Oriki for Robert Farris Thompson

Henry John Drewal and C. Daniel Dawson

hen Drewal was invited to write To My Favorite Mambo-Freak a praise piece for Robert Farris Henry John Drewal ompson for this issue celebrating the ieth anniversary of African “Flash” and “Spirit” come to my body-mind when I think Arts, he soon realized it was beyond about Robert Farris ompson, aectionately known as “Bob” or his body-mind-heart, because Bob “Master T.” His is a spirit that ashes with brilliance, depth, and himself is larger than life, a person who has touched and inspired richness. at extraordinary spirit inspired his Yoruba friends to soW many folks in so many walks of life and thought. So Drewal give him a “pet name” that playfully ried on his, calling him contacted his dear friend and colleague C. Daniel Dawson, who “Robert Fáàrí tó ńsùn!”—“Robert, the one who plays and enjoys may know Bob better than anyone, as well as Bob’s immense life, even when sleeping!” He is an elder whose presence among circle of admirers. Drewal proposed that they solicit a variety us continues to inspire and encourage us to be bold in our feel- of perspectives from the worldwide Master T “posse” and create ing, thinking, and doing. I have admired him ever since our rst a “posse praise poem” in his honor. We had only a short time encounters back in the s, aer my return from two years of to pull this together so we both reached out to friends far and teaching, learning, and a sculpting apprenticeship among Yoruba wide, gave them four weeks to compose and send their thoughts people in Nigeria. In the midst of graduate work at Columbia and feelings in any way they chose. Some have written odes, University writing my dissertation on Gelede masquerades, I others have sent poems. One sent a painting. Another sent a cita- heard he had just come out with Black Gods and Kings: Yoruba tion. Others have contributed photos of Bob past and present. Art at UCLA (). I panicked, thinking he had just written Another sent a song that will be played (http://international.ucla. everything I intended to write in my dissertation! Fortunately for edu//media/podcasts/PROFE_T-ol-guw.mp), and a dance that me, his Gelede chapter was a short, pithy, and insightful one, so will be stepped (http://international.ucla.edu/media/mp/drew- there was still room for me to say something original. Whew! al-dance-j-kb.mp) … All of these acts are acts of love meant I pressed on and wrote to him to ask if he would be an outside for a person who inspires love and more. Where would we be in reader for me as I developed the work. Even though we had not our understanding and appreciation for the arts of Africa and its met in person, he wrote back in his distinctive hand, saying he many diasporas if the gods had not given us Bob? We think, not would be pleased and honored to do so. I was embraced by his very far. He continues to show us the way to be and to think as he unfailing, boundless generosity of spirit, his willingness to share works on his latest opus on mambo. We hear his voice, we see his and mentor, encourage and guide. He is aectionately known smile, we sense the move in his groove, and we learn once more as “Master T”—and for me, not because he was the Master of to share the passion he possesses. Enjoy these words, images, and Timothy Dwight College at Yale, but “Master Teacher” as well. sounds of praise— this multi-oriki is for you! His classes at Yale are legendary. He inspired not only students of Africa and African Diaspora worlds, artists and art historians, H J D is the Evjue-Bascom and Hilldale Professor, De- anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, historians, sociologists, partments of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University writers, poets, dancers, and musicians—he inspired a generation of Wisconsin-Madison. [email protected] of thinkers and makers and doers in the arts in all forms. I got C. D D teaches about the African Diaspora in the Institute to attend only one of those classes. Students were expected to for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. cd- embody the lessons he taught—with drumming, dancing, chant- [email protected] ing, singing. And as I think about my own apprenticeships with

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 Dancer and dance historian Jacqui Malone, gray shirt, blue jeans, teaching the “Suzy-Q” dance to Master T’s seminar students. Yale University. March 1, 2012. Photo: C. Daniel Dawson

Yoruba artists, in and again in , and what I learned about myself and the embodied knowledge and wisdom of artists, the muscle memories and sensitivities that made them virtuosic creators, I think about Bob drumming on a lectern, or telling a joke in a distinctive accent, or getting down in his dance stance and mesmerizing his audiences with his joy and focus. When African Art in Motion came out (), it opened up a whole vista of sen- sory experience to be theorized and explored. So I continue to work on this (and its working on me!) with an approach I term sensiotics, because of his boldness in exploring the things that I also know his early and sustained work in the many diaspo- animate him sensorially—music, dance, and art. If Bob is, as he ras of African artists—especially those in the Americas and the calls himself, a “mambo-freak,” then he has inspired me to be a Caribbean—was the foundation for a perspective that has come sensiotic “salsa-freak.” to be known as the Black Atlantic World. Before any others, he bridged the intellectual gap that oen divides Africanists from Americanists, pushing them to recognize the deep and complex cultural beliefs and practices on both sides of this Black Atlantic World that time and space have shaped, and continue to shape. Witness his masterful and corrective account of the history of tango—that art history of love ()! For those who make those smooth and seductive moves, ignorant of tango’s African and Black Atlantic origins, Master T has given them knowledge and understanding. He will do the same with mambo—giving credit where credit is due. His commitment to the truth, his passion for justice, and his intellectual honesty and humility make him an elder to honor and emulate. I feel blessed to have him as a mentor and friend. Continue to teach and preach Master T!—Ase! Ire O!

See Henry Drewal’s samba in honor of RFT at http://international.ucla.edu/ media/mp4/drewal-dance-4j-k1b.mp4

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | Robert Farris Thompson: Some Pictures and Some History Susan Mullin Vogel

is contact sheet is a ashback to pioneer days: RFT’s rst lucky enough to midwife his denitive exhibition and catalogue big exhibition of his life long project, the “African and Afro- on the same subject, the monumental and unforgettable “Face of American Art: the Transatlantic Tradition,” objects exhibited the Gods.” Bob was always trying to do y things in the time a by the Museum of Primitive Art. With an undertone of incredu- normal person needed for one, and this was a big, hugely ambi- lity, New York Magazine explained, “ e show is designed to oer tious show requiring many feats none of us had accomplished proof-positive that the Negro has a vast and telling art historical before. As deadlines approached Bob would strap his computer tradition. ere are immense ties between the visual arts of West into the front seat and drive to New York so the Museum sta Africa with the arts of the blacks in North America, the Caribbean, could pry his text “out of the machine.” He would sit across and South America …” e catalogue text was too late to print, but from me discussing installation challenges with a never-men- sixteen years later, it formed the core of Flash of the Spirit. Peter tioned wad of herbal material plastered onto the top of his head. Moore, a prominent photographer of the downtown art world, Everybody understood that wad and the genius beneath it was photographed the exhibition objects and gave me this contact giving us much more than another exhibition. In the course of sheet of us installing. You see RFT presiding over objects waiting the show, visitors le oerings of hundreds of dollars in change to be mounted, Frances Fleming hanging an Ibibio mask, and me and small bills on the altars in the galleries. I later learned the examining a headdress (loan from the Nigerian Museum?). Also sta, wearing gloves, periodically cleared it away and donated it on that sheet—shots from a lo showing of a Nam June Paik exhi- to an AIDS charity. bition. Bob was always avant garde. I took courses from RFT at Yale while studying for my PhD at S M V ’ work was recognized by an ACASA Leader- e Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. During those years I was also ship Award; her Baule: African Art Western Eyes received the Hersko- full time Assistant Registrar at the Museum of Primitive Art and vitz Award. She is currently writing about the rise of African art in the met Bob in the whirlwind of his show. Twenty-ve years American art world, driven by global forces, local events, and singular personalities (mid-1960s to mid-1990s). [email protected] later, as Executive Director of the Museum for African Art, I was

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 For RFT Brooke Davis Anderson

RFT adores two of my most favorite people on the planet: my “an African expert at Yale.” At that age, I was not too interested grandmother and my mother. in the academic life at Yale and I resisted until she told me who it My elegant and beautiful-in-every-way grandmother, Virginia was: Robert Farris ompson! Hurrying down to New Haven to Davis Taylor, was a secretary at the Yale University Art Gallery have lunch in Dwight Hall with my mom and Master T, I was so when RFT was a student; RFT adored her. excited to meet this singular mind! We sat down in the Commons My sunny and spirited-in-every-way mother, Pamela Bisbee Dining Hall. ompson immediately asked me if I had a scrap of Simonds, worked at Dwight Hall on the Yale campus when RFT paper, onto which he quickly sketched a map of the continent, was a professor (my mom would on occasion join his drumming and then crowded it with skull and bones iconography. He n- circles on the grounds of Old Campus—uninvited, no doubt, but ished his map. He looked at my mom. He looked at me, and said, always most welcome). RFT adores her. ‘If you promise your mom and me that you will not visit any of Because of my grandmother, RFT and I have a special bond the countries at war [a.k.a. the skull and bones], then I will bless born out of mutual admiration for her and that depth of feeling this trip!” While I was looking for adventure I wasn’t seeking that that develops between two people who knew an elder-turned- much of an adventure and eagerly obliged. He then said, “You are an cestor, and who wouldn’t care to ignore or overlook the deep going to fall in love with the continent and return many times. connection created by this kind of generational history. You are also going to have bad teeth because you will only have Because of my mom, I am lucky to have a friendship with RFT beer and orange soda for drinking.” that goes back to ! I still have that map. It has been with me on every adventure In unbeknownst to my mom I was reading a book like no everywhere since . And so has RFT: Africa, Africa again, other, Flash of the Spirit, in preparation for my rst solo trip to NYC, NC, New Orleans, and Africa again. Africa. Since that rst lunch, we have had countless lunches together I was planning to travel to Africa not for research nor with in New Haven with our family. a grant, or with any other goal than to travel to a place on this I have never been a student at Yale, but I have always been a planet that was entirely unknown by my very well-traveled family. student of RFT. RFT has been a mentor, friend, colleague, and When I was in my early twenties I interviewed family mem- supporter! But so much more. bers, for whom travel was a very important part of living and RFT and I have discussed not only Africa but American culture learning, and came to nd out that no one in my family had been too—we have a full-on appreciation for the underappreciated art- to West Africa ist from Tennessee Bessie Harvey. We are both intrigued beyond (they had been belief by memory jugs. We have long seen the genius of Lonnie to East Africa, Holley and ornton Dial, James Hampton and Nellie Mae Rowe. South Africa, I am realizing while writing this that during our thirty-plus and the northern year friendship RFT has never said “no” to me … he even trav- countries). eled thru a Nor’easter to get to a lecture I had organized for him My decision to give at Winston-Salem State University. to travel to West RFT has lectured at conferences I have organized, in organi- Africa for several zations I have run. He has written in books I have authored and months was born published. out of a young e cherry on top of these activities was the “Flash” conference adult’s desire I organized with Danny Dawson in fall of in New Orleans, to traverse new to recognize the importance of that book, the book that intro- landscapes and duced me to RFT in the beginning. experience places, RFT has shown me that the history of art is not a straight line peoples, and cul- and that the discipline deepens with the appreciation that what tures that were we don’t yet know is what we are working so hard to uncover and unknown to my explore. father, grandfa- Every time I am with RFT—like all of us—I am in awe of thers, and other his mind and his moves, his head and his heart, but I am also members of my reminded—as is he because we always talk about it, every time— well-traveled of our shared adoration for my grandmother and our mutual family. enjoyment of my mother. It is quite something to see your two In his introduction, Thompson described Flash My mother favorite women reected in this giant of art history, every. time. of the Spirit (1983), as being “about visual and was a bit worried you. meet. him. philosophic streams of creativity and imagina- about my solo I am certain that I will never have a friendship like this one tion, running parallel to the massive musical and choreographic modalities that connect black adventure, so she again. persons of the western hemisphere, as well as the asked me to come millions of Europeans and Asian people attracted to New Haven to B D A is the Edna S. Tuttleman Museum Director of to and performing their styles, to Mother Africa.” have lunch with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. [email protected]

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | Ijuba (Homage to Baba/Master T.) Rowland Abiodun

Ẹni a bá bá lábà, là ńpè ní Baba. Ẹ̀ ẹ́ gbó, ẹ̀ ẹ́ tọ́, Àṣẹ. Níjọ́ tí Àrè Làgbàyí ń tokò ọnà á bọ̀ Orógbó ni í gbó’ni í sáyé, obì ni í bi ibí sọrun. Apá ń sáá lapá Ìrókò wọn a dìgbò ̀ l’ọpẹ̀ It is the elder one meets on a farm that we call Baba Wọn láwọn ò mọ bii Làgbàyí ó sọgbá ọnà yí kà (Father/Master) Ẹni o kúrú, ńtiro ni ́ nwọ ń tiro (Thus, it is only proper that I respectfully refer to Profes- Ẹni o gùn, wọn a bẹ̀ rẹ̀ sor Robert Farris Thompson as Baba/Master). Wọ́ n n se, “Kújénrá, Agbósokùn” May you live long and remain physically and mentally ‘Lé wo lò ń lọ sound. Àṣẹ. Ọ̀ nà wo lò ń rè Orógbó [bitter kola] it is that enables one to live long while Ǹ bá mọbi ò ń rè obì [four-lobed kolanut] drives away evil forces. Ma bá ọ lọ Kújẹ́ nrá o, Agbósokùn Mo júbà o Ọmọ a gbẹ́ gi wúrúkú mú ṣe láyaba Àdáṣe ni í hun ni Àrè, Làgbàyí, ará̀ Ọjọwọ̀ n Ìbà kì Í hun ọmọ ènìyàn Bí ekòló bá júbà ilẹ̀ Ilẹ̀ á ya’nu Bí ọmọdé bá júbà àgbà Á roko ọjọ́ ayé d’alẹ́ Mo júbà o.

We acknowledge your presence and pay our respects to you as our elder To embark on any action unilaterally without your support is not only to invite failure but to court disaster. Whenever the earthworm pays homage to the dry and solid earth, the earth opens its doors to the boneless earthworm Similarly, when younger folks pay due respect to their elders, they live to a ripe old age. Today, we pay our respect to you as our elder and we acknowledge your presence.

Baba Thompson’s life and work brings to mind the following excerpt from the oríkì of the legendary sculptor, Àrè, Làgbàyí, ará̀ jọwọ Ọ ̀ n, “The itinerant Làgbàyí, citizen of Ọ̀ jọwọ̀ n.” More importantly, we note the enthusiastic reception he receives every time he returns from one of his celebrated carving expeditions:

Rather than merely highlighting sculptural objects from the Katherine Coryton White collection, Thompson used the occasion of the exhibition “African Art in Motion” (1974) to explore the idea that African art is not a static presence to be viewed but to be performed. His approach has to do with the unity of the arts in performance. One medium such as sculpture, is not emphasized in its African context at the expense of others such as music, word, and dance. All may be equally stressed.

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 On the day Làgbàyí, the itinerant artist was returning from Given Thompson’s own literal and intellectual journeys one of his carving expeditions, and his extraordinarily warm reception in classrooms, Apá trees collided with one another in trepidation. lecture halls and exhibition venues after returning from Ìrókò trees collided with palm trees in great fear. his numerous research trips to Africa, Brazil, South They wondered where next Làgbàyí would place his load America, and the Caribbean, he is eminently qualified to of carving implements. be called an ‘Àrè’. Àrè Làgbàyí was very fondly remem- Short people in the crowd stood on their toes, bered in Yorùbá oral traditions as the artist who pioneered While very tall spectators stooped down [to catch a new forms and styles in carving. He set new aesthetic glimpse of him]. standards at home and abroad. His elevated status in They all exclaimed “Kújẹ́ nrá, whose other name is Ag- the society enabled him to interact with, and influence bósokùn, his patrons, among them Yorùbá sovereigns, chiefs and Where are you going? diviners. Where Làgbàyí’s carvings have not survived for On which road are you going to tread? us appreciate, Thompson’s intellectual work and legacy I wish I knew where you were going, are very much with us and will inspire future generations I would have gone with you. of scholars in African art. Ikújẹ́ nrá, whose other name is Agbósokùn, Offspring of those who carved small pieces of wood and R A is John C. Newton Professor of the History of Art turned them into queens and Black Studies at Amherst College. [email protected] Làgbàyí, the itinerant citizen of Ọ̀jọwọ̀n.”1

______1 Wande Abimbola, “Làgbàyí: The Itinerant Wood Carver of̀ Ọjọwọ́ n,” in The Yoruba Artist, ed. Rowland Abiodun, Henry Drewal, and John Pemberton III (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).

Four Moments of the Sun (1981) explored the arts of burial and commemoration in Kongo and traced Kongo roots and afﬁni- ties across the Atlantic. Prominent on the cover is a detail of a ceramic form known as diboondo. The diamond-shaped opening represents what is identiﬁed as the dikenga, a cosmogram alluding to the movement of the sun, the spirit world and the world of the living, and the moments of birth, adulthood, death, and afterlife.

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | God and Bob at Yale Donald Cosentino Painting and caption by José Bedia

During a interview published in African Arts (reprinted in do. Clearly this was not a worry for Bob. He isn’t in the habit of Aesthetic of the Cool, ), I asked Bob ompson whether there checking his Black Atlantic spirituality at JFK customs, nor in was a god in his life. Without skipping a beat, he replied, nding the gods of Afro-Atlantis ancillary to other contemporary divinities. As he further revealed, “I don’t think I was prepared to Oh, there are several gods in my life. An Afro-Atlantic person who, read the Holy Bible until I came back from two and a half years as I am, is a member of Yoruba religion through the worship of in Nigeria, and opened up King David’s psalms. He nally spoke Erinle; a member of the Kongo religion through initiation into Mayombe in Havana; or a member of the Leopard Society though to me. His images had laterite on them. Nigeria prepared me for initiation in Cameroon, can write art history from within that even more: how to handle religiosity in a way that can get at spirit knowledge, as Reinhold Neibuhr wrote from within his. If you are and tradition without any awkward phrasing.” going to deal with a liturgy, it could be done as a non-believer, but under extreme diculty. One could crack certain codes, supply certain grammars. But it was not until I had been initiated into Erinle, received my two stones, that Yoruba priestess Abatan took me seriously as a colleague, as opposed to that strange oyinbo who came to her door with amusing insistence …

What I found most compelling in ompson’s response was his armation of Black Gods—not merely as powerful meta- phors (pace Wole Soyinka) but as living realities who intersect Mpangui Mundele Jura Nkisi—this work is my interpretation and testimony of the scene that took place during Thompson’s initia- with modern life—making his conteor at a time when declar- tion in Cuba as a Congo member. In the work he is the figure who ing for Jesus (or other divine beings) in a personal way could is kneeling, the figure in front of him is our “Tata” (the deceased destroy your credibility with academic colleagues, afraid of being Alberto Goicochea) and the figure standing behind him with the rooster in hand and a hand on his shoulder is me. The title means charged with violating “Enlightenment principles” by appreciat- “The White Brother Swears In Front of the Nkisi.”—José Bedia ing religious praxis as something a white professor might actually

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 is was the kind of discourse that should have made William Robert Farris Thompson delivering the commencement keynote to the graduating class at the Maryland F. Buckley, Yale graduate and patron saint of Goldwater-Reagan- Institute College of Art. May 18, 2015. Cruz conservatism, shout hallelujah. In , a generation before Photo: C. Daniel Dawson ompson published Flash of the Spirit, Buckley had published God and Man at Yale, decrying the absence of any transcendent meta- physics among the Yale professoriate, or more generally, among America’s soi-disant intelligentsia. Buckley envisioned God and Yale on a collision course, for, in words which continue to inspire Tea Party Trumpistas, Buckley wrote, “I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world.” I don’t believe that scholarship is a zero-sum game. I think that the As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, it’ll prob- more ecstatic you are, the more committed you are to being serious. ably come true.” Of course, when Buckley intoned “God,” he was So this is what neo-Puritans, who might be put-o by the ecstatic level in African-Atlantic scholarship, cannot understand: it is an not referring to Obatala or Nzambi Mpungu. But a generation earned ecstasy. Just as you cannot do eldwork until you speak the later, members of the Yale football team were wearing T-shirts language, so you cannot be cassé until you have something to be imprinted with Ashe, while Bob’s grad students were confront- broken. e more you crisscross the Atlantic, the more integument ing the orisha, minkisi, and vodun with personal commitments you meet, the more resistance, the tougher you become. It gives you far transcending the strategies of “participant observation.” more and more right to get happy. Much of this revolution in scholarly attitudes can be traced to the inuence of Flash of the Spirit, through its declamation on Bob’s sermons turn Malinowski’s methodology on its head. the moral attributes of Black Gods and its hermeneutic unravel- We now go to the eld to learn from masters. To reshape lessons ing of dikenga and rma as they perdure in the philosophies of taught by Voltaire and Marx in order to reinfuse their data with Africa and its diaspora. While Flash ushered in a new place for the ecstatic, to demonstrate that religion is deep structure and Black Atlantic religion inside academia (though not in ways that not epiphenomenon. “To me, Afro-Atlantic methodology is by Buckley might have appreciated), it assumed an even more pow- artistic example. Study and absorb Coltrane, don’t ask how he erful place outside the academy, where it was included alongside did it. Paint Betye and Allison Saar until you become yourself. William Bascom’s volumes on Ifa divination, as canonical theol- Until emergent identity makes all those inuences move for you.” ogy in the consultation rooms of botanicas from Miami to LA, So Master T issues the call to African art historians, not as some and propagated in the theological tracts of John Mason’s Yoruba John the Baptist crying in the desert, but as St. Paul in a J. Press eological Archministry in Brooklyn. suit, preaching a New Age revival for some very old religions. e credibility of Bob’s scholarship derives in large part from D C is a professor emeritus of UCLA’s World Arts and his religious commitments, as he explained when I asked him Culture program and has conducted extensive research on the art and about the role of ecstasy in his eldwork: religion of Haitian vodou. [email protected]

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | Thompson Dancing Perkins Foss

As part of his study of African dance criticism, Robert Farris ompson on occasion entered into the dance himself, and in doing so, elicited commentary on his own eorts that in turn revealed perceptive insights by local critics. As described in African Art in Motion (:), herewith a few observations regarding his own eorts:

() Later in Ago ShaSha, a village famed for its Gelede dancers, Adejumon met the writer by chance on July and observed the writer enter the dance ring during an Egbe Arobajo dance; a battle of dance speedily broke out, the writer versus the local master of the dance, with predictable results. Adejumon felt the writer had committed an aesthetic atrocity and wasted no time in enumerating the reasons.

() e carrying of the legs and of the entire body was balanced (in the dancing of the local master) (ese to ngbe ati gbogbo ara dogba).

() e creating of [phrases to match the] drumming was t- ting in the case of that particular local boy, [far] exceeding the foreigner’s [talents] (dida ilu omo na bamu, ju ti oyinbo lo).

() Various styles of dancing were called for by the drumming and the local member danced them as they were sounded (orisisi ijo ni omo na njo ti o ba ilu mu) … the foreigner not (oyibo ko).

P F has studied Urhobo art and culture over y years. He taught at Dartmouth College and at Penn State. He has recently donated his notes, photographs, and accompanying material to the Penn State Library Archives. [email protected]

The Pennsylvania State University Special Collections: Perkins Foss Papers. Photos: Perkins Foss, Ago ShaSha (Anago Yoruba), July 27, 1965.

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 Robert Farris Thompson Tribute Neil Clarke

Spirits Flashing, done. ere is no model, no plan. ere are examples, but how Revealing the Faces of Gods and Kings, does one quantify that? It is not something that everyone, anyone Here to fore unrecognized, can do. To emulate the product of a singular mold. Nor is it some- In the shadows of ignorance and dismissal, thing that one really can plan to do. It is ultimately who someone As they Mambo and Tango Artistically in Motion, is and as a result it is what that someone does. But then there is a rough the Four moments of the Sun, catch, choice! Around the Atlas Mountains’ Midnight Indigo Waters, I have been taught, and I believe, that it is frequently the ances- Re ecting the Cool Aesthetic, tors that choose. And the ancestors are selective in who they Expressed in Erinle’s Ikoko, choose because their agenda, their priority is not necessarily con- rough the sacred caress sistent with ours. IF the ancestors do choose one, they call. When of Àbátàn of Oke-Odan. they call, rst of all we have to be paying attention so we hear the Àse̩ ̩ call. If we do, we have choices. To answer the call or not. If we do Beginning in a place whose name—“ e Pass” (El Paso)— decide to answer their call, and if we do then conduct ourselves emanates from the idea of “to proceed” on the banks the Grand consistent with the appropriate standards, then the ancestors River of the North (Rio Grande), was enlisted here a man, a will lead us to where, who, what, when and how we need for the spirit, to journey there, across a primordial liquid expanse that next step, phase, stage and we hopefully progress. Some of us under his gaze would come to be redened for us all, on the way get stuck, lose our way, get distracted or otherwise diverted and to the land of Ancestors he did not know but knew him, to the some of us perhaps were/are not on the right path to begin with. banks of Odo Yewa, in the realm of the primordial hunter-healer at’s another conversation. Eyinle, to receive keys to unlocking windows, doors, channels, In the case of RFT I think it’s safe to say we have witnessed portals, frequencies and ultimately insights we were all waiting someone who was selected, was chosen, was called, did hear, for. Who would think? How? Why? did choose to answer the call, conducted himself according to Innate curiosity? Ambition? Integrity? Generosity? Awareness? the standards appropriately, was given access and then turned Open-mindedness? Instincts? All? at would allow him to around and shared it. How lucky are we? I think it’s safe to say, become Asiwaju, the one who goes before, a scout per se. A bea- We’re all the better for the journey of RFT!!! con Illuminating the Path for those of us whose destiny it was/ I’ve been blessed to know a few great individuals along my way. is to come his way on our way, on the journey that we have been Perhaps we all have. I consider Robert Farris ompson to be charged by our Ori to navigate. It is as Yoruba philosophy teaches, one of those who I am indebted to for his vision, his work, his his destiny and it is our destiny to know him. He has done his job. commitment and generosity. We have to decide Collectively our paths, our journeys, our thought processes how to approach have been nourished by the walk of RFT. We’ve been given the ours. Not that his opportunity to peek behind and beyond the veil into realms that is necessarily done, before him, were ignored, dismissed, overlooked, frequently only Olodumare, misinterpreted and commonly fragmented and disconnected. Ori, and Ifa can rough his approach, his eorts, his creativity, generosity, his know that, but humanity, Humpty Dumpty is a bit closer to being put back what he has together. We can give thanks and we can celebrate. And we can accomplished to honor one who has done so much to get us there. this point is more Omo Odo “Elephant” than Asiwaju most could even Ori Tutu ‘nla consider of trying Oju Tutu ‘nla to chew! Hence, Enu Tutu ‘nla we take note and Olukọni we celebrate, as we Omo Eyinle should. Eniyan It is oen recom- Ẹ ku’ se mended that one follow the Path. For N A A A T C (Oloye Alu- some, like RFT, it is fopejo Awo of Osogbo) is an internationally recognized master percus- Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and not about following the African Americas (1993) was published in sionist, scholar, arts educator and producer. For 50+ years, he has been conjunction with the eponymous exhibition of the the Path. It’s more involved with and is respected for his advocacy of traditional African Museum for African Art, New York. Focusing on about going where drumming and culture. Clarke has enjoyed longstanding relationships Mande, Yoruba, and Kongo sacred assemblages, there is no path with the legendary Harry Belafonte and currently with NEA Jazz Mas- Thompson elucidated their shared intent and ter Randy Weston. Clarke is also an Adjunct Professor at City College of content with those of Brazil, the southeastern US, and leaving a trail. Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in the Americas. Easier said than New York (Jazz Studies). [email protected]

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | To Bob Zeca Ligiéro, translation from the Portuguese by Isis McElroy

Qual o poder da palavra dita What is the power of the spoken word si ela é percussão, dança e canto? if it is percussion, dance, and chant?

O vento que sopra a palavra sonora e wind that blows the uttered word fecunda a terra. fertilizes the land.

A palavra é plantada no papel e word is planted on paper para reter ali conhecimento to keep there its knowledge segredo a ser germinado secret to sprout como um grão guardado like a cared for grain tesouro reunido gathered treasure de tantas viagens made of so many journeys investigações research meditações. meditations.

Robert Farris ompson Robert Farris ompson orquestra sozinho orchestrates all by himself com a sombra dos ancestres que visitou with the ancestral shadows he visited sons da África negra sounds from Black Africa vozes de diásporas atlânticas voices of its Atlantic diasporas de suas múltiplas andanças from his multiple wanderings aprendizados embodiments incorporações confabulations confabulações reconnections. reconexões. RFT brings back to the Americas RTF traz de volta para as Américas keys chaves traces vestígios footsteps pegadas evidence. comprovações. His luggage Sua bagagem inverts the process inverte o processo he decolonizes himself ele descoloniza a si próprio as a white North-American como norte-americano branco so as to discover the true essence para descobrir a real essência black red heart coração negro vermelho under white skin. sob a pele branca. His simple presence A simples presença dele rekindles ames acende as chamas que estavam apagadas providing maps of unknown treasures. enquanto fornece mapas de tesouros desconhecidos. And this is how the sounds reverberate on a white sheet of paper E assim o que é som reverbera na folha de papel branco waking up its colors once brought to sleep by colonialism acordando suas cores adormecidas pelo colonialismo in its pure eurocentric reason da razão pura eurocêntrica forged by hysteric materialism forjado pelo materialismo histérico by the repression of the body and its full relationship with the pela repressão ao corpo de sua relação plena com o espírito da spirit of nature. natureza. Our souls vibrate, waking themselves up with new wishes Nossa alma vibra, ela se acorda com novas vontades capturing something our senses could not even suspect capturando algo que nossos sentidos suspeitavam but that up till then we did not enough so as to let them dance mas que até o momento não possuíamos conhecimentos para que freely bailassem livres

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 em inusitadas conexões. in such unusual connections. Master T nos deu régua e compasso Master T gave us ruler and compass para perceber que ciência, arte e religião to realize that science, art, and religion são parte da mesma trama are part of the same woven fabric nas diversas culturas africanas desembarcadas no Continente in the diverse African cultures that came ashore the American Americano. Continent.

A gente aprende quando reconhece o que não sabe We learn when we recognize what we do not know em alguém que traz algo que descobrimos pela primeira vez when someone brings something we discover for the rst time trazendo à luz um desejo antigo não revelado bringing to light an old desire kept secret tecendo inesperadas graas weaving unforeseen letters refazendo antigas gramáticas em vocabulários corporais pelo remaking ancient grammar in corporal vocabulary through espaço imprevisível. unexpected spaces.

Mas anal, o que é o símbolo sem o conhecimento secreto das But aer all, what is the symbol without the secret knowledge of religiões? religions? um amontoado de retas e curvas, a bunch of lines and curves, Bob traz palavras exatas Bob brings precise words suas paginas falam baixinho para quem quer ouvir. his pages speak lowly for those who want to hear.

O que seria das grandes distancias sem a palavra? What would great distances be without the word? Como pensar o que vivemos sem o verbo? How would we think what we live without the verb? Se não fosse a palavra como entender o a presença do passado If it wasn’t for words, how would we understand the presence of africano the African past habitando corpos nas Américas em suas milhares de manifestações inhabiting American bodies in a myriad of manifestations nos diversos mundos das diásporas experimentadas pelos nossos in diverse worlds of these diasporas experienced by our senses? sentidos? His study recreates Black Africa in the manner it was lived, in its Seu estudo recria a África Negra, da forma como foi vivido, em sua eloquence eloquência it recovers behaviors in its individual and collective actions recupera o comportamento em suas ações individuais e coletivas bringing the Other so close trazendo o Outro para tão perto as if the Other could be among Us como se o Outro pudesse estar entre Nós mesmos and be One of Us. sendo assim Um de Nós. Ashe, Baba, I wish you continue playing your atabaque Axé, Babá, eu desejo que continue sempre a tocar o teu atabaque and allowing us to hear you e soltar a tua voz you will be always beating in our hearts and minds. eles estão sempre reverberando em nossos corações e mentes.

Z L is an artist, with a PhD in Performance Studies, and a professor at UNIRIO-Brazil. [email protected]

Nelson Cabassa (l.) and Alexander LaSalle (c.) of Alma Moyo: Afro- Puerto Rican Roots Band teaching bombs drumming and dancing to a Master T seminar, Yale University. October 18, 2012. Photo: C. Daniel Dawson

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | Praise Song for RFT Lowery Stokes Sims Although I am not a former student or close academic colleague ompson’s contribution over the last ve decades to the of Robert Farris ompson, he has been a subtle yet crucial inu- growth and development of African and African American stud- ence on my life and self-perception ever since I rst read his essay ies as a strong and more widespread academic specialization “African Inuence on the Art of the United States” in the early s is immeasurable. His intellectual strategies have been bench- when I was in graduate school. is was his contribution to the pub- marks for new approaches to art historical analyses of cultural lication for Black Studies in the University, a symposium organized production in Africa evaluating African cultural practice based in by the Black Student Alliance at Yale, a group that included on criteria from its own context rather than solely from outside Craig Foster, the cousin of my longtime friend and colleague Leslie points of view. As if heeding the cautionary tone of the Surrealist King Hammond. As I searched for more comparable input about renegade Georges Batille, he rejects the habitual hierarchical and my heritage and history, I took in the exhibition on the Black patronizing positioning of the “civilized” (i.e., European or white Atlantic that he was involved at the Museum for African Art (when American) over the “primitive” (African, Pacic, First Peoples) it was housed in a townhouse on West th Street across the street that has reinforced the power relationships of colonialism and from MoMA). ere was no catalogue to accompany that exhibition, postcolonialism. He draws on the cultural philosophies and but one was promised for the future, and nally in Professor practices that contextualize artistic production in Africa, taking ompson published Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American into account realms of temperament and demeanor, as well as Art and Philosophy, which became a cultural and artistic bible for conditions of place and “territory.” As ompson surveys the so many of us. en over the next three decades I felt he recruited “continuity in change” of the “indelible cultural codes” of African me to see African art in motion rather than merely on a pedestal in cultures he also analyzes “transoceanic” pairings of cultural a vitrine, to look upon the Face of the Gods in African-based altars, manifestations in the Cross River, Lower Niger area and western practice the art of the Cool, and to recongure my notions about the Cuba; Dahomey (now Benin) and Haiti; in the Akan regions of ubiquitous dance form of the tango. Ghana and those in Surinam. So I was pleasantly surprised but ready when Gloria Khury—then We also have access to ompson’s path to his intellectual and at the press of the State University of Pennsylvania and now propri- experiential states. In an interview with anthropologist and cura- etor of Periscope Publishing—contacted me to write an introduction tor Donald Consentino, he eloquently traces his life journey from to an anthology of Professor ompson’s essays. Aer a bit of hag- Dudley School in El Paso, Texas, in an ambiance where boogey- gling over the focus of the selection and a gentle rebuke on my part woogey, rhythm and blues, and rock music revealed to him “that for the overly masculine focus of the content, we concluded Aesthetic African Americans had a dierent spiritual vision.” What is of the Cool: Afro-Atlantic Art and Music. is project enriched fascinating is his ability to observe various manifestations, expe- my perception of the unique phenomenon that is Robert Farris rience various things in dierent contexts—Elegba shrine in New ompson. In his essays—which included several unexpected early York, James Brown on stage, Cuban rumba music, and country analyses of Afro-Latino jazz—he revealed himself to be as much music—to “role-switch fast” and make connections with all these rigorous scholar as engaged critic; as much innovative theoretician elements in such a way that they eventually coalesced into an aes- as enthusiastic fan. thetic and art historical practice. e consummate In summary, ompson never fails to provoke and challenge cultural aneur, he us with ideas that spark a reordering of our priorities and reex- revealed that he was amination of long-standing assumptions about race and class. able to move in and His intellectual endeavors have forged lineages in the work of out of and around scholars such as Rowland Abiodun, Suzanne Blier, Sylvia Boone, in multiple cultural Henry Drewal, Kate Ezra, Alisa LaGamma, Babatunde Lawal, contexts with equal Moyo Okediji, Mary Nooter Roberts, Zoë E. Strother, Susan Vogel, ease and percep- and Roslyn Walker. He also can be said to have reestablished the tion, be it a village awareness of the unique black Atlantic identity among Africans on in Africa or a jazz this side of the Atlantic that is the focus of the scholarship of indi- club in the West viduals such as Houston Baker, Kamau Braithwaite, Henry Louis Village of New York Gates, Gray Gundaker, Leslie King Hammond, Eileen Southern, City. Whether writ- Deborah Ambush, C. Daniel Dawson, Kellie Jones, Marta Moreno ing early reviews Vega, Sterling Stuckey, John Vlach, and Maude Waldman. In the of Afro-jazz or context of the world in his work only gains cogency for all of parsing the visual us who nd our identity, our culture, even our very being reviled polyrhythms of and discredited by the larger society. And so I oer this praise song Aesthetic of the Cool (2011) published in con- quilts by African to him and state unequivocally that we continue to be in his debt. junction with an exhibition by the same title, American women, further solidiﬁes the bond between Africa and its he taught us how we diaspora that Robert Farris Thompson champi- L S S, a specialist in global contemporary art, is a former oned in earlier works, demonstrating their shared were cool and com- curator at the Metropolitan Museum, former director of the Studio Muse- concepts of cool in multisensory aspects of plex and stunningly visual, verbal, and performative arts. um and Curator Emerita, Museum of Arts and Design. She now works as original. an independent curator and art historian. [email protected]

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 Honoring Robert Farris Thompson Leslie King Hammond

Dr. Robert Farris ompson, you forced the world to see the Congo, recast the mambo as a keystone of ethnochoreology, and sometimes blinding light of a cultural truth that spans centuries framed hip-hop as a direct descendant of the “cool” embedded and an ocean. You have devoted your life to cataloging the gene- in the cultural heritage of creative expression transmitted to the alogy of genius, tracing the artistic roots of the Americas across Western Hemisphere through the Atlantic slave trade and rein- the Atlantic to Africa. Aer y years of your scholastic leader- carnated with each generation. You showed how spirituality was ship, insight, and intellectual courage, we can trace rhythmic and a key to survival in the diaspora, boldly examining the Face of aesthetic provenance back to the creative motherland and unite Gods in a study of altars of the Black Atlantic world. You have through an undeniable common cultural ancestry. shown how our collective cultural soul is interlinked with the As the longest master of a residential college in Yale’s history, diaspora, and how we must respect Africa as our artistic inspira- even noted scholars become students in your presence, as you tion and guiding light. lead them in an examination of Africa’s cultural impact on the Dr. ompson [we honor you] for incontrovertibly resetting world with a debt of context few can surpass, incorporating the standard for art history, for elevating the contributions of a religion, linguistics, dance, philosophy, humanities, and anthro- people too oen overlooked, and for showing us our sameness pology. rough your landmark book, Flash of the Spirit, you through our common cultural ancestry, and for providing us the boldly drew a straight line through the Middle Passage and high- model of scholarship for the future. lighted visual art, music, and dance traditions so strong they took —Excerpted from a citation for Robert Farris ompson for root on continents on the opposite side of the world. You have an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, presented by Leslie traced the tango backwards through time from Argentina to the King Hammond, PhD, Founding Director, Center for Race and Culture, Maryland Institute College of Art at Undergraduate Commencement, May , . After receiving an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Maryland, Bob Thompson (center) poses with (from left to L K H is Professor Emerita; Founding Director, Cen- right) Neil Meyerhoff, Chairman of the Board of Trustees; ter for Race and Culture, Maryland Institute College of Art; Senior Samuel Hoi, President; Leslie King Hammond; and Ray Allen, Provost. May 18, 2015. Fellow, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation; and Senior Advisor, Baltimore Photo: C. Daniel Dawson Arts Reality Corporation. [email protected]

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | T John Santos painting and caption by José Bedia

Hear this oriki performed by the author at http://international.ucla.edu//media/podcasts/PROFE_T-ol-guw.mp3

T Profe T Profe T In today’s entertainment-worshipping, prophet of light materialistic society where religion is used illuminating generations of minds for everything that is not spiritual, sharing jewels of your amazing journey your utterances take on increasing urgency from Texas to Mbanza Kongo as it is now particularly crucial via México, Buenos Aires, Bahia, to experience African cultural truths La Habana, New York and New Haven. in the halls of hallowed institutions …

Profe T Profe T a ash of spirit We the innumerable so bright that you have inspired and enlightened that the faces of the gods could be seen have no way to thank you for light years for being the eervescent lamp through ancient wood, iron and bronze. to lead us on the noble road less travelled— Amid tombstones, textiles and clay, the innite search for justice mambo’s myriad meanings, in the academy and on the planet. cosmological black truths uncovered in South Carolina Poetic, historical justice in furious opposition to disseminated with a jinga the immoral omission of Black truth and an esquiva baixa in the annals of Western society. centuries removed from Angola Your groundbreaking, barrier smashing in front of a university podium. example of how to study, how to teach, how to stand, humbly, Profe T before hidden treasures scores of fascinated seekers before they are liquidated, pouring over like so many other bathing in, absorbing pirate’s bootys and ransoms. every word every pearl of wisdom Your legacy is the nganga— uniquely backlit to feature the relevance an altar to eternity and her elements— of the clear tweet emanating from respect for life and the planet, the th century ngoma, a direct line to the elders and the unseen and the timeless text from an nfumbe most importantly, to spirit—the spirit of freedom, of in a joint eort between creativity, of justice, of the river, of time. the quick and the dead to wake the collective slumber, Profe T so as to prevent yet another round of slavery. You are the master of communication— the precious thread between the centuries, Jeyé, jeyé, jeyé between dynasties, between graveyards, brothels, Asere, asere, asere, asere, asere slave barracks, cotton elds and chitlin’ circuit blues clubs. monina oh eh e link in our chain to break the chains. asere, asere, asere You are our Fernando Ortiz, our Jack Kerouac, oyayo oyayo our Arturo Schombourg, our August Wilson, asere, asere, asere supreme storyteller of non-ction, negros brujos, Mana kankúbia komo índia Abakuá. be-bop hipster academagician connecting rst through the gut, then the heart, then the spirit, Praise the birth of the Abakuá through the drum. and then the head. yumba obonékue yumba Seems that we just met Initiations bring unity. yet have known each other through lifetimes. Mi padrino, Julito Barondó te saluda. You have much in common with the relentless, unforgiving clock,

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 Briyumba Nsila means “El Camino Briyumba” (The Briyumba Road) which references the second Congo Afro-Cuban branch in Cuba, which both I and Thompson belong to, as initiated members. The ﬁgure is standing in front of a road in perspective, representing the straight and cor- rect road through life which should be pursued. —José Bedia

for we have grown to depend upon being awakened by you I love that you are a sarcastic, progressive sage and reminded consistently who can profoundly ponticate at length that there is no rest for the weary. on myriad fascinating subjects of signicance, Our stay here is brief but our mission is eternal, but that you also thrive on a beer, to pay it forward and thusly add a grain of sand a bar, a conversation to the endless, wondrous, beautiful beach and getting as street as need be. to which you invited us. Profe T Unknowingly baptized by Diego Rivera, Perez Prado, Peraza I thank you not only on behalf of the legions, Arcaño, Tito, Ray, Mongo, Israel, Orestes, the Palladium, decades and generations of fans, admirers, Bird, el plante y El Monte, drumheads, afrophiles, anthropologists and glowing with Mambo Madness, ethnographers whom you have delighted through the lectern is your pulpit your research, papers, books, lectures and stories from which you’ve preached us but also on behalf of the babalawos, the sacerdotes, the iyalochas, with remarkable clarity babalochas, iyawoses, ayugbonas, apetegbises, fodduces, mambos, to higher ground. nfumbes, tatas, obonekues, iyambas, mokongos, ekueñónes, nasa- koes, monibonkóses, and every Lucumi, Yoruba, Arará, Abakuá, Saoco, batanga, batiri, tango Bakóngo, Bantú, Iyesá descendent and ancestor all of whom you para hervir la malanga have so highly honored pa’ bailar el mambo by giving them a place of dignity in academia un ajiaco caliente and recognizing their unique grace and wisdom of the ages pa’ abrirse la mente. in the evolution of our planet and of our species.

I swear I see spirits dancing milonga and I Profe T hear distant Candombe drums you are a blessing. in minute three of your address— May your path forever be lit. borokotó, borokotó, borokotó e next beer is on me. ancao y amarrao como dice el viejo Cañengue, J S is a multi-Grammy nominated bandleader, composer, brujo de reputación producer, and percussionist, SFJAZZ Trustee and US Artist Fontanals garabato lungowa ae, garabato Fellow. He currently teaches at the California Jazz Conservatory in Berkeley and the College of San Mateo, and has lectured and conducted Profe T countless clinics and workshops in the United States, Europe and Latin Your prolic genius is amazing in every way. America since the mid-1970s. [email protected] Every single ounce and page of every one of your published works oozes with the same passion.

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | Something for RFT David T. Doris

A while back, I wrote the following short tribute in honor of Atlantic cultural creation. It is an achievement of profoundest Robert Farris ompson, my mentor, one of the few people I aspiration, crystallized over more than half a century of tire- call Bàbá simply out of respect and love. e piece was printed less research on four continents and innumerable islands, and in a program for a Yale conference in his honor; later, I read it inspired by the creolizing impulses of mambo: a dance, an argu- aloud at the unveiling of his portrait as Master of Yale’s Timothy ment, a matter of the spirit. at research covers the expanse of Dwight College. ere’s lots more to say about Robert Farris a millennium, but is inextricably keyed to the energies of the last ompson, and over the last few weeks I’ve burned through lots six decades—a tumultuous era that witnessed the decolonization of pages trying to say it. But rereading this piece, it still seems to of African and Caribbean nations, the birth and struggles of the hit a few right notes, so I’m proud and honored to include it here Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the ascendancy (and with some minor revisions. yes, struggles) of the rst black US president, and a few other If you’re reading this journal, you know Robert Farris events along the way. Tempered by that era, ompson highlights ompson, who stands among the preeminent historians of the “Blackness” as a ghting word, muscular and sinuous, a source arts of Africa and its diasporas. He is one of the eld’s found- of unifying strength that is also innitely diverse, resisting every ers and still its greatest revolutionary, the man who made “Cool” racist stereotype. a viable academic category. us far, ompson’s life’s work In landmark books, articles, and exhibitions, and in breathtak- has comprised an extended praise-song to the genius of Black ing lectures at Yale University and around the world, ompson has consistently called for art history to examine and step beyond its self-referential connes, even beyond the limits of visuality. He enjoins us to listen, at long last, to the voices of black creators and thinkers, to understand their works as they describe them, as they move with them and are moved by them. “Black Gods and Kings,” ompson’s exhibition of Yoruba art and aesthetics Robert Farris Thompson with Tito Puente disk in hand, lecturing on New York mambo at at UCLA, directly confronted a prevailing paradigm in African Professor Nelson Wu’s Garden of Yenling Yeyuan, cultural studies, which for years had gured African creativity Connecticut, June 5, 1965. Photo: Perkins Foss, used with his permission. as unthinking adherence to “tradition” and formal repetition:

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 changeless, timeless, bound to place, primitive. ompson engine of Robert Farris ompson’s life’s work as researcher, dashed those preconceptions by highlighting black cultural writer, lecturer, curator, musician, professor, mentor, conduit, innovation as polyphony—a refractive range of individual con- translator, and everything else he’s been so far. It is a boundless, versations rooted in, inspired by, and departing from practices lifelong love, an absolute commitment to the innumerable ways of the past. Likewise, ompson’s National Gallery of Art in which blackness continues to transform the world. Less adven- exhibition, “ e Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two turous academicians, of course, might be tempted to discount the Worlds,” celebrated the visual culture of the Kongo peoples of value of such love as a methodological tool. But really, there can Central Africa. Long dismissed as mere “fetishism” submerged be no other explanation for the sheer, convincing power of it all. at the heart of the “Dark Continent,” Kongo culture unfolded in Were it otherwise, we’d all be the poorer. ompson’s study as a realm of classical radiance, an exalted, liv- No wonder, then, that what has come to be known as ing source for a spectrum of black cultural practices in Africa and ompson’s signature book, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro- across the ocean, in the Americas and the Caribbean. American Art and Philosophy, has remained in print ever since its From his earliest inquiries into a pan-African “aesthetic of the publication in . It speaks to people. Like all his work, Flash of cool,” to his monumental Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa the Spirit is a mambo, a public conversation that inspires and chal- and the African Americas, to his explorations of the blackness of lenges within and without the halls of the academy. In , the Argentinian tango, ompson has traced the cultural history of an College Art Association honored ompson with its inaugural Africa that traverses and overows geographical limits. is is the award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement for Art Writing, “Black Atlantic,” a term ompson coined, now in common par- calling him a “towering gure in the history of art, whose voice lance among cultural historians. It is a liquid space of imaginative for diversity and cultural openness has made him a public intel- recollection rendered as the sounds, gestures, words, and forms lectual of resounding importance.” As he prepares to publish his that mark the ows and breaks of historical memory and spiritual next book, Staccato Incandescence: Mambo in Art History, Robert longing. At its core is the once radical idea that Black Atlantic art- Farris ompson continues to be a singular model of brave, com- works are, above all, philosophical objects in critical motion. mitted scholarship, a leader who is always a step or two ahead of ompson’s work is a powerful critique of the staid objectivist the rest of us. And more than that: He is one cool creature, an methodologies of academic social science and of the Eurocentrism unrepeatable phenomenon. it represents. His research, writing, and teaching are infused with a passion and lyrical grace that reect the ambitions and human- SOMETHING TO RFT (A PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT) ity of the black men and women who are his closest collaborators. Bàbá, studying with you at Yale, and knowing you since, has In ompson’s reception-based methodology, creative, critical been one of the great blessings and honors of my life. From you thinking in the Black Atlantic is not just the purview of a select I’ve received a thousand gis, including one that surpasses all: canon of artists or ritual specialists—neither, to be sure, is it the freedom. With a Yoruba adage (“Tibi tire lá da ilé ayé”) and an exclusive domain of Western art historians. It is vernacular stu; American injunction (“Be there, listen, take notes, and tell the it belongs to everybody. ompson unearths hidden histories truth”), you challenged me as a student with the freedom to tell by honoring the living actors who render ordinary experience true stories about unexpected objects and the extraordinary into mythic gesture. In their dauntless vitality, and in the chal- people who experience and think about them. Such stories and lenge of their works, we students—and by “students,” I mean all objects might not fall in line with received or canonical ideas— of us—might see a glint of ourselves at our best: driven by the even those you yourself had established—but they are nonetheless contingencies of the present, emboldened by jeweled fragments true, and need to be told responsibly, responsively. ank you, of the past, and graced by an unnished, unquenchable yearning Bàbá, not only for your faith in my work; but for your fearless for excellence, for transcendence, for freedom. In ompson’s embrace of critical dierence as the driving engine of newness, translations of black creativity—he once described himself to me growth and transformation in your own work, in the history of as “a conduit, a translator”—we feel what it’s like to give ourselves the arts, and in the world at large. E séun gaan, Bàbá mi òwòn, over to something or someone other than ourselves, to embrace Bàbá mi dáadáa, Bàbá mi titi láíláí. those worlds of understanding as we might our own, to commit ourselves to learning, to caring, to working, to ghting … D T. D is an Associate Professor of Art History at the Univer- And above all, to loving. Because love, indeed, is the synthesizing sity of Michigan. [email protected]

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 | J M, an orisa priest of Obatala and diviner initiated in 1970, is a graduate of City College of New York and recipient of a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship in Folklore. In 1973 he cofounded and is currently director of the Yoruba eological Archministry, a nonprot research center located in Brooklyn, NY. A traditional and jazz percussionist and composer, with y-three years experience, he formed MASON-JAM-JA Band in 1998. [email protected]

african arts AUTUMN 2017 VOL. 50, NO. 3 Downloaded from| http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 RFT’s album Safari of One: Primitive Rhythms on African Thumbpianos and West Indian Drums was released by SMC Pro Arte in 1969.

VOL. 50, NO. 3 AUTUMN 2017 african arts Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_a_00358 by guest on 23 September 2021 |