Well of Souls by Kristina Gaddy

Author:Kristina Gaddy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

This eighteenth-century painting with the inscription “Île de Saint Domingue: Vue du Cap de la Fossette” shows a man playing a banza—similar in size to the one in the South Carolina watercolor—during a dance at the burial ground outside Le Cap. Etude Tajan

In his research into Haiti and its revolution, Schœlcher may have read about the banza in Moreau de Saint-Méry’s or Descourtilz’s books. He had also read about the kora, as well as the koonting, “a sort of guitar with three strings,” described in Mungo Park’s book about his trip to West Africa from 1795 to 1797. Park’s basic description of a guitar-like instrument with three strings seems similar enough to a banjo, and perhaps if Schœlcher hadn’t seen a konting (as it is more commonly spelled) in a museum, private collection, or an engraving, he might have thought that the instrument he saw in Haiti was the instrument Park described. The banza had four strings, three long and one short, and could reasonably be described as guitar-like, since it was a plucked instrument about the size of a small guitar. Schœlcher had read Park’s book because he wanted proof that Africans had culture, and what he saw or chose to see in Haiti proved his point. Perhaps he thought that bringing the banza home to France could prove that not only did the people of Haiti have a culture, but that it connected back to Africa.11

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.