Culture has the huge concept in various areas of human life, which is a study of philosophy, art, history, cultural studies, linguistics, and ethnology. It is a human activity which includes all forms of self-expression, self-knowledge, and individual human behavior. This paper aims to understand black culture: how does it affect the spiritual and spiritual state of a person, on his health, how does it relate to the pressure on the person that modern civilization is purposefully exerting, and in particular the situation in the US. This is a new field of knowledge, concentrating on the study of cultural phenomena in their refraction in the psychology of an individual.
The documentary “Africa: A Voyage of Discovery with Basil Davidson” is a widely praised educational arrangement depicting the historical backdrop of Africa. The eight-hour arrangement was delivered in 1984. It is separated into eight areas on four recordings. Each segment is 57 minutes in length. Basil Davidson utilizes different assets. Davidson normally talks as area film of Africa is appeared. Every once in a while, he shows up in the recordings. Additionally indicated are documented media and emotional recreations. The eight segments are recorded underneath with subsections that we have made from notes (Davidson, 2016).
The old city of Benin gives us a stylish case of the connection between a king and the city (Trotter,2000). An exceptionally African bit of workmanship demonstrates the king at the focal point of the city and the universe. This passes on the power and secret innate in the part of king. The Dutch who went to this city in 1400 AD depicted it as having cleaned houses, 30 principle avenues, great police, and offering an indistinguishable kinship to guests from to each other. They particularly said it was not second rate. The king had incredible power in setting with his committee. European guests would offer the king endowments and demand exchange licenses.
The city of Kano lies in Hausaland, in the territory of present day Nigeria. There were various little towns on the slope. Early kings endeavored to broaden their energy as they did in medieval Europe, and Kano emerged as the most capable town. A colossal royal residence was worked in the fifteenth century. The king lived there encompassed by enormous riddle. In any case, his reality was subject to his committee, which existed to exhort the king on all issues and to constrain his energy (Davidson, 2016). A large number of the king’s different ‘slaves’ were given some definitive impact and direct access to the king. In old Kano, Bori was the indigenous religion. Be that as it may, in 1300 AD Muslims brought Islam and its impact into Kano. In 1500, the King requested that Almingili come and prompt him on the grounds that the city’s influence and riches developed. His recommendation fixated on enhanced equity and the extension of Islam in the king’s authority. African kingdoms were progressed from Europe regarding the balanced governance in them. A constitution was additionally made for the administration and its kin. In any case, the king did at present oversee the encompassing towns and their exchange; thusly, he likewise misused this exchange. The cultivating towns around Kano were surprisingly ripe and created much cotton, corn, and grain, making the towns and thusly the kingdom exceptionally rich (Davidson, 2016).
The indigenous population of Africa can be conditionally divided into three large groups according to the level of socioeconomic development. The first are nomadic hunting tribes of Bushmen and Pygmies, who do not know farming and cattle breeding. The second, the most numerous group, can include most of the agricultural and pastoral peoples of tropical and southern Africa. The third group unites the peoples of North and North-East Africa, who since ancient times lived a common life with the advanced peoples of the Mediterranean, having lost elements of their patriarchal way of life (Dodson, 2003). These peoples developed along their own path, which differed from the path of development of the tribes of Tropical and South Africa. There have long existed civilizations based on agriculture and cattle breeding, the most famous of which was the civilization of Ancient Egypt. To the west of it there were powerful slave states: Carthage and Numidia. Therefore, the culture of the peoples of North Africa was more developed.
16-17 century, White people willingly buy from USA “gold”: black – slaves and white – ivory, a large number of which are forced to supply artists from the tribe of Bini. They make pottery, caskets and other things intended for trade with the Portuguese. The islanders of sherbro work even in the furniture shops of Portugal. Both wish that the memory of his reign is not seeping, so orders his blacksmiths to cast new tiles of bronze and to depict on them pictures of new times. New times are the Portuguese in plaid clothes, with weapons and in helmets or hats with wide brim; they consult with local nobles, inspect the city or hunt in the jungle. These tiles were replaced on the walls of the palace previous. The Treasury of Oba was full of wonderful bronzes made by Binski casters, widely known all over the world, as the raw materials for their products were brought from Central Europe through Portugal. The molding, made in Benin, is quite unusual. Its thickness does not exceed 2 mm, and the image is so beautiful and elegant that it seems incredible to get such a pattern by casting. The art of Benin was elitist and portrayed court life. Founders worked for the needs of the king and were forced to do so under the threat of death. Both needed not only tiles for finishing the walls of the palace, but also portrait sculptures of ancestors for the altar. Therefore, Benin produced sculptures designed for the cult of the dead, who were buried with a solemn ceremony (Davidson,1984).
When Benin’s glory faded and his hegemony in Nigeria ended, the decline and elite court art, only his plebeian current in the Yoruba survived, which left a rich heritage of ancestral art. To the west of the Yoruba settlements stretched the state of Dahomey, once military, ruled by the absolute ruler. Dahomey fascinated travelers; especially attractive was her unusual army of Amazons, which was the personal tsarist guard. They fought wisely and carefully, without excessive bloodshed – the enemy was surrounded and taken prisoner, killed only in case of protection of their own lives. The creator of this humane army was King Gezo, who ruled in 1818-1858.
During the time of glory in Dahomey, as in Benin, there was a court and folk art. Professional artists-co-vali worked under the order of the tsar. In the court art dominated statues of deities, forged from metal, which along with the already known examples of lithuania were an interesting innovation in the metaloplastics of West Africa. Forged in this technique statues consist of forged, respectively, modeled plates, connected by rivets.
The art of Dahomey demonstrates the lack of consistency in its development. Its heterogeneity is due to the clash of various artistic tendencies. On the one hand, one can notice the influence of Yoruba art, manifested in squat proportions and large heads of wooden sculpture, and on the other – in metal sculpture – the dynamics, delicacy and elegance of foundry items of the Ashanti tribe. The influence of contacts with the Portuguese is also felt. Dahomey probably did not have an old, homogeneous artistic tradition, so there was no integration of all elements into a single integrity. In general, we can draw a conclusion about the distinctiveness of the art of Black Africa, associated with the specificity of Black culture (Davidson,1984).
Cultures of the African continent have made a significant contribution to the treasury of world culture. First of all, the context of European culture organically included jazz, which was born on the basis of African traditions, its rhythms give people pleasure, so he made a career in Blaskavitch and was immediately included in the classical repertoire. The appearance of African plastics in Europe was of greatest importance for world artistic plastics. Echoes of the culture of Black Africa can be found in the works of outstanding artists of the 20 century. The latter managed to combine the two-dimensional perspective, adopted in Western painting, with the third dimension, represented by forms of African sculpture. It was this combination that led to Cubism. Cubist forms of African sculpture were imbued with artists of the most avant-garde groups, and cubism entered the history of world culture as one of the most interesting directions.
The ability to synthesize, which characterizes the culture of Black is still one of the directions of the artistic quest for world culture. The charms of Black culture were given credit to such writers as Dodson, Trotter, Dodson and others and the artistic circles enthusiastically met collections of myths, poetry and legends collected on the Black culture.
References
Dodson, H. (2003). Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture. National Geographic.
Trotter, J. W. (2000). The African American Experience. Cengage Learning (1st ed.).
Davidson, B. (2016). AFRICA Episode 3 Caravans of Gold. youtube.com. Accessed form youtube: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSoZ07LXnKo >
Davidson, B. (1984). The King and The City: Africa: A Voyage of Discovery with Basil Davidson. cosmolearning.org. Retrieved from https://cosmolearning.org/documentaries/africa-a-voyage-of-discovery-with-basil-davidson-1402/4/
