The Arts of Africa

FELA Live – Power Show

Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s afrobeat occupies a pivotal position in Nigeria’s musical continuum and socio-political discourse. Through Fela, a new medium of social and political criticism was unearthed for the critical mass of Nigerians in the 1970s. Although Nigeria was experiencing what would turn out to be a brief respite of oil-boom prosperity after the bitter Biafran civil war, Fela used his music to remind the society to be critical of and cautious about the military dictatorship and the impact of neocolonialism on the psyche of the Nigerian people.

The Senaglese artist Iba Ndiaye, one of the most important painters of 20th-century African modernism, died on Oct. 5 in Paris, where he had lived for many years. He was 80.

The cause was heart failure after a long illness, said Susan Vogel, the founder of the Museum for African Art in New York, which showed Mr. Ndiaye’s work.

Mr. Ndiaye was born in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in 1928, and moved to France in 1949 to study architecture in Montpellier and Paris. He returned to his homeland in 1959. After Senegal gained independence in the 1960, Mr. Ndiaye created a department of plastic arts at the National School of Fine Arts in Dakar, at the request of President Léopold Sédar Senghor. Mr. Ndiaye taught there until 1966, influencing a generation of younger artists, among them Mor Faye.

During this time he helped found, along with Papa Ibra Tall and others, a Senegalese art movement called École de Darkar, which was aligned with the literary movement of Négritude. And in 1966, he organized a large exhibition of Senegalese modernists for the first World Festival of Pan-African Arts in Dakar. While making these formative contributions, however, he also fundamentally disagreed with the primitivist bent in art espoused by many of his École de Dakar colleagues, who believed that new work had to look distinctly non-colonialist to be authentically African.

Although he made many beautiful drawings based on the forms of traditional African masks, Mr. Ndiaye painted in oil on canvas and in a semi-abstract School of Paris style that made little direct reference to African subjects or techniques. His allusions were often to classic Western painters like Goya and Rembrandt, to which he gave a mordant political twist. His 1986 version of Vélazquez’s famous portrait of Juan de Pareja presented its startled-looking black subject under attack by dogs. Much of his work was also influenced by jazz, an art of the African diaspora, in which he had immersed himself in Paris as a young man.

“Certain Europeans, seeking exotic thrills, expect me to serve them folklore,” he said in an interview. “I refuse to do it — otherwise I would exist only as a function of their segregationist ideas of the African artist.” Today, many younger African-born painters like Moshekwa Langa, Odili Donald Odita and Julie Mehretu have followed his lead.

Partly in response to art fashions with which he was uncomfortable, he again left Senegal and returned to Paris to live in 1967. In France, he painted one of his best-known series, “Tabaski.” The images are based on the ritual slaughter of sheep for religious purposes, but are actually about human cruelty and oppression.

His work has appeared in many international exhibitions, including “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994,” which traveled to Munich, Berlin, Chicago and New York in 2001-02; and “Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art,” organized by Ms. Vogel for the Center for African Art in New York in 1991. In 1987, he had a retrospective in Munich and another in the Hague in 1996. In 2000 he had a career survey in his birthplace, Saint-Louis. A book on his career, “Primitive? Says Who? Iba Ndiaye, Painter Between Continents” by Franz Kaiser and Okwui Enwezor (Adam Biro, Paris), appeared in 2002.

He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Francine Ndiaye, who was for many years in charge of the African collection at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.

“I need to go back to Paris often,” Mr. Ndiaye said during a period in which he was living in Dakar. “If I remained here I would run the risk of going to sleep. But for inspiration, I need Africa.”

Enter the extravagant, decadent, rebellious world of a legendary musician.

A provocative hybrid of dance and Broadway musical, FELA! features the Afrobeat music of Fela Anikulapo–Kuti, a book by Jim Lewis and the direction and choreography of Tony® Award winner Bill T. Jones.

His Passion Ignited a Generation.
His Music Fueled a Revolution.
His Legacy Inspires the World.

FELA! uses stirring Afrobeat music (a blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies), to tell the story of Kuti’s controversial life as artist, political activist and revolutionary musician. Featuring many of Fela Kuti’s most captivating songs and Bill T. Jones’s visionary staging, FELA! is the most original new musical on Broadway.

DanceAfrica is a heritage and community celebration centered on the diverse dance forms of the African Diaspora held annually in New York City, Washington, DC, and Chicago. Included are indoor and outdoor performance including live music, a film series, master classes, education programs, and an outdoor bazaar.

The Ndzundza Ndebele are an Nguni people who originated in South Africa in the areas of present day Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Northern provinces, formerly called the Eastern and Northern Transvaal. King Musi, a great diplomat, lead his people to settle among the Tswana and Pedi, intermarry and pursue cultural exchange. It is believed that early Ndebele house structural format was developed through their “co-existance] with the neighboring Sotho-Tswana,” (Rich, 1995, p. 174), and similarly that Ndebele house-painting strategies were adopted from a “Pedi original,” (James and van Vuuren, 1998, p. 66). Ensuing family battles caused one group of Ndebele to go farther north into Zimbabwe, thus creating the Southern and the Northern Ndebele (Powell and Lewis, 1995). Of the groups who stayed in South Africa, the Manala and the Ndzundza, it is the latter, who have developed the abstract house painting schema, and who are recognized globally as the Ndebele of South Africa (van Vuuren, 1994). The Ndebele were large land holders and fierce warriors who were able to defend their lands against encroaching Boer farmers. Autumn 1883, brought intense war between the Boers (armies of the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek) and the Ndzundza under Chief Nyabela. Both Boer and Ndebele traditional stories report how the Ndebele valiantly fought for five years and finally held out in the famous Caverns of Mapoch for over eight months before starvation and lack of fresh water brought them out of their enclave.

The sculpture art of Yohannes Teleb combines colorful abstract paint aplication with abstract shaped alibaster, limestone and other stone and natural materials.

Ethiopian painting has made a smooth transition, stylistically and aesthetically, from the religious to the secular. The canvasses are rich in color and alive with movement and crowds, sometimes extraordinary numbers of people, who engage the eye of the viewer with their eyes — even when glancing right or left. It is one of the stylistic hallmarks of Ethiopian painting, the rendering of eyes. The twentieth-century secular painting tradition is also an extraordinary visual record of Amharic history and culture, as is quickly apparent by simply leafing through the pages of this book. Those who read German will be further rewarded by the copious, informative notes on each of the 120 plates of reproduction. The works are from several German and other European museum collections and a few private collections.

African Artists are featured here!