BritishBlackMusic.com: PRESS RELEASE: TAOBQ unveils a top 10 list and a new concept for identifying people of African heritage

PRESS RELEASE

Jan 14 2014

TAOBQ unveils a top 10 list and a new concept for identifying people of African heritage

A new year, a new concept and a new word for affirming African heritage!

The TAOBQ (the African Or Black Question) campaign revealed its araning concept and its first ten 10 subjects yesterday.

“Araning is the act of giving one’s self or someone else an African name in order to unequivocally assert their African heritage,” explained TAOBQ co-ordinator Kwaku at the Xtra History & Reasoning Session presentation entitled ‘Araning: The Importance Of African Names In History & Our Daily Lives’, which took place at the Harrow Mayor’s Parlour.

Aran is made up from African Reclaimed And Named, a concept that encourages Africans, particularly those of note who’ve contributed to world history, to be given African names, so that there’s an obvious connection of their achievement to their African heritage.

Whilst individuals are welcome to aran themselves, TAOBQ will only aran posthumously.

The person at number one of the top 10 list is William Kofi, the 19th century Chartist leader. The araning concept was born as a result of a young person saying they had learnt about the Chartist at school. But with his surname spelt Cuffay or Cuffe, it was not obvious to her that he had African heritage, until she saw his image at a community history event.

Kofi is a Ghanaian name for a male born on Friday. Kofi’s grandfather was taken into enslavement from Africa, possibly from the area now known as Ghana.

At number two is the Maroon leader and Jamaican national hero known as Nanny, which we contend to be a corruption of Nana, a Ghanaian title for a king, queen, chief or revered elder. Her brothers, apart from Johnny, had typical Ghanaian day names such as Cudjoe and Quao.

The African-American inventor Kwadwo Lewis Latimer is accorded third place. Kwadwo is a Ghanaian name for a male born on Monday.

Elsewhere on the list, at number four is the African British classical composer Babatunde Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. His name is Yoruba for “father returns”. Although he never met his doctor father, who never returned from Sierra Leone, one can imagine the composer might have longed for his father’s return as he gravitated towards Africans from the continent and the US, and infused his compositions with African sensibilities.