The Blood on the Keyboard

In his 1947 book The World and Africa, W.E.B. Du Bois remarked that a society built on capitalistic exploitation doesn’t see the “blood on the piano keys.” Throughout his lifetime, piano keys with their ivory veneers had been created through a noxious system of consumption that affected the lives of millions of people and elephants. Still, pianos were seen as symbols of moral value, becoming so popular that by the early 20th century, they outnumbered bathtubs in the United States. By the 1400s, when Portuguese traders became the first Europeans to get involved in the African ivory trade, many African societies — including the Yao, Kamba, Ngonde, and the Kingdom of Benin — had been using and trading ivory for centuries. Swahili people on Africa’s east coast sold ivory to Arab and South Asian traders, in addition to using ivory for musical instruments and decoration. But before the 17th century, no African society’s economy depended solely on ivory. In the 17th and 18th century, Europe ... Read full article.