African Roots in Jamaica - Art

I've somewhat regained my composure since my last heel-clicking post in which I raved about how much African aesthetic is infused into Jamaican life. You'd think I was visiting the island for the first time, even though I was born here and have barely set foot anywhere else since that sun-hot Wenesday in 1972.

The thing is this; African retentions in our culture sometimes get compartmentalized and thought of in ways that seem distant. Yes, over 90% of Jamaicans are black and are direct desendants of the people who came from West Africa, so when we look at each other we see our ancestry. The other place we could look for our ancestry in everyday life is in our language, but then we often do not appreciate the extent to which the language we speak everyday was shaped by West African languages. If most of us were to be honest, we probably believe with the rest of the world that patois is really just broken English, not much more. Otherwise we'd be able to pinpoint, not merely one or two words that originated from West African languages, we'd be able to show that these languages are fundamental in some way to the structure or the sound of Jamaican patois. But most of us cannot really do this, or at least, I couldn't, until recently.

So when we think of Africa, we generally tend to look to the Maroons in Accompong or Nanny Town. Or to a documentary or JIS feature we see on TV on Augus' morning. Or we take our children to cultural events like Fi Wi Sinting, or to museums. But my excitement stems from the realization that Africa is not as far away as that. It only takes a kench of awareness to see that she has as much influence on our daily life as England, North America and yes, China.

In this post I scratch the surface a little about African continuities in our art and show that West African art is very much part of our daily lives.

The adinkra symbol you see to the top left is called the Nyame Dua (God's Tree). To some West Africans, it signifies God's omnipresence and eternal nature. This Nyame, is the Asante God Onyankopong, is still venerated by the Jamaican Maroons and is commonly known as Nyangkipong. I'm not sure whether there is an association in meaning with the maroon village called Accompong. This symbol is replicated on gate after gate and on the grillwork on verandahs and carports all over Jamaica. Like here:

Another motif, the Sankofa is a stylization of a bird of the same name. You can see from the drawing beside the symbol here:

This bird is shown turning its head towards its tail, signifying that it is good to turn to the past and learn from it, as Del rightly noted in her comment on the last post. This is also a commonly used motif in Jamaican grillwork.

I've also noticed these other motifs below in our grill work as well as wall moldings.

They all have their profound meanings and can be seen in West Africa, notably on fabrics, but also on walls, jewellery and else where.

This must have been the symbol of excellence to which Flygirl referred in her comment on the last post:

Patricia Bryan, in an African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica article, notes that there is no available evidence that the meanings of these motifs have been retained in Jamaica. But she suggests that their prevalence in architectural decorations may well be a case of reinforcement of a predisposition. The andrinka symbols would have been used by the slaves who did not only plant sugar cane but they also built furniture, plantation houses, roads and bridges. Our craftsmen gravitated toward an art form which they saw around them, and for which they had an innate taste.

But this takes me to another aspect of the retention of African art in Jamaica which I hope to write about soon: reinforcement of a predisposition may be one of the processes by which we kept these symbols in use, but there is aslo that process which we cannot account for- intuition. Visionaries like Kapo and some other self-taught artists actually intuited the principles West African art. It's amazing that nobody taught them, they never went to Africa, they never saw samples of the art they created. Yet the work they produced might well have been made in West Africa by a West African born person. That's something to write about. More soon.

Acknowledgement: I drew on my reading of ACIJ Research Review November 1, 1984 in writing this post.