African traditions
Ancestral sub-Saharan practices
African traditions encompass the customs, beliefs, rituals, and practices passed down through generations across Africa's diverse peoples.
These include ancestor veneration, oral storytelling, communal ceremonies, music and dance, and spiritual systems predating colonial contact.
The phrase often appears in discussions of cultural preservation or diaspora identity: The festival celebrates African traditions.
Given Africa's fifty-four nations and thousands of ethnic groups, the term necessarily generalizes across vast diversity.
- griotsHereditary oral historians
- libationCeremonial drink offering
- oral historyRecorded interviews about the past
- call and responseAlternating vocal pattern
- animismSpirits inhabit all things
initiation rites · rite of passage · coming of age · naming ceremony · Ubuntu · ancestor worship · spirit world · woven textiles · folktales · ceremonial attire · divination · drumming · proverbs · talking drums · elder councils · epic poetry · beadwork · scarification
- African studiessub-Saharan, pan-Africanism, colonial history, Afrocentrism, negritude
- Gullah GeecheeGullah, St. Helena Island, Hilton Head, Beaufort, sweetgrass
- Black CanadiansDrake, The Weeknd, Black History Month, heritage month, Black churches
- Moorish SpainAl-Andalus, Reconquista, Alhambra, Granada, Seville
- Santeriaorisha, orishas, ache, toque, cowrie shells
African traditionsEuropean traditions
Customs from the continent
European culture · Western culture · European heritage · American traditions · Nordic traditions
African traditionscolonialism
Domination through foreign settlement
European colonization · Western imperialism · colonial education · globalization · cultural imperialism
African traditionsmodernity
Being of present times
modernization · innovation · Westernization · globalization · urbanization