World Festival of the Black Arts launches at the UN

With speakers as diverse as Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH coalition to Akon, international singer-songwriter and producer, the FESMAN kickoff was a show of music, applause and hopeful voices calling for a united Africa.

Held in part to promote peace, culture and development, the festival could not be held at a more prescient time in African history. “This world festival of black art will be held in a global context marked by a change in paradigms and questions about world economic governance. The world is facing many questions to which we must provide relevant answers,” said keynote speaker President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal.

In a conversation with Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, a revered scholar and professor of African American Studies at Temple University, he told MediaGlobal, “There are two aspects to the developmental process on the African continent. The first is seeing culture as a demonstration of collective values of the African people.” Echoing, President Abdoulaye Wade, Asante also said, “Second, we must respond to challenges that are economic, disease oriented, moral, ethical and governmental. The best way to address each is return to the critical cultural development of African people and the concepts of antiquity: harmony; balance; order and justice.” Dr. Asante is also the chair of the United States Committee for FESMAN 2009.

This year's celebration will mark FESMAN's third run in nearly five decades. Many years on the drawing board, the festival was discussed in two Congresses for Black Writers and Artists held in Rome and Paris in 1956 and 1959 respectively. These first meetings established a common cultural ground among fragmented black civilizations and also nurtured the desire to elevate their heritage to a global arena.

President Léopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal welcomed the first FESMAN to Dakar in 1966 under the theme, “The Function and Importance of Black and African Art, for Peoples and in Peoples.” One of the major players and poets of the 1930s Negritude movement, President Senghor set a clear objective harkening to the early struggles of black cultural identity, “to contribute to an understanding between peoples, to assert the contribution by black artists and writers to universal thought, and to enable black artists to compare the results of their explorations.” It was in this spirit that so many venerable personalities of the black arts came together for the first time to honor their shared, yet diverse identities. Aimé Césaire and Langston Hughes awarded the young Nelson Mandela's first book, "No Easy Walk to Freedom" while Duke Ellington and Marion Williams performed alongside Samba star Clementina de Jesus.

Lagos, Nigeria hosted 1977's second world festival under the auspices of FESTAC focusing on the topic “Black Civilization and Education.” The evolution of music recording and media contributed to the success of 1977's program. Stevie Wonder, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Randy Weston and countless others set the groundwork to further elevate African-influenced music throughout the next several decades. Discussions for African policy and cultural development from the first FESMAN continued among the African States.

This year, FESMAN will return to its birthplace with representatives from over 80 countries gathering in Dakar and across Senegal for twenty days (December 1-20) of film, visual art, music, literature, architecture and fashion to celebrate the theme, “African Renaissance.”

President Abdoulaye Wade wishes to pay tribute to former presidents Senghor and Obasanjo whom organised the first two festivals saying, “it is critical to invest in what we have best to offer: culture. Motherland Africa has the duty to contribute to the emergence of a universal civilization, in which all cultures are represented in order to share and to grow.”

The theme of African unity and cultural uplift was omnipresent throughout each of the launch's speeches and performances. The audience, dressed in glistening robes and brightly coloured scarves, listened closely as the idea came up again and again.

Dr. Asante distilled the essence of FESMAN into these thoughtful words: “ We are dealing with Millennium Development Goals. Development is not a one shot deal. You must have an ongoing generator of economic, political and cultural will. The only way you can do that is to ensure people have their own sense agency. This is the Afrocentric approach to development and we are individuals and collectives, not the beggars [of] the 21st century. Now we are actors.”

Article published courtesy of MediaGlobal.