BLACK CULTURE

by HE. President Leopold S. Senghor

On the eve of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, it is necessary to recall that today no problem is more important for black people, than that of black culture. Black people are engaged in dis­cussing and often disagreeing about negritude or the African personality. But what is "culture"? To define it, it will be necessary to compare it with civilization.

"Civilization" is the combination of facts and social phenomena, structures and values which characterize any given society. "Culture" is, within the framework of this "civilization", the combination of its values; in one word, its spirit. It follows from this that each races, each ethnic group, each nation, indeed, each society has its own values. Because there is a black race, and a black ethnic group, there is similarly, a black civilization and a black culture. The Arabs are divided on practically every issue except that which really matters, that is their culture ­Arabness.

It is exactly this faith which they have in their culture that gives the Arabs their strength and their advantage over us the blacks. I shall deal only with black culture, because once again, on the eve of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, it is the most important problem facing black people in the world, black Africans as well as the blacks of the diaspora. Black culture is a set of values originating from, and original to, blacks as is expressed in their different national societies. We find them today in our political in­stitutions, our ancient traditions and our moral values, and especially, in our literature. Whether they are ancient or contemporary, we find them in black African languages. But above all, in our arts, theatre, music, dance, sculpture, painting and tapestry.

Our culture is so strong that it is expressed even in the way we walk, laugh or cry: the German philosopher, Hermann Von Keyserling used to say that the Americans dance, walk and laugh like the blacks. To expand on the observation of Keyserling, we know that since the end of the 19th century, since what I call "the revolution of 1899", European arts and through it, the art of the world, have been influenced by black arts.

But what are these original values that make up black culture? They are, fundamentally, the sense of communion between the visible and the invisible, man, nature and God; the sense of analogical images, which expresses this communion and finally, the sense of rhythm.

I speak of a rhythm that is living which is neither simple repetition nor mechanical discourse as is most often European rhythm, but a living rhythm that results from asymmetric parallelism: of a rhythm characterized by unity in diversity; in one word, by the swing which comes at a time when, or a place where, it is not expected. Extending the debate from Africa to the Third World , and to universal civilization, I would say that the problem of culture is that which dominates all others, because it conditions them. This is so true that not only politicians, but also economists affirm their concern for man and the necessity to study and take into account the cultural aspects of problems, especially economic problems, in order to effectively solve them.

In this regard, I will refer you to the report which Messrs. Mesarovitch and Pestel of M.LT. read to the Club of Rome under the title "Strategy for Tomorrow". But this is not all. All countries, whether they are developed or developing now agree that their essential problem is to ensure their development through a national, coherent and effective plan. And all economists are equally agreed that, from start to finish of any development plan, there is man himself, with his values, his culture. It is man, supported by his values, who produces the plan and this plan has as its objectives the develop­ment of man.

That is to say, development of all his faculties in life in relation to the values of national culture. My conclusion therefore, is as follows: if we wish the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture to be a success, as I do, we should consider its colloquium as the most important point which should define, defend and illustrate black civilization and above all its spirit; that is, its culture, which is today the most powerful force in the universal civilization. Once more, I do not speak of material values, I speak of spiritual values.