In the Guardian Thembi Mutch reviews a British Library show:
More hereWith a saddlebag Qur’an, a slave-ship manual and Fela Kuti, the new exhibition takes a thrilling journey through a thousand years of West African history – and it’s full of surprises
image by Toby Keane via the BBC
A giant carnival queen looms over the British Library’s new show West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song. Below her, David Rudder’s Notting Hill carnival classic Calypso Music pumps out of speakers, and footage from carnivals past can transport you back to Portobello Road in 1993.
The exhibition celebrates the complexity and diversity of west Africa’s heritage, while never sidestepping the more thorny issues of rebellion, protest and the transatlantic slave trade.
