Book Description

The jali--a member of a hereditary group of Mandinka professional performers--is a charismatic but contradictory figure. He is at once the repository of his people's history, the voice of contemporary political authority, the inspiration for African American dreams of an African homeland, and the chief entertainment for the burgeoning transnational tourist industry. Numerous journalists, scholars, politicians, and culture aficionados have tried to pin him down. This book shows how the jali's talents at performance make him a genius at representation--the ideal figure to tell us about the "Africa" that the world imagines, which is always a thing of illusion, magic, and contradiction.

Africa often enters the global imagination through news accounts of ethnic war, famine, and despotic political regimes. Those interested in countering such dystopic images--be they cultural nationalists in the African diaspora or connoisseurs of "global culture"--often found their representations of an emancipatory Africa on an enthusiasm for West African popular culture and performance arts. Based on extensive field research in The Gambia and focusing on the figure of the jali, Performing Africa interrogates these representations together with their cultural and political implications. It explores how Africa is produced, circulated, and consumed through performance and how encounters through performance create the place of Africa in the world. Innovative and discerning, Performing Africa is a provocative contribution to debates over cultural nationalism and the construction of identity and history in Africa and elsewhere. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A fast read that I couldn't put down.
This book is really easy to read. Donald Wright is an good story teller. It brings history to life and sheds light on current events like off-shore job issues, foreign policy, international trade, nation building, military power, etc.

Wright starts by outlining basic theories about globalization. He makes a convincing argument for his case (converting this reader from the Basil Davidson mindset). Wright then shows how these theories played out in the history of Niumi, a small but powerful country on the west coast of Africa. Along the way he tells spellbinding tales about Niumi policitics, economy, religion, and culture. Wright did a great deal of research, and points out what is well documented versus anecdotal. My only wish is that the maps could be more helpful...maybe more detail, more color, more of them.

Good books to read along with this are Skeletons on the Sahara by Dean King, and Francis Bok's book about slavery in the Sudan.

Reading this book has given me 1) a better grasp of African history, 2) a greater awareness of the long history of globalization, and 3)a better ability to read the signs of our times and speculate where the current economic hub is rolling to (hint: its time to start learning Chinese). ... Read more

Reviews (2)

fascinating and funny
If you ever go to Gambia, this is the book to get, together of course with the ubiquitous Lonely Planet. Hudson, a young adventurer, spent 14 months in a Mandingko village, observing and commenting on the daily life. Amazingly, he was allowed to join one of the women's societies... so he followed them around, participated in their dances, field work and intrigues and documented this stuff in OGD. Hudson shows that African women are, although destined to a life of hard work, circumcission & mostly unhappy arranged marriages, far from helpless creatures. They are economically independent, they are free to choose their lovers, they sing and they dance:

"It was in the early hours of the morning before the dancing began in earnest, the figures of the women glowing as though golden in the light of the hurricane-lamp, as they came running towards the drummers, spinning around only at the last moment to dance. This was what they liked more than anything elese - the extremity of this total bodily exertion, this fervent, almost ecstatic unleashment of energy, in which every muscle, every last atom of their energy would be used. It was as though the rhythms of the drums..[...]... were touching something actually inside the women themselves, to which their frenetic shaking was an involuntary, though wholly pleasurable response. They called it dia - sweetness."

"Hear the sound of these drums!
Our own drums!
Here the sound of these drums!
Our grandmothers' drums!"

Hudson shows that African life can be strange beyond our imagining. The pragmatic and relaxed attitudes towards the body and sexual activity; the separatedness of women and men, who get together pretty much just for sex; the ancient initiation formulas and rites, the pragmatic interpretation of the Muslim religion mixed with animism and, above all, the aliveness of these people get through in this book really well. These Mandingko use their bodies for pleasure in a way which makes Westerners look like hollow emaciated specters lost in our greedy little calculating minds. There is much fun in African lives and much sadness - sadness that we have forgotten about.

We need to learn from Africans about how to inhabit our bodies and about how to live in the present moment and this book gives us first hand information on these topics. Highly recommended.

OUR GRANDMOTHERS' DRUMS
This travel book does not move from the village of Dulaba in the Gambia but it uncovers a truly fascinating web of social life,customs,intrigue,obligation, initiation, sex and much more - it takes you to the heart of Africa . A MUST for anyone heading for the 'dark continent'. ... Read more

Book Description

The Gambia is an African country that, despite its small size and rather artificial boundaries, has a history of resilience that makes it worthy of greater notice. Arnold Hughes and Harry A. Gailey have answered this demand with an expanded and updated edition of the"Historical Dictionary of The Gambia." Like its two predecessors, this edition looks at The Gambia's history from precolonial times to the present. It includes entries on significant persons, places and events, institutions and parties, and various political, economic and social aspects. It provides a longer chronology, a more probing introduction, and expanded and additional entries. An extended bibliography takes into account new scholarship and publications. Reviews of the Previous Editions: "This book serves as an important adjunct to any study about Gambia." --ARBA "[Gailey] is a recognized authority on the Gambia, and the dictionary is a welcome historical reference work on this little-known West African republic. A valuable general reference work which will serve the needs of laymen and specialists alike, and deserves a place in college, university, and larger public libraries." --CHOICE ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Geographical Journal, published by Royal Geographical Society on July 1, 1994. The length of the article is 15056 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: In the late 1700s, one of Britain's colonial outposts in The Gambia was considered for use as a major penal colony. This idea was scrapped in favour of its use, in the early 1800s, as a resettlement site for slaves intercepted in the Atlantic and repatriated to Africa's shore. This paper examines the experience of the experimental resettlement programme and draws parallels with problems of refugee resettlement in contemporary Africa.

Citation Details
Title: Guests of the crown: convicts and liberated slaves on McCarthy Island, The Gambia.
Author: Patrick Webb
Publication: The Geographical Journal (Refereed)
Date: July 1, 1994
Publisher: Royal Geographical Society
Volume: v160Issue: n2Page: p136(7)

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