You might suppose that this Wednesday festival belongs quaintly to an African past.

For the artists, these images provide a livelihood; for their clients they offer a psychological link to an imagined African past.

For them the African past is Eden, an infinite source of wisdom about everything from psychiatry to business, politics and education.

Religion in the black communities remains the most durable link with the African past.

In a sense, Portugal's new ties with its African past is even restoring this country's image of itself as being more than just European.

The making of the South African past: major historians on race and class, (1988)

"A lot of the work from that point on took for granted the African past."

Jungle animals, rituals, dances, and gods evoke the African past.

Yet he feels alienated from his African past, and out of place in England.

Many of the oral and musical traditions have roots in Palenque's African past.