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West African Culture

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Rulers want beautiful objects to celebrate their high position. Potters, weavers, blacksmiths, leather workers, and others were often highly skilled. West Africa is very beautiful. Benin makes really nice things for the king. Metal workers weld brass and use it in copper that has been mined. Come see it! West Africans have musicians and poets for their ceremonies and entertainment. The artists and musicians can’t be missed! Woodworkers and craftsmen are in such high demand. They work hard so they never are poor. Creativity is a gift from God. West Africans use art to express their beliefs. Our art influences art around the world. Blacksmiths ability to shape tools from metal ores is considered to be magical. Masks that we make are used …show more content…

Make sure to bring scarves or some kind of headwear to cover your face from sandstorms and the heat. People in West Africa usually wear loose cotton clothes, you can go shopping at the local market. Remember to wear a jacket at night though because the desert isn’t just hot and dry, it also can be cold and wet! In the daily life of West Africa, you could see many different types of things. While walking through the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, you could see great, big, bustling markets. These markets are usually full of many people buying and selling goods, as in, books, textiles, books, tools, wood, metal, honey, milk, meat and other foods. Mostly though, gold and salt are traded. When you walk through villages there could be large, mosques made of dried earth and decorated with wooden projections and clay. While you are are visiting the West African Kingdoms, you would need a place to stay. In the villages that populate West Africa, people live in circular clay houses with straw cone-shaped roofs, that keeps you dry from the rain. If you want you could always live like a nomad and stay in tent-like houses, that are portable or in a new modern flat roof, brick home. In the house you stay in you will be gifted a cot or a bed mat, so you can sleep soundly after a nice day of going to the market and playing sports and games with the native people in your

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The Mali Empire (North Africa) and the Swahili Coast (East Africa) were both medieval civilizations in Africa that had similarities and differences throughout their reigns largely due to geography. One of the main similarities between the two is the fact that they were both resource-rich empires who used trading to their advantage. Mali had a lot of natural resources such as gold, salt, copper, and ivory. They got their main source of income from trading and selling these resources throughout the Sahara. The Swahili Coast also was also very fruitful; the merchant class traded things from the interior of Africa to traders from Arabia and India.

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The artists within the Empire of Benin were typically appointed by the king and were assigned to a guild such as the ivory workers (Igbesanmwan) guild or the brass workers (Eronmwon) guild. Many of the sculptures and artefacts developed by Benin’s artist were used to depict and glorify the king and his royal family. When the King or Oba of Benin is depicted in a sculpture he is typically show wearing his crown and tunic woven of red coral beads as was the tradition in the empire. This type of sculpture symbolised the wealth and prosperity of the empire to the citizens and more importantly to other foreigners with whom trade was conducted. Benin was known for brass casting and the smelting of copper and zinc which had been ongoing in west Africa since 600 BC by the Nok Kingdom, Yoruba, Benin Kingdom and Mande people who later formed the Mali Empire.

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