African Voices

African Arts, Summer, 2001 by Robert T. Soppelsa

AFRICAN VOICES National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Opened December 1999

I have visited "African Voices" at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History several times since it first opened in December 1999, and I have come away each time with something different. Many of us remember the former Smithsonian exhibition on human culture in Africa, with its pale walls, dusty cases, fluorescent lighting, and yellowing labels. The one that has replaced it is sometimes confusing, often crowded, and always noisy, but it is also informative and exciting. The charge to the committee that developed the new exhibition was to present African culture as grounded in history, but vibrant and complex in its variety. The voices presented here are voices of living Africans, and of African literature and music read and performed by Africans.

Visitors can enter the hall at either end, each of which presents an orientation to the display. The center of the hall is a walkway in which a historical narrative introduces the history of human life on the continent in nine sections, beginning with its first appearance nearly two million years ago and ending in the 1990s. This is the only linear element in an otherwise pod-like presentation in which adjacent areas flow into each other with sometimes bewildering complexity. In fact, the historical narrative occasionally drifts into the other areas, as is the case with the display describing the Benin kingdom's politics and art, adjacent to the Living in Africa area.

The openness of the gallery means that one can hear from one part of the installation to the other, and sound recordings in several places combine with the voices of visitors. The separate parts of the exhibition also interplay visually with each other, as walls are sometimes transparent (vitrines and glass walls), and most opaque walls are really curved screens which permit space to flow from one area to another. Along one side of the hall, discussions of education and the family lead into presentations on toys, cloth, and markets, then on crafts and manufacturing (metals, clay, recycled materials). Along the other side, displays on housing and cities lead into a presentation on Benin as a city and political entity, which becomes a discussion of a major African belief system at the Kongo crossroads (opposite the market crossroads, inviting comparisons between the two) and eventually to discussions of the slave trade and the African Diaspora. The Diaspora is presented as multi faceted, covering Brazilian Candomble, Cuban Santeria, North American political and economic slavery and its aftereffects, and African American life in Washington, D.C. In the adjacent Freedom Theater visitors can watch video presentations on dramatic episodes in the history of Africans in the New World.

Sections on either side of the central Walk Through Time concentrate on particular themes: daily life, economics and work, marriage and family, religion, material culture and entertainment, and the African Diaspora. The African voices presented here are greatly varied and fascinating, belonging to men and women from all parts of the continent. In many instances they are, in fact, recorded voices. Next to a complete, cutaway Somali aqal, for example, a life-size, full-screen video shows a man and woman discussing their memories of life in these portable houses when they were children. Whereas the aqal, made mostly of plant and animal fibers, is protectively encased in a vitrine, the Somalis recorded on celluloid are approachable and alive. Their narratives are remarkably touching. Further along, visitors encounter an example of spirituality in Africa as they walk through the Kongo crossroads (with its clearly marked cross within a circle of inlaid metal on the floor). Eventually one comes to the presentation of African American culture, visiting a Brazilian tenda, or religious supply store, and watching video presentations about African American religious specialists in Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti. Opposite the tenda, one hears recorded statements from Africans about the transatlantic slave trade and its horrors. Like the Somali voices, these are strong and moving.

Other voices take the form of recorded music, wall texts presenting proverbs and poetry, prayers, songs, and spoken or chanted epic narratives. They are for the most part those of living Africans rather than African voices reported by scholars. When we hear from scholars, they are African scholars (e. g., dele jegede on African crafts and aesthetics, Ali Mazrui on African history).

The profusion of sounds and sights in crowded west African markets are particularly well represented. Visitors walk through, re-creations of stalls and tables that look remarkably real. The west African market as a world of women becomes apparent as one proceeds through this section. It opens with Malian mud-dyed cloths, bogolan, which have become well known in the West since Norma Kamali first used bogolan-inspired cloth in her fashion designs. Traditional uses of the cloth, its manufacture by women, and the more recent spread of the art form (including use of the technique by male artists in easel paintings) introduce the complex overlapping of material culture traditions with modern developments and the spread of "world culture." Visitors are then led into the world of machine-printed cloth and its proverbial meanings in contemporary African culture. This presentation is followed by a kola vendor and a yam vendor's stalls and a dry goods shop. Through biographical narratives and large photographic portraits of these individuals, taken while they were at work, the merchants, all women, become complete persons rather than simply agents of commerce. Contextual photographs appear frequently in the exhibition, as do wall texts that refer to African philosophical concepts through quotation of proverbs and poetry.