UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
African Dance in the Diaspora Bibliography [Cochran]

African Dance in the Diaspora Bibliography [Cochran]

Date: Fri, 10 Jun 1994 05:50:56 -0700 (PDT) From: "Wendy E. Cochran" Subject: biblio

Note: The annotations really help describe how the girls went about their research. The best part was taking them all through San Francisco to meet and study with their primary resource teachers while we went to Sacramento to compete.

BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY RESOURCES:

INTERVIEWS:

Christian, Winston. Telephone Interview. 11 February 1994.

Mr. Christian helped us to enrich our knowledge of Jamaica and Trinidad. He spoke with us about the Maroon people of the Jamaican mountains and discussed the practice of Judaism amongst a lot of the Jamaicans. He shared resources in his personal library with us and recommended books for further research.

Cochran, Wendy Ellen. Personal Interview. Continuos Instruction.

Mrs. Cochran is our daily dance teacher at Gompers Secondary School. Mrs. Cochran has taught dance for 22 years and has trained at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York. She traveled to Tijuana and San Francisco to study with Cuban, Haitian, Senegalese and Brazilian dance masters to ensure accurate choreography for our project..

Diouf, Zak. Telephone Interview. 11 February 1994.

Dr. Diouf is a great pioneer in the African traditional arts including singing, drumming, and dancing. He is from Senegal and is considered a master drummer. He gave Nafi her African name. He also took the time to grant us an extensive telephone interview to verify facts about the Wolousodong.

Gomez, Carlos. Telephone Interview. 2 April 1994.

Mr. Gomez helped us to continue our research on Afro-Cuban religion. Mr. Gomez is very high up in the Santeria religion. His job is to teach others about the religion, that is what a Babalawo does. He told us about how in this particular religion has kept a lot more then other religions. This is because a lot of the slaves were taken from the Yoruba speaking tribes in Nigeria.

Moore, Omar. Personal Interview. 4 January 1994 and 20 January 1994.

Mr. Moore is a professional drummer who helps teach Mrs. Cochran's Multi-Cultural Dance classes and Mrs. Richardson's (a music teacher at Gompers) music, chorus and band classes. He influenced our research by referring us to Dr. Diouf and he also taught us about the meanings of the dance movements from the Wolousodong. Through Omar's information, we came to realize how the interpretations of the same dance can vary, as in Woulousodong.

Newsome, Dennis. Telephone Interview. 12 January 1994.

Mr. Newsome discussed the migration of Capoeira and Makulele to Brazil from the Umboda tradition in Angola. He described how they masked the fighting with music and dance to hide it from the slave owners. He helped us to see another example of how African culture was preserved even after this huge geographical movement of people during the African Diaspora.

Powers, Sheri. Telephone Interview. 18 March 1994.

Ms. Powers extensive experience as a Samba dancer and her participation in many Carnival activities in the Bay Area were really helpful to us. We interviewed Ms. Powers on the different forms of Samba. She told us about the differences between the original Samba-de- Roda and the Samba done today during Carnival in different parts of Brazil.

Spencer, Steve. Telephone Interview. 11 February 1994.

Mr. Spencer is very familiar with Samba and Carnival in Brazil since he is in a Samba band. He provided us with video tapes of Samba schools and Carnival in Rio, as well as written travel guides and printed information on both Samba and religious Condomble dances of Brazil. Through the videos we were able to visualize the social context Samba is performed in and we got more ideas for the choreography of our dance. Mr. Spencer was extremely helpful in guiding our research.

Watson, Ruth. Telephone Interview. 18 March 1994.

Ms. Watson has traveled and studied extensively in Brazil. She helped translate our "Portuguese" greeting and she described for us what the Samba-de-Roda looks like and told us that it originally had religious significance. Ms. Watson also helped us to understand the fact that there was a mixture of tribes in Brazil during the slave trade and that this was how we ended up with the different forms of Samba like the Bossa-Nova Samba.

SECONDARY RESOURCES

BOOKS:

Barnes, Sandra T. Africa's Ogun Old World and New. United States: Indiana University Press, 1989.

This book told us about how in different parts of the world Ogun is alive, but his name is pronounced differently. We learned that over 70 million people practice the religion and know who Ogun is.

Beckford, Ruth. Katherine Dunham: A Biography. New York: Marcel Dekker Inc., 1979.

Offers more information on the life and travels of Katherine Dunham and her research in Jamaica and Haiti.

Canizares, Raul. Walking With the Night: The Afro-Cuban World of Santeria. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1993.

This book gave us information on the numbers, colors, and herbs of the Orishas. It told us about how the appear and what they are for. Like it told us that Yemaya is the mother of the ocean and that Eleggua is the keeper of the cross roads.

Carter, E.H., G.W. Digby, R.N. Murry. The Story of Our Islands. Thomas Nelson and Sons LTD, 1963.

In this book we were able to learn a lot more about the Caribbean Islands. This book told us about how the Arawak and Carib Indians came to live in the Caribbean Islands. This book also taught us some of the things that they are known for.

Davidson, Basil. Africa In History. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1961.

We found out about the background of the African peoples and their cultures. This helped to connect some of the cultures of Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil to that of West Africa.

Davidson, Basil. The African Slave Trade. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press and the Little Brown and Co., 1980.

Davidson's book helped us understand more about the slave trade into Brazil by providing us with the years that slaves were brought to Brazil and with the figures of how many were brought. It is from this source that we learned most of the slaves were taken from West Africa.

Dominy, Jeannine. Katherine Dunham: Dancer and Choreographer. United States: Chelsea House Publisher, 1992.

Dominy's book helped enrich our knowledge of Haitian cultural dance and how the dances were brought from one country by Dunham and taught to others. This book influenced us about Haitian dances. Katherine Dunham was instrumental in providing Americans with African based dance information.

Dunham, Katherine. Dances of Haiti. Los Angeles: University of California, 1983.

In this book we learned a little about how Voodoo is practiced in Haiti. It told us a lot about the serpent god Damballa. The author told us that his colors are pale blue and white, also that when you do his dances in a worshipping context that you can get possessed.

Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1969.

Ms. Dunham discusses at great length performing the Yan Va Lou during her initiation ceremony. Her descriptions helped us to perform this dance with a greater understanding of what the movements mean.

Farah, Mounir. World History. Ohio: World History, Glencoe, 1992.

This book told how badly Spain treated the original Cubans and how they suffered from disease and starvation. It was very sad to see how they treated the Indians. It was hard for us to try to picture how badly humans treated one another.

Goldman, Albert. Carnival in Rio. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1978.

The author went to Brazil during carnival and it helped our project by giving us more information about Samba and how it originated. Carnival in Rio taught us that it was during the 1920's that Samba began to make a change into what we see today in the Samba-de-Janeiro.

Haverstock, Nathan A. Cuba Visual Geography Series. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1987.

This book gave a good picture of what the religious cults in Cuba are like, including the usage of the drums. Descriptions of ceremonies and the different drums used for each was very valuable in getting to know the nature of the island's religious practices. We learned that certain rhythms went along with certain dances.

Hoff, Rhoda. African Adventures in Eyewitness History. New York City: Henry Z. Walck, Inc., 1967.

This book helped us focus on the dances and celebrations at African funerals and marriages.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse. New York: Perennial Library, 1990.

This is a story of the authors travels to Haiti and Jamaica. This gave us a better understanding about how it really is.

Jones, Even. Tale of the Caribbean. Bothell, Washington: The Wright Group, 1986.

This is a childrens book that told us stories of Nanny and the fighting Maroons. Also it told us some old wives tales of Jamaica.

Lamb, David. The Africans. New York: Random House, Inc., 1982.

David Lamb gave us a lot of background information, also, on the slave trade. It was interesting to find out that slaves were still being imported legally, after the U.S. Civil War, into Cuba and Brazil. The Africans said that during the three centuries of the slave trade, about 3,000,000 Angolans were taken to Brazil. The reason why a lot of Angolan tradition has been preserved in Brazil became understandable with this figure in mind.

Mannix, Daniel. The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade. New York: The Viking Press, 1962.

Mannix's book told us why slaves were brought to Brazil in the first place- to work on different plantations. They were used to raise sugar, tobacco, cotton, and coffee crops.

Michener, James A. and John Kings. Six Days in Havana. Austin: University of Texas, 1989.

This book traces the slave trade journey from West Africa to Spain. This book provided us with specific dates of when the slaves arrived in Spain and were then transported to Cuba. Information about the prison camps about Spain were saddening and shocking.

Mitchell, Carleton. Isle of the Caribbees. Washington DC: National Geographic Society, 1966.

This book got us started on our Jamaican research since books on this subject are hard to find. We realized that even in remote Caribbean islands the African based religion are alive and well in strikingly similar form to the larger islands of Cuba and Jamaica.

Murry, Joseph M. Santeria. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.

This book gave the updated version of the Cuban religion. It also showed us some of the connections to Africa and some of the other parts of Central and South America.

Simon, Peter and Stephen Davis. Reggae International. New York: Rognen & Bernhard Gymbh & Co., 1982.

This book deals with the Rastafarian culture of Jamaica. Its pictures provided valuable visual aids for what the Caribbean islands look like. Some of our costume ideas and headdresses came from the illustrations in this book.

Tanna, Laura. Jamaican Folk Tales and Oral Histories. Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica Publications Limited, 1984.

Like the African tradition of storytelling, Tanna's book provides great information about the Maroons of Jamaica and the tales of Nanny and Cudjoe, the strong leaders of the fighting Maroons, also brother and sister. The songs are combined with Jamaican folklore. The book also has many stories from many elders that are still alive. The author went to Jamaica to study the folklore. She was able to walk away with many interesting stories.

MUSIC:

Brooks, Marie. Ethnic Dances of Black People Around the World. Audio tape. United States: Kimbo Educational Records, 1972.

This record anthology provided us with the music for Yan Va Lou, Samba and Calypso. This record set came with a booklet that had helpful cultural descriptions of the dances along with suggested steps.

NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS:

Bahia Tourism Authority. Bahia: A Tourist Guide. N.p., N.d.

This tourist guide gave us a clearer picture of what Brazil is like- it's culture, land, and people. This brochure also talked about Brazil's famous Carnival in Rio de Janeiro and how often it is celebrated. It also talked about how the people of Brazil give the same type of devotion to catholic saints as to the Candomble orishas.

Henstell, Bruce. "Brazil: Salvador Draws Visitors." Los Angeles Times 9 September 1984, sec. Travel.

Bruce Henstell's article talked about the whole atmosphere in Salvador, the food, the people, and it's origins. African slaves were used to build the city and to work on the sugar plantations. He also discussed the Carnival that brings people to Brazil from all around the world.

Johnson, Ben. "Island Port: A Haunting Reminder of Slave Trade." San Diego Union, 6 February 1994.

This article was a major motivation for the theme of our project. This is how we got the idea of having an ancestor dancing with her long-lost descendants.

VIDEO TAPES:

The Best of Bahia. Videocassette. Steve Spencer. N.d,

This video gave us a good concept of what Carnival is like and gave us ideas for our choreography. In this video, we were also able to see all the different Samba schools during Carnival in Rio. Affects that demonstrated different gods (orishas) in the Afro-Brazilian pantheon were prominent floats in the Carnival extravaganza. Again great costume ideas were found in this personnel video.

Jamaican Dance Theatre. Dance and the Child International Conference. July of 1990.

This film was brought back by Mrs. Cochran from a conference in Utah. We helped choreograph our Calypso dance and learned about the islands language spoken called "Patois." We were also able to get information about what life is like in Jamaica. It was very interesting.

Black Orpheus. N.p., 1950.

An old movie telling the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Euridyce through Brazilian Samba. This movie gave us both costume and choreographic ideas. It also taught us a little about the religious beliefs.

Afro-Cuban Dance Classes. Raymond Crawford. April 1993.

This video provided us with clear information on the dances done for Elegua and Yemanya in the context of Cuba. This helped us to choreograph our Cuban portion with cultural accuracy.

Lazaro Ros and Ogun. N.P, N.d.

This video told us the myths about of the Cuban gods Elegua, Ogun, Oshun, Oya, Shango, and Ochossi. This film helped to tie together the dances that we do, and why the movements are the way they are. Since Lazaro Ros is a leader in the Santeria religion, his descriptions of how the religion is practiced was very interesting. The video provided unusual footage of religious ceremonies called Tokai's where celebrations in honor of certain orishas (god, goddesses) were held.

Conjunto Folkorico de National de Cuba. N.p., N.d.

This document is about some of the different orishas in Cuba. It didn't only focus on Santeria though, it went into the ancient religion of Apallo. We learned that this is a very old religion that is heavily involved with witchcraft. It is a very interesting religion.

Dancing: New Worlds, New Forms. Ruth Ann Barnes, Director. Thirteen: WNET, Educational Resources Center, New York. 1993.

This video told us about how the slave traders could not keep the music away from the slaves. It helped us to visualize the ritual fusion that accrued between the African religion and Catholicism.


Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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