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 and/or history:
“Every modern male has, lying at the bottom of his psyche, a large, primitive being covered with hair down to his feet. Making contact with this Wild Man is the step the Eighties male or the Nineties male has yet to take. That bucketing-out process has yet to begin in our contemporary culture.”
—Robert Bly (b. 1926)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)