Introduction

Summary

A collection of articles, interviews and a screen-play, reflecting issues of African performance and media inevitably carries some aesthetic and ideological baggage. A common perception of innovation in Africa places media firmly in a tradition derived from exposure to colonial and post-colonial ideologies. The perception is perhaps inevitable, given that most twentieth-century electronic media technology (cinema, radio, telephone and television) was introduced to Africa through colonial importation. More significantly, the early development of these media tended to be influenced by Northern economic support, training and cultural influences.

Such a narrowly technocentric interpretation of media, however, needs to be interrogated. Although this collection deals with electronic communication, the history of Africa's engagement with it has been strongly influenced by indigenous oral performative media: dance, masquerades, mime, puppetry and oral narrative. The problem with a technocentric viewpoint is that it tends to situate innovation within a paradigm dominated by technology, so that ‘progressive’ or ‘avant garde’ cultural innovations are projected as those associated with the latest media technologies. This perspective ignores the adaptive genius of much African creativity, which has often been expressed in such performative modes as improvisation or the synaesthesia of mixed art forms.