Carnival of the Old Coast

ISBN-10: 0865434808
ISBN-13: 9780865434806
Category: Poetry / General
Pages: 98
Language: English
Published: 1995
Publisher: Africa World Press, Incorporated
Author: Lemuel A. Johnson

Description

The concern in Johnson's Sierra Leone Trilogy has been to return to, and re-frame, the years from the 1500s to the 1960s, and to do so by deploying con/texts in the Sierra Leone Krio heritage - with its remarkably elastic history of scatteration and re-grouping; its canon of anguish that is as much a tale from Shakespeare as it is a bolero for Quasimodo. In brief, Carnival of the Old Coast, Hand on the Navel, and Highlife for Caliban all negotiate, traffic and trade as necessary, into a quite complex cultural genealogy. It is a genealogy that is as much Yoruba as it is Afro-Portuguese; as much Liverpool and Hull as Nova Scotia and Jamaican Maroon. The product, too, of the coast of the Carolinas and of the Gullah islands, this carnival of a Krio identity is here answerable to its ancestry in Afro-Christian Shout as it is to the call of the Afro-Islamic Aku Krio mosques of Fourah Bay in the Eastend of Freetown. The result is "pedigree, with weight" - Hagar and Othello; Arabia Felix and Calypso and Buenos Aires. In Johnson's voice, it produces a strange familiarily - like "great hatred in a small house" - and a certain "defiance of figures in wood": "Call us Ishmael (if you please) or Barrabas/Habibatu or Zenobia. Cain, too./we take a count in figure and in sum, /no matter how hissed as injury into the ear./we barter coinage for coin/ and do not sink".

Get the book

Similar books

Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (Second Edition)
By Polly Pattullo
The book shows how Caribbean societies are corrupted by tourism and its culture turned into floorshow parody. This new edition has been extensively revised and updated.
Historical Dictionary of Sierra Leone
By Magbaily C. Fyle
This new edition is based primarily on recent research on the country, but covers the earliest known inhabitants, the colonial era, and the period of independence including the very confusing turmoil of the recent past.
In and Around the Arena: The 100-Year History of the Fortuna Rodeo
By Alex Service, Susan J.P. O’Hara
... some of the nostalgia for “the good old days” that may help explain the continuing appeal of the Fortuna Rodeo. ... note “The secretary was instructed to tender a new contract to Gold Coast Shows for the carnival for the 1971 Rodeo.
Music, Performance and African Identities
By Toyin Falola, Tyler Fleming
42 Her statement is affirmed after having looked at the formation of the concert party in the Gold Coast and the Coon carnival in Cape Town. On the other hand, Veit Erlmann considers the studies of popular performance as “one of the ...
Scorpion: From Detective to Soldier to Spy
By John Diamond
The international motor racing carnival on the Gold Coast and the Bathurst motor racing weekend in regional New South Wales. And finally the famous horse race, the Melbourne Cup at Flemington Race Course on the first Tuesday of November ...
The Gold Coast Transformed: From Wilderness to Urban Ecosystem
By Tor Hundloe, Bridgette McDougall, Craig Page
Chapter 8, by Shelley Burgin and Daryl McPhee, takes us to the Gold Coast freshwater environment, rather than the specifically ... Itinerant carnival operators turned up at popular camping beaches such as Southport, Burleigh Heads and ...
Big River Racing: A History of the Clarence River Jockey Club 1861-2001
By John O'Hara
... 161 , 180 , 186 Carlill , R 83 Carlton , John 157 , 221 , 222 Carmont , WH 66 Carrs Creek , NSW 11 , 31 , 40 , 53 , 164 , 178 Carruthers , Joseph 64 , 70 Casino Cup carnival 129 Casino Jockey Club 100 , 103 , 114 Casino , NSW 6 ...
Gold Coast Diasporas: Identity, Culture, and Power
By Walter C. Rucker
Akyem, 51, 53, 242n52; on classes of Gold Coast peoples, 94; on Denkyira, 54–55; on oathing ceremonies, 91; on regional languages ... Thomas, 135 Carnival, 156, 163 cassava farming, processing, and preparation, 218, 268n28 Chambas, 132.
Lonely Planet Chicago
By Lonely Planet, Karla Zimmerman, Sara Benson
Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Chicago is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries await you.
Kakaamotobe: Fancy Dress Carnival in Ghana
By Courtnay Micots
This book examines how Fancy Dress in Ghana voices public commentary on pop culture; social and cultural mores; and local, national, and international politics and economy.