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Books by Peter Eric Adotey Addo
How
the Spider Became Bald: Folktales and Legends from West Africa
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Talking Drums An Anthology of Poetry
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Origins Of African American
Spiritualism
By Peter Eric Adotey Addo
It was a very typical African afternoon, the
sun was high, hot, and muggy. People were everywhere in the
village square under the few coconut trees. As the drums began
to beat, suddenly people could be seen running and hurrying to
the square from every direction. There seemed to be an air of
expectancy. Something was happening and once in a while there
was a loud noise from the crowd.
But this was no play. It was not even a
political rally. No one seemed curious because everybody knew
what was happening, for that moment it was a sensational
happening of great importance. Now as one looked one could see a
tall dark skinned man in the center of a human circle wearing
only a white waist cloth covered with white clay. He also wore
several talismans around his neck, ankles, and arms. Now he
gyrates in circles and steps as if walking on fire. The drums
beat and several women in white, who seem to be his assistants,
begin to feel his movements as if he is in fact talking with
them.
These are the Okomfo, and one by one they
stand up and raise their hands. The right hand is lifted and
then stretched up and forward with the second and third fingers
pointed to the dancer, who by this time is in a frenzy. He is
the most revered priest of the Klote Lagoon the keeper of the
oral traditions, the interpreter of the gods, who knows all
things present and in the future.
The people shout in fear, admiration, and
respect. Now his eyes are focused on the crowd and his chest is
wet and the drops of sweat shine on him like little stars at
night. He begins to move towards the audience and now he
displays his knowledge handed to him through the years. He takes
a walk and as if he is a lion, and then a bull. The audience now
in fear and anticipation moves back.
The priest shouts and does several
somersaults and waves his lion’s tail, the Awuja, to emphasize
his power. He jumps high. The great fetish is now being
possessed by the great Lagoon Spirit. Now he moves around and
his eyes dilate, he now speaks in a tongue that no one
understands.
The Okomfo bring him a potion to drink in a
special bowl and they dance around him, moving back and forth .
Now the high priest is in full possession of the Spirit of the
ancestors and he waves his lion’s tail, the Awuja, towards his
audience. Now whoever he points to is automatically possessed
and moves into the circle and dances without hesitation.
This begins to take hold of the audience and
soars like a wind through it. Some are dancing in a frenzy and
tearing off their clothes. The women priests move in to make
sure that no one is hurt. The possession of the spirit is no
respecter of persons. It works and subdues any and all.
The priest who is considered the great and
only true mediator between men and the gods is also the mediator
between the family and the ancestors, between the weak and the
strong. He will pour libation for the possessed to help them
maintain a proper connection with their dead ancestors. They
will have to return later with food, goats, and other tokens of
respect and hospitality and then perform the proper rituals as
mandated by the Holy Priest who in his possession by the spirits
has seen the destiny of the possessed who were overcome by the
spirit.
This is the ultimate spirituality; for in
African traditional life spirituality is the foundation of
one’s being. One’s destiny is bound up in it from the time
one is born to the time one dies. And through this ritual of
spiritualization the gods are able to transfer a sacred
consciousness to the High Priest who can then share it with the
people . Hence the priest in his state of spirituality is able
to help to ensure that the people are in balance with the gods,
the ancestors, and other living persons, families, and nature.
The desecration of Africa in the past by the
Western European powers seriously and adversely affected the
traditional cultures of the indigenous African people and in
consequence many traditional beliefs, social values, customs,
and rituals were demeaned or disvalued as “pagan” or
“superstitious.” True culture is the what and the how of a
peoples’ creative survival, and the introduction of European
Christianity separated the indigenous Africans from the ancient
roots of their traditions and their identity.
Traditional African religion is centered
around the existence of one Supreme High God. However, the
Europeans who spread Christianity in Africa never understood or
properly appreciated the African’s own conception of the Great
Creator. They saw no similarity between the God they preached
and the African’s own belief in the One Supreme God and
creator who was king, Omnipotent, Omniscient, the Great Judge,
Compassionate, Holy and Invisible, Immortal and
Transcendent.
The traditional African belief is that the
Great One brought the divinities into being. He, therefore, is
the maker and everything in heaven and on earth owe their origin
to Him alone. He is the Great king above all Kings and cannot be
compared in majesty. He is above all majesties and divinities.
He dwells everywhere. Thus He is omnipotent because He is able
to do all things and nothing can be done nor created apart from
Him. He is behind all achievements.
He alone can speak and accomplish his words.
Therefore there is no room for failure. He is Absolute, all-wise
Omniscient, all Seeing, and all Knowing. He knows all things and
so no secrets are hid from Him. If there is rain it is God who
wills it and if the fish do not run it is by His will. This
Great Creator is the final Judge of all things, but he is able
to be compassionate and merciful. He can look kindly and most
mercifully on the suffering of man and is able to smooth the
rough roads through his divine priests and the ancestors.
But the God of the African Traditional
Religion is also a Holy God both ritually and ethically. He is
complete and absolute since He is never involved in any wrong or
immorality. Traditionally Africans believe that the holiness
blinds and cannot be approached by mere mortals. He is a spirit
and thus he is invisible.
How is this God to be approached? He is to be
approached directly and indirectly only through his chosen
priests. Libations or prayers are the only supplications
acceptable.
And they are made by his chosen priests in
traditional rituals and ceremonies. The priest becomes the
keeper of the welfare of the people and subsequently is
entrusted with the sacred rituals of worship. The African,
therefore, does not need to prove the existence of God to
anyone. God is self existing and needs no proof. His existence
is self-evident and even children know by instinct that the
Great One exists. There is a proverb that says, “No one points
out the Great One to a child.”
This God then is given regular and direct
worship at regular intervals and the calendar is kept by
dedicated priests. However, there is continuous indirect worship
on a daily basis through the divinities and ancestors at all
times during the day by each family and individual. The ritual
altars in the African villages are the indigenous peoples’ way
of reaching out and praising the Great Creator. To the Africans
they are the boundary between heaven and earth, between life and
death, between the ordinary and the world of the spirit.
The constant pouring of drink, food, and
sacrificial animal blood makes them sacred and no one would dare
abuse them. Some altars are simple, especially the ones in
homes, but some communities and villages have communal altars
for the entire village as vehicles for channeling the positive
forces from the Great one and the ancestors to the whole
community.
These are some of the components of the
traditional beliefs that the Africans who were brought to the
Americas as slaves brought with them . They arrived in this
hemisphere with the cultural imprint of the traditions of their
elders, and what they retained in fact or symbol is the very
essence of contemporary black spirituality.
Thus there are many common and latent
traditions and cultural behaviors among contemporary African
Americans that could be derived from the traditional African
beliefs and religious systems. Religion today plays such an
important part of the contemporary African America’s life that
it would be hard to ignore the vestiges of African tribal life.
Indeed today, in spite of the hurt and
suffering, the denial of the existence of Black Americans, the
denial of equality in all aspects of American life, the Black
church is still the only viable social institution which is
dominated, operated, and totally controlled by African
Americans. It is a tribal instinct which has survived years of
change and abuse.
The Priest Leader and spokesperson is still
the Black Preacher. The intense need to be free motivated
African Americans to adapt their Christianity to the African way
of life and the tradition continues today. The African
traditional religious life has always considered all life to be
the sphere of the Almighty, the powerful (the Otumfoo), the
Omnipotent (Gye Nyame). He is wise, and all seeing and all
knowing. He is the Great Spider (Ananse Kokroko), and the
Ancient of Days (Odomankoma).
In the private and public life of the African
religious, rites, beliefs, and rituals are considered an
integral part of life. Life then is never complete unless it is
seen always in its entirety. Religious beliefs are found in
everyday life and no distinction is made between the sacred and
the secular. The sacred and the secular are merged in the total
persona of the
individual African. Life is not divided into compartments or
divisions.
Thus there are no special times for worship,
for everyday and every hour is worship time. There are no creeds
written down because through the traditions of the Elders all
creeds and functions are carried in the individual’s heart.
Each individual by his very nature and life style is a living
creed from the time one rises until one retires at night. An
understanding of the basic nature of the African religious
tradition surely illuminates the meaning of spirituality in the
contemporary African American church.
In the Black Church to be full of the Holy
Spirit is being filled with such inspiration that one can feel
as it were the breath of God. It gives one power to do the
impossible. In contemporary language it enables some to “do
great things for God,” to even love your neighbor though that
neighbor may be your enemy or your oppressor. The Holy Spirit
does not free one from harm. Evil may abound and burdens may be
heavy, but the Holy Spirit enables the faithful to say of God:
“Though He slay me; yet will I trust Him.”
Like the biblical Diaspora, the people of the
African Diaspora have deep wellsprings of spirituality for they
too were taken by force, stripped of their dignity and had their
identity blurred by centuries of abuse. But in spite of this
devastation they managed to persevere and to keep in tune with
God, even in a foreign land. Like their African cousins, African
Americans still have extended families, and they still break out
in spontaneous song and joyful music.
And they still drum, even in the church.
Dancing goes with music as it always has in African culture, and
colorful processionals mark the beauty of African American
spiritual life. There is a pronounced and evident African
residual in African American spirituality that gives it the
uniqueness of “soul,” and there is a deft synthesis of the
sacred and the secular in much African American music just as
there is in Africa. Many African American songs reveal the same
improvisations found in the music of Africa and also feature the
same improvisations found in the African village celebrations.
But it is at the Sunday worship service that
the perfect welding of God and man takes place in a formal and
ritualized setting. There in the black churches African American
spirituality achieves its most complete expression in a rich
variety of forms.
When the Great Spirit, by whatever name,
moves among the worshippers some may cry out in release from the
accumulated tribulations of the week gone by. Some may testify,
bearing witness to the goodness and graciousness of God. Fervent
prayer, joyous singing, powerful preaching and the rekindling of
the bonds of love and fellowship bring God and humankind
together in a festival of spiritual celebration. This is the
African American Church at its best. This is African American
spirituality transcending its origins in the regeneration of the
faith that had its origins at Pentecost.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update
25 November 2011
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