Spectacle Africain)
in that of the performing arts, the greater number now
seem scared to give their creative imagination free
reins. lam not sure that an artist that cannot think
originally can create anything of worth. And I see
nothing in the books, studios or record disks of
characteristic present-day artists to reconsider my
stand.
Cultural monolithism was the nonce word I used in a
recent article (Ezeh, forthcoming) to attempt to bring
all such thought suppressants under one rubric. The
world has already witnesses this in its recent history
in the shape of colonisation, neocolonisation, and
currently globalisation. We began this discourse with a
brief survey of efforts of scholars and artists to help
Africa find a way forward after the humiliation of
colonisation. But there was a clear view on the part of
those Africans that emphasised cultural symbiosis
visà-vis this continent and all other peoples, great or
lowly. And note that symbiosis presupposes plurality,
mutual accommodation and give-and-take. It is in
multiple incompatibility with, though not necessarily
the exact antonym of, parasitism and related terms.
But no one goes for cultural symbiosis who in the first
place suffers from the cultural equivalence of sadism or
masochism. Alioun Diop’s description of the efforts of
those African intellectuals of 1 950s supported by their
fair-minded French friends is worth quoting at some
length to allow the relative sorry uncritical cultural
acquiescence come out in bold relief.
The problem is not only one of
assuring the theoretical equality of individuals
between black and white ... They know it concerns a
fundamental recasting of the structure of European
civilisation and of African life, and the links
which binds us spring from the cultural level. In
short, it involves an emergence of the African
personality from the accretion of Western culture,
which colonisation has thrown into disequilibrium
and servitude (Legum 1962:96).
I lack evidence that
African cultures still enjoy this level of intellectual
protection. Perhaps a greater number of Africans now
take pride in assaulting their cultures and anything
that stands in symbol to it. Much commotion erupted not
long ago at a city in Nigeria’s southeastern districts.
Some Christian fanatics had demolished a sculpture of a
man to be found in a typical Igbo compound. In his most
familiar form he holds a cutlass in his right hand, this
being a symbol of resourcefulness in a setting where
agriculture was the hod of the economy. The ontology and
symbology of this famous statuary have been well
documented, not least byAniakor (1973) who has situated
these in the context of visual arts. Indeed when the
Institute of African Studies of University of Nigeria,
Nsukka, floated its journal in 1972, it gave it this
name. So rather than bore you with the details here,
what is relevant to our present purpose is to mention
that, being at the heart of Igboland a government
thought, on just account in my view, that it would be
apt to erect the statute in a major street for reasons
of aesthetics and that of cultural relevance. Fanatics
thought differently and saw idolatry in it and, throwing
pluralism to the winds, went to war.
We can chronicle similar instances including cases
involving losses of life between these cultural
nihilists and their opponents whose ranks are thinning
out every passing day. In the example in Oyims (1993),
the Christians drew the anger of the traditionalists
when the former tried to violate the principles of a
rite de passage that had underpinned social organisation
there since time immemorial.
Any investigation of Africa’s present social and
economic doldrums must take this drastic acculturation
into account. And religion is the fuel that gives the
engine of culture its energy. ‘When the religion of a
civilisation dies,” H.D. Major, was reputed to have
said, “the death of the civilisation speedily follows.”
Africa has to be careful with what it does with the
plethora of foreign faiths that is every day being
obtruded on her. Not all of these are done with good
intention, and nothing can be more injurious to the
commonweal of a people than ill-digested foreign dogmas.
It is the shortest distance to corporate self-hate, and
therefore to self-rejection, disintegration, and
failure.
Because religion by its very nature is usually opposed
to reason, any of its varieties is, therefore, a very
delicate subject to interrogate or scrutinise. For the
same reasons, it also provides a convenient and
effective cover for scoundrels to hide and create havoc.
Asabor (2000:5) examining the Nigerian case quoted the
French thinker, Blaise Pascal, “Men (read people) never
do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.”
Artists and the Challenge
Artists and scholars have proved to be extremely helpful
in similar situations in the past. Europe was in a
similar morass through the Dark Ages and up until the
18th century when the famous Enlightenment or Age of
Reason tackled all that. Artists as has been pointed out
also played important role in challenging the evil of
colonisation. Indeed at the second World Congress of
Negro Writers and Artists in Rome, resolutions were made
whose implementation even at this stage will be quite
helpful. Paucity of space will bear the reproduction of
only a section of those.
The Second International Congress of
Negro Artists and Writers propose ... the
establishment of a team of Negro specialists who
would be charged with making on-the-spot inventories
of African sculpture to find out
(a) the general laws which have governed the
elaboration of African sculpture and statuary
(b) the spirit and the general laws governing the
diverse expressions of Negro plastic art
(c) the present condition of the painter and the
sculptor in the different artistic zones of the
Negro world; the condition of the painter and the
sculptor in countries with populations of African
descent; African sources of hese artistic zones; the
nfluence of the African plastic arts on Europe; and
inversely, the influence of Western arts on
Negro-African arts (Legum 1962:219,220).
What is needed on these is
merely an update and the polishing of the language to
align with the sensibilities of the present. Many will
now find the use of the term Negro in this context
objectionable. Domains of art covered should also be
enlarged. So much have now been discovered in the genres
of autochthonous painting which eluded eay foreign
researchers.
What the Authorities
Should Do
I have suggested elsewhere (Ezeh 2002) that there should
be policies at the level of the African Union,
subregional organisations such as ECOWAS and the various
countries prohibiting religious intimidation. In such
neutral settings as educational institutions the true
features of African traditional religions should be
highlighted.
At the moment only foreign religions are usually taught.
From the kindergarten to the highest levels of
education, the traditional religions of Africa should be
taught with equal emphasis and respect.
Africa cannot make the progress it needs in other social
spheres unless we learn to put religion in its proper
place, which in turn cannot happen unless policymakers
and the people they serve are clear on the true nature
of religion.
A paper delivered at the conference
of Pan-African Circle of Artists, at Accra, Ghana,
27 January 2004
References
Aniakor, Chike. 1973. “Structurahism in Ikenga - An
Ethnoaesthetic Approach”. lkenga, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6
28
Economic Background.
London: Oxford University Press.
Anya, 0. Anya. 1995. “Hope
Waddell, a Vision and a Mission”. Daily Sunray, 15
March, p.12.
Asabor, Isaac. 2000.
“Reflections on Religious Crisis”. Daily
Champion,l5March,p.5.
Ezeh, P-J. 2002. “Religion in Renascent Africa”. A paper
read at the meeting of experts advising on proposed
Pan-African Cultural Congress, Nairobi, Kenya, 16
December.
Ezeh, P-J. forthcoming.
Cultural Monolithism, Ethnography and Tourism: The Case
of Heortology.
Legum, Cohn. 1962. Pan-Africanism
A Short Political Guide. London: Pall Mall Press
Oyims, Larry. 1993.
“Religious War Looms As Cult, Christians Disagree”.
Sunray, 6 November, pp. 1,2.
Royal Institute of
International Affairs, The. 1960. Nigeria - The
Political and
|
