This volume encompasses over forty years of scholarly research on African art, both traditional and modern, by the anthropologist, Simon Ottenberg. Focus is on the arts of the Afikpo, an Igbo group in southeastern Nigeria and on Bafodea Limba of northern Sierra Leone. The essays discuss art objects and music in the context of their use in performance and ritual, and the symbolism of aesthetic forms and behavior. Stress in the writing is placed on obtaining Africans’ conceptions of their own arts blended with Western viewpoints. The writing is based on extensive research in Africa.

"This two-volume collection of essays is a significant milestone in the discourse of African Studies and an insightful summation of the career of a distinguished scholar of African anthropology and art history. The books testify to the originality of Ottenberg's insights and chronicle his transformation from a young anthropologist observer to a valued member of the Afikpo-Igbo society."

-Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie
Art Historian, University of California, Santa Barbara

"This book presents us with an invaluable snapshot of the emergence of a uniquely innovative approach to the study of African cultures, peoples, and histories, an approach which privileges the sensibilities, priorities, and changing social dynamics of the African people without casting their universe in the language of insular exceptionalism