Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:23:02.591Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religion and ethnicity in the arts of a Limba Chiefdom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Simon Ottenberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article examines the major visual and performing arts of one society and explores what changes have occurred to them over roughly one hundred years as a consequence of external religious and ethnic forces. This is a holistic, processual view of a people's arts in a particular region, providing a model to balance the excellently detailed studies of specific art forms which now exist for Africa. Using a holistic view we will raise certain issues concerning changes in African art. One of the most significant is the interrelationship of ethnicity and religion. Scholars (Bravmann, 1974, 1983; Prussin, 1986) have written extensively on the influence of Islam on African art, but have not seriously raised the question of the ethnic factor associated with Islam, which is equally important. In the case of Islam and its carriers there is a delicate intermixing of religion and ethnicity which is at issue and needs exploration. Further, the holistic approach employed here brings to the fore the reasons behind the wide range of responses to change of the various art forms of a people. Why do some syncretise, some disappear and others remain unchanged? Again, the holistic view allows us to ask to what extent the arts of a people merely reflect forces of change, or do they play roles in leading and directing it? The approach requires considerable background history, which is presented below.

Résumé

Religion et ethnicité dans les arts d'une souverainete Limba

Les changements dans les principales formes des arts visuels et performants de la souveraineté Limba de Wara Wara Bafodea dans le nord de la Sierra Léone au cours des cent dernières années sont examinés afin d'évaluer l'influence des facteurs religieux et ethniques ainsi que les caractéristiques urbaines. On a trouvé que certaines formes d'art visuel qui ont pénétré de l'extérieure ont réussi à se syncrétiser avec les formes Limba mais des types musicaux d'origine extérieure existent parallèlement avec les types Limba sans syncrétisme proche. La souveraineté est considérée être influencée à la fois par les forces culturelles de la Guinée au nord et par le sud Limba, Temne et les facteurs urbains de la Sierra Léone en provenance du sud. Malgré l'isolation apparente de la souveraineté, elle a été soumise à de nombreuses influences externes dans les arts, qui sont en grande partie dans une situation peu consolidée, avec de nombreux courants artistiques distincts, représentant diverses forces culturelles et religieuses qui reflètent la complexité de la situation religieuse et ethnique dans la souveraineté d'aujourd'hui. L'importance de distinguer les facteurs ethniques des facteurs religieux dans les changements artistiques est soulignée alors que cela a été parfois négligé par les érudits.

Type
Men at ease
Information
Africa , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , October 1988 , pp. 437 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atherton, John. 1969. ‘The Later Stone Age of Sierra Leone’, PhD thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon.Google Scholar
Atherton, John 1972. ‘Excavation at Kamabai and Yagala rock shelters, Sierra Leone’, West African Journal of Archaeology, 2: 39–74.Google Scholar
Bazin, Hippolyte. 1906. Dictionnaire bambara-français: précédé d'un abregé bambara. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Biebuyck, Daniel P. 1973. Lega Culture: art, initiation and moral philosophy among a Central African people. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bravmann, Rene A. 1974. Islam and Tribal Art in West Africa, African Studies Series 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bravmann, Rene A. 1983. African Islam. Washington, DC and London: Smithsonian Institution Press and Ethnographica.Google Scholar
Davenport, Peter, 1984. ‘Form and Structure in Kondi Music of Northeastern Sierra Leone: Kututeng music among the Limba’, MA thesis, Program of Ethnomusicology, University of Washington.Google Scholar
DeCorse, Christopher R. 1983. ‘Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau: archaeological research in northwestern Sierra Leone’, MA thesis, University of California at Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Doi, A. R. I. 1976. ‘Islam in Iboland’, Islam and the Modern Age, 7 (1): 1–28.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1965. Survey of the Limba People of Sierra Leone, Great Britain, Department of Technical Co-operation, Overseas Research Publication No. 8. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1967. Limba Stories and Story-Telling. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Fyfe, C. A. 1962. A History of Sierra Leone. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fyle, C. Magbaily. 1976. ‘The Kabala complex: Koranko-Limba relationships in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’, in Arthur Abraham, Topics in Sierra Leone History, pp. 104–17. Freetown: Leone Publishers.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1979a. The Solima Yalunka Kingdom: pre-colonial politics, economics and society. Freetown: Nyakon Publishers.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1979b. Almamy Suluku of Sierra Leone, c. 1820–1906: the dynamics of political leadership in pre-colonial Sierra Leone. London: Evans.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1979c. Oral Tradition of Sierra Leone. Niamey: Organization of African Unity, Centre for Linguistic and Historical Studies by Oral Tradition.Google Scholar
Finnegan, R. H. 1980. The History of Sierra Leone: a concise introduction. London: Evans.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest, 1981. Muslim Society, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodge, Carleton T. (ed.) 1971. Papers on the Manding, Indiana University Publications, African Series, vol. 3. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hopewell, James F. 1958. ‘Muslim Penetration into French Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia before 1850’, PhD thesis, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Howard, Allen M. 1972. ‘Big Men, Traders and Chiefs: power, commerce and spatial change in the Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Lamb, Venice, and Lamb, Alastair. 1980. ‘The classification and distribution of horizontal treadle looms in sub-Saharan Africa’, in Dale Idiens and Ponting, K. G. (eds.), Textiles of Africa, pp. 22–62. Bath: Pasold Research Fund.Google Scholar
Lamb, Venice 1984. Sierra Leone Weaving. Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books.Google Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia. 1968. Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa: a study of Islam in the Middle Volta Basin in the pre-colonial period. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Levtzion, Nehemia (ed.). 1979. Conversion to Islam. New York: Holmes & Meier.Google Scholar
Lipschutz, Mark Ross. 1973. ‘Northeast Sierra Leone after 1884: response to the Samorian invasions and British colonialism’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of California at Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Nunley, John. 1987. Moving the Face of the Devil: art and politics in urban West Africa. Urbana, 111.: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon. 1971. ‘A Moslem Igbo village’, Cahiers d'études africaines’, 11 (2): 31–60.Google Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon 1983. ‘Artistic and sex roles in a Limba chiefdom’, in Oppong, Christine (ed.), Male and Female in West Africa, pp. 76–90. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon 1989. ‘The beaded bands of Bafodea’, African Arts, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Ottenberg, Simon n.d. ‘Design and song in a Limba chiefdom’, unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
van Oven, Cootje. 1981. An Introduction to the Music of Sierra Leone. Wassenaar, Netherlands: the author.Google Scholar
Picton, John, and Mack, John. c. 1979. African Textiles: looms, weaving and design. London: British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
Prussin, Labelle. 1986. Hatumere: Islamic design in West Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sanneh, Lamin O. 1979. The Jakhanke: the history of an Islamic clerical people of the Senegambia. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Schildkrout, Enid. 1978. People of the Zongo: the transformation of ethnic identities in Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, David E. 1971. ‘The Development of Islam in Sierra Leone During the Nineteenth Century’, PhD thesis, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Skinner, David E. 1976. ‘Islam and education in the colony and hinterland of Sierra Leone (1750–1914)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 10 (3): 499–520.Google Scholar
Skinner, David E. 1978. ‘Mande settlement and the development of Islamic institutions in Sierra Leone’, International Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies, 11 (1): 32–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, David E. 1987. ‘Sierra Leone relations with the northern rivers and the influence of Islam in the colony’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Denver, 21 November 1987.Google Scholar
Thomas, A. C. 1983. The Population of Sierra Leone: an analysis of population census data. Freetown: Demographic Research and Training Unit, Fourah Bay College.Google Scholar
Trimingham, J. Spencer. 1959. Islam in West Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trimingham, J. Spencer and Fyfe, Christopher. 1960. ‘The early expansion of Islam in Sierra Leone’, Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, 2 (2): 33–40.Google Scholar
Vansina, J. 1984. Art History in Africa: an introductory method. London: Longman.Google Scholar