West African Music
Pestles against mortars, axes against wood, the rattling of loom shuttles, and the gasps of billows all set the tempo, the cadenced backdrop, for traditional West African music. And its …
The West African Mask
As sculptural, aesthetic, and museum-worthy that the mask may be, it cannot, and was never meant to, stand on its own, at least in traditional West Africa. It is but …
Those with Feet-in-Reverse and Other Fantastical Beings
There is a certain beguiling artistry to having backwards feet. This rather anomalous attribute ―demarcating, droll, and devious ― is much-vaunted in the legendary creature realm and happens to be …
Tata Somba, Batammaliba Architecture at its Height
Kuiye, the Batammaliba sun and Creator god, is the ultimate architect, having not only built an enormously tall, multilevel Tata Somba — fortified house — in the “sun village” in …
The Calabash, a Cultural and Cosmological Constant
Although Einstein didn’t quite have this in mind when introducing this term to mathematically describe the nature of the universe, there is a kind of conceptual ‘cosmological constant’, a recurrent …
3 Yoruba Tales of Creative Deception
All of the elements attributed to classical drama are present in traditional Yoruba folktales: setting, mood, a colorful cast of characters, some intervening dilemma or an ethical contrast between good and …
Shhhh! There are Spirits Lurking …
In traditional West Africa, humans and spirits have always stood side-by-side, occasionally reaching over to tap one another on the shoulder, as if to remind each other of their mutual …
Garay Alphabet: a Wolof Script
Garay is an alphabet created specifically for Wolof, a language widely spoken in Senegal and parts of the Gambia and Mauritania. Traditionally, Wolof was written with an adapted version of …
The Mandé Ritual Clown
Comedians, contrarians, jokesters and tricksters have made their appearance in all human societies, from the more or less secular, bell-capped court jesters of the English Royal Court to the humorous …
The Squirrel and the Peanuts: A Kapsiki Tale
Every West African group has its favorite animal trickster, the most famous of which is no doubt the spider Anansi. For the Kapsiki of north-eastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon, no …