How Black diasporic cosmology and spirituality inform Black cultural arts.
Introduction.
There are different aspects of black cultural arts, which influence the participation of different cultural practices that are known to be for the black arts. The founders of black art are black artists; however, some aspects of black art came about; as a result, the black culture and other norms. Black artists, such as the black writers, supported black revolutionary movement through their creativity in writing. Therefore, black creative arts. The back artist plays a significant role in American history as they came up with a revolutionary movement known as “the black arts movement.” It was aimed at waking the blacks and alerting their consciousness in their ultimate process of achieving liberation. Therefore, different issues affected the black creative arts revolutionary movement, such as diasporic cosmology and spirituality, which were primarily brought about by the neighboring culture of the Americans.
Body.
Black creative arts are surrounded by different theoretical frameworks that interfere with how the black expression of their original techniques. Living in a foreign land and led by a different culture, it is possible that the black creative arts could be affected by various issues (Richards, 1989). Spirituality is something that the backs have always treasured and highly valued since it is at the base of their culture and traditions. The blacks have severally been condemned to maintain their lifestyle, which is thought not to last long in them.
The trauma of slavery suffered by the blacks has made them be condemned by their oppressors to have drifted their attachment to their ancestors, thus interfering with their spirituality. However, the blacks do not believe so, claiming that they could all have died, were it not for the connection they still hold with their ancestors. It is more claimed that Africans have always denied and gone against their black cultural heritage, thus making them be good Christians (Richards, 1989). These claims are just made to brainwash the black creative arts so that they can practice a different religion and demonstrate it in their creative techniques. However, the blacks still hold onto dignifying the heritage inherited from their motherland.
Cosmology is primarily the science that surrounds the origin and the developing aspects of the universe. During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, millions of Africans were traded as slaves. However, as much as most of the heritage materials that depicted their culture were left behind, they carried in them their strong cultural heritage (Harris, 2005). Therefore, in the new communities that they were integrated, they came up with their sub-communities as they developed new means of expressing themselves. This means that, even though their cosmology was altered, they were still who they were.
Although diasporic black creative arts are emerging from an oppressive context where Africans ended up in different lands as slaves, the expression of Black theatre pieces of art should maintain the idealism of the black culture. It should not be limited to dramaturgical concepts of the westerners (Harris, 2005). Clear distinctions should be set for people who practice black creative arts to maintain the costume that tunes in black domestic life during performance.
As much as black creative arts is practices in different cosmology, the fact should not diminish the idea embedded in the arts (Harris, 2005). The American theatre degrades the black culture aspects. It tends to interfere with the real face of the culture by changing and bringing in different alterations that adhere to the best fit of the American culture.
Black creative arts is a real continuity of the real African heritage as termed by the ancestors. Therefore, different geographical conditions should not interfere with the expression of the African creative arts. Still, instead, the aspects should remain in a person like how their bloodstreams in the body. Victimization of social realism should not be the reason for the degeneration of the black creative arts (Harrison, 1996). This is because they convey different significant ideas that withhold the African heritage and moves them close to their living dead ancestors.
Another critical factor of the Black creative arts is that they were transformative theatre aspects brought about by black artists, to promote how westerners viewed the black culture with racism and violations of human rights. Therefore, the black creative arts are well informed with the diasporic cosmology as they turn out to work for the benefits of the black but still impact the diasporic society of the real and rich black heritage (Rastas and Nikunen, 2019). For instance, they pose challenging aspects to different nationalism as they essentialize the black race and acknowledge the global circulation of the diasporic black African cultures and the impactful connections to the black communities in the diaspora.
Conclusion.
Black creative arts are real theatre brought by the black artist as a way of connecting the oppressed African communities in different lands, the various aspects of the art were interfered with by things such as the diasporic communities and spiritualism. Black creative arts are rich in the black heritage as they support the black culture from whichever destination and, in return, maintain their connections with the ancestral world.
References.
Harris M.D. (2005) Art of the African Diaspora. In: Ember M., Ember C.R., Skoggard I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Springer, Boston, MA https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-29904-4_32
Harrison, P. (1996). Black Theatre: The Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora (pp. Chapter 1, Pg 1-15). http://tupress.temple.edu/uploads/book/excerpt/1429_ch1.pdf
Rastas, A., Nikunen, K. (2019). Introduction: Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Spaces in Europe, Open Cultural Studies, 3(1), 207-218. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0019
RICHARDS, D. (1981). Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African-American Spirituality. Présence Africaine, (117/118), Nouvelles séries, 247-292. Retrieved May 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24350836