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Showing 13 results for “Language”
Music · VideoThe Drummers of Dakar
Sabar rhythms are a language. Three drummers explain what their hands are actually saying.
Senegal · Dakar · Wolof
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Place & History · StoryThe Meaning Behind a Village Name
Place names are compressed history. This one holds a description of the shoreline as it was two centuries ago.
The Gambia · West Coast · Mandinka
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Folklore · StoryIfá: The Memory of 256 Paths
A Yoruba system of knowledge in which 256 chapters of verse are held in memory and read through a divining chain.
Nigeria · South-western Nigeria · Yoruba, English
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Music · StoryThe Balafon of the Senufo
A pentatonic wooden xylophone tuned by ear and by generation, played at work, at funerals and at village gatherings.
Burkina Faso · Cascades and Hauts-Bassins · Senufo, Dioula, French
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Languages · StoryThe Vai Script: A Writing System Made in Liberia
An indigenous syllabary created in the 1830s and still written by hand in Vai towns, learned outside any school system.
Liberia · Grand Cape Mount and Bomi counties · Vai, English
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Traditions · StoryCarnival in Bissau: Masks of Many Islands
Neighbourhoods and islands bring their own masks and songs to the streets of Bissau, each carrying a different tradition.
Guinea-Bissau · Bissau and the Bijagós Islands · Kriol, Portuguese
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Traditions · AudioHarvest and the First Rain
Farming ritual and the calendar it keeps.
The Gambia · Upper River Region · Fula
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History · StoryRiver Routes
How trade, salt and language moved along the water.
The Gambia · Along the Gambia River · English
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Languages · AudioProverbs in Mandinka
Forty sayings, with the situations that call for them.
The Gambia · Brikama, West Coast · Mandinka
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Languages · AudioWolof Greetings, In Full
The long greeting nobody shortens at home.
The Gambia · Serrekunda, Kanifing · Wolof
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Languages · StoryWords With No Translation
What is lost when a term is rendered into English.
The Gambia · The Gambia · English
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Music · VideoThe Drum That Speaks
Sabar rhythm as language, phrase by phrase.
Senegal · Medina, Dakar · Wolof
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ThemeLanguages
Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Jola and the words that carry culture.
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