Sierra Leone Arts and Literature

CULTURE: LITERATURE

The literature reflects the composite social and ethnic reality of the country. In fact, it is necessary to distinguish a literary production in English, by the bourgeois elites, descendants of former liberated American slaves, and a popular, indigenous literature in African languages. The latter had already had their own writing for some time. The one in the Vai language, syllabic and phonetic, also used for literary purposes, dates back to 1835 (created by Mamolu Duwala Bukolo), but derives from an older pictographic system. Even the base has an alphabet that dates from the century. XX. However, popular literature remains mostly oral. The best known is that of limba, with songs called mboro (ancient stories), stories of animals, whose protagonist is the spider, and of generalized human beings. It includes other genres: myths, historical narratives, proverbs, riddles, maxims. The literature in English of the former slaves reflects the experience of individuals who felt culturally marginal in the African context and were pushed to make a synthesis between two civilizations also under the influence of the great black American thinker EW Blyden, who lent his work as an educator in Sierra Leone. The Creole bourgeoisie went from an unconditional acceptance of Western civilization to an attempt to elaborate an African idea. Literature, which had precursors in the century. XIX in the historians and essayists Africanus Horton (1835-1883) and ABC Sibthorpe (1835-1916), advocated anti-racist theories, the formation of independent states in West Africa and the revaluation of traditional cultures. In the first half of the century. XX James Johnson attempts a reconciliation between the evangelical message and African culture. Love for the land of Africa appears in the verses of JS Davies (1879-1957) and Crispin George (1902-1971) and in the narrative works of Adelaide Smith (1868-1959) and Gladys Casely-Hayford (1904-1950)), which was the first to use krio, a popular creole jargon. Among the literary production of the fifties and sixties of the last century we remember the short story writer and essayist Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994), the novelist Robert Wellesley Cole and T. Bankole, author of a biography on XX James Johnson attempts a reconciliation between the evangelical message and African culture. Love for the land of Africa appears in the verses of JS Davies (1879-1957) and Crispin George (1902-1971) and in the narrative works of Adelaide Smith (1868-1959) and Gladys Casely-Hayford (1904-1950)), which was the first to use krio, a popular creole jargon. Among the literary production of the fifties and sixties of the last century we remember the short story writer and essayist Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994), the novelist Robert Wellesley Cole and T. Bankole, author of a biography on XX James Johnson attempts a reconciliation between the evangelical message and African culture. Love for the land of Africa appears in the verses of JS Davies (1879-1957) and Crispin George (1902-1971) and in the narrative works of Adelaide Smith (1868-1959) and Gladys Casely-Hayford (1904-1950)), which was the first to use krio, a popular creole jargon. Among the literary production of the fifties and sixties of the last century we remember the short story writer and essayist Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994), the novelist Robert Wellesley Cole and T. Bankole, author of a biography on popular creole jargon. Among the literary production of the fifties and sixties of the last century we remember the short story writer and essayist Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994), the novelist Robert Wellesley Cole and T. Bankole, author of a biography on popular creole jargon.

Among the literary production of the fifties and sixties of the last century we remember the short story writer and essayist Abioseh Nicol (1924-1994), the novelist Robert Wellesley Cole and T. Bankole, author of a biography on Kwame Nkrumah. In the seventies poetry was loaded with symbolic meanings that sometimes made it obscure, with a dense and convulsive style. She is mainly represented by Gaston Bart-Williams (1938-1990), Lemuel Johnson (1940-2000), Syl Cheyney-Coker (b.1945) and Mukhtarr Mustafa (b.1943). Theatrical literature developed in the 1980s: elitist literature in English represented by Raymond Charley, and popular literature in African languages. The novel acquires a good author with PD Palmer. Literary criticism was very lively thanks to the publication of one of the most prestigious magazines in Africa: African Literature Today. Alongside the vernacular languages ​​and English, there is also Creole, or krio, the language of former freed slaves. This language has some good literary attempts: the verses of Acquash Laluah and Thomas Deker, which claimed in the Krio Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. At the beginning of the 21st century, however, it is still difficult to find writers from the country.

CULTURE: ART

In Sierra Leone the most notable groups in the artistic field were the kissi, the mandingo and the toma. According to allunitconverters, the first two groups lead an interesting production of small soft stone sculptures. In reality, these figures in soapstone, called nomori in the mandingo area, pomtanin the kissi area and found buried in the ground, they present an enigma about their origin, as the kissi and mandingo are not the authors, on the contrary they consider them of supernatural origin attributing to them magical powers; most probably the statuettes are to be ascribed to populations who previously inhabited those regions. Also worth mentioning, with regard to the Mandingo, is the helmet mask on a spiral neck worn by the women of the Bundu (or Sande) association, a female equivalent of the Poro society. On the border between the forest and the savannah, the Toma meet, who use numerous masks for their initiation rites, most of which are connected to the powerful secret society Poro. Typical of the toma is a flat mask that recalls the cubist style in its essentiality.

Sierra Leone Arts