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African Ceremonies: The Concise Edition

African Ceremonies: The Concise Edition

List Price: $49.95
Your Price: $31.47
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: See it before it disappears
Review: A beautiful look at cultural conventions that may soon be relegated to the quaint and unusual.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Buy it for what it is
Review: Buyers should understand what this is - a beautiful coffee table book. Beckwith and Fisher present their usual quality of brilliant, sensitive photography. But understand that this is, for the most part, capturing a memory, a fantasy. This Africa no longer exists. Don't buy the book to learn African culture. Buy it if you like photography. As a historical record, it's lacking. One can capture a visual from the outside, but one cannot capture a cultural understanding as readily.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
Review: HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THAT THESE CULTURES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE, OR THIS IS AN AFRICA THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THEY TOOK THESE PICTURES WITHIN THE LAST 10 YEARS.. DIDN'T THEY ? DUH ? EVERYONE KNOWS THERE IS A COMMON EVERYDAY AFRICA.. GOING TO WORK GENERAL LIVING ( JUST LIKE US HERE IN AMERICA FOLKS) BUT STILL THERE IS AFRICAN TRIBAL SPLENDOR. JUST LIKE IN AMERICA INDIAN'S GET TOGETHER FOR TRIBAL POW WOWS. THEY STILL EXIST TOO. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK ARE SHOCKINGLY GORGEOUS...AFRICAN PEOPLE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE! THE MEN ARE HANDSOME, THE WOMEN WONDEROUS. IT JUST MAKES ME WONDER WHY THE EUROPEAN STANDARD, HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE "STANDARD" OF BEAUTY. THIS REVUE MAY SOUND SHALLOW, BUT IF YOUR INTO THE HUMAN HAS ART FORM ...BUY THIS BOOK!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
Review: HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THAT THESE CULTURES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE, OR THIS IS AN AFRICA THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THEY TOOK THESE PICTURES WITHIN THE LAST 10 YEARS.. DIDN'T THEY ? DUH ? EVERYONE KNOWS THERE IS A COMMON EVERYDAY AFRICA.. GOING TO WORK GENERAL LIVING ( JUST LIKE US HERE IN AMERICA FOLKS) BUT STILL THERE IS AFRICAN TRIBAL SPLENDOR. JUST LIKE IN AMERICA INDIAN'S GET TOGETHER FOR TRIBAL POW WOWS. THEY STILL EXIST TOO. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK ARE SHOCKINGLY GORGEOUS...AFRICAN PEOPLE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE! THE MEN ARE HANDSOME, THE WOMEN WONDEROUS. IT JUST MAKES ME WONDER WHY THE EUROPEAN STANDARD, HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE "STANDARD" OF BEAUTY. THIS REVUE MAY SOUND SHALLOW, BUT IF YOUR INTO THE HUMAN HAS ART FORM ...BUY THIS BOOK!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The books that capture you
Review: I purchased this book (it's actually a two volume set) about a year ago and it still fascinates me. It sits underneath a glass coffee table in our living room. When company visits, invariably, someone picks it up and starts going through it, at that point they are "no longer there". It happens everytime, once you start, it becomes very difficult to put the book down. You tell yourself "I'll just look at one more page" but the photos are superbly done as well as the narration. WONDERFUL!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: African Ceremonies (Beckwith and Fisher)
Review: I received African Ceremonies as a birthday present two months ago and soon began to read the book carefully since the photographs beg you to listen to the stories they tell about people, their lives, their aspirations and their ceremonies. For centuries Africa was a continent of massive migrations and vibrant cultures. All had their high time, declined in the normal course of events and left a legacy for their successors. Yet most ceremonies, although embellished and refined over time, remained largely the same. The hypnotic photograph of the Voodoo dancer from Ghana on the front of the slip case, for example, speaks of a time of spirits, oracles and divinations. Of soothsayers and intermediaries between man and the higher powers as well as of the unshakable belief that intervention is needed to protect man from evil, to solve his troubles, to cure his illnesses and generally to secure good fortune. And the Berber bride in her bejeweled headdress and cloak on the spine of the book reminds us that not all Africans are of black skin colour and that depending on what coast of Africa one finds oneself on, influences from out of Africa have helped to create new Africans. And with them ceremonies.

Beckwith and Fisher have been photographing Africa for over thirty years, and like a ripe savoury wine African Ceremonies was many years in the making. With the expert collaboration of writers and designers each volume now contains three sections: Birth and Initiation; Courtship and Marriage; Royalty and Power in Volume 1; and Seasonal Rites; Beliefs and Worship; Spirits and Ancestors in Volume 2. The Dagara shaman Malidoma Patrice Som‚ from Burkina Faso, a special friend and guide to the photographers, sets the tone in his Foreword by saying that Beckwith and Fisher's travails are really a labour of love for Africa and that the two women responded "to an urgent call from the continent's ancestors to record sacred ceremonies before it is too late." And record they did: the two volumes contain over 700 pages and hundreds of exquisite colour photographs showing 43 ceremonies in 26 countries.

Birth, childhood, initiation, marriage and death are fateful events in an African's life. The first photograph in African Childhood of a Surma father in Ethiopia surrounded by five children with their bodies painted has universal appeal as do those of ochred Himba children in Namibia and young Krobo girls draped in their beautiful cloths from Ghana. The initiation ceremonies and practices leading a young boy or girl from childhood to adulthood are elaborate, and while they are sometimes difficult for us to look at they have nevertheless been part of African life for time immemorial. The rituals of the Taneka initiation in northern Benin, of Ndebele womanhood in South Africa or Maasai warriorhood in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania are deeply rooted in the land and its people. Glistening with red ochre body paint and adorned with various implements, marching one behind the other across the arid savannah, the page literally palpitates with the excitement and eagerness of these young Maasai boys to at last become adults.

The photographs of a Tuareg wedding deep in the Saharan desert pulsate with a life unknown to the viewer. Descended from the ancient Berbers of North Africa who fought and then mingled with invading Arabs centuries ago, the two-page photograph of guests arriving in their finery on their camels from across the arid land is a breathtaking symphony of colours any contemporary fashion designer would love to create. The beautiful photographs of African Brides later in the book are a reminder that, whatever one's culture, a wedding day is one of the most significant days in a woman's life.

In the best of times man and nature in Africa have lived in harmony and in the spirit of reciprocity, and across the continent seasonal rites are a time-honoured means by which people seek the protection of the spirit world for themselves, their land and their animals. The tall lean Dinka of the southern Sudan, elegant in their traditional beaded corsets, are devoted to their cattle. So are the Omo from the Omo river valley in southwest Ethiopia who perform an elaborate bull jumping ceremony to prove the young initiate's prowess. Bedik planting rites from southeast Senegal call on the spirit world to appease the powers of nature and bless the crops and the people who work the fields. The Ewe people of Togo and Ghana perform a yam blessing ceremony, and for the agriculturist Bobo of Burkina Faso nature is a benevolent entity that only human actions can upset. Their colourful bush mask rituals are meant to reestablish that equilibrium.

To most Africans the worlds of the living and the dead are equally real, and the funeral is the last transitional rite before the departed joins the world of the spirits forever. The Surma burial rites in the southwest region of Ethiopia on the border with Sudan, and the collective Dogon Dama funeral in Mali south of the Niger, which takes place every dozen years, are fantastic ceremonies to witness. To have been allowed to photograph them speaks volumes about Beckwith and Fisher's talent to win the confidence of their subjects as well as of their ability not to let the lens become an annoying intruder.

African Ceremonies is photographic story telling and adventure at its finest. It is art rather than ethnographic documentation and will, no doubt, be the definitive photographic record of African ceremonies for a long time to come..................

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Entertainment Not Scholarship!
Review: I received this book as a gift and was greatly dissapointed and offended. It was patronizing and exploitative. Moreover, it treated anceint cultures in a shallow and irresponsible manner --typically eurocentric!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Africa that *does* exist, but that is vanishing
Review: The "concise edition" of AFRICAN CEREMONIES opens with a preface by Dr. Malidoma Some, president of "Echoes of the Ancestors" and author of his autobiography OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT and THE HEALING WISDOM OF AFRICA. Malidoma is from the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso. His name means "make friends with the stranger/enemy," and that is why he now lives in the West.

I have met Malidoma on a few occasions (participating in some of his rituals) and I corresponded with him for a time. He has been incredibly helpful and supportive in my own spiritual journey (he is an initiated shaman of his tribe and has recently become the youngest initiated elder), and therefore I trust what he says. Malidoma's preface makes it clear that, sadly, AFRICAN CEREMONIES documents a world that - unlike the claims of some - is not entirely gone, but that is quickly vanishing. Malidoma comments that these photographs are very important because they show the last time that some of these ceremonies will be performed in such elaborate nature, and perhaps they will never be performed again at all.

AFRICAN CEREMONIES continues the tradition of these well respected photographers by providing a beautiful volume of beautiful peoples.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally!A Nonethnocentric Perspective on African Traditions!
Review: The New York Times Sunday Book Review section today had a wonderful review of this book (2 volumes in a slipcase). The documentation of ritual and people performing rituals as the seasons change in Nature and life cycles turn for People is a sacred task. The photographers appear to have embraced their subjects with care and respect - perhaps others will follow in this way in the future. What strikes me most about the book and the reviews is the genuine approach of the authors to the dignity, honor and respect of the African People they have photographed and documented. This alone makes the book a winner for me.

Regarding the book, I am particularly impressed by their treatment of sacredness without judgment and jaded lens. Indeed the art and form of ritual itself creates tradition. The music of these images is at once visual and alive celebrating the sacred as timeless expressions of culture and community.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A beautiful but narrow vision of Africa
Review: These photos are simply stunning, and I've always been impressed with the artistic quality of Beckwith and Fisher's photos (their other books, their spreads in National Geographic, etc.). My problem with what they do--not just this title but their entire body of work--is that it purports to represent an Africa that doesn't really exist.

The Africa of Beckwith and Fisher is lovely to look at, full of color and motion and vibrancy. Its residents are splendid in their traditional attire, dancing their traditional dances and observing their traditional rituals. These images have a timeless quality to them; one comes away with the impression that African societies are little changed since the pre-industrial, pre-colonial era.

And this is precisely what's wrong with these presentations. Africa HAS changed, and immeasurably so. From Dakar to Dar es Salaam and from Cairo to Cape Town, Africans are living in the 21st century just like the rest of us. Many of them are going to work in the morning, coming home and watching TV at night, and wearing Adidas track suits. But you wouldn't know that from AFRICAN CEREMONIES or any of the other Beckwith/Fisher books, because that's not the Africa they're trying to sell. Their Africa is "traditional," "pure," and "authentic," whatever those words mean, and it bothers me that they've taken it upon themselves to determine what does and doesn't make the cut.

I would never suggest that the creators of this book somehow staged their scenes so as to filter out all vestiges of modern life. But they must have selected their photos very carefully to have the same effect. You have to look pretty hard in this collection to see so much as a wristwatch, even though the vast majority of Africans wear wristwatches nowadays.

I spent a few years in Africa, including among some of the peoples whose ceremonies are "recorded" here. But looking at AFRICAN CEREMONIES, I had a hard time recognizing the same places I'd been and the people I'd known. What you get with this package is a carefully screened presentation of African life. Admire its beauty, which is genuine, but don't be trapped into believing that these images represent some kind of ageless African truth. They don't, because Africa is not stuck in the past.


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