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Celebrate Africa Day 2008 with London on Bank Holiday Monday, May 26

To celebrate Africa Day 2008, Trafalgar Square will play host to some of Africa’s best loved music artists, on May 26 from 1-8pm

The May Bank Holiday sees the second annual GLA (Greater London Authority) Africa Day festival, with cultural flavours from Africa – including a wellseasoned medley of traditional and cutting edge sounds and performances from many African nations.

Africa’s western regions are featured, with headliners Les Amazones de Guinée, a rousing
all-female group, taking time out
from their more formal roles as members of the Guinean army.
They’ll be bringing to London a unique brand of west African jazz
that has been a Guinean institution since the 1960s (and rarely performed in Europe).

Zimbabwean musician Sibusisiwe ‘Busi’ Ncube – who fuses singing in six languages with her mbira (thumb piano) and percussive talents – will take to the stage with her six-piece band, Rain, performing tracks from her 2007 album ‘Malaisha’.

The winners of this year’s BBC Radio 3 World Music Award for Album of the Year, powerhouse Malian musician and composer Bassekou Kouyate with Ngoni ba, showcase the ngoni
(a lute-like

instrument from west Africa). They are playing alongside Mali’s first ngoni quartet, which includes Oumar Barou Kouyate, Moussa Bah and Andra Kouyate. The group is joined by Bassekou’s wife, singer Amy Sacko, known as the ‘Tina Turner of Mali’.

Rhythmic soukous and Cuban rhumba will merge beautifully when Zairean Kanda Bongo Man hits the stage with his guitarfocused take on the soukous musical tradition.

Expect a full weekend, as Trafalgar Square is decked with stalls selling African art and crafts, fairtrade treats, a Bedouin tent, information on travelling to Africa and a series of drumming workshops for kids.

A ‘Taste of Africa’ food village will reflect different regions within the continent, with a licensed bar selling African beers and soft drinks. So, all in all, there’ll be everything you need to get into party mood, African style.

Nana Ocrant

African languages in London

From the Anglo-African creole of Krio to the click consonants of Zulu, the sound of Africa reverberates through the city. Of the 300 languages spoken in London, as many as 100 are African, and heritage languages are undergoing a rebirth. On May 31, Word from Africa, a celebration of African language and literature at the British Museum, kicks off two weeks of cultural events.

At London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the biggest teaching centre for African languages in the UK, Twi, Igbo and Yoruba are the most popular heritage languages. SOAS language co-ordinator Dr Anil Biltoo says: ‘If you look at the languages in demand, they follow colonial history.’ Children and grandchildren of Nigerian and Ghanaian
immigrants are learning languages from those countries, but ‘in a generation or two, we might see an uptake for Somali from people of that lineage’.

In January, Jamaican-born Colin Robinson opened the African Language School. Nine languages, including Wolof, Ga and Amharic, are taught. Robinson says: ‘Our students are everybody from holidaymakers to businesspeople. But Africans
in the diaspora should be able to speak an African language. Language gives our children a sense of belonging.’ SOAS, Thornhaugh St, WC1 (020 7637 2388, www.soas. ac.uk).

The African Language School, 627-633 Barking Rd, E13 (020 8471 2258, www.the africanlanguageschool.com).

African heritage

London has a long African history and is the birthplace of pan-Africanism

Africans have lived in London for centuries, possibly since as early as the 12th century, and, in 1555, merchant John Lok was recorded as bringing over five Ghanaians to teach them English so they could become interpreters.

In the 18th century, large numbers of Africans (an estimated 40,000 in the 1760s) arrived as servants of naval officers and colonialists. Some servants of prominent Londoners were themselves famous in high society. Quobna Ottobah Cugoano came from Ghana in 1772 and was the servant of painter Richard Cosway in Marylebone. He went on to write two books and campaign against slavery. Writer Samuel Johnson paid for his African valet Samuel Barber’s education and considered him more a friend than a servant.

In 1792, the case of runaway John Somerset established that it was illegal to deport a former slave from Britain against his will, which encouraged more Africans to settle here. Many Africans campaigned for change; former slave Olaudah Equiano (pictured) became a celebrated writer and abolitionist. After the American War of Independence, African soldiers who had fought for the British began to arrive and in the 1800s Africans from the British navy formed a community in Canning Town.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, born in Holborn in 1875 to a Sierra Leonian father and English mother, studied at the Royal College of Music and became a successful composer. His music is still played today and several lost works were discovered and recorded in the last ten years.

In 1900, the First Pan-African Congress was held in Westminster and London became the centre of an emerging pan-African movement. After World War II, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah were prominent in the Pan-African Association before returning home to lead their countries.

Twenty-four African nations gained independence between 1957 and 1962, and a new influx of Africans came to work
and study in London. For the first time, this included large numbers of women (most African residents had previously
been servicemen). Buchi Emecheta arrived in 1962 from Nigeria and raised five children while studying sociology. She
went on to become a celebrated novelist and a London University tutor, and was awarded an OBE in 2005.

African students in London

Study has always been key to Africans in London. In 1788, there were over 50 African students here, and in 1800 an African academy was founded in Clapham to educate freed Sierra Leonean slaves.

In 1925, law students formed the West African Students’ Union (WASU) and set up a hostel and library in Camden. Members included the future leaders of Kenya and Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah (pictured above), who
was WASU’s vice-president.

Many black Africans who could not study back home took correspondence courses with London University. Thabo Mbeki
studied economics before he came to London and Nelson Mandela gained a Bachelor of Laws while he was in prison. His countryman Desmond Tutu studied here in the 1960s.

More recently, Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek was a student at the London College of Fashion when a model scout discovered her at a market in Crystal Palace in 1995.

Mandela monument

A year short of Nelson Mandela’s ninetieth birthday this July, the late artist Ian Walters’ homage to the former president of South Africa was unveiled in Parliament Square. The idea for a permanent tribute to Madiba (the honorary clan title that South Africans affectionately call him) came from anti-apartheid activist Donald Woods, who led a seven-year campaign for its installation. It is Walters’ second statue of Mandela in London – he also created the bust that was installed at the South Bank in 1985, when Mandela was still a prisoner.