THE DRAMA OF NOMMO

by Paul Carter Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 4, 1973

Nommo is both word-magic and the power source of this polemic as well as the ""African"" aesthetic it traces in black American life and art. More specific we cannot get, since Harrison's ethnography is amateur indeed, but documentary scholarship is not really essential to his purposes. What he is describing is not a cultural transmission from the motherland but something more akin to race memory or soul; and in relating contemporary black modes and values to (a wave of the hand) ""Africa,"" where unperverted nommo force united and vitalized communities, he is really projecting, almost prophetically, lines of vast creative and constructive potential in the black lifestyle here and now. It's the vision that compels us, and also magnetizes the facts into strict and potent alignments -- dress, jazz, dance, family patterns, etc. are reinterpreted as latter-day means toward a rich ritual harmony, subverted and almost forgotten but surviving still in the communal immediacy of image and style. Some of the best things Harrison has to say apply as well to white life and culture (especially with regard to community and its essential relevance to art). It is a liberating book insofar as it manages to keep a sense of social symptomatology while imagining beyond, and asserting the limits of political cause and effect.

Pub Date: March 4, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Grove -- dist. by Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1973

Categories: NONFICTION