>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, DC.
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: This is the
African Middle East division that's
responsible for 78 countries
on the continent of Africa,
the whole continent of Africa.
And the Middle East which is --
Which includes not only the
Arab world, Turkey, Iran,
but also we include Central
Asia in this division.
We go up to all the stans and
we stretch out to Afghanistan.
And then we have the Hebraic section
that includes not only
the collections in Hebrew
from the Near East, but
also from around the world.
So this division actually
not only recommends materials
from the region, collects
them, stores them here.
We have stacks and
we are custodians.
We in the Asian division
are the only 2 divisions
who are actually custodians
of materials
in the vernacular from
the countries.
But we serve them to our
readers in this room.
We organize programs
such as this one.
We host exhibits.
We just closed a major
exhibit on the Persian book.
And we hold conferences.
And numerous other activities
that highlight the
collections that we have.
So we are sort of quite active.
Our -- The staff of this
division, made up of scholars,
all of them are scholars in their
own right, they write books.
And not only about libraries, but
about the regions that they cover.
The African section is a very
active section in acquiring
and developing collections, briefing
visitors coming from the countries
that they are responsible for,
organizing programs,
symposia and workshops.
Major ongoing program that
the African section has is
in partnership with the poetry
of literature center
here at the library.
And with the Africa Society of
the National Summit on Africa.
And this program is entitled
"Conversations With African Poets
and Writers" and we interview
major award winning writers
and poets from Africa.
And we've created an archive
of these writers and poets
and they're up on our website.
And it's an ongoing program so we
already have 16 or 17 interviews
and we intend to continue.
We also reach out to people
in the community of scholars.
People who have researched and
done work on our countries.
We ask them to share with us
their insights, their findings,
their ongoing work so that all
of us attending, participating,
or watching on the web the
programs that we have feel enriched
with new information
and better and feel
that they've understood better
the cultures of these societies.
And so today we have 2 authors
and illustrators of the book
"Kanga Series" which
will be available
for purchase after the program.
Phyllis Ressler and Laura
Ressler [assumed spelling] host,
a mother and daughter team.
They have researched, written, and
illustrated an extraordinary book
on the culture of the kanga cloth.
Laura is unable to be here today.
So Phyllis will talk of their
work in Kenya and in other parts
of East Africa where the Ressler
family has lived for I understand
over 4 decades which
is very impressive.
And now to introduce our
speaker is Eve Ferguson,
our senior reference
librarian for East Africa.
So Eve.
>> Eve Ferguson: Good afternoon,
and welcome to the African
section's program "Kanga Stories."
My name is Eve Ferguson, reference
librarian for East Africa.
And, as Mary-Jane has
already advised you,
when you ask a question you're
agreeing to be part of the webcast.
This program is really special to me
because I also collect kanga cloths.
Nowhere near as many
as Phyllis Ressler has.
I have probably a dozen.
I think she has several hundred.
But kanga cloths are an integral
part of East African life
in particular, but have also gained
popularity around the continent
as a means of transmitting
information.
Recently kangas have
become tools in elections
and commemorative kangas have been
produced for special occasions.
Recently on the death of the
author Chinua Achebe they created a
commemorative kanga with his photo
that was worn at his funeral.
Hopefully one day we will
be able to acquire one.
The library has several
kangas in its collections,
most of which are the Obama
memorabilia from Africa collection
for which there's a finding aid
on the web at www.loc.gov/rr/amed.
Today we have Phyllis Ressler.
As Mary-Jane mentioned, her daughter
was unable to make it today,
but Phyllis and I met at the
folk life festival last summer
where she was speaking
and displaying her
lovely kangas over here.
Phyllis Ressler holds an MA in
anthropology of food from the school
of Oriental and Africa
Studies in London.
She's also worked in the field
of cross cultural communications
and media at the global level.
As an affiliate of the
national museums of Kenya,
in 2009 she initiated and managed
a research project in collaboration
with the British Museum on
textiles in East Africa.
The project culminated
with a publication
and an exhibition installed
at the National Museums
of Kenya and Nairobi in 2011.
Additionally she participated in
the planning and implementation
of an educational project
on arts and culture of Kenya
with the National Museum in 2000.
And in 2000 coordinated the
research, design, and installation
of the first kanga
textile exhibition
for the National Museums of Kenya.
Additional presentations and
publications include "Kanga,
the Cloth that Reveals,"
co-production of culture in Africa
and the Indian Ocean, which was
presented at the Textile Society
of America's 13th biannual
symposium in September of 2012.
And she has also written on the
social impact of cash transfers,
a Kenyan case study for Renewal,
International Food Policy
Research Institute in 2008.
She's presently developing
and editing --
developing publications that
focus on East African textiles.
Most recently she produced the book
"Kanga Stories" which was introduced
at the Smithsonian folk
life festival Kenya program,
Mambo Poa, this summer in 2014.
In addition she participated
as a presenter at the festival
on the kanga as early
text messaging.
Phyllis has taught at Webster
University, Geneva campus,
for 8 years in the field
of cultural anthropology
and media communications with
a focus on cultural diversity
in the media, cultural
anthropology and research.
In addition she teaches at
James Madison University,
an Eastern Mennonite
university in Virginia.
She assisted in the development
of the media trends conference
"New Media Tools in Human
Rights" at Webster University
in Geneva, Switzerland, March 2012.
So please help me to
welcome Phyllis Ressler
who will talk about Kanga stories.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Phyllis Ressler: Thank you.
It's really a privilege to be here,
and I hope that I can tell you
just a bit about this kanga,
a bit perhaps from a
different perspective,
and to entice your interest
in how the kanga for us,
and I'm very sorry my daughter's not
here, she's a mother with children
that needed her, but more than
that she's involved in a project
that actually she needed to finish.
It was supposed to be finished 2
days ago but it's not finished.
So I had to accept that
she wouldn't be here.
She's helped a lot
with the research.
She's also lived -- As a family
we lived in Kenya, but she's lived
in Burundi and a number of
other places since that time.
The -- What I wanted to just
say since we have a small group,
if you don't mind being a bit
informal I'd be interested
in how many people here
actually have a kanga
or have done some research
on the kanga.
Great. It was fun because
today we discovered
that our friend back here -- I'm
sorry I didn't ask your name --
His wife sent a kanga
for a meeting today.
And this is a kanga -- I have
never seen this, actually.
It's a kanga from Somalia with
-- written in Somali text.
So you'll want to come
up and take a look --
And do you want to tell us what
it says just while we start here?
Before we get --
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler: You
will meet your destiny?
We can talk about what
that actually means later.
And I -- It looks like -- Have you
done some research on the kanga?
I noticed your hand.
There was a hand.
Anyone here who has
done research at all?
Okay. I'll tell you what
we've found, and I will start,
first of all, by giving thanks
and acknowledgement
to a number of people.
But the thing I want to say
first is that the way I got
in to this kanga this time was
by -- When we lived in Kenya,
I started to read everything
I could find.
I went in to the dusty
sort of book sellers places
in London and in New Delhi.
And followed other kanga researchers
around who were going all
around Africa and Asia
and the Middle East.
I've gone back to little
alleys in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
And found things about the
kanga everywhere that I went.
But when I found the papers
I found a lot of PhD research
from American researchers who
went to Dar or went to Kenya,
did their PhD, studied Swahili,
learned a lot about the Swahili
culture on the coast and the kanga,
took their paper and
brought it back to the US
and it never stayed in Kenya.
And after years of working at
the National Museum of Kenya,
I began to wonder why the
people who wear this cloth,
why it had never been
studied by them.
And began to suspect that we
didn't have the whole story.
So that underlies it,
and I need to start this
by giving great acknowledgement to
the department of cultural heritage
at the National Museum of Kenya.
And a great of anthropologists
and researchers there from --
And it's from their work that a lot
of what I'll say today
comes, in fact.
It was a wonderful
experience and one
that could go on for a long time.
A couple of the other people
that I really should mention
particularly are, as you may know,
you may be familiar with VLISCO
the Dutch textile company.
VLISCO, of course, printed
textiles for West Africa.
And what they told
me when I was there,
which was not what I
really wanted to hear,
but they said when we needed to
run out the presses and get rid
of all the ink we would
just print up cheap kangas.
And sort of dump them on
the East African coast.
Which was kind of an interesting
way to look at it as someone
who was madly in love
with the kanga.
But of course at some point VLISCO
made a significant amount of money
and they had a huge business.
They began in 1867 printing
kangas that were sold
in East Africa primarily.
But they have a wonderful museum.
If you ever want to do
any research on the kanga,
go to Helmond in the Netherlands.
Large museum of thousands of kangas.
Well documented and well
photographed and a lot
of the photographs that I have
today will come from that.
And with great appreciation actually
for someone named [inaudible]
and Jan Dryson [assumed
spelling] who did the photography
and who opened up the archives.
And I spent probably 4
or 5 visits with them.
At the same time, I need to say
thank you to Webster University,
the Geneva campus,
who supported this
with a lot of the research funds.
And some other supporters as
well, some administrative support.
The original -- The original
research project came
out of a very interesting experience
where when I was living in Kenya,
working at the National Museum,
and I just kept thinking, you know,
I'd like to do something.
I had done a lot of exhibits
in the past with the UN,
some communications advocacy things.
I thought it'd be really fun to do
something at the National Museum
that kind of I could leave there.
I've learned so much here.
I loved Kenya.
And I'd been fascinated
with this kanga,
but at that point this was in 2000.
I wasn't able to really get
hold of much information.
There was information.
I just didn't know where to find it.
So we had a meeting and someone
from the Royal Dutch Embassy
was there at the meeting.
And I asked the people
that I worked with, I said,
"What if I did collaboratively
an exhibition on the kanga?
Would you be interested in that?"
And it was fascinating
because the men in the meeting,
they sort of looked at me
and said, "No one would.
This would not be interesting.
No. We would not want to do this."
So then they went and had tea
and all the women came
up and said, "Ah, yes.
This would be very interesting.
Let's see if we can do it."
So at that point we
began the process.
The Dutch embassy gave funding.
The embassy of Switzerland
in Kenya helped to fund it.
And the Aga Khan Trust for
Culture at one point got involved
and did quite a bit of kind
of in kind contribution.
And the NMK.
And at the end with the final
exhibit we worked very closely
with the British Museum.
And with someone named Julie
Hudson, and Chris Spring.
So a lot of appreciation
does go to them.
After that meeting, I was
quite fascinated with it.
And in that reaction.
So there was a decision to sort
of tentatively take
a look at this kanga.
And it led me to wonderful
conversations in Mombasa,
sitting with museum -- with older
Swahili men out on the terrace
who would say to me,
"Ah, but you're a woman.
We can't tell you everything
about this kanga."
And just continuing with discussions
everywhere and also with discussions
with African researchers and people
like John Gillow who writes a lot
of the African textile books.
And at one point he said to me --
This was at the American
Textile Conference.
He said, "You know,
the things I wrote
about the kanga, I'm just not sure."
He said, "I just don't know
that we really yet have begun
to understand about this kanga."
So it was in that kind of
environment and also because I found
that as I learned more about
the kanga I began to realize
that there are thousands,
maybe millions of these kangas.
At some points in time,
which continues,
they're produced every 2 weeks.
This is just on the
coast in Mombasa.
And women go and buy new kangas
as often as they can and they wait
for the new ones to come out.
This has been going on, literally,
for probably 120 years or more.
And so suddenly when I
realized that if you look
at a textile book they tend to have
1 or 2 pages and they likely have 1
or 2 kangas and they generalize
and say, "This is what a kanga is.
This is what it looks like."
We'll talk about that in a
minute, for those who don't know.
This is how you define it.
This is what it's used for.
And it comes from the Swahili coast.
That's about as far as it goes
until recently there have
been more people who've begun
to say, "Wait a minute.
There's something here
that we're missing."
Because why has this
cloth, if you look at --
Particularly this is probably
one of the nicer more newer ones,
but from our value judgments many
of them are printed
on rather cheap cloth.
It has no particular value
in terms of [inaudible].
It's not hand woven.
It's not even, as hard
as we've tried --
We cannot confirm that the women
who wear it actually have much to do
with the design or the text.
So why -- What is it about this
kanga that has allowed it to remain
and to be so important
for all this time?
It has basically changed very
little, and yet the designs,
the text, that changes all the time,
but the basic structure and the use
of the cloth has remained the same.
This was basically the question
that was in front of us.
And when I saw just 2 or
3 in the book I thought,
"This can't possibly be
the story of this kanga.
It just can't be that simple."
And I think it's part of a concept
that I really believe in a lot.
And that is the concept of --
And some of you have probably heard
the rather famous now TED lecture
called "The Danger
of the Single Story."
And I think it was that
that also spurred me to say,
"This kanga is coming out of
cultural complexity and somewhere
in here there's something
very important
that I'd call ascribed value."
There's something -- We
all do it, all the time.
But there must be something
about this cloth,
the values that people have
given it, and what it can tell us
that is not immediately obvious.
So this is the background
to the research.
From my side, particularly.
If you look at -- As you know,
kangas, they have a variety of uses,
a variety of ways that they're
worn, a variety of meaning.
I have a friend in Mombasa.
His business is called Mali Abdalla.
They have printed kangas
for over 100 years.
His father and grandfather
were the ones who started it
and were very instrumental
in putting text on the kanga.
And he would say it's a
humble cloth, but it's a cloth
that has very strong religious and
cultural significance on the coast.
And, as you can see, there
where it's being worn in the way
that a Muslim woman would wear it.
Other places it's worn
as a headdress.
It can be worn to the beach.
It can be worn every day at home.
In Abu Dhabi women told me they
wear it under the [inaudible].
At home it has many, many uses.
And of course even though some
people would say this is a woman's
cloth, it's actually
also worn by men.
And you find it worn
privately in the home,
but Maasai men do wear
it quite a bit.
I just have a few quick pictures
of a number of kangas just
to start our discussion here.
We'll talk more about this one.
This one is here.
This one. It is actually the --
It's called the kisutu
and it's considered one
of the first designs of the kanga.
This is a very modern one.
It has some elements that
we'll talk about later
that very clearly define
it as a kanga,
but it also has a very modern look.
In our discussion today I also
wanted to draw just a little bit
from my good friend Pierre
Bourdieu [assumed spelling]
and I'm taking an idea of his and
I might be adjusting it just a bit.
But his concept of the field
of cultural production --
Because when I tried to understand
the kanga I also began to realize
that there were a lot of
forces actually that shaped it.
It's not just a simple cloth.
A lot of things are involved.
These are some of the things that
Bourdieu talks about in that field
of cultural production, and I
want to look at it that way.
The ones that I'm particularly
going to focus on would be history.
Some of the story of -- As you -- If
you know something about the kanga,
you know how important the
whole issue of the trade winds
and the monsoon winds on the Indian
Ocean were to shaping the issues
of textiles and design on
the East African coast.
We'll also look a little
bit at communication
and the text messages
that are on the kanga.
As well as the basic concept of
meaning and use and ascribed value
that is given to any textile
and particularly to the kanga.
So this kanga has been there.
It's still there.
You find it everywhere.
In many shapes, colors and ways.
This is just a quick photo of
actually some Maasai friends.
And, as you can see, the one
man is definitely wearing kanga.
These are women waiting to buy
kangas on the Mombasa coast.
This is a truck that
comes around every 2 weeks
and they're just picking
the new designs.
So what is a kanga, just in
case anyone here is not sure?
We'll start with the name.
As some of you know, kanga
is a Swahili name for a bird.
The kanga bird.
It's what we call the guinea fowl
and it's the one that's black
with little tiny white dots.
And some people say -- But it's
-- All of the stories are --
I think that's one thing
we really learned too is
that these are stories.
I talked with Chris Spring at
the British Museum and I said,
"How can we actually
talk about this kanga?"
And he said, "You have
to call it a story."
Because there are many.
And so I will give you the stories
that we found were the
most commonly discussed,
but they're not the only ones.
So of course this little
dot, the little tiny dot
like this, is on many, many kangas.
And the idea is that it's similar to
the guinea fowl or the kanga bird.
And that's one reason why
it was called a kanga.
At the same time it's also
on the coast particularly
in East Africa called a leso.
And there's a lot of thinking
that the term leso came
from the Portuguese word
[inaudible] for the bolts of cloth
that they brought to the coast,
later a kind of a handkerchief
like textile, which then the women
sewed together into a larger piece
which became what we now
call the kanga or the leso.
As I mentioned, it's a
machine printed cloth.
This is a picture of
one of the first kangas.
The earliest kangas that we
were able to actually see,
I've seen it at VLISCO, it
would have been late 1800s,
I'm not sure the date on this one.
But VLISCO says it's
of a design of 1925.
We saw it in Mombasa.
And they would have
said it was late 1800s.
They said it was their very first
kanga design, and we used it
in an exhibition at the
National Museum in Kenya.
You will see that it's
printed in Arabic.
In the early -- It's fascinating.
The early text on the
kanga was Arabic.
Very -- Just a tiny bit of Swahili,
but most of the Arabic was
actually transliteration
and was Swahili in meaning.
So this -- We worked
with some people
to do the translations for us.
And so we have some translations.
I would never stand
by them 100 percent.
Kanga translations
are very difficult.
They're very contextual.
And certainly the Arabic
was also quite difficult.
But this one, as best
as we know, would say,
"A lawbreaker has no
place in society."
And this is one of the earliest ones
showing both the geometric patterns,
the circles and the tiny little
dots which are typical of the kanga.
As you probably are aware,
many people see the kanga
as belonging particularly
to the East African coast,
but as we began the
research we began to find
that in fact you can find kangas
in the back side of the market
of Kinshasa, Burundi,
Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi.
They have different names
in different places.
Madagascar.
Comoros has a lot of kangas.
Now we're talking about
Somali which I knew
but I had never seen one before.
And as well as I mentioned
before, Abu Dhabi, Dubai.
They're large markets.
Now because the kanga
is printed in Dubai
and in China there's
also a lot of trade,
but in fact people are
also wearing them there.
The kanga is specifically identified
by its distinctive border.
And this is where it's different
than the wax prints and the kitenge
and the different other
African textiles.
It always has a border.
It has some kind of a central
field or central image.
Sometimes it's an image.
Sometimes it's just circles
like this or cashew shapes.
It's usually 45 by
65 inches in size.
The newer ones are much larger.
Usually sold in pairs
because traditionally
on the coast it was worn as
a dress and a head covering.
Now sometimes they cut them, people
buy just one, but most of the time.
And that's why the ones we have here
are actually -- They're all pairs.
And typically on the kanga a line
of text, often a proverb or saying,
and we'll talk a little bit
more about the communication
of the kanga, it's
printed along the border.
One of the interesting
things about this one
which for some reason
I can't seem to --
This kisutu, this early one,
it actually has no text.
It never has had text.
And it's one of the
very early designs
and it's still around with no text.
So that's a very special one.
The very early kangas -- And this
is a picture that kind of goes
with this name of the kanga bird --
They were printed in
black and white.
And still today they're printing
some kangas just in 2 color.
This one Eve donated
today just to the speech.
Not for my permanent collection.
And this is a 2 color.
And I have been told by some
of the kanga sellers in Nairobi
that the 2 color ones are
actually quite valuable
because you don't see
them very often anymore.
But the original ones
were black and white.
To understand, to really understand,
the history of this kanga you have
to look at the Indian Ocean, at
the trade winds and to look --
What it did for me was it
really opened up the history
of Africa in a fascinating way.
And the concept that I liked was
the concept of co production.
That in fact from way back the East
African coast was very much involved
in a kind of co production of
art, design, trade, culture.
And one of the things that people
always say, particularly in relation
to the development of
textiles and design,
was because of the monsoon
winds or the trade winds,
and I'm sure you all
know about that,
but because of the way it
works in the Indian Ocean
which is a contained area in a
sense with a variety of cultures
around it, the winds
shift every 6 months.
So when a sailor -- The sailors
that would leave the East
African coast would go to India,
to the east coast of India.
They would stay for months before
they would be able to come back
on the [inaudible] that
they were sailing on.
So in that process a real
cultural exchange took place.
And we feel that the kanga
shows some of those effects
in a very interesting way.
This is just a simple
version that shows --
really helps to show how connected
this whole region was by trade.
And how connected the East
African coast was actually as early
as 1,000 in the Common Era.
And it's particularly people see
it directly related to the monsoon
and the trade winds and
the role that that played.
And, as we know, the people that
-- Living on that Swahili coast,
they are the Swahili people.
And it is also the language.
The Swahili language is
what is spoke in that area.
They participated in the trade
relationships with those living
in the interior regions of
East and Central Africa.
They became wealthy
through export of goods.
The wealth of the region
during this period was also due
to the gold trade, to trade in
spices and of course to slave trade.
When the Omani sultan Said came
and moved his palace from Muscat
to the Island of Zanzibar in
1830, we also had a big influence
of the Arab influence as
well as Arab trade of slaves
and also the religion which
had been on the coast.
The Muslim religion had
been on the coast before,
but it began to have a
significant impact in the culture
of the coast at that point.
We see not often -- There are not
a lot of old photos of kangas.
They're hard to always
document exactly
where and when they come from.
But we have found a couple that show
women, slave women, wearing kangas,
and they're from this period.
Probably mid, late 1800s as
best as we can date them.
And Laura Fair and Sheryl McCurdy
write significantly about their --
the role of the kanga as a kind of
identity of women along the coast.
And at that point slave
women were wearing --
We have a picture here, I think.
This one. There was a cloth that
you may know called mericani.
It was cotton from the US.
And it was the Swahili kind
of use of the word American,
but they called it mericani.
It was a heavy kind of rough cloth.
And people block printed it with
indigo and they dyed it a bit,
and a lot of women either wore
that or what they call kaniki
which was a softer cloth from India.
But at this -- At the point
when the slave women --
Excuse me as I go back.
I was forgetting to talk about that.
What Laura Fair and Sheryl
McCurdy talk about is the fact
that as women were freed, when
the slave women were freed,
or in the process perhaps of
trying to establish a new identity
in the society on the coast, they
would be wearing the dark cloth
and then if they could
would buy colorful cloths.
And the colorful cloth
usually was the kanga.
And what we find in
the writing of --
The earliest woman that we've
been able to find who writes
about the kanga and the trade routes
is a woman named Lady Jane Moir,
M-O-I-R.
It's been very hard
to find her writing,
but I finally did find some
documentation of her diary.
And she followed her husband
to places like Ujiji and Tabora
on Lake Tanganyika at that
time, and has pictures
of women wearing what she
then calls colorful cloths.
And the concept was that the
colorful cloth was an identity
for women who were maybe slave --
Women were freed and were attempting
to establish a new
identity in the society.
This is a photo of
women in Zanzibar.
This is probably late 1800s.
But this shows how the kanga was
beginning to develop with the border
with the dots in the inside.
If we go just again back just a bit
to the idea of the kanga origins,
those women were probably
late 1800s.
Travelers to the East African
coast frequently remark --
We find this in a lot of the male
travelers at that time who continue
to remark on the colorful cloth.
So there was a point where these
colorful cloths really flooded
particularly the East coast,
the port towns and cities.
And they were probably initially --
What we understand is this
handkerchief type of textile
which was called the leso was
sewed together by the women.
As far as we can tell, this story
emerges every time you look.
And it's probably a
very accurate story
of women sewing together the
handkerchief into a larger piece
and then merchants on the
coast picking up the idea
and having it printed either
locally block printed --
We do know that there was block
printing happening at that time
on the East African coast.
And VLISCO after 1867
had 800 block printers
who were printing kangas
for East Africa.
If you look at the early kangas you
can always see slight variations
and you can tell that they
were block printed by hand.
So as the merchants picked
up the popularity of this
and they redesigned this larger
textile, this is the kind of cloth
that they were designing in Zanzibar
and this is probably
late 1800s again.
But the part that's
always a bit confusing is
that this cloth was being printed
outside of Africa most of the time.
And that's again where you come
back to this idea that most
of us have many kinds of
cloths and clothing and things
that we don't actually make and
they still carry a lot of value.
And that's what we
discovered with the kanga
which is quite interesting.
They were being printed in the UK.
They were printed at
one time in Japan.
They were printed in Switzerland.
They were printed in the
Netherlands at several places.
And the one in the UK is called ABC.
The one in the Netherlands
is VLISCO.
And now printed in China.
This is an interesting photograph
to me because it's a late 1800 photo
of -- And the woman is
actually wearing this one,
as you can see the design.
And this one has a
particularly interesting story.
Again just one of the other
photographs of slave --
women who were enslaved in
the Swahili coastal culture.
And then one woman who
appears to be wearing a kanga.
It would be nice if we
really knew the story.
This is a particularly
interesting picture.
It's a watercolor that was
painted by the daughter
of the British consul
in Cape Town in 1877.
For a long time it was the very
earliest thing that I had seen
that clearly looked like women
were wearing kanga and you can see
where it looks like the squares
had been actually sewn together
or printed to look like that.
These are slave traders' women.
They were actually
traveling with Stanley,
and they were on their way
back from the interior.
So a lot of people question how
much trade was crossing Africa
at that time.
And I think in all the research
that we did and all the people
that we talked to I would say
a lot always had been, in fact.
But that's not even
really much of a question.
It had -- There were
roots long, long before.
But the interesting question that
has -- this has always raised is,
"Where did they get the kanga?"
They had left Zanzibar I
think more than a year before.
They were on their way coming back
from South Africa up the coast.
Where, in fact, did
they acquire this kanga?
So that's a bit of a
mystery yet to be answered.
It's also become quite clear
that the kanga was really a --
indicated status and identity.
This is actually a later photograph,
but it's of a Burundian princess
wearing again what is very clearly a
kanga type of cloth with the
text on it with Arabic text.
I think we have -- What --
I have about 50 minutes?
Is that right?
I want to get to some more about
the value and the use and meaning.
I wanted to talk a bit -- There's
some people that raise a question
about is this really an African
cloth if it's printed outside,
if it's not designed by the women.
Of course the women had a strong
influence as the consumers
in terms of what they would buy.
And they probably had
a lot more influence
if you talk to Mali Abdalla.
They know exactly what the women are
interested in and they create that.
But there isn't a direct
-- We can't find a story
where a woman went home, designed a
kanga, chose the text and went back
and told them to print it.
There's always an exchange.
But at the same time one of the
really very fascinating things
about the kanga that I'd like to
go through really quickly is some
of the elements which actually show
the -- some of the co production.
These are some of the very
early ones that were printed
that VLISCO has in their archives.
This is -- This shows 2 of
the elements of the kanga
that are the most clearly
identifying
and that is the small dot
on the dark background
and what we call the
Persian [inaudible].
It's called a cashew nut in India.
It's called a mango shape.
And we all know it, of course,
as paisley which I think you
have -- is on your [inaudible].
This is a design that is --
of course was significant in
the early, early Persian art.
You see it everywhere.
It's passed all over the globe.
And it's -- Some people
consider a kanga not a real kanga
if it doesn't actually have it.
It's in many, many
different shapes, forms now,
but you'll see it in
many, many kangas.
This is a modern version
again of probably 1
of the very oldest designs.
It contributes a bit to this
one, and this early design
of this one is 1868
at the VLISCO museum.
So that's probably one of the
very early ones that they made.
This one also again shows
the spots and the mango shape
which is a significant
part of the kanga.
This one also shows a lot
of the geometric patterns
which some writers have
said in fact if we look
at African art you're going
to see the geometric patterns.
If you look at your
jacket that you have
which we would consider African
art, you see the geometrics.
And those geometrics we now have
all over art all over the world,
but in fact the roots of a lot of
that are very African in nature.
And if you look at the mud
cloth, the raffia art that we see
in Africa, it all has
this kind of a pattern.
And it's also exhibited
on the kanga.
This again is the boteh,
the paisley design.
Here a couple more really
interesting designs on the kanga
that I think show the co production.
Some people would say that this
design is actually a printed version
of the bandhani Indian
tie-dyed design.
If you see the small pieces there,
they look exactly the way
the Indian cloths look
when they have done the
tie-dye, the bandhani style.
There's a study done by Sarah
Fee from the museum in Canada
about Omani stripped cloth.
And there's a very distinct
cloth that is produced in Oman.
And of course at the time when the
Omani sultans were on the coast
and were in Zanzibar some people
think that there are kangas
that also picked up
a lot of the designs
that would be somewhat similar
to the Omani stripped cloth.
Kangas have always been a
kind of a documentation.
We decided we'd like to call
it early text messaging,
was the very first form, and
not only did it have text,
but it has always documented
in a kind of a --
in a society that at that point
was very oral in many ways.
It documented things that were
happening, things that people knew
about on the East African coast.
Airplanes.
Radios. Televisions.
Just about anything you can
imagine has at some point been
in the center of a kanga.
And, as you mentioned, there
it's also been used for a lot
of political messaging and
of course as Kenya believes
that Obama really belongs to
them in any case, they have lots
of Obama kangas all over Nairobi.
And they still do.
This is one that came out after
the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.
It's in Arabic.
And this was an early Kisutu design
found in the Museum of VLISCO
and it is one of the very early
block printed versions of this one.
Just to tell you real quickly
the story of the Kisutu
and then we'll move on just a little
bit to the use of the kanga now.
The Kisutu have -- There
are basically 2 stories.
One is that kisutu in Swahili
is -- Kisu is a word for knife.
And a husband came home one morning.
His wife was wearing this cloth.
And she was cutting
vegetables in her kitchen.
She was very angry at him
because he had been out all night.
She chased him and stabbed him
and the cloth then took the
name because of that event.
It became the kisutu because of her
using the knife to stab her husband.
There's also a lot of
stories about it that talk
about these little
symbols and they say
that at the time there were
many plagues that hit Zanzibar.
And that at the time -- But
we find the story a bit hard
to really collaborate
exactly because of the time
when the cloth was produced
and the time of the plagues.
And the story goes that Red
Cross vehicles that had crosses
on them were copied and
that this cloth is seen
as a kind of a protection.
People consider this cloth as
something that will protect you.
It's used in weddings.
It's used when babies are born.
It's a little bit hard
to put Red Cross vehicles
and this cloth together with dates.
But it's a nice story, in any case.
Let's talk just briefly about the
text messages that are put on them.
There are many, many people
who have studied text messages
and I won't even begin to try to
pretend that I could be an expert
in any way on the text messages.
One of the things you
learn about them --
Just like if you look at messages
even on things that we have,
like t-shirts, if you think
of someone taking a t-shirt
that says "Just do it."
Now we all know it
comes from a Nike ad.
We know what it means.
Somebody might wear it just
because it's all they had to wear.
Somebody might wear it
because they're actually
saying, "I'm going to do it.
I'm going to jog today."
Whatever. It carries
a lot of meaning.
It's a lot like the text messages.
They're very contextual and
they were of course given
with the purpose of
sharing a message sometimes.
Not always.
People -- Women on the coast
at a certain time period used the
text messages definitely to pass
on information to their friends,
other women who they thought
might be taking their husband.
There's a lot of interesting
stories about text messages.
But it's not always done that way.
In fact, there are
many people in Kenya
who purposefully cut
off the message now
or the Maasai often
wear it upside down.
Because they actually don't want
the message to be significant.
But originally it was a fantastic
way to exchange messages.
Here are just a couple of
samples from the VLISCO archive.
This is one that's particularly
well known because it talks
about a woman's wickedness
is in her tongue.
What you also find is they call
it different levels of Swahili,
but I would just call it
very highly contextual
that there are many
different meanings.
The first meaning that you see
is not necessarily the only thing
that that saying or proverb
might mean in the right context.
This one is an advertisement.
Sometimes they're used
for advertisements.
And this is a really special one
that a lot of Maasai women wear
and have worn for a long
time because of the colors,
predominantly they choose the red,
and also because the message
is a reasonably good one.
Let's go quickly through some
of the things that we've found,
particularly in working with
the anthropologists at the NMK
where they had time to sit down
with people and actually talk
about how the kanga is used.
And this was a pretty wide
variety of ethnic groups.
Some of these you may know.
Some of them you may not.
But I'm going to just go
through them rather quickly
because they're very interesting,
and I may even read some of them.
Kangas, as we know, are worn
inside and outside the home.
They may serve as a sling for a
baby, a shawl, a turban, a blanket,
a table covering, a room divider, be
given as a gift, used in a ceremony.
I know now that if I went to
visit a Kenyan friend in New York,
if I could I would take a kanga.
It's just what you do when
you go to visit someone.
In urban areas of Kenya and Tanzania
modern women are less likely
to wear the kanga in public.
They often wear it at home.
And it's very important.
Mothers usually save them.
Sometimes grandmothers
save them in a chest.
There's a very special
way that they're folded.
They're often perfumed,
sometimes with incense.
They save them and they give them to
their daughters or granddaughters.
I have friends who when they
left to go to university
in Chicago the thing
that they took with them,
one of the most important
things, was a kanga.
And the kanga is seen by
many women as a kind of way
to be sure it's for
modesty and respect.
If you're in some random situation
where your grandmother shows up
or an older person, you
can always put on a kanga
and you'll be considered respectful.
In many situations men do wear it.
The Maasai wear it
around during the day.
A lot of men just wear it at home.
And some of the stories about
how the kangas are worn are
particularly interesting.
Particularly on the Swahili
coast and some of the stories
that those men didn't
want to tell me
and I still probably
don't know all of them are
that the kanga's very much a
part of the wedding ceremony.
And then it's also something that
women will wear the same kanga
as their husband in
the evening at home.
They will fold it in certain ways to
indicate their mood, so it is said.
And there are other issues like if
you have a male guest in the house
and people relaxing wearing kangas
a woman would never wear the same
kanga that the male guest wears.
There's a lot of gender, a lot of
identity issues connected to kangas.
They are definitely used in
weddings, particularly on the coast.
They're an important
part of weddings.
At kikuyu weddings the kanga's
often laid on the ground
and the bride walks on the
kangas to go from her house
to either the church
or to the groom's house
to join the groom's family.
On the coast kangas
are a lot of fun.
You've probably heard of
this where people still do it
when there are certain
games as part of the wedding
where the women cover
completely and the groom has
to try to find his bride.
And kangas are often used in that.
Kangas are often rolled
up and thrown by the bride
and whoever catches the kanga
is supposedly the next girl
to get married.
So it kind of follows some of
the things that we do as well.
After the wedding, the couple
may share the same kanga pair.
Kangas play a big part in a
lot of kinds of relationships.
Let's see if I can find
one or two others ones.
In funerals kangas are used to
wash the body, to wrap the body.
They're used at the birth of a baby.
A kanga would be used
perhaps in a simple home
where you needed to have privacy.
You would hang the kanga.
In the past it's very interesting.
We have a couple of videos of
in the early days say in Lamu,
Muslim women before they had the
burka they actually made a tent
of the kanga and when they would
leave the house their slaves would
carry the tent and they
would walk under the kanga.
So the kanga was -- Okay.
So we need to -- We'll finish.
Okay. I think basically what I would
like to say, there are just a couple
of things about this kanga.
One is it's a tremendous
documentation of co production.
Globalization way before the
things that we mostly talk about.
And co production of art and design.
And that it's a fantastic example of
how people ascribe value and meaning
to even a very simple
item and it keeps --
It's a very important
part of the culture.
And the one quote that I was
going to use at the beginning,
but that I also feel is the way I
feel about studying this kanga is
that perhaps the cause of all
our trouble is that we try
to believe in a pure identity.
And, in fact, there are many
stories and many identities.
And that's what makes
life fun and interesting.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: At this
point, if you have any questions
for Phyllis Ressler about
kangas, please speak up.
Any questions?
Comments? No questions or comments?
Okay.
>> Phyllis Ressler: Yeah.
Go ahead.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler:
If anyone else wants
to say anything else
about that, but right.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler:
How they're connected?
The kanga, the way we see
it is the origins are really
on the East African coast.
And that was, quite frankly, one
thing that made me really interested
in it because most of the
time we hear about art
and textiles from West Africa.
And the West African things are
very clearly connected in there.
Some are -- We have some of the
indigo dyed cloths that are local.
And then we have the
printed cloths again
that are coming from Europe usually.
Just like the kanga.
The ones that -- VLISCO
had 2 things that they did.
And I just use VLISCO because
I particularly focused on that.
But there are many
other companies as well.
They did the wax print.
They're particularly
famous for their wax print
which is what is behind
the kitenge or the cloth,
and what we often call
it is cloth with meaning.
The cloth in West Africa
is gorgeous,
and it's actually highly prized
and extremely expensive now.
It's beautiful.
It does not have the same
border, image and text.
It is different than the kanga.
They are not the same thing.
The origins are not the same thing.
They may have both at a certain
time been printed by VLISCO.
That in fact is true, and
we know that the designers
in the Netherlands
were designing both.
You go there now and I listen to
a group of designers discussing,
and it was quite fascinating
because they were discussing
the new VLISCO designs.
The wax prints for West Africa.
And the one man, I heard him say,
"Well, now I'm sure this is going
to be very successful, but the truth
is we don't really know very much
about Africa, do we?"
And I found it quite
interesting that in fact
in that situation they
are producing wax prints
that are quite popular
all over Africa
and we think of them as African.
The kanga actually in some respects
because of the proverbs and because
of the sayings and these designs
like taking different politicians
and things may actually be a little
bit more connected in some ways
than the kitenge, actually.
Even though now we see both of
them as very African cloths.
But yes. The kanga -- The
kanga may have had the image
of a West African politician
of Zanzibar.
Anyone that people knew and
basically it was about commerce.
Somebody might want to buy a cloth
with Barack Obama's
picture in the middle.
They could put it on the kanga.
I don't know if that helps
to explain it or not.
They're 2 different types
of designs, 2 different --
They come out of different cultures.
But now we easily mix them up a bit.
>> Can you tell us a little
bit about kanga production,
what countries produce
the most kangas
and the volume they're
produced in and --
>> Phyllis Ressler: I
don't know that I'm going
to be able to give you any numbers.
I could get some.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler: Oh.
Okay. The question is,
"Can I say anything
about what countries produce the
most kangas and the numbers?"
And I'm not going to try to do
numbers, but I know that VLISCO
from 1867 to 19 -- I think in the
60s they stopped producing kangas.
And they produced thousands.
I would like to say millions,
but I'm not going to say that.
You wouldn't believe it.
The room is as big as this room.
Maybe even a little bit bigger
with rows and rows of kangas.
Perfectly pressed, hanging lovely.
If you ever have a
chance, it's worth going.
It's a beautiful museum.
And that's only one of many.
You have ABC which was a UK
company which has now been bought
by the Chinese which supposedly
also has a huge collection,
but nobody quite knows
what to do with.
So you had the UK printed kangas.
The Netherlands printed.
There was a time in Switzerland
where they were printing kangas.
The interesting thing is
they were printed in Japan
and there's a period of time
when they were -- A certain --
There's a fish design particularly
came on to the kanga during the time
when they were printed in Japan.
I think there was a small time
they were printed in Germany.
Now India.
The west coast of India
was producing them.
All over India.
Ahmedabad was a big producer of
the kanga and that's where some
of the rajasthani designs
came in, during that time.
And now China.
And then of course Kenya and
Tanzania have produced on and off.
Tanzania continues and
they have a strong market.
Kenya's has been more sporadic.
Is that a reasonable
-- What about Somalia?
You were saying that
they came from Dubai.
Okay. From India.
Okay. Right.
Any other questions?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler: That
would be a fantastic study
because one thing that's really
hard to do, VLISCO has tried,
but it's very hard to
put dates on the designs.
And they've tried and then some.
That's why you see some of these
designs a lot of them are just 1925
because they're not quite sure.
But to be able to show that change,
and then to try to understand maybe,
like you said, what
caused the motif to change.
Was it fashion?
Was it -- Go ahead.
[ Inaudible ]
>> And, you know, when I look at
the black, I never saw black used
on the kangas during the
70s [inaudible] you know.
So [inaudible] the yellows,
the greens, that's what we saw.
Not -- And not -- A lot of red.
>> Phyllis Ressler:
An interesting --
>> The colors just changed and you
get a book and you can find pink
and red, but not -- I don't know.
It's just very different.
>> Phyllis Ressler: It is actually.
If you go to Burundi, you
find pink that you never find.
A really distinct pink
and kind of maroon red.
Maybe that's what you're --
that you never see really
in Kenya or Tanzania.
Tanzania you see a lot of
yellow, green, strong colors.
There's an interesting thing
that they told me at VLISCO
that I'd like to do more work on.
But they said because of the Dutch
printing process they developed --
And I'm not going to be able to
explain this technically very well.
But they developed a kind of
printing where they didn't have
to overprint the color and
they could get the clear,
strong yellows, pinks, reds.
I just said, well, they were
like the tulip colors, right.
But they had an eye for these
very clear, strong colors.
And to me that's what I tend to
think of also as kanga colors.
It was exactly what you're saying.
It was oranges, red, yellow, green.
But they would say that
some of the ability to do
that actually was related
to their technology
at a certain time in
the Netherlands.
And we now identify them as
-- very clearly as kanga.
This is a really modern one.
So I'm sure that the black is a
design -- sort of modern design.
But this one is interesting
because it's always,
even from its very early stages,
it may have been a hand printed
dark, dark blue at one point.
I'm not sure if it was always black.
This is a modern printing of that.
But even in that very early
block print, it had black in it.
And you're right.
You don't see much black.
But what was the name that
you called them in Mozambique?
>> I don't know.
It started with a L but I don't --
>> Phyllis Ressler: Lamba?
>> Yeah.
>> Phyllis Ressler: Was it lamba?
There's also -- Yes.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler:
Those are the first ones
that I had also, and
now they're big.
They're really big now.
They're really expensive.
And they're --
>> They were cheap.
You could [inaudible]
just buy a handful.
I had tons of it.
I gave it away.
>> Phyllis Ressler: Yeah.
No. Those early ones are really
special because they were soft.
They're really nice, yeah.
That's right.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Phyllis Ressler: Yeah.
That's correct.
That's right.
I've also heard the name
chitenge and I don't know
if that's Mozambique or
not, but lamba I think.
Okay. Any other questions?
>> Since these patterns have
continued over 100 years,
is there -- Is there
a stencil somewhere
for the particular patterns
and so that's how they
could continue the process?
>> Phyllis Ressler:
That's a great question.
I'll tell you what I saw in Mombasa.
I have never seen a stencil.
There could be within certain
companies that they did in fact.
I mean they did block print
them for quite a long time,
so I saw the block print.
So there was a -- There
was some of that repetition
that must have come from that.
Now some of it is computer design.
I know for sure that it's
now done on the computer.
But there was an interim
period where when I went
to visit Mali Abdalla in Mombasa
they have the shop in Mombasa.
They're one of the biggest kanga
sellers and they sell something
like half a million kangas a year.
So they're really a big producer.
They took us to the home where
the father lived at that point.
He was quite elderly.
And on his dining room table he
had a big brown piece of paper
where he was doing the
design of the kanga.
He designed it.
He would just design the
corner, very, very detailed,
and attach a saying, and send
it to a printer in India.
So at that point it
looked pretty freehand.
I didn't see any templates.
But I also met a designer in
Nairobi who was an art teacher.
She was Indian.
And she did this on the side
for some of the companies.
She would just design kangas.
She also said she did it freehand.
Copy. They copied a
lot from other ones
that people liked, and mixed it up.
So I think it's, you know
-- It's like everything.
There are many stories.
There may be some templates
somewhere,
but you certainly don't -- Like
you couldn't go to the archive
and find a set of kanga templates,
at least not that I've
ever found yet.
Any other questions?
>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Well, please
help me to thank Phyllis Ressler
for coming today to talk about
kangas and brining the kanga cloths.
I'm not sure if anybody is
interested in taking a closer look
for a moment, but please help
me to thank Phyllis Ressler
for her very informative
talk on kanga.
Thank you.
>> Phyllis Ressler:
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.