Zulu warrior dance. In ancestor veneration it is considered that the death is a mere passage from the human world to the spirit world. In many societies the ancestors occupy more devotional attention than God/Supreme being. Native American Religion Native American religions are the spiritual practices of the Indigenous peoples in North America. Traditional Native American ceremonial ways can vary widely, and are based on the differing histories and beliefs of individual tribes, clans and bands.
Among the Sioux and Arapaho, the Ghost Dance was one of the central rituals of a new religious movement that focused on the restoration of the past, as opposed to a salvation in a new future. The movement was active within limited tribes and mirrored other attempts by previous Indians to escape the civilization of the white man. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times but was first performed in accordance with Jack Wilson's teachings among the Nevada Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the American West, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, Native American tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs, often creating change in both the society that integrated it and the ritual itself.
These sacred events have sacrificed all kinds of behavior in order gain control of the spirit world. Rituals are another source of sacred practices such as Igbo rituals. Igbo tribes worship the goddess of earth, called Chukwu, or Chineke. The Igbo people envision that each person has their own spirits which could decide their fate. They have special ceremonies or rituals that mark significant events of life cycles.
Other forms of community theatre have political intent, to inform and energise a community in bringing change or in asserting human rights, Theatre for Development in Africa for example or Purna Chandra Rao’s work in Hyderabad, India supporting peasants’ land rights against rapacious landowners. It can also be dangerous. Rao’s fellow-countryman, theatre activist Safdar Hashmi, was beaten to death while performing a street play Halla Bol during municipal elections in the Jhandapur Sahibabad area on January 1, 1989 . Alternatively, the exciting work of ‘Z Divadlo’ in the small town of Zeleneč, Slovakia, combines amateur community actors with the expertise of a professional director, Jozef Bednárik to perform original work. In Brazil, the work of Marcia Pompêo Nogueira and Beatrice Cabral resonates in communities, some of which are in danger of losing their cultural identify through the arrival of electricity and television.
He was portrayed this way in Shakespeare because the European’s were unsure how to accept the unfamiliar looks and lifestyles of these newly found people of the New World. In Césaire, the author wants Caliban to be an example of black pride by making him more vocal and rebellious. This subtle difference in the character descriptions speaks volumes to how the views on Caribbean colonization changed over the 350 year time period between the releases of the plays. In Shakespeare’s time, the newfound natives of the Caribbean were known as cannibals to most of Europe. They were generally thought as monstrous, uncivilized beings who consumed the flesh of other humans.
Through the analysis of Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" and George Orwell's autobiographical recount "Shooting an Elephant", offer an insight to the concepts of belonging which are substainted through literary devices. Texts act as a memory of time capturing context in a creative manner. Belonging is at the heart of the human condition and thus composers explore this dynamic closely. Through Miller's own feelings of alienation during an American era engulfed in anti-communist hysteria, Miller noticed the same hysteria paralysing the town of Salem during the 1692 Salem Witch trails. The parallels between these two eras are striking and expose _________________________.
Shamanism, Vodou, and Santeria, three Afro-American religions, each in their own ways grant us a communal relationship with the Spiritual world and the powers it inhabits through the ritual uses of healing, divination, dance, and the other many facets and concepts each religion presents, and it’s a shame that society has skewed these religions to being something they’re not. Everything from the initiation methods to the structure of the ceremonies, societally, is presented as a macabre display of mutilation, manipulation, or violence. In reality, however, these practices are inseparably and inexplicably tied to the Spiritual realm, and it is the goal of each practitioner to be an active participant in this bond. Each of the three main religions
Besides the obvious black face that white people put on in minstrel theater with the help of burnt cork, the tropes of the genre include stylizations or parodies of black music, dance, speech, and character. Actual blackface theater was already in decline toward the end of the nineteenth century, but here and there it survived much later. In 1848, Frederick Douglass scornfully branded blackface minstrels as “the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature ( Blackface and Blackness ,7).” This should remind us that in the years when blackface theater was most popular, slavery was still an American fact of life in Southern states. As one historian put the matter, for a “half-century” these entertainments represented “insurement to the uses of white supremacy.” The
To the Minoans religion involved the natural world and provided an explanation of natural phenomena such as the seasons. Minoans seemed to have believed in spiritual forces in a spiritual place in the sky and high places beyond the normal world of humans on earth, as well as spiritual forces below the earth. According to Dickinson the Minoans believed that natural forces controlled the weather and the fertility of the land. Evidence suggests that the Minoans were polytheistic and that like most ancient people, they used special rites to please and placate the gods. The Minoans believe the divine world could be accessed through ritual, images on seal stones and frescoes showed this.
Scarification, also known as “The Proud Mark”, describes the art where a person marks his or her skin in decorative patterns. Inks or dies pack the mark forming basic tattoos. “Scarification was developed during ancient times in Africa because the dark skin of the African People did not fit the ideal for tattooing” (Afrobeauty). Africans use body paints during special occasions within their tribes. Tribe members create body paints using oil, clay, chalk, and plant dyes.