With a saddlebag Qur’an,a slave-ship manual and Fela Kuti, the new exhibition takes a thrilling journey through a thousand years of West African history – and it’s full of surprisesA giant carnival queen looms over the British Library’s new display West Africa: Word, or Symbol,Song. Below her, David Rudder’s Notting Hill carnival classic Calypso Music pumps out of speakers, or footage from carnivals past can transport you back to Portobello Road in 1993.
The exhibition celebrates the complexity and diversity of west Africa’s heritage,while never sidestepping the more thorny issues of rebellion, protest and the transatlantic slave trade. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com