The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
PART 3
This instalment marks the end of this series which was courtesy of Pathisa Nyathi’s paper presented at the Afreaka Festival on 1 June 2016 in Brazil. As stated in the two previous articles of this series, the paper was titled; “Enduring African identities: Unpacking the hierarchy of cultural expressions.”
Nyathi’s discussion on the hierarchy of cultural expressions constitutes a very pragmatic identity contestation between the Global-North and the Global-South. The reality of the said global hierarchy has been sidelined by innuendos of superficial global citizenship. Global belonging has since become a discourse guided by a caste system which is deliberately and arrogantly denied by others through soft-power violence, mainly the media which curates imagined facets global communal belonging disconnected from hard-power realism.
This is what constitutes the Global-South barrier — the failure to accept our “bottomness” in the global hierarchy and confronting the reality of our “unwanted-ness” in the scheme of things. As such this last part of Nyathi’s presentation explains how Global-South art can be resourceful in helping us to exit our forced residence in the peripheral margins of the global hierarchy accorded to us by hard-power. Moreover, this part of Nyathi’s thesis is a campus giving direction to how Global-South art — as soft-power can catalyse real “self-expression” for the disenfranchised of the globe.
Seeking to identify what informs artistic expressions: relating part 3 to part 1
What should have emerged this far is the fact that cosmologies and worldviews are, in the final analysis, expressed by creative arts. We now seek to identify those cosmologies by moving from the creative arts to the underlying cosmologies. It is these cosmologies, somewhat hidden and least understood. That lies at the root of Africanness. Commonalities between mainland Africa and her diaspora are attributable to these. Even as they might have been undermined and to some extent made redundant, their echoes reach into the future and thus live through their inspired creative arts such as music and dance and the visual arts.
We should appreciate the fact that the fundamental cosmologies are expressed in more ways than one. For example oral traditions, folktales, epics and stories of legends will unravel the fundamental beliefs, philosophies, worldviews and cosmologies. Folktales in particular have a strong appeal to the youthful members of a community. They have thus been used to entertain but also go beyond that role to inculcate the cherished values and beliefs of a community. In terms of Unesco Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) these aspects of a community’s culture belong to Domain 1. However, it is those aspects of culture that belong to Domain 2 that have a greater appeal to a wider spectrum of the population.
More senses are involved in the consumption of performances, namely sound and sight. In the African tradition there were no audiences. Instead, everyone was a participant in the various roles availed by a performance. Taking part in a performance was therapeutic and built some esprit de corps within community members. Performances have both content and aesthetics; they evoke both emotional and intellectual engagement. Beyond aesthetic consumption they transmit messages including the critical philosophies, beliefs and worldviews. Long after the cosmologies are dead and gone or pushed beyond the outposts of comprehension, their progeny lives on though enjoyed/consumed without full appreciation of their genesis (Gray, 2001).
The other artistic form that tends to live on beyond the demise of worldviews and cosmologies are the visual arts such as painting, drawing, wood or stone sculpture and the embellishment of various crafts and textiles. The decorative motifs on the surfaces of crafts are aesthetic and appealing while at the same time pregnant with meaning, particularly those relating to the worldviews. While over the centuries the messages have become dim or completely lost the aesthetic components have endured. The decorative motifs are pointers to and markers of the fundamental worldviews and cosmologies. The motifs reside on various products such as ceramics, fabrics, ivory, stone and a whole range of other materials and handicrafts. Here it is easy to identify commonalities between the African Diaspora and Africans on the continent. Some of these designs and motifs are even found on hairstyles (Nyathi and Chikomo, 2016).
Let us now give a few examples of the decorative motifs and the worldviews that they carry. The circle is the most basic organising design in the universe. Celestial bodies such as stars, planets and moons are circular in design and are in constant motion. Besides, their orbits are circular or elliptical. The said bodies exhibit rhythmical, periodic and predictable motion. Africans have always sought to replicate the heavens on earth. Their cosmologies, cultural practices and artistic traditions are informed by the realities of astronomy. A circle has no beginning or end. It is thus one design that implies and captures the idea of continuity and endlessness. Graphic designers make use of circular the design not for what it expresses philosophically, but as one of the elements of African aesthetics (Nyathi and Chikomo, 2013).
It comes as no wonder therefore that circularity underpins a lot of both cultural practices and artistic traditions. Africans make a circle when they dance. Their artefacts are circular and in the olden days were never rectangular. African architecture is influenced by the cosmos which is embraced by the African worldview. The African perceived himself as part of the broader natural environment and in his cultural sphere he sought to be in harmony with nature.
If the circle and the cycle were applied in all cultural spheres, there would have been monotony. As a result, the one universal organising design was re-configured in many designs, seemingly different but carrying the same message as that resident in the circle. The chevron is one such pervasive decorative motif among the Africans. Inspired by the body of a woman, it is in actual fact a cone and therefore comprises an infinite number of circles.
The design is directly linked to the reproductive roles of women where the womb is the important organ or site where reproduction, continuity, takes place. The chevron is rendered beautiful through repetition, another important element in African aesthetics. It also displays movement, balance and rhythm. That way it captures the essence of the cosmos that Africans seek to copy (Nyathi and Chikomo, 2016).
There are other variations of the circle that are aesthetic and capture and express the same ideas as the circle. These include decorative motifs such as the herring bone, chess board and dentelle. In the final analysis all of them are differently configured circles that embrace the critical worldview of endlessness which celestial bodies embrace through their rotation and revolution. A good example of this is the moon through whose phases captures the ideas of regeneration (birth)-growth-development-degeneration (decay)-death-rebirth, ad infinitum. As a result curvilinear is one of the elements of African aesthetics and finds home as a decorative symbol in the African world of fashion and design. In essence therefore, these are the pan-African symbols/motifs that Africans both on the African continent and the diaspora have their eyes naturally trained to appreciate and love.
Conclusion
The main thrust of this narrative and discourse is that it is possible to identify and pin down commonalities between Africans long separated as a result of slave trade and slavery driven by the desire of the enslaving nations to power their primary industries, in particular the sugar cane growing and processing industries. It is never too late to have the two cultures cross-fertilising each other and establishing enduring bridges between the two peoples, which bridges should provide the much needed and sustained intercultural dialogue. The greatest challenge facing the blacks of this world is damaged or deflated egos of selves, eroded or mutilated images of selves and living in the demeaning shadows of other peoples who are the self-appointed chiefs of the global village and whose culture is the preferred culture of the global village.
The best that can be done in the circumstances is to sharpen the minds of the down trodden and the oppressed and wretched of the earth, as enunciated by Paulo Freire. We need to be ever cognisant of the fact that the mind requires another mind to sharpen it, and not the rough stones of racism and prejudice.
One possible route to take is through exchanges between the people of Brazil and those from Africa at the level of performances and the visual arts. As pointed out above, these have, by their very nature and quality, a strong aesthetic appeal.
When performances and visual art traditions are allowed to interact, contemporary artistic commonalities will be identified, which commonalities shall lead to deeper and more sustainable cultural intercourse.
However, it is also critically important to involve individuals with minds and the mental skills and perceptions to excavate and unravel the more fundamental worldviews and cosmologies that drive and inform the artistic expressions.
In order to sustain the artistic expressions it is important to know the seminal worldviews and cosmologies so that their change is handled with care to avoid conflict and disengagement between the two. At the practical level, workshops and seminars should offer platform where cosmologies and worldviews are unraveled, analysed and interpreted with a clear view to giving Africans self-confidence, positive egos, dignity and respect as deserving citizens of planet earth. Both strategies should seek ways through which black brothers and sisters may find each other and begin to lend support to each other so that they begin to articulate without fear or shame their Afro-centric worldviews. Africans need not continue to be the wretched of the earth any longer, nor should they be content with being the classical hewers of wood and drawers of water.
It is my fervent hope that Afreaka Festival shall play the much needed role of providing the necessary platforms for exchange of ideas and practical programs that will bring the Blacks of this world closer together in enduring solidarity and begin to speak with one audible and challenging voice.
It is my passionate hope once again, that this august and well-meaning Afreaka Festival will provide for intercultural exchanges and dialogue, the much needed cross fertilisation of African minds and their ideas, both here in Brazil and the general African Diaspora and the African continent.
Let not the Festival fall into the iniquitous temptation of becoming a celebrated but hollow platform for advocacy and practical programs. The Festival needs to migrate from academic pronouncements to programmatic strategies that shall bring forth positive and sustainable results.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN, Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on [email protected]
