Black Rice

Catalog description

Rice originates in only two places in the world: Africa and amp; Asia. Most historians agree that West African rice and its cultivation and amp; processing technology were transmitted to colonial SC and amp; GA via the trans-Atlantic slave trade, laying the foundation for the commercial rice industry and making South Carolina rice planters the richest planters in British North America before the American Revolution. Though some historians don't agree.... In "Black Rice," we'll learn about how rice technology in West Africa's Upper Guinea Coast for subsistence, how it was transferred to the antebellum US South, and why technology in precolonial West Africa and enslaved people as skilled, not just brute labor are so, so controversial! In addition, we will watch the March 3, 2023 performance of "Unburied; Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice" by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center and discuss the libretto on which the project was based.