West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song

West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song was a major four-month exhibition at the British Library in London — the first of its kind in the UK to explore in detail the cultural history of the region, through literature, artefacts, art, music and performance — which ran from 16 October 2015 to 16 February 2016. It has been described as "undoubtedly the most ambitious exhibition to date at the British Library".

Co-curated by Dr Marion Wallace (Curator of African Collections) and Dr Janet Topp Fargion (Curator of World and Traditional Music), with an advisory panel chaired by Gus Casely-Hayford, the show spanned 2,000 years, 1,000 languages and 17 different countries: a broad definition of the region allowed for the inclusion of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

The exhibition made use of manuscripts, historic film and sound recordings, books, photographs, and woven and printed textiles, to underline a literary culture that is centuries old, while co-existing with ancient oral traditions. Headphones delivered spoken-word recitals, songs and the sounds of musical instruments, as part of an audio-visual journey from the 14th-century epic poem about Sundiata, founder of the Mali Empire, through to the Notting Hill Carnival and a specially designed Bélé costume.

...
Wikipedia