It’s also a reference to those great “flashes of the spirit” that I kept coming across on my travels. This landmark book shows how five African civilizationsYoruba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Cross Riverhave informed and are reflected in the aesthetic, social and metaphysical traditions (music, sculpture, textiles, architecture, religion, idiogrammatic writing) of black people in the.

It’s also a nod to the album of the same name by Jon Hassell & Farafina. The title refers to the book of the same name by Robert Farris Thompson, which I’d read during my residency in Benin. Thompson, who minted the term Black Atlantic, devoted his life to the study of African art history, of which he was one of the world’s foremost scholars. It is largely an instrumental album, weaving vocals in abstracted, sliced and textural ways only the original vocals come from artists such as Diana Bada, Gustave Dylamour, John Follass and Noel Saizonou, whom I’d met and recorded with during my residency in Villa Karo, Benin, in 2013. The music blends my diverse influences of Afrobeat, Ambient, Blues, Electronic, Fourth World, Krautrock, Minimalism and West African traditional musics, and it incorporates my field recordings from those journeys into some of the pieces. Book design by Charlotte Staub Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Thompson, Robert Farris. This space is always in the state of becoming: changing, emerging and suggesting new possibilities. This landmark book shows how five African civilizationsYoruba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Cross Riverhave informed and.

It’s a reflection on a kind of liminal global space, imaginary and real, that exists in between and beyond cultures, nations, borders, ecosystems, beliefs, social constructs, identities and differences. Introduction: The Rise of the Black Atlantic Visual Tradition by Robert Farris Thompson. Read 'Flash of the Spirit African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy' by Robert Farris Thompson available from Rakuten Kobo. Flash of the Spirit is inspired by my travels and experiences in West Africa.

Flash of the spirit thompson