UNIT 25: Global Popular Culture

UNIT AUDIO GLOSSARY

Click the audio icon to hear pronunciations. View full Audio Glossary.

Akira Kurosawa

Japanese film director.

capoeira

Brazilian martial art developed by enslaved Africans in the 1500s.

ethnomusicology

Study of world music in its cultural contexts.

Haile Selassie

Ethiopian king, 1930 - 1974, who attempted to modernize his country; considered the Messiah by Rastafarians.

Kingston

Capital of Jamaica.

Kwame Nkrumah

First president of the independent nation of Ghana.

Leni Riefenstahl

German film director.

Lu Xun

Revolutionary Chinese author who satirized Chinese traditional society, 1881-1936.

Marcus Garvey

Jamaican who founded the United Negro Improvement Association in 1916 to help blacks in the Americas move back to Africa, 1887 - 1940.

Ngugi wa'Thiongo

East African writer.

Nnamdi Azikiwe

First president of Nigeria, 1904 - 1996.

Ousmane Sembene

West African filmmaker.

Panhellenic

Literally "all Greek"; of or relating to all of Greece or the area where ancient Greek culture dominated.

Pierre de Coubertin

French citizen who re-established the Olympic games in 1896.

Rabindranath Tagore

Indian political leader, philosopher, and poet who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

Rastafarianism

Religion developed in Jamaica that promotes the belief that Ras Tafari (Haile Selassie) is the Messiah and that Africa (especially Ethiopia) is the promised land.

reggae

Jamaican music style influenced by African musical traditions.

Satyajit Ray

Indian film director.

ska

Jamaican music style that influenced reggae.

Wole Soyinke

Nigerian Nobel Prize winner for literature.

back to top