In the mid
1440s, the simple diverse folk population of the Senegambian region faced the
most uncivilised and inhuman disintegration of its people, and their rich
diverse cultures, by the Portuguese, the first Europeans who set out to seek
slaves in Africa to sell to the New World capitalist. These Europeans came by
medium size boats that they used to navigate both the Gambian river and the
Casamance rivers, since there were no infrastructures at this time to travel
by land, invaded and took from this region the best workers, the best
priests, the best natural doctors, the best folk musicians etc and took them to
work in Spain and in Portugal. Later in the
sixteenth century, when these European capitalists realised that they could
make enormous profit by using the labour of the Africans to exploit the
wealth of the Americas they started selling the African slaves to North
America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean countries to
provide slave labour in the gold and silver mines and on the agricultural
plantations, growing crops such as sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco. From 1445 to
1600 about one million Africans were taken from the West African region,
particularly from the Senegambian region. The ethnic groups that suffered
most during this slave aggression were those living along the coastal areas
of the river There is still a very old saying among the elderly Jolas
that the music of the Akonting in its initial stage was so sweet to the
devils that most outstanding Jola Akonting players who played late at nights
in the rice fields when work is suspended for the day and is time to play the
Akonting and dance and drink their palm wine until they get tired and
then come home, that most of these Akonting players did not come home. On the
following day when the people went out to search for them the saw prints of
shoes on the ground which they associate with feet of devils because in those
days Jolas don’t use shoes or know how shoes look like. This is how the Jola
Akonting came to the Daniel Jatta |
