Africans would not be Africans, Antonio Benítez-Rojo tells us, without their beliefs:
African beliefs don’t limit themselves to the worshipping of a given group of deities, but rather inform an authentic body of sociocultural practices extending through a labyrinth of referents as diverse as music, dance, theater, song, dress, hair-style, crafts, oral literature, systems of divination, medicinal botany, magic, ancestor cults, pantomime, trance states, eating customs, agricultural practices, relations with animals, cooking, commercial activity, astronomical observation, sexual behavior, and even the shapes and colors of objects. Religion in black Africa . . . permeates all human activity and interferes in all practices.
(Quoted from page 4 of Island Paradise: The Myth, An Examination of Contemporary Caribbean and Sri Lankan Writing, by Melanie A. Murray, Rodopi, 2009.)
For a brief biography of Antonio Benítez-Rojo, click here. For images of and relating to Antonio Benítez-Rojo, click here. Melanie A. Murray is affiliated with the University of Northampton, UK.
African beliefs don’t limit themselves to the worshipping of a given group of deities, but rather inform an authentic body of sociocultural practices extending through a labyrinth of referents as diverse as music, dance, theater, song, dress, hair-style, crafts, oral literature, systems of divination, medicinal botany, magic, ancestor cults, pantomime, trance states, eating customs, agricultural practices, relations with animals, cooking, commercial activity, astronomical observation, sexual behavior, and even the shapes and colors of objects. Religion in black Africa . . . permeates all human activity and interferes in all practices.
(Quoted from page 4 of Island Paradise: The Myth, An Examination of Contemporary Caribbean and Sri Lankan Writing, by Melanie A. Murray, Rodopi, 2009.)
For a brief biography of Antonio Benítez-Rojo, click here. For images of and relating to Antonio Benítez-Rojo, click here. Melanie A. Murray is affiliated with the University of Northampton, UK.
Comments