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A Powerful Book for Powerful Purpose Susan Cooksey, Robin Poynor, Hein Vanhee, eds.. Kongo across the Waters. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. Illustrations. xviii + 458 pp. $30.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-8130-4945-8. Reviewed by Allen Roberts Published on H-AfrArts (November, 2014) Commissioned by Jean M. Borgatti (Clark Univeristy) Following Kongolese logic, this book is an University of Florida’s Harn Museum with those nkisi—a “power object” sure to transform many of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in readers’ lives. Kongo across the Waters is heavy Tervuren, Belgium. The initiative began as a com‐ in substance and weight, and a testament to the plement to demi-millennial celebrations of the insight and hard work of the west-central first-known European visit to Florida. When Africans and their diasporic descendants who Ponce de León sailed to (or happened upon?) the conceived, realized, cherished, and performed the peninsula in 1513, two Africans served in his brilliant objects illustrated and explained, as well crew. Very little is known of them, but because the as to the feet-on-the-ground researchers, students Portuguese had visited west-central Africa thirty and conservators of collections, and museum pro‐ years earlier and had then established notewor‐ fessionals who created the exhibition that this thy diplomatic relations and cultural exchanges volume is meant to accompany and extend. In‐ with Kongo kingdoms, might the sailors have deed, students of African arts might be directed to been of this cultural identity? A century later the the book’s unusually detailed acknowledgments first enslaved Africans were brought to the Ameri‐ as a lesson in complexity and purpose: it has tak‐ cas to provide basic plantation labor and specific en many behind-the-scenes contributors in many technological skills, such as cultivation of black lands at many institutions to make this project rice (an African cultigen) and ironsmithing. In en‐ possible. Again, like the efficacies of an nkisi, of‐ suing years, hundreds of thousands would be cap‐ ten what and who are not seen are as important— tured and traded in west-central Africa, many of and sometimes more—than what and who are in whom were Kongo themselves or who came to be immediate evidence. known as such because they were evacuated from The Kongo across the Waters program has the continent via Kongo ports of call. Established combined human and material resources of the and ongoing research has explored the deep aes‐ H-Net Reviews thetic impacts that Kongo and related people have scene, leaving one to wonder how the earliest Por‐ had on créole societies of the black Atlantic in‐ tuguese may have been depicted in Kongolese fg‐ cluding those of the United States, as documented ural sculpture. Given how adept Kongo artists and depicted in the more than 450 pages of this were in adapting Christian arts to their own styles book. as shown in catalog section 1, one can only imag‐ The volume is composed of a brief introduc‐ ine how European “energies” were redirected to tion by the editors; twenty-six scholarly vignettes Kongolese purposes via nkisi objects and chore‐ —that is, short and shorter “mind bites” rather ographies of these early times. RMCA curator than full-blown essays; seventeen “visual inter‐ Julien Volper offers a suggestion of such in more mezzos” focusing on particular objects or genres; recent times, and one is reminded of Julius Lips’s and seven full-color catalog sections accompanied The Savage Hits Back, or the White Man through by significant captions. A great deal of ground is Native Eyes, which, although—or perhaps be‐ covered, then, regarding people of the Kongo con‐ cause—written in 1937 in wartime angst, remains geries of west-central Africa, as well as their dias‐ the best presentation we have of this sort of cul‐ pora throughout the black Atlantic. Kongo across tural adaptation. the Waters is divided into three parts: “Kongo in Research underway or recently completed Africa,” “Kongo in the Americas,” and “Kongo in features in several of these frst offerings, with Cé‐ Contemporary Art.” A mix of renowned and up- cile Fromont reporting from her fne studies of and-coming scholars provide the writing, most Kongo iconographical references in Portuguese based on their own feld and archival research. heraldry and other indices of early aesthetic in‐ Such a seemingly comprehensive list of contribu‐ teractions. The historian Jelmer Vos contributes tors inevitably raises questions of nzawu ( Lox‐ two valuable vignettes, one on impacts of the odonta cylotis, perchance?)—“elephants”—in the transatlantic slave trade on Kongo and related room, as will be discussed briefly below. Here fol‐ peoples, the other a chapter entitled “Kongo in the low a few highlights of the book’s many gifts. Age of Empire,” as written with RMCA curator Readers are frst introduced to Kongolese his‐ and collections manager Hein Vanhee, who is also tories through two pieces by Linda Heywood and an editor of Kongo across the Waters. These texts John Thornton, foremost scholars who have stud‐ are informed by Vos’s participation in the Trans- ied many aspects of earlier life in west-central Atlantic Slave Trade Database Africa and offered much evidence of the region’s (www.slavevoyages.org) that has revealed such importance to Atlantic studies—and, indeed, to deep detail of the horrific ravages. The pieces also world history more generally. Mbanza Kongo is provide readers with a sense of ongoing courage presented as the kingdom’s political center and and creativity amid tragedy of unthinkable pro‐ cultural capital described by a European visitor in portions, and of how local people rose to new eco‐ 1491 as “a fne town” rivaling in size and splendor nomic and political opportunities even as society Portugal’s own second city (p. 17). Mbanza Kongo itself was transformed. In a related way, John would become the continent’s frst site of mixed Janzen harkens to his strong studies of social African and European aesthetics, architectures, process over the years in a feeting reference to schools, literacies, and religions. The second con‐ the ever-updating idioms of Kongo religion. In tribution by Heywood and Thornton concerns equally short shrift, Wyatt MacGaffey lends a Kongo/Portuguese diplomacy, and Francesco Ca‐ sense of Kongo “meaning and aesthetics” based porale’s wonderful portrait bust of Kongolese am‐ on his feld and archival studies of Kongo. bassador Antonio Manuel realized in 1608 sets the Whether “in most of Kongo the sculptural tradi‐ tion was dead” by the time he and other re‐ 2 H-Net Reviews searchers reached them is debatable (p. 174), giv‐ Leone, and Mathew Cochran draw attention to en feldwork more recent than his own such as what Fennell calls “material manifestations of that of Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz (Kongo Graphic core symbols in Kongo” as discovered in excava‐ Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign [2013]). tions in the United States. Fennell asserts that “en‐ But on balance MacGaffey has made distinct and slaved laborers ... from the Kongo continued to enduring contributions to Kongo studies and it is shape material culture in accordance with beliefs useful to have differences of opinion presented. and practices learned in their homeland,” and Indeed, one wishes that more controversy had that a “core symbolic repertoire included an ideo‐ been put on the table through the book, exhibi‐ graphic expression, or cosmogram,” called diken‐ tion, and symposium—again as a point to which ga—the well-known X-marks-the-spot crossroads we shall return. Portfolios of historical photo‐ of the living and the dead that appears etched into graphs and color presentations of potent fgura‐ ceramics illustrated with his piece (p. 230). Read‐ tive and nonfigurative nkisi among other stun‐ ers will be interested in the complexities of such ning works (what remarkable woven mats!) com‐ findings as reported in Fennell’s excellent Cross‐ plete the section. roads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and Ethnogen‐ Offerings following these shift the focus to esis in the New World (2007). In tantalizing brevi‐ Kongo artistic practices. The contribution by Nic‐ ty, the aforementioned team’s research in historic hole Bridges is derived from her doctoral re‐ homes of Annapolis, Maryland, is also mentioned, search on Loango ivories and their remarkable revealing “spirit practices,” including the dikenga spirals of historical depiction. Here she addresses and buried bundles that cannot but make one “transatlantic souvenirs,” for these magnificent think of Kongo minds and hands at work to re‐ sculpted tusks as well as other artistic genres store some balance to the world (p. 242). were often developed for gifting or purchase by Kongo-isms in American language, cuisine, Europeans visiting west-central Africa; but the and “folk art” are introduced by Jacky Maniacky, same visual literacy was carried throughout the Birgit Ricquier, and Jason Yong, respectively; and black Atlantic by enslaved Kongolese as evi‐ the “Kongo connection” discerned in sweet-grass denced in the iconography of walking sticks, such basketry of the Carolinas is masterfully presented as the remarkable Emancipation Cane now at the by Dale Rosengarten. Kongo music and dance in Brooklyn Museum. A focused selection of illustra‐ New Orleans’ famed Kongo Square are mentioned tions provides further enticing objects, including in a few pages by Freddi Williams Evans, and carved tusks, staffs, scepters, whisks, and other Mathilde Leduc-Grimaldi brings readers’ atten‐ accoutrements and “curiosities” of Kongo royalty. tion to how Kongo people and their material cul‐ A catalog of musical instruments and masks in‐ ture were portrayed in nineteenth-century ex‐ cluded in the Kongo across the Waters exhibition plorers’ accounts. The latter piece would seem provides further evidence of surpassing artistry better placed in the book’s frst section than this from earlier days, and RMCA ethnomusicologist one, but introduces a strangely understudied top‐ Rémy Jadinot offers a soupçon of how remarkable ic crying out for scholarship.
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