Sempangi, F. Kefa and Leonard Goines, 1975 March 25

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Scope and Contents

Artist, author and minister Kefa Sempangi and jass musician and professor Leonard Goines lectured together on 3/25/1975 (2015-0002/RR265).

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Ugandan artist Kefa Sempangi’s (b. 1939, Uganda) practice spanned surrealist portraiture, abstract painting, found object assemblages and cast bronze.

Goines holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University, The New School, and Harvard University. He has taught at New York University, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Howard University, York College, and Morgan State University. From 1965-1976, Goines played trumpet for the Symphony of the New World, he was also a member of the Preservation of Jazz Advisory Commission, former music panelist with Arts Connection, former trustee with the National Guild for Community Arts Education, and former chair of the Special Arts Section Panel with the New York State Council on the Arts.

RR 265 There is no introduction, speaker (presumably Sempangi) discussing African art and its basis in the African culture of family, tribe, nature and the environment. Leonard Goines is presumed to be the second speaker, discussing African music in Latin/South America [sound quality worsens for second speaker becoming unintellgible in multiple places].

Dates

1975 March 25

Conditions Governing Access

Links to digitized content are included in the finding aid.

Biographical / Historical

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Ugandan artist Kefa Sempangi’s (b. 1939, Uganda) practice spanned surrealist portraiture, abstract painting, found object assemblages and cast bronze. His paintings often navigated themes of religion and morality, exploring internal conflicts with an intense concentration of feeling. He explained, ‘it is these hidden forces behind the natural, behind the superficial, behind the seen, that I dedicate myself to capture and portray.’ Sempangi studied fine art at the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts in Kampala and at the Royal College of Art in London, where he graduated in 1970. He went on to complete a PhD in Art History at the Vrije University of Amsterdam. On his return to Kampala, Sempangi was appointed art history lecturer at Makerere University. During this time, his work was exhibited in Uganda and the UK, including at the African Art Centre and the Camden Art Centre in London in 1968 and 1969.

In 1974, Sempangi and his family went into exile in the Netherlands and the USA for six years, where he mobilized funding for Ugandan refugees escaping Idi Amin’s regime and studied Divinity in Philadelphia. On his return to Kampala, Sempangi founded the Presbyterian Church of Uganda and worked as a Reverend and in public office until his retirement – continuing a personal art practice alongside.

His artwork is represented in private and institutional collections in the UK and Uganda, but pieces are rare and hard to find. He is also the author of Reign of terror, reign of love and A Distant Grief.

[https://artauctioneastafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Art-Auction-East-Africa-catalogue-2021.pdf / https://lccn.loc.gov/n89607686 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_Church_in_Uganda /http://ministryblue.com/kefa.html

Leonard Goines credits his early substituting for musicians in jazz bands and Broadway shows as a teen-ager with the start of his career. The work enabled him to "break into the council of elders", a clique of musicians who populated Manhattan's jazz community of the '30s and '40s. As an adult, Goines played or recorded with some of the very best: Ella Fitzgerald, Donald Byrd, Duke Pearson, Yusef Lateef and Buddy Johnson. Goines considers himself a musician who plays jazz rather than a jazz musician, allowing him to work with symphonies, Broadway pit orchestras and pop stars like Barbra Streisand and Frankie Avalon. Lafayette College chose him to be a visiting professor under the recently established Black Scholars program and the first professor - visiting or otherwise - to teach a jazz history course at the College. Goines' includes degrees in anthropology, psychology, counseling, political science, music education and ethnomusicology, as well as studying with Margaret Mead and Nadia Boulanger.

Besides teaching, Goines has done some extensive field research in the area of jazz, including writing for academic journals and an oral history on high-note trumpet player Erskine Hawkins, whose band popularized the song "Tuxedo Junction" in the late 1930s. Goines has followed, by choice, two careers simultaneously: teaching and playing trumpet in the Leonard Goines Quartet.

[https://www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-1986-01-30-2514503-story.html (Morning Call, 1/1986) / https://www.allmusic.com/artist/leonard-goines-mn0001828149]