There's a very interesting article by Robin Denselow in the most recent 'Songlines' magazine about an exhibition entitled 'Reversible Entaglements' on show until mid-April in Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The show collects some of the photographs, artefacts and sound recordings collected by anthropologist, Northcote Whitridge Thomas on his travels through colonial Nigeria and Sierra Leone between 1909 and 1915. N.W.Thomas was employed to gather intelligence for the British Colonial Authorities to help deal with any clashes between the laws they were imposing and local customs. During his 4 tours Thomas took over 7,500 photos and made over 700 recordings of speech and music.
Paul Basu from the Centre for African Studies at SOAS has pulled a collection the artifacts together from the various storage places. He has taken some of the material back to West Africa and the recordings are certainly some of the oldest available in some of these areas. Of course, it opens the discussion of the negative effects of colonialism and that these findings should not be used as a positive outcome of that European colonisation of Africa. Nevertheless the images look fascinating, and I enjoyed the discussion of the images in the video at the foot of this page.
You can hear some of the sound recordings and read information about the wax cylinder sounds here:
Maybe I should risk a trip south in the next couple of months.
Paul Basu from the Centre for African Studies at SOAS has pulled a collection the artifacts together from the various storage places. He has taken some of the material back to West Africa and the recordings are certainly some of the oldest available in some of these areas. Of course, it opens the discussion of the negative effects of colonialism and that these findings should not be used as a positive outcome of that European colonisation of Africa. Nevertheless the images look fascinating, and I enjoyed the discussion of the images in the video at the foot of this page.
You can hear some of the sound recordings and read information about the wax cylinder sounds here:
Maybe I should risk a trip south in the next couple of months.