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I had a lovely cocktail zoom with friends.
A. and I listened to the Asante Empire episode of You’re Dead to Me. We really liked listening to historian Dr. Augustus Casely-Hayford on the Mansa Musa episode, and this time, the comedian was Sophie Duker, who has lived in Ghanaian ancestry, has lived there for a few years. As with the Ibn-Battuta episode, a comedian who has personal connections to the place being discussed is really helpful and quite powerful.
A.’s history class is wrapping up their Africa unit, and she said she didn’t really get the African art they were looking at, so I walked her around the house and showed her examples of mud cloth and other African textiles we have in the house, as well as a drum, some sculpture (a couple of wood pieces and a soapstone piece), and a gourd musical instrument. She liked those and we had a nice chat. We also had gotten out her textbook, and there was a bronze of a woman:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/aict/x-spl077/spl077
A. didn’t really understand what was going on there, and in general, if I’m looking at a human who has adornment or whatever that I don’t recognize, I go looking for a photograph. While we didn’t find anyone with this precise at the time, I later found this:
https://www.randafricanart.com/Benin_Oba_commemorative_heads.html
If you scroll down, you can see photos of women with that hairstyle and with decorative beads. A. and I talked about how if you see the depicted thing in a photo or in person, with color, it often looks very different than the more structural presentation in bronze. While the bronze is quite beautiful, it is difficult to fully appreciate its beauty without knowing about the brilliant colors typical of the adornments that go with this hairstyle. Common problem across cultures! We also found some fantastic photos of contemporary Benin hairstyles for fancy events such as weddings.
A. and I listened to the Asante Empire episode of You’re Dead to Me. We really liked listening to historian Dr. Augustus Casely-Hayford on the Mansa Musa episode, and this time, the comedian was Sophie Duker, who has lived in Ghanaian ancestry, has lived there for a few years. As with the Ibn-Battuta episode, a comedian who has personal connections to the place being discussed is really helpful and quite powerful.
A.’s history class is wrapping up their Africa unit, and she said she didn’t really get the African art they were looking at, so I walked her around the house and showed her examples of mud cloth and other African textiles we have in the house, as well as a drum, some sculpture (a couple of wood pieces and a soapstone piece), and a gourd musical instrument. She liked those and we had a nice chat. We also had gotten out her textbook, and there was a bronze of a woman:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/aict/x-spl077/spl077
A. didn’t really understand what was going on there, and in general, if I’m looking at a human who has adornment or whatever that I don’t recognize, I go looking for a photograph. While we didn’t find anyone with this precise at the time, I later found this:
https://www.randafricanart.com/Benin_Oba_commemorative_heads.html
If you scroll down, you can see photos of women with that hairstyle and with decorative beads. A. and I talked about how if you see the depicted thing in a photo or in person, with color, it often looks very different than the more structural presentation in bronze. While the bronze is quite beautiful, it is difficult to fully appreciate its beauty without knowing about the brilliant colors typical of the adornments that go with this hairstyle. Common problem across cultures! We also found some fantastic photos of contemporary Benin hairstyles for fancy events such as weddings.