Modern History
During the colonial era, Senegal was colonized by France, and the people grew to adopt a French identity. Many, though not all, Senegalese identified as French instead of any African ethnicity. Post-independence, the philosophy of negritude arose to counteract this trend. The first President of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor (also a poet) was one of the primary exponents of negritude, which espoused the idea that the griot traditions of Senegal were as valid, classical and meaningful as French classical music.
Read more about this topic: Music Of Senegal
Famous quotes containing the words modern history, modern and/or history:
“Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)
“Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)