Women's Songs from West Africa

Women's Songs from West Africa PDF Author: Thomas A. Hale
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253010217
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Exploring the origins, organization, subject matter, and performance contexts of singers and singing, Women's Songs from West Africa expands our understanding of the world of women in West Africa and their complex and subtle roles as verbal artists. Covering Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and beyond, the essays attest to the importance of women's contributions to the most widespread form of verbal art in Africa.

Women's Songs from West Africa

Women's Songs from West Africa PDF Author: Thomas A. Hale
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253010217
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring the origins, organization, subject matter, and performance contexts of singers and singing, Women's Songs from West Africa expands our understanding of the world of women in West Africa and their complex and subtle roles as verbal artists. Covering Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and beyond, the essays attest to the importance of women's contributions to the most widespread form of verbal art in Africa.

Women's Voices from West Africa

Women's Voices from West Africa PDF Author: Aissata G. Sidikou
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253356709
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Aissata G. Sidikou and Thomas A. Hale reveal the world of women's songs and singing in West Africa. This anthology—collected from 17 ethnic traditions across West Africa—introduces the power and beauty of the intimate expressions of African women. The songs, many translated here for the first time, reflect all stages of the life cycle and all walks of life. They entertain, give comfort and encouragement, and empower other women to face the challenges imposed on them by their families, men, and society. Women's Voices from West Africa opens a new window on women's changing roles in contemporary Africa.

Women Writing Africa

Women Writing Africa PDF Author: Esi Sutherland-Addy
Publisher: Feminist Press
ISBN: 9781558615007
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
A major literary and scholarly work that transforms perceptions of West African women's history and culture.

Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-drumming Community in Ghana

Female Voices from an Ewe Dance-drumming Community in Ghana PDF Author: James M. Burns
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754664956
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
James Burns provides a detailed ethnography of a group of female musicians from the Dzigbordi community dance-drumming club from the rural town of Dzodze, located in South-Eastern Ghana. Dzigbordi is part of a genre known as adekede, or female songs of redress, where women musicians critique gender relations in society. Burns uses audio and video interviews, recordings of rehearsals and performances and detailed collaborative analyses of song texts, dance routines and performance practice to address important methodological shifts in ethnomusicology that outline a more humanistic perspective of music cultures. The book will appeal to those interested in African Studies, Gender Studies and Oral Literature, as well as ethnomusicology and includes a DVD documentary.

Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa PDF Author: Kathleen Sheldon
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442262931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
African women’s history is a vast topic that embraces a wide variety of societies in over 50 countries with different geographies, social customs, religions, and historical situations. Africa is a predominantly agricultural continent, and a major factor in African agriculture is the central role of women as farmers. It is estimated that between 65 and 80 percent of African women are engaged in cultivating food for their families, and in the past that percentage was likely even higher. Thus, one common thread across much of the continent is women’s daily work in their family plot. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on individual African women in history, politics, religion, and the arts; on important events, organizations, and publications; and on topics important to women in general (marriage, fertility, employment) and to African women in particular (market women, child marriage, queen mothers). This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Women in Africa.

Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative

Storytelling: Global Reflections on Narrative PDF Author: Tracy Ann Hayes
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004396403
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
This book focuses on storytelling and human life by exploring the possibilities of narrative approaches across numerous disciplines and in diverse contexts; stories are humanity’s oldest way of making meaning of our past, present and future.

Song Walking

Song Walking PDF Author: Angela Impey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022653815X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Song Walking explores the politics of land, its position in memories, and its foundation in changing land-use practices in western Maputaland, a borderland region situated at the juncture of South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland. Angela Impey investigates contrasting accounts of this little-known geopolitical triangle, offsetting textual histories with the memories of a group of elderly women whose songs and everyday practices narrativize a century of borderland dynamics. Drawing evidence from women’s walking songs (amaculo manihamba)—once performed while traversing vast distances to the accompaniment of the European mouth-harp (isitweletwele)—she uncovers the manifold impacts of internationally-driven transboundary environmental conservation on land, livelihoods, and local senses of place. This book links ethnomusicological research to larger themes of international development, environmental conservation, gender, and local economic access to resources. By demonstrating that development processes are essentially cultural processes and revealing how music fits within this frame, Song Walking testifies to the affective, spatial, and economic dimensions of place, while contributing to a more inclusive and culturally apposite alignment between land and environmental policies and local needs and practices.

West Africa's Women of God

West Africa's Women of God PDF Author: Robert M. Baum
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017912
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
West Africa's Women of God examines the history of direct revelation from Emitai, the Supreme Being, which has been central to the Diola religion from before European colonization to the present day. Robert M. Baum charts the evolution of this movement from its origins as an exclusively male tradition to one that is largely female. He traces the response of Diola to the distinct challenges presented by conquest, colonial rule, and the post-colonial era. Looking specifically at the work of the most famous Diola woman prophet, Alinesitoué, Baum addresses the history of prophecy in West Africa and its impact on colonialism, the development of local religious traditions, and the role of women in religious communities.

Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women’s Discourses of the Female Body

Postcolonial Hauntologies: African Women’s Discourses of the Female Body PDF Author: Ayo A. Coly
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496211898
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Postcolonial Hauntologies is an interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of critical, literary, visual, and performance texts by women from different parts of Africa. While contemporary critical thought and feminist theory have largely integrated the sexual female body into their disciplines, colonial representations of African women’s sexuality “haunt” contemporary postcolonial African scholarship which—by maintaining a culture of avoidance about women’s sexuality—generates a discursive conscription that ultimately holds the female body hostage. Ayo A. Coly employs the concept of “hauntology” and “ghostly matters” to formulate an explicative framework in which to examine postcolonial silences surrounding the African female body as well as a theoretical framework for discerning the elusive and cautious presences of female sexuality in the texts of African women. In illuminating the pervasive silence about the sexual female body in postcolonial African scholarship, Postcolonial Hauntologies challenges hostile responses to critical and artistic voices that suggest the African female body represents sacred ideological-discursive ground on which one treads carefully, if at all. Coly demonstrates how “ghosts” from the colonial past are countered by discursive engagements with explicit representations of women’s sexuality and bodies that emphasize African women’s power and autonomy.

Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa

Gendered Institutions and Women’s Political Representation in Africa PDF Author: Diana Højlund Madsen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1913441172
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
During the course of the past three decades efforts of democratisation and institutional reforms have characterised the African continent, including demands for gender equality and women's political representation. As a result, some countries have introduced affirmative action measures, either in the aftermath of conflicts or as part of broader constitutional reforms, whereas others are falling behind this fast track to women's political representation. Utilising a range of case studies spanning both the success cases and the less successful cases from different regions, this work examines the uneven developments on the continent. By mapping, analysing and comparing women's political representation in different African contexts, this book sheds light on the formal and informal institutions and the interplay between these that are influencing women's political representation and can explain the development on women's political representation across the continent and present perspectives on an 'African feminist institutionalism'.