Wasambo Were and the Impetus of Context-Smashing: Assessing Changing Patterns of African Performance Aesthetics

Abstract

The paper investigates the changing patterns of African performance aesthetics using terms deployed to evaluate the encrustations to which African performances have been exposed and the corrosive factors that now characterize performance in the African setting. Particular attention has been paid to Wasambo Were and other seminal contributions to the preservation and rejuvenation of indigenous artistic sources that Africa can rely on for contemporary artistic creation and production in theatre and film. Within the vortex of this proposed discourse, on one side are what constitute an African performance, elements and patterns like folkism, polycentrism, curve-linear and other patterns; on the other side are the postmodern, globalizing, consumerist and postcolonial factors which have exerted their influences on the artistic space that now determine the dominant artistic expressions within the continent. At this point, a perspective which emerges when a normative scenario of creative operation is established, bringing with it all its negative encumbrances. If some individuals take this challenge to the hilt to protect what is pristine and progressive to the continent, then a context is being smashed.

Keywords: Context, Patterns, Performance Aesthetics.