Chronicle Editor
Cultural Heritage With Phathisa Nyathi
IN the last few articles, we found ourselves delving more and more into the built environment. That we did to appreciate changes wrought on a built environment when modes of production changed drastically. In our case, we sought to unpack the changes resulting from domestication of certain grasses for their and the domestication of animals for the meat and subsequently other utilities.
The two processes were of fundamental importance and, in their wake, changed several aspects. We shall continue to deal with these, though not in this particular article. We acknowledge that there are strong links and relations among thought, cosmology and worldview on the one hand and cultural practices and emerging arts on the other. I found myself in Harare last week propounding this very important link against the backdrop of plans to introduce living cultural heritage in school systems in both Zimbabwe and Namibia.
In the case of Zimbabwe, the schools were chosen from three provinces of Matabeleland South, Masvingo and Manicaland. Officials from relevant ministries attended the stakeholders’ workshop that was also attended by culture experts, from the two countries, officials from the UNESCO National Commission in Zimbabwe and the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa.
Domestication came about when new agricultural practices within a community were adopted. New ideologies emerged and these belonged, in the main, to the new perceptions, worldview and thought or beliefs. When changes take place at that level, there occur several manifestations and ramifications at the lower level, that of cultural practices.
In our case, the cultural practices related to animal husbandry that had broad implications within the cultural front. Cultural practices themselves changed in tandem with thought and beliefs. The relationship between the two is interesting. The changes may have begun at thought or belief level. Thought and belief are critical initiators of changes at the level of cultural practices. Cultural practices mirror and reflect the formative thought and beliefs that underpin and inform them.
Apparently, this is not all. The resulting cultural changes may sometimes be so far reaching and deep-rooted toa point where there is some mismatch between the thought and beliefs that spawned the cultural practices in the first place. Some adjustments may have to be made so that at the end of the day, it is cultural changes that initiate changes at thought level. The two levels or spheres of culture mutually influence each other.
The requisite balance should be maintained. The introduction of book religions operated at the level of beliefs and thought. That happened against the backdrop of cultural practices that were sitting well with thought, cosmology and worldview that underpinned and informed existing cultural practices. When that happened, Eurocentric thought subsumed African thought, beliefs, cosmologies and worldview. An unsettled relationship resulted. The existing cultural practices no longer sat well with the new thought. The relations were uneasy, unstable and unsustainable.
This is what Africa’s eminent writer and scholar Chinua Achebe of Nigeria referred to in his seminal book, “Things Fall Apart.” Indeed, the centre could no longer hold. The mismatch resulted from thought and worldview and the cultural practices that were no longer congruent.
Eurocentric thought was buttressed by many factors, some persuasive and others coercive. Legislative measures were also arrayed against African cultural practices. In the end, Eurocentric thought, ideas and beliefs were no longer in tandem nor congruent with existing cultural practices that were spawned by different thought systems that had since been subsumed.
It became clear the centre, the balance, the equilibrium had been distorted and could no longerhold. As I expressed in my book, “African Body Art: Aesthetics or Utility,” the world was defined to Africans. The all-embracing processes included, inter alia, aspects such as cuisine, religion, aesthetics, art in general, culture in the broad sense of the word, education and governance. Cultural practices did not freely adjust or change to the influences of new thought, worldview and beliefs.
Achebe was right to observe these unsustainable changes. However, the world that was coercively defined to Africans is now willinglyaccepted as their very own. Thought and belief were not ingrained. In most cases, it was deceptive sugar coating.However, over the years, Africans themselves were tipping their cultural practices towards a deep abyss of rejection. Today many of them are proud adherents to exotic thought. What was forced down their throats are today acceptable juxtapositions. Indeed, the centre is being forced to hold. After losing its rootedness and energy, it is failing to hold and things have and are falling apart.
The last aspect that underpins and informs cultural practices that I referred to was that of the arts. The arts are expressive culture. They express a community’s culture. The arts, in other words, flow and shift together with the formative, informing, and underpinning aspects of culture, the worldview and beliefs.
The arts are diverse in as much as the world of culture that they mirror, represent and express is diverse. Arts come in various formssuch as performances (poetry, drama/theatre, music and dance), visual arts (sculpture, drawing, painting, architecture, graphic design, creative photography), the culinary arts and the literary arts, among several others. These are products of creative minds. Art starts in a mind where we cannot consume it.
For other minds to consume it, the creating mind must translate the art-in-the-mind to a form that other minds may consume. That process we refer to as production. Production techniques and processes may vary from one arts genre to the other. Beyond that stage, there has to be marketing and promotion to alert would-be consumers to be aware of the existence of the arts product. In some cases there have to be consumption sites, Theatre is a good example where spaces are required for productions, rehearsals and change rooms.
As already pointed out above, the arts are some sort of monitors of thought, beliefs and cultural practices within a given community. Art operates within a cultural context. It shifts in tandem with cultural practices that it expresses. The cultural practices themselves are spawned by thought, ideology, worldview and beliefs of a community.
It goes without saying therefore, that when changes are introduced at the mentioned two levels, those changes will be reflected, captured and expressed at the level of the arts. The arts possess the capacity to express the same ideas differently. However, what is common to all of them is that they are captivating, enthralling and engrossing.
They pass messages effortlessly. They are thus a preferred methodology in transmitting new messages. They entertain while educating at the same time. Iyasa, in its hilarious style, may be engaged to transmit and inculcate in the minds of its audience, a new message such as awareness against some pandemic such as Covid-19. The intended performance will, in the first place entertain. That affords the performing group to draw attention of the targeted audience. Their offering goes beyond entertainment. Within the context of entertainment, they transmit the all-essential message about Covid-19.
A dance reflects a particular community. The language of first choice is that of the community. Intelligibility is of the essence. What would be derived when a performing group sings in Kiswahili in front of an Ndebele audience where the goal is to communicate and thus send messages? Language is of paramount importance.
The choreography has to be equally meaningful. It must be movement that is intelligible to the audience and its wider community. It just cannot be entertainment without a purpose. When traditional African games are played, there is quite often purpose beyond the game. Sometimes it might be some cognitive enhancement, physical and mental coordination and numeracy, for example.
In the same book, I argue and call for research that is more concertedacademics to go beyond the obvious aesthetic component. Art, San art included, is like an onion with several layers with each layer bearing a particular meaning. Beyond the first layer of meaning, there is yet another meaning. That might well be something that has nothing to do with aesthetic consumption.
Instead, there could be some hidden utility that comes buoyed by aesthetics. When that happens, adoption of the targeted utility is effortlessly accepted. For example, the pentagram, which on the face of it may seem an aesthetic design, is at another layer, a design that was usedby ancients as a repellant against witches. I have identified the role of the pentagram at just two levels. Why would I think I have exhausted all the layered meanings?
I have since faced the possibility that what we perceive as San rock art that we perceive as purely and wholly aesthetics may be misplaced.
There could very well be utility layers beyond the obvious first layer of aesthetics. We need to dig deeper to understand the mind of the San. We would missit if we sought to get into his shoes. He had no shoes and yet always had his mind. The mind creates, produces, and consumes.
A building is created with considerations of the community’s aesthetic traditions, its worldview, intended purposes of the building and available materials, and the knowledge and skills and techniques available within the community.
How does one who leads a precarious and nomadic lifestyle resort to posting images in a cave high up the wall while animals he wants to kill for supper are moving away? Does that constitute an economic way of utilizing available time? For a hunter, time is of the essence. Why paint? We have to answer that question. Besides, what species of animals were painted? I might not have looked at a sizeable assemblage of San rock art. I have not yet come across an image of a squirrel, a hare and other relatively small game. Why?
Interpretation of art, does not depend on the biological eyes. The artist has perception beyond what material eyes see.
I posit that we need to comprehensively understand the culture of the community from which painters were drawn. Art, as expressive culture, derives its life from the community. Even where, I argue, there is fine art, the mind is at work. The mind sits well with its context, both material and, more importantly, the spiritual one.
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