by Jon Lackman | 23 September 2008 | Africa, Books
In the Autumn 2008 issue of African Arts, anthropologist Joseph Nevadomsky reviews Art, Performance, and Ritual in Benin City by Charles Gore:
Gore’s book signals a change of direction in Benin Studies. It chips at the ossifications that had become the boundary markers of Benin research. John Piction, in his blurb, call Gore’s book “the most important book on Benin art and ethnography since Robert Bradbury’s 1973 Benin Studies.” … Gore provokes a conversation … where hardly any academic discourse existed before … His monograph meticulously accounts for the ideologies and practices of priests whose creative energies and spiritual transformations are displayed in fantastic mud and concrete shrine constructions, trance and dance possessions of extraordinary vitality and individuality, and the allegiances of followers whose search for belief, drama, and creation is met by a panoply of religious leaders enticing them. What places Gore’s book on a par with Bradbury’s work is its careful exposition of religious and structural linkages among the various levels of society … The summary chapter, “Art History and Artefact,” … incisively critiques art history’s and anthropology’s constructions, those uncritical baseline assumptions that form the fabric of research on Benin. This is essential reading to resituate Benin Studies … Gore’s book is a fundamental revamp. It shatters the standard hype. It will lead into new terrain and generate a passel of PhDs …
To celebrate his monograph, I wrote a rap song honoring his achievements, happy to have him as a comrade-in-arms and colleague.
That dude Gore
Talkin’ the note
Slingin’ the tote
Goin’ over the wall.He got the spill
Dude innocent ‘nough
Yet he got the skill
T’ git over that wall.The wall that confines
The big house done built
That make we believe
The wall it for realBreak happenin’ man
We gotta go
From ‘diana, New York, an’ UCLA too
From London, Vienna, even KokomoFree at last
Free at last
Thank god almighty
From that historyJust breakin’ free!
Said Rev King
An honest dude, man
Too bad he deadBut Gore is here
Settin’ us free
From Benin folklore
And art historyThat art history, bro’
Leave it behind
Like a turd in the cell
For ‘ficials to find.
