ABSTRACT
African performance is a tightly wrapped bundle of arts that are sometimes difficult to separate, even for analysis. Singing, playing instruments, dancing, masquerading, and dramatizing are part of a conceptual package that many Africans think of as one and the same. The Kpelle people of Liberia use a single word, sang, to describe a welldanced movement, a well-sung phrase, or especially fine drumming. For them, the expressive acts that gives rise to these media are related and interlinked. The visual arts, the musical arts, the dramatic arts-all work together in the same domain and are conceptually treated as intertwined. To describe the execution of a sequence of dances, a Kpelle drummer might say, "The dance she spoke."
