Review
"Martin succeeds in capturing the heartbeat of an evolving urban culture.... As a compelling and in places haunting recreation of the spice of life for the African Brazzavillois of the times her book is a model to be followed and a masterpiece which I suspect cannot be duplicated." Jan Vansina, The Int'l Jrnl of African Historical Studies
Product Description
In this book, Phyllis Martin, a well-known Africanist scholar, opens up a whole new field of African research: the leisure activities of urban Africans. Her comprehensive study, set in colonial Brazzaville and based on a wide variety of written sources and interviews, investigates recreational activities from football and fashion to music, dance and night life. In it, she brings out the ways in which these activities built social networks, humanised daily life and forged new identities, and explains how they ultimately helped to remake older traditions and values with new cultural forms.
