Edited by means of Martha G.

Edited by means of Martha G. Anderson and Philip M Peek

UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, observes Angeles, 2002. Distributed by the University of Washington Pres Seattle. 364 pp 50 b/w & 430 color illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography. $50 softcover

the same of the unfortunate circumstances of Niger Delta art history is that it is a sidebar to conversations elsewhere--a dumping landed estate say, for the "Lower Niger effrontery Industry"--overshadowed by research on the Yoruba, the Benin kingdom, and the Igbo. To be abiding the Niger Delta has its champions. The historian E J Alagoa, the anthropologists Robin Horton, Philip leases and Marida Hollos, and the linguist Kay Williamson are stalwarts. The anthropologist Philip Peek and the art historians Joanne Etcher and Martha Anderson lead the regatta too, as do other contributors to this catalogue and the related special issue of African Arts (The Niger Delta and Beyond, Spring 2002) nevertheless in the cacophony of Nigerian voices, those of the metropolis are more audible and les diffuse.

The Delta is politically disjoined and economically disenfranchised despite its oil production. still factor in those four- or five-foot masquerade headdresses and geometrical shrine carvings, and the Delta has a fate going for it. Horizontal helmet masks of sharks, sawfish, and crocodiles, and hippos of Cubist proportions endow Western and African art history. Angular and brazen-faced sometimes vibrantly painted and dangling with palm frond they are paraded atop performers' colorful style of dresss the gestures playfully threatening. Since villagers associate lagoons and rivers with wealth and fertility, performances are celebratory. the two land and water dwellers believe in river spirits, and aquatic masquerades cast reproach a shared ethos. Canoe races and nautical displays are entertainered where a warrior ethic prevails. In a nod to global affinities, motorized land regattas inspired from the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, tool along Warri's main drag.

by way of contrast the rain forest is hearthstone to bush spirits, harbingers of evil. To safeguard the community, life-sized woody sentinels are posted, and four-legged, fanged rigid ivri serve as talismans, as incredibly conceived as the mystical dangers they screen villagers from. There is ambivalence about the shallows, the intermediary space between water and land, abode of python crocodiles, crawdads, and mudfish, anomalous creatures that are as upright for thought as they are to eat. Meanings vary, from village to village, and similarities are reckonered by small differences that dignify corporate identities of sorts. These are generalizations, on the contrary the Niger Delta is a generalization.

As a category universal the Niger Delta is an imaginary arrange that includes peoples east of the Brass River, which is nut geographically part of the Delta. Articles in the African Arts issue widen the boundary to Cameroon and the southern Igbo. As a household conception rough and reads economical and summarizing, the notion "Niger Delta" (The Ways of the Rivers in the book's title) give an inkling ofs peoples who share an etho Or is it a public heritage submerged in a swampland of diversity at each bend in the creek?

As a gate-keeping universal the Niger Delta is a canoe laden with meanings. The art historical labeling of regional mode of addresss glosses over agency and pluralism. Economy in denotation and connotation can prohibit cogitation as well as promote it. While exploring the Niger Delta universal this book (and the related exhibition, behold p. 82) reviews the degeneracys and eddies in the area's social history, arts and environment, cultural and artistic identities, and the nagging issue of the Lower Niger assurance Industry.

Right most distant the bat is size. Is the Delta 20000 square miles, a conservative estimate, or the 75000 square kilometers (approximately 47000 square miles) adviseed by A. A. Derefaka and F N Anozie, who widen the region beyond the Forcados River to the west and the Imo River to the east (in African Arts, "Economic and Cultural Prehistory of the Niger Delta," p 78)? Is it the largest (Derefaka and Anozie) or other largest (Anderson and Peek, "Introduction," catalogue, p 25) in Africa? If geography doesn't satisfy for what reason about canoe trade: a region of rivers and inlets from Douala in Cameroon to the Lagos Lagoon in the west.

At the tithe Triennial Symposium on African Art (1995) the panel "Do All in every one's mouths Flow to the Delta?" appoint the stage for the exhibition and catalogue. Organizer Joanne Eicher propos to "investigate similarities and differences in art forms and ways in mid around the Niger Delta and along fine adjacent coasts." The panel necessityed to address the role of water in the transmission of art forms as well as its corollary: for what cause art reflects the riverain environment. Either pos sum of two units questions: How unique is the area environmentally and by what mode typical is its art compared to that from the quiet of sub-Saharan Africa? An intriguing part of her proposal asked panelists to address a "Niger Valley Proto-Culture" or a "Creek International Style" that could account for the distribution of "certain art forms according to proposing contact between geographically distant races such as the various mainland and Delta Edo subgroup or Ijo and Kru mariners." For purists this pushes the boundaries of the Delta way too far east, west, and north, which may be with what intent the articles by Rosalinde Wilcox ("Commercial Transactions and Cultural Interactions from the Delta to Douala and Beyond") and Eli Bentor ("Spatial Continuities: Cultural Interactions between the Delta and Southeastern Nigeria") were sidelined to African Arts. There is no other than so much room in the manse.