Abstract
“We are still Black and we have come back. Nous sommes revenus [‘We have returned’]. We have come back and brought back to our land, Africa, the music of Africa. Jazz is a Black Power! Jazz is a Black Power! Jazz is an African Power! Jazz is an African music! Jazz is an African music! We have come back!” proclaimed African American poet Ted Joans as he stood before an audience in the overcrowded streets of Algiers, Algeria, at the First Pan-African Cultural Festival in July 1969. He continued the poem, emphasizing his French phrases to ensure the largely Francophone African crowd would understand him: “Nous sommes revenus. Nous sommes les Noirs Americains, les Afro-Americains, les Africains des Etats-Unis. Mais, le premier chose, nous sommes Africains.” [“ We have returned. We are Black Americans, Afro-Americans, Africans of the United States. But foremost, we are Africans.”]1 Next to Ted Joans was an animated and commanding Archie Shepp, pacing across the stage playing his sa xophone. Riding over and through Shepp’s melodies were the rhythms of the Algerian Tuareg2 musicians who stood nearby, beating at their drums. The audience responded with uproarious applause and spurred on what was to become a classic jazz recording, Archie Shepp’s Live at the Panafrican Festival.3 Shortly after the performance, Shepp was interviewed about the experience by the Algerian national newspaper, El Moudjahid. He described the moment’s meaning in personal and political terms: “In my opinion, jazz is the music of all the long-lost Africans in America.
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Notes
Transcription taken from footage of the Festival in William Klein’s documentary film, Festival Panafricain d’Alger (ONCIC—Office National du Commerce et de l’Industrie Cinématographiques, 1970), as well as from the sound recording, Archie Shepp, Live at the Panafrican Festival (BYG-Actuel 529351, 1969).
Archie Shepp, Live at the Panafrican Festival (BYG-Actuel 529351, 1969).
William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 189.
For a discussion of some of these tensions, see: Philip G. Altbach and Salah M. Hassan, eds., The Muse of Modernity: Essays on Culture as Development in Africa (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996);
Dominic Thomas, Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002).
Sékou Touré, “The Political Leader as the Representative of a Culture,” (address to the second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Rome, 1959). Quoted in Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), 206.
Quoted in Henri Lopes, “Negritude: A Sober Analysis,” in New African Literature and the Arts Vol. III. ed. Joseph Okpaku (New York: The Third Press, 1973), 82.
See: Samir Meghelli, “From Harlem to Algiers: Transnational Solidarities between the African American Freedom Movement and Algeria, 1962–1978,” in Black Routes to Islam, ed. Manning Marable and Hishaam Aidi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 99–119;
Brenda Gayle Plummer, In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956–1974 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013);
Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996);
Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997);
Kevin Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006);
Robyn Spencer, “Merely One Link in the Worldwide Revolution: Internationalism, State Repression, and the Black Panther Party, 1966–1972,” in From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution, ed. Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 215–231;
Fanon Che Wilkins, “‘In the Belly of the Beast:’ Black Power, Anti-Imperialism, and the African Liberation Solidarity Movement, 1968–1975” (PhD diss., New York University, 2001);
Fanon Che Wilkins, “The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa before the Launching of Black Power,” Journal of African American History 94, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 468–491;
and Besenia Rodriguez, “Beyond Nation: The Formation of a Tricontinental Discourse,” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2006), among others.
René Lemarchand, “The C.I.A. in Africa: How Central? How Intelligent?” The Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 3 (1976): 401–426;
Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Karl van Meter, and Louis Wolf, eds. Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa (London: Zed Press, 1980).
See: Mercer Cook, “The Race Problem in Paris and the French West Indies,” Journal of Negro Education 8, no. 4 (October 1939): 673–680;
F. Abiola Irele, “The Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement,” in The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature eds. F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 759–784;
Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002);
and Brent Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), among others.
Larry Neal, “Sterling Brown and the Erection of a Whole Literary Tradition,” in Sterling A. Brown: A Umum Tribute (Philadelphia, PA: Black History Museum Publishers, 1982).
Nathan Hare, “Algiers 1969: A Report on the Pan-African Cultural Festival.” Black Scholar 1, no. 1 (November 1969): 3.
See: Neil Sheehan, “5 New Groups Tied to C.I.A. Conduits,” New York Times, February 17, 1967, 1, 16; John M. Crewdson, “C.I.A. Link to Cherne Unit Is Denied,” New York Times, February 21, 1976, 11; John M. Crewdson, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.,” New York Times, December 26, 1977, 1, 37; Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 197–224.
William Keorapetse Kgositsile, “Paths to the Future,” Negro Digest xvii, no. 11–12 (September–October 1968): 40.
Abdias Do Nascimento, “An Open Letter to the 1st World Festival of Negro Arts,” Présence Africaine 58, no. 30 (1966): 208–218.
Nathan Hare, “Algiers 1969: A Report on the Pan-African Cultural Festival.” Black Scholar 1, no. 1 (November 1969): 3.
Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Black Paris: The African Writers’ Landscape (Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 73.
For more on the International Section of the Black Panther Party: Kathleen Cleaver, “Back to Africa: The Evolution of the International Section of the Black Panther Party (1969–1972),” in The Black Panther Party Reconsidered ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 211–254. See also: Meghelli, “From Harlem to Algiers.”
Hoyt Fuller, Journey to Africa (Chicago: Third World Press, 1971), 94–95.
Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: Politics & Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 39.
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© 2014 Timothy Scott Brown and Andrew Lison
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Meghelli, S. (2014). “A Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation”: Black Arts, Black Power, and the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival. In: Brown, T.S., Lison, A. (eds) The Global Sixties in Sound and Vision. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375230_11
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