Black Orpheus (magazine)

Issue number 1

Black Orpheus was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier that has been described as "a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa".[1] Its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor.[2] Beier wrote in an editorial statement in the inaugural volume that "it is still possible for a Nigerian child to leave a secondary school with a thorough knowledge of English literature, but without even having heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire", so Black Orpheus became a platform for Francophone as well as Anglophone writers.[3]

The Congress for Cultural Freedom, a front group set up by the Central Intelligence Agency, was a funder of the magazine.[4]

  1. ^ Kate Tuttle, "Black Orpheus", in Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr (eds), Encyclopedia of Africa, Volume 1, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 189.
  2. ^ Peter Benson, Black Orpheus, Transition, and Modern Cultural Awakening in Africa, University of California Press, 1986, p. 24.
  3. ^ Quoted in Mark Wollaeger with Matt Eatough, The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 276.
  4. ^ Scott-Smith, Giles; Lerg, Charlotte A. (2017). Campaigning Culture and the Global Cold War The Journals of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-59867-7.