Learning the Ghana ways through Nani

Today in class we had the opportunity to learn the process of Batik.  Nani Agbeli explained how the process worked and what some of the symbols meant.  I thought Nani was a great teacher, instead of just standing at the front of the class lecturing about the process and us taking notes on what he talked about we actually got to do the Batik process.  The first thing we did was choose a stamp and Nani expressed how important it was to understand the meaning of our stamp and to choose something that represented us as a person.  The next process was to sketch a design for our cloth.  Then we needed to put the stamp on our cloth my dipping our wooden stamp into hot wax.  Nani shared with us that it helps make the shake the excess wax off of the stamp and then press it on the cloth immediately.  If you wait to decide where your stamp is going to go the wax will dry on the stamp and you will have to repeat the process again.  That is why it is important to have an idea of the design that you are trying to achieve before you start dipping your stamp into the wax. 

            After we were done stamping our cloth we then folded the cloth whichever way we wanted, we then got the choice of dying our cloth in red, blue, or purple.  The next process is removing the wax.  First we have to let the cloth dry from the dye. We then rinsed the cloth in very hot water to remove the wax and then scrub the wax off of the fabric. The next process is laying a piece of cloth on the table then laying a piece of newspaper on top of that and then laying the wax cloth on top of the newspaper and then another newspaper on top of that.  The purpose of the newspaper is to soak up the wax from the cloth that we designed.  I’m really happy with how my design turned out.

On Thursday September 8, 2011 I attended  the Nani Agbeli Drum and Dance Performance in Maucker Union.  At first I thought we were just going to listen to a lecture about Ghana drumming and dance, however I was highly mistaken.  Nani began by giving a short performance on the drums.  While he was drumming I noticed the rhythm and his reactions to the rhythm.  Nani seemed to be “feeling the rhythm.”  Throughout his performance Nani showed many different emotions while he was drumming.  At one point I noticed happiness then the next I noticed anger in his face.  He made different facial expressions and did different movement with his head and his arms.  The drumming started out slow but then the rhythm picked up.  After his drumming performance Nani performed a dance for us that lasted almost ten minutes.  The dance included many different techniques involving your whole body.  Some specific movements I remember were actions that looked like he was praying to a god by kneeling to the floor and on the opposite end of the spectrum he did a toe touch a few times throughout the dance.  He incorporated the audience by going around and speaking to them in his native language, however we were not sure what he was saying he tried using hand motions and actions to get us to understand.

            We got a chance to learn the dance that he showed us.  At first I thought I was going to be really uncomfortable, but Nani made it really fun.  He taught us that the word dance is often associated with feeling uncomfortable so if you call them movements people will feel less uncomfortable.  The dance was a lot harder than I was expecting.  It incorporates all the muscles in your body.  I had a lot of fun learning this ways of the dance.

            Nani explained to us that there are two performances one is used to prepare for war and the other is just for tourists.  Out of the two experiences that I was a part of this week I think my favorite would have to be textile workshop because it was such a hands on activity.  Learning about the different textiles in class was helpful with the background information before Nani’s arrival but I think the workshop really helped me grasp the whole idea of it.  I learned how important it is to the peoples in the Ghana area and why they take it so seriously.  Making these textiles takes a lot of time and effort.  Many of the people make these textiles for a living.  By learning the dance, the drumming and the textiles I think it helped me see how the peoples of Ghana live and that learning about the little things that go along with these examples help you understand their lifestyle a little bit better.

            I’m a firm believer in everything has a purpose and I think that the purpose of the textiles and the performances is to show other peoples how the peoples of Ghana represent themselves.

Intriguing Information about the Dogon

Coming into the class of Arts of Africa I didn’t know much about Africa in general, let alone about anything to do with Art in Africa.  During the first week of class we learned about a group of peoples called the Dogon.  With this being the first topic of discussion in class I quickly became captivated in the topic.  Information that stood out to me in the classroom lecture and the required reading for the week seemed to be based around three things­­– sculpture, architecture, and masks.

Sculpture:

The piece of sculpture that stood out to me the most was the Seated Couple that was made sometime between the 16^th and the 19^th century.  It was made of wood and metal.  The most obvious thing I noticed right away was clearly the two figures sitting beside each other, but after studying the image I noticed this sculpture had much more to it than that.  The two figures are almost identical to one other besides the fact of one being male and one being female.  The male is seated on the right side of the woman with his arm around the woman’s neck.  One thing I learned from the reading was the purpose of having the man’s hand placed on his privates is to connect the thoughts of procreative powers or fertility, while the woman has a child on her back to show her role as a nurturing mother.  The man also carries a quiver, which is a portable case for holding arrows to show his role as a hunter or a warrior.  Another noticeable feature of this sculpture is the geometric shapes carried throughout this piece the cylindrical neck, legs, arms, and body and elongated oval faces all connect together to make this artwork.  The stool the couple is sitting on went unnoticed until our lecture in class when I learned the importance of the stool.   The stool represents the “tree of life” and also refers to the support of the couple’s ancestors.

Architecture:

The Granary Door is the piece of architecture that I thought was the most mesmerizing, not that all Dogon architecture isn’t interesting but I thought that this work had much more details that told the story of the Dogon better than the others.  This is a matter of my opinion of course.  At first, I had no idea what a granary was until in class we discussed that the purpose of a granary was to store goods, money, food and other important objects in them.  Another thing I learned about the granaries is that they are separated into male and female granaries.  The male granaries are usually used to store grain, while the women granaries are used to store jewelry or cotton.  Artwork on the door include lizards, birds, human figures, breasts, and geometric motifs.  The reason the granary doors interested me was because each door is different; no two doors are the same.

Masks:

Out of the three main topics of the Dogan, masks are by far the most interesting to me.   There are many different masks such as; Awa “The Great Mask”, the Sirige, and the Kanaga just to name a few.  The mask that I thought was the most interesting was the Sirige.  All of these masks are used to preform dances to remember those who passed away in their families.  The Sirige is the visual representative of the Great Mask.  It is painted in grid-like motifs with crossroads, which is said to represent the crossroad between life and death.  The painted rectangles on the Sirige is said to represent the different generations of a family.  The mask is several meters in length, during the dance the dancers jump and make rotating movements with the head forwards, backwards, and sideways making it very difficult that require a physical strength that not all dancers possess.  One of the most interesting things I learned about the masks, besides the make-up of them and the background information on them is that in the present day they have two different performaces.  One is normally for the tourists, while the other is the actual symbolic dance preformed in private or secluded with the Dogon.

The three of these key factors tied in to show me a little bit more about the Dogon and gave me a little bit better of an understanding on a small part of African culture and African Art.  The textbook allowed me learn some basic knowledge on the Dogon and did a good job at explaining the key words, however I did look other background information on the Dogon beyond what the textbook described.