Portal:Pan-Africanism

Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s. Its initiators included Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor (the first President of Senegal), and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, and argued for the importance of a Pan-African racial identity among people of African descent worldwide. The intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the black radical tradition. The writers generally used a realist literary style, and some say they were also influenced somewhat by the Surrealist stylistics. In 1932, the manifesto "Murderous Humanitarianism" was signed by prominent Surrealists, including the Martinicans Pierre Yoyotte and J. M. Monnerot.

Musa Ngum (or Musa Afia Ngum, born 1953 in Fatoto, the Gambia; died 11 October 2015 at the Dantec Hospital, Dakar, Senegal) was a singer and songwriter who was very popular in Senegal and Gambia. He was one of the pioneers of mbalax music, and "helped to define the mbalax style of popular music in the Senegambia" and "had a strong influence on Youssou N'Dour and other mbalax pioneers". He was "something of a cult icon back in the Senegambia region, and a pioneer of the mbalax fusion style". The mbalax, which originated from the Serer religious and ultra–conservative njuup music tradition sang during Ndut rites by circumcised boys (also referred to as “Kassak” songs) was the foundation of Ngum's music career. He mastered many of the njuup classics and built a name for himself whilst at the same time developing his voice.

Throughout his music career, Ngum advocated for Pan-Africanism, and in particular the unification of Senegal and Gambia under one president.

The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from central and western Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders (with a small number being captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids), who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies especially were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.

The Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, and other European countries soon followed. Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar and cotton plantations, gold and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as "indentured servants", like workers coming from England, and also as "apprentices for life". By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with the slaves and their offspring being legally the property of their owners, and children born to slave mothers were also slaves. As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services.

African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the native African, African diasporas, such as African American, Caribbean and other American art. Despite this diversity, there are some unifying artistic themes when considering the totality of the visual culture from the continent of Africa.

Masquerade, metalwork, sculpture, architecture, fiber art, and dance are important art forms across Africa and may be included in the study of African art. The term "African art" does not usually include the art of the North African areas along the Mediterranean coast, as such areas had long been part of different traditions. For more than a millennium, the art of such areas had formed part of Islamic art, although with many particular characteristics. The art of Ethiopia, with a long Christian tradition, is also different from that of most of Africa, where traditional African religion (with Islam in the north) was dominant until relatively recently. African art includes ancient art, Muslim art of North and West Africa, the Christian art of East Africa, and the ritualistic art of these and other regions. Most African sculpture was historically in wood and other natural materials that have not survived from earlier than, at most, a few centuries ago; older pottery figures can be found from a number of areas. Masks are important elements in the art of many peoples, along with human figures, often highly stylized. There is a vast variety of styles, often varying within the same context of origin depending on the use of the object, but wide regional trends are apparent; sculpture is most common among "groups of settled cultivators in the areas drained by the Niger and Congo rivers" in West Africa. Direct images of deities are relatively infrequent, but masks in particular are or were often made for religious ceremonies; today many are made for tourists as "airport art". Since the late 19th century there has been an increasing amount of African art in Western collections, the finest pieces of which are now prominently displayed.

African mask art has had an important influence on European Modernist art, which was inspired by their lack of concern for naturalistic depiction.

West African cultures developed bronze casting for reliefs, like the famous Benin Bronzes, to decorate palaces and for highly naturalistic royal heads from around the Bini town of Benin City, Edo State, in terracotta as well as metal, from the 12th–14th centuries. Akan goldweights are a form of small metal sculptures produced over the period 1400–1900; some apparently represent proverbs, contributing a narrative element rare in African sculpture; and royal regalia included impressive gold sculptured elements. Many West African figures are used in religious rituals and are often coated with materials placed on them for ceremonial offerings. The Mande-speaking peoples of the same region make pieces from wood with broad, flat surfaces and arms and legs shaped like cylinders. In Central Africa, however, the main distinguishing characteristics include heart-shaped faces that are curved inward and display patterns of circles and dots.