What do you know about black culture? Hip-hop? Rap? NBA basketball? A festival held to celebrate black culture and history yesterday went past the stereotypes to show the diversity of the black community, beyond Michael Jordan and Michael Jackson.
Hundreds of people explored the rich culture and traditions of African descendants in the Black History Month Celebration at Taipei Huashan Culture and Art Center. The event included a market featuring African jewelry, clothes and food as well as performances of African singing, dancing and poetry.
PHOTO COURTESY OF DESCENDANTS OF AFRICAN PEOPLE
"This is a positive event for us to learn about other cultures," said attendee Suzan Babcock, a lecturer in the English Department of National Taiwan Normal University. "It is important to support people who are willing to share their cultures and try to change some wrong perceptions about the group."
Organized by Descendants of African People (DAP), a group of African descendants living in Taiwan, the event provided an enriching cultural experience for both the foreign and local communities through various activities.
"This is a celebration of the achievements of the African people from around the world," said DAP co-founder Jaleea Price. "It is also a connection of black history and culture between various regions and countries in the world."
According to Elissa Russell, another DAP co-founder, Black History Month is a four-week-long celebration of African-American history that dates back to 1926. Every February, various events are held to promote knowledge of black history and raise awareness of black people's cultural heritage.
Elissa said that in the same spirit, DAP wants to share black heritage and the commemorative holiday with Taiwan.
"In addition to sharing the culture with others, this event is also an enriching experience for ourselves to learn from the international black community with blacks from America, Canada, Belize, Somalia and all parts of Africa," she added.
The one-day event was filled with African-style crafts, music and dance. Some hip-hop dancing was unavoidable, but there was also a West African drum show, poetry-reading about the history of African immigrants in ancient China, lessons on the history of African music and even a hair-braiding booth.
Hair-braiding stylist Lylianne Diedhiou came to Taiwan a year ago to learn Chinese at National Normal University. DAP members said Lylianne's hair-braiding skill ended their long search for the perfect hair salon in Taiwan.
"The texture of black hair is usually coarser," Price explained. "It's hard to find hairstylists in Taiwan to do perfect hair-braiding for us."
According to DAP members, many people now consider hair-braiding a fashion, and more and more white people have begun to braid their hair too. However, for Africans, hair-braiding comes from their culture and is one of their historical traditions.
In addition to performances and displays, the event also showed off achievements and contributions worldwide. There were slide shows of African leaders from around the world such as Nelson Mandela, and various black leaders such as Lewis Howard Latimer, who invented an electric lamp with an inexpensive carbon filament and a threaded wooden socket for light bulbs.
DAP also shared black history, from the earliest days when blacks lived on the African continent, to the slave trade beginning in the 1450s to the banning of slavery and the development of new cultural identities across the globe.
One visitor, Ben Huang (
"My knowledge of African culture mostly comes from the media, which is all about entertainment and sports," Huang said. "So I wanted to come here and have a deeper understanding of what black culture really is."
As a foreigner who has been living in Taiwan for more than 20 years, Suzan said that she is glad to see Taiwanese become increasingly aware of their own country's ethnic and cultural diversity, such as through the preservation of Aboriginal and Hakka languages.
"I think this event can be a beginning for Taiwanese to not only appreciate its own cultural diversity, but also to embrace the prosperous cultures brought by foreign communities," she added.
According to Russell and Price, since the creation of DAP last March, the group has attracted more than 80 members. They want DAP to provide both newly-arrived and well-established black people in Taipei with a community in which they can find support, and to educate Taiwanese about what it means to be black.
DAP is designed to serve as a home for African descendants in Taiwan, through meetings and marking events like Black History Month, Juneteenth (African American Emancipation Day on June 19), black film festivals and forums.
The group also hopes it can debunk some myths about black people, and help Taiwanese learn that black culture is about more than rap and hip-hop.
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