Seminar: Kanga: the ‘talking cloth of the Indian Ocean’

The seminar is co-organized by the ASCL collaborative research group 'Africa in the World' and the Contemporary History and International Relations Research Seminar series (CHIRRS) of Leiden University. 

Material objects like the Kanga, a unique genre of cloth, have stories to tell. The fabric is a historical repository of the migration of Indian traders, who sailed across the western Indian Ocean to the Swahili coast, trading cloth, but also transporting visual aesthetics. Kanga designs feature Paisley/Khorosho motifs, the familiar square and dot patterns that adorn Indian Bandhani, but they also reveal artistic influences from Europe, the Middle East and the inland cultures of the Swahili coast. Over the centuries, this cosmopolitan cloth has mixed the boundaries between the peoples of the continents of Asia and Africa.

This seminar presents a short film, ‘Common threads: fabrics from India for Africa’, which documents the journey of the Kanga from the factories in the cottonopolis of Jetpur, Gujarat, to the marketscapes of East and southern Africa, showcasing the master artisans whose skilful workmanship produces these brilliantly coloured fabrics. The presentation draws upon the ethno-fictional narrative Home Between Crossings, by the Kenyan novelist, Sultan Somjee, as well as fieldwork among the women of Nairobi, Mombasa, Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar who are the keepers of the Kanga - of its stories of wisdom, of protests, of migration, histories and memories.