African Theatre 19: Opera & Music Theatre 1847012574, 9781847012579

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African Theatre 19 Opera & Music Theatre Volume Editors KRISTINA JOHNSTONE Christine Matzke, Lena van der Hoven, Christopher Odhiambo, Hilde Roos Reviews Editor Sola Adeyemi

Published titles in the series: African Theatre in Development African Theatre: Playwrights & Politics African Theatre: Women African Theatre: Southern Africa African Theatre: Soyinka: Blackout, Blowout & Beyond African Theatre: Youth African Theatre 7: Companies African Theatre 8: Diasporas African Theatre 9: Histories 1850–1950 African Theatre 10: Media & Performance African Theatre 11: Festivals African Theatre 12: Shakespeare in & out of Africa African Theatre 13: Ngug˜ ˜ ı wa Thiong’o & Wole Soyinka African Theatre 14: Contemporary Women African Theatre 15: China, India & the Eastern World African Theatre 16: Six Plays from East & West Africa African Theatre 17: Contemporary Dance African Theatre 18 African Theatre 19: Opera & Music Theatre

African Theatre 19 Opera & Music Theatre KRISTINA JOHNSTONE Series Editors Yvette Hutchison, Chukwuma Okoye & Jane Plastow

Reviews Editor Sola Adeyemi Associate Editors Omofolabo Ajayi-Soyinka

Dept of Theatre, 1530 Naismith Dr, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045–3140, USA

Awo Mana Asiedu

School of Performing Arts, PO Box 201, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

David Kerr

Dept of Media Studies, Private Bag 00703, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana

Patrick Mangeni

Head of Dept of Music, Dance & Drama, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda

Christine Matzke

Dept of English, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany

Olu Obafemi

Dept of English, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

James Currey is an imprint of Boydell and Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF (GB) and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com www.jamescurrey.com © Contributors 2020 Playscript We Take Care of Our Own © Zainabu Jallo Playscript copyright information: For all enquiries for performance or reproduction please contact the copyright holder All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library First published 2020 ISBN 978–1–84701–257–9 ( James Currey cloth edition) ISBN 978–1–78744–950–3 (ePDF) Cover photograph: Monica Mhangwana sings in Bach’s St John’s Passion, staged in Meadowlands Seventh Day Adventist Church, Soweto, South Africa, by director Kobie van Rensburg and conductor Felix Bender with six community choirs, professional chorus, soloists and orchestra for Umculo NPC. (Photography: Creative Emporium)

Typeset in 12/13 pt MBembo by Kate Kirkwood, Cumbria, UK

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Notes on Contributorsxi Obituaries Remembering Victor Ukaegbu xvii OLADIPO AGBOLUAJE



Sidwell Hartman & George Stevens

xix

MICHAEL ARENDSE

Acknowledgements

xxiv

Introduction1

LENA VAN DER HOVEN, CHRISTINE MATZKE, HILDE ROOS & CHRISTOPHER ODHIAMBO

Articles

15

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts

17



NEO MUYANGA

‘It was here, you must remember,  our children played their games’ A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre

PAULA FOURIE

‘Opera is an art form for everyone’ Black Empowerment in the South African Opera Adaptations Unogumbe (2013) and Breathe – Umphefumlo (2015)

52

LENA VAN DER HOVEN & LIANI MAASDORP

‘We can’t let politics define the arts’  Interviews with South African Opera Singers

29

LENA VAN DER HOVEN

77

vi  Contents Aida’s Legacy or De-/Colonising  Music Theatre in Egypt The Example of the Cairo Opera House

NORA AMIN

Towards an African Operatic Voice Composition, Dramaturgy and Identity Strategies in New Yorùbá Opera

183

SAMUEL KASULE

‘Home is where the memory persists most’ Introducing Zainabu Jallo’s We Take Care of Our Own

159

FABIAN LEHMANN, WILFRIED ZOUNGRANA & ANDREA REIKAT

‘I smoked them out’  Perspectives on the Emergence of Folk Opera or ‘Musical Plays’ in Uganda

136

TOBIAS ROBERT KLEIN

The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten Three Perspectives on a Controversial Project in Burkina Faso

107

BODE OMOJOLA

The Phantom of the West African Opera A tour d’horizon

90

194

CHRISTINE MATZKE

Playscript We Take Care of Our Own • ZAINABU JALLO

203

Contents  vii Book Reviews edited by Sola Adeyemi Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong on 231 Chima Osakwe The Revolutionary Drama and Theatre of Femi Osofisan Chris Dunton on S. M. Mofokeng Senkatana

233

‘Funmi Adewole on Victor N. Gomia and Gilbert S. Ndi, eds Re-writing Pasts, Imagining Futures: Critical Explorations of Contemporary African Fiction and Theater

237

Christopher Odhiambo on Angelo Gobbato A Passion for Opera

240

JC Niala on Koulsy Lamko Bintou Wéré: African Opera

243

Christopher Odhiambo on Musa Ngqungwana Odyssey of an African Opera Singer

245

Hilde Roos on Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley, eds Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance

247

Allison R. Smith on Hilde Roos The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid

250

Wayne Muller on Naomi André Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement

254

William Fourie on Naomi André, Donato Somma and Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi, eds ‘New Voices in Black South African Opera’ African Studies, vol. 75, no. 1

258

List of Illustrations

FOURIE

Figure 1. Sandra McGregor & Ray Querido’s  Little Theatre

30

VAN DER HOVEN & MAASDORP

Figure 1. Khayelitsha – screen shot of the establishing  scenes of Unogumbe & Breathe – Umphefumlo Figure 2. Screen shots of performers ‘on stage’ in  industrial space, and audience of children, in Unogumbe Figure 3. Screen shots of cinematic representation in  Unogumbe showing children crafting elements used for the ark scene in the depicted shadow play, and the ‘real world’ ark Figure 4. Screen shot of the orchestration ‘on stage’  during the storm scene in Unogumbe using everyday objects such as a bin, paper and swung pipe

52 66 67

68

OMOJOLA

Example 1a. Akin Euba, Chaka, Conscience theme 117 Example 1b. Akin Euba, Chaka, Noliwe theme 117 Example 1c. Akin Euba, Chaka, Dies Irae theme 117 Example 2a. Akin Euba, Chaka (Recurring Motif) 117 Example 2b. Akin Euba, Chaka (Recurring Motif) 117 Example 3. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò),124 ‘À wa n´ Súre’, Act I Example 4. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò),125 ‘À wa n´ Jayé’, Act I Example 5. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò),  127 ‘Dance of the Crossroads’, Act IV, Scene 2 ix

x  List of Illustrations

Table 1. Chaka (An Opera by Akin Euba) Table 2. Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò) (An Opera by  Bode Omojola) Figure 1. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò),  ‘Stage and Orchestra Pit’ Figure 2. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò),  ‘Aládúrà Scene’

112 120 119 130

KLEIN

Figure 1. George Nicholas Julius Ballanta, Afiwa,  ‘Why tempt ye me’ (No. 6), bars 1–7 Figure 2. Adam Dogoro Fiberesima, Opu Jaja, Act I,  bars 482–95

139 148

LEHMANN ET AL

Figure 1. Festspielhaus Afrika, published by Christoph  Schlingensief in January 2009 Figure 2. Centre of the Opera Village in Burkina Faso

163 163

MATZKE

Figure 1. Adolphus Ward as Youssouf, Sab Shimono  as Moon-So, Afro-Atlantic Festival reading rehearsal, Minneapolis, July 2019 Figure 2. Richard Ooms as Bajran (with Adolphus  Ward in the background), Afro-Atlantic Festival reading rehearsal, Minneapolis, July 2019

202 202

Contributors

Nora Amin is a writer, performer, choreographer and theatre director. She is the founder of The National Egyptian Project for Theatre of the Oppressed. She has been a Fellow of the following: Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed in Brazil (2003), the Academy of the Arts of the World (Cologne, Ger­many, 2015) and the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures (Free University Berlin, Germany, 2015–2016). She holds a Cultural Leadership in the Performing Arts from the British Council (2009) and a Clore Leadership diploma (UK, 2009). In addition, she has been an S. Fischer guest professor (FU Berlin, 2004–2005), a guest lecturer (acting) at Mount Holyoke College (USA, 2005) and Valeska-Gert guest professor for dance sciences in cooperation with DAAD and Academy of Arts (FU Berlin, 2018). Paula Fourie is a writer living in Stellenbosch, South Africa. She currently works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bern Uni­ver­sity of the Arts, researching Afrikaans translations of Swiss novels and plays published and performed in South Africa during the apartheid era. She is also a Research Fellow at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University where she is working on a biography of musical theatre composer Taliep Petersen. Paula is also active in professional theatre, having since 2012 worked alongside playwright Athol Fugard in the staging of his works. Her published work includes academic journal articles, essays, book reviews, interviews, plays and poetry. Lena van der Hoven’s research interests include contem­porary South African opera and music theatre and politics. She received a PhD in Musicology at Humboldt-University, Berlin. She was also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for xi

xii  Notes on Contributors Human Development. Since 2015 she has been Assistant Professor for Music Studies at the University of Bayreuth, since 2016 a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and in 2020 she was appointed Research Fellow of Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University. In 2018 she received the Scientific Award of the University of Bayreuth for her research on South African opera. Zainabu Jallo is a researcher at the Institute for Social Anthro­ pology, University of Bern, Switzerland and Uni­ver­sity of São Paulo, Brazil. Zainabu’s academic and creative work have been conveyed through Fellowships at the Sun­ dance Theater Institute, The Institute for World Litera­ture, Harvard University, The Mellon School of Theater and Performance at Harvard (Migrations session), Institute for Cultural Diplomacy in Berlin, Residenztheater Munich, Chateau de Lavigny, and House of Writers in Switzer­land. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK, and the UNESCO Coalition of Artists for the General History of Africa. Her scholarly interests include Diaspora studies, Iconic criticism, and Material Culture. Samuel Kasule is Professor of Postcolonial Theatre and Perform­ ance at the University of Derby. His research focuses on African and African diaspora theatre and performances. Recent publications include Walukagga (The Black Smith) (Wavah Books, 2018); ‘Theatre Artists Peopling the Media in Uganda’, African Perform­ ance Review (APR), vol. 9, no. 2, 2018; and Resistance and Politics in Contemporary East African Theatre (Adonis & Abbey, 2013). His latest book, Theatres and Performances of East Africa, co-authored with Osita Okagbue, is forthcoming with Routledge in 2020. Tobias Robert Klein studied Musicology, African Studies and Computer Science at Humboldt-University, Berlin and completed his PhD alongside a teaching appointment at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. He was a Research Scholar at the interdisciplinary Centre for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin and an Associate Member of the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Music

Notes on Contributors  xiii and Media Studies at Humboldt-University and a member of the joint German-Austrian-Swiss research group ‘Writing Music’ at the University of Gießen. His publications and research interests are equally divided between the musical (and literary) cultures of Western Europe and West Africa. Fabian Lehmann has just completed his PhD at the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS). His research is on contemporary visual arts that address the remem­ brance of the German colonial period in Namibia. Lehmann was a research fellow at Iwalewahaus, the African Studies Centre at the University of Bayreuth. Together with Nadine Siegert and Ulf Vierke, he is the editor of Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa (2017), a collection of essays and art works that trace the connections between Christoph Schlingensief, Richard Wagner and the African continent. Liani Maasdorp is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town. She convenes the Master of Documentary Arts and is the founder of Stepping Stone community engagement video training programme and ScreenCubator film and media talent developer. She is passionate about studying and teaching South African film, particularly documentary film. Her work has been published in the books World Cinema Directory: Africa and Defining the Docu­mentary: Case Studies in the Post-1990 Context, the Film Philosophy Journal and the Journal of African Cinemas, and popular publications including National Geographic Traveller, Mail and Guardian and The Conversation. Christine Matzke teaches Anglophone literature and theatre at the University of Bayreuth. Her work has engaged with West and East Africa, particularly Eritrea, and African women writing in diaspora. Recent publications include a contribution to The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics (2019) and an article on Sefi Atta’s play ‘The Sentence’ (Research in African Literatures, 2017). She was co-guest editor of two previous volumes in the African Theatre series, Diasporas (2009) and Contemporary Women (2015); and she loves reading crime fiction, going to the theatre and – you might have guessed – listening to opera.

xiv  Notes on Contributors Neo Muyanga is a composer, sound artist and librettist. His work traverses new opera, jazz improvisation, and Zulu and Sesotho idiomatic song. He trained to sing in township choirs in Soweto, and learned to perform madrigals while living in Italy in the 1990s. In 1996 he co-founded (with Masauko Chipembere) the duo, Blk Sonshine, and in 2008 (with Ntone Edjabe) the Pan African Space Station – a platform for cutting-edge pan-African music and sound art on the internet. His records include: Blk Sonshine (1999), the Listening Room (2003), Fire, Famine Plague and Earthquake (2007), Good Life (2009), Dipalo (2011), Toro tse Sekete (2015) and Secondhand Reading (2016). His stage productions include A Memory of How it Feels (2010), The Flower of Shembe (2012), The Heart of Redness (2015) and MAKEdbA (2018). An alumnus of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD (2016), he was also Composerin-residence of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival (2017), the National Arts Festival (2017) and the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (2018). He tours widely as a solo performer, bandleader and choral conductor. Christopher Joseph Odhiambo is a Professor of literature, theatre, creative writing and film at the Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. He taught African literature and applied theatre in Departments of African Literature and Drama at the University of the Witwaters­ rand from 2007 to 2009; he also taught African Drama at the Department of Theatre Arts at Stellenbosch University. Odhiambo has been on the editorial boards of a number of journals, as well as a reviewer. His research interests include postcolonial literatures, applied theatre and popular cultures in Africa. Recent publications include articles in Tracks and Traces of Violence: Representation and Memorialization of Violence, Views from Art, Literature and Anthropology (2017), Re-writing Pasts, Imagining Futures: Critical Explorations of Contemporary African Fiction and Theater (2017), Imbizo (2018), Jahazi: Culture Arts Performance (2018), African Performance Review (APR) (2017), Ffk Journal: Film-und-Fernsehwissenschaftliches Kolloquium (2017) and LIFT: The Journal of Literature and Performing Arts (2019). Bode Omojola is a Five College Professor of Music and teaches at Mount Holyoke College and the Five College Consortium

Notes on Contributors  xv

(Amherst, Hampshire, Smith colleges, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.). Omojola received his PhD from the University of Leicester, England. His research centres on Yorùbá and African diaspora music, including modern African art music. His awards have included the Radcliffe fellowship in musicology at Harvard, and the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at the University of Cologne, Germany. His opera (Odyssey of a Dream) was premiered in 2018 by the Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra and Five College African opera students in the United States. Andrea Reikat is a social anthropologist specialised on Bur­kina Faso where she lived and conducted research between 1992 and 2018. Since 2004 she has been associate professor at the University of Frankfurt/Main; from 2004 to 2018 she was also lecturer in Sociology and German Studies at the University of Ouagadougou. Her major research subjects are West African regional and economic history and the relationship between traditional and modern political systems. Since 2005 she has been working in applied development: until 2015 she was in Burkina Faso for GIZ (German Development Cooperation), subsequently as a project coordinator for the Burkinabé NGO ‘AMPO’. Since 2018 she has again been with GIZ, working in Rwanda and Burundi. Hilde Roos is the General Manager of Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University. Her research concerns historical and con­tem­porary representations of opera in South Africa with special reference to the intersection of the genre with politics and race. Her PhD dissertation focused on the indigenisation of opera in South Africa. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University and the University of South Africa (UNISA) and published in journals such as Acta Musicologica, Historia, Acta Academica, Litnet, the South African Theatre Journal and Muziki. In 2013 she co-edited the oral history book Eoan: Our Story and published her monograph The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid with University of California Press in 2018. Wilfried Zoungrana holds a Master’s degree and a PhD in

xvi  Notes on Contributors

International Relations from the University of Erfurt. His PhD was published in two volumes; Method as Theory: Lakatos, Methodology, and Interpretive International Relations (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, 2017) and Knowledge at War: Epistemology and Terrorism in IR Theory (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, 2017). Zoungrana worked for the late theatre and opera director Christoph Schlingensief as a translator and performer in Via Intolleranza II. In 2016, he started teaching German language and culture to adult refugees. His latest publication is No Country for Migrants? Critical Perspectives on Asylum, Immigration, and Integration in Germany (Brill, 2019).

Obituaries

As this volume goes into print, we are deeply saddened to hear that Tejumola Olaniyan, Louise Durham Mead Professor of English & Wole Soyinka Professor of the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, died suddenly on 30 November 2019, aged 60. Teju Olaniyan’s outstanding academic achievements are too many to name in detail here, but we would like to thank him for his support in the early stages of this book project. We remember him with deepest respect and gratitude. The Editors

Victor Ukaegbu (1954–2019) My first encounter with Victor Ukaegbu was as an actor. I travelled with two friends of mine during my University of Benin days to Northampton (UK) to see a production of Femi Osofisan’s Once Upon Four Robbers. We were curious as to how a major Nigerian play was being performed in a market town outside of London and how it would be received. Victor was on stage playing one of the robbers alongside his colleague, Jumai Ewu. From their accents I knew they were the only Nigerians performing in the show. I also guessed they might be responsible for producing the play, as indeed they were, being co-artistic directors of Jawi Theatre Collective, the producing company. It was a short run and on that night there was a good house, with a mixed demographic. The show itself was well received by the audience. As the show finished late and my friends and I had to hurry back to London I didn’t get to speak to Victor. The thought never occurred to me that our paths would cross again. In 2006, I attended the inaugural meeting of the African Theatre xvii

xviii  Obituaries

Association (AfTA) at Goldsmiths, University of London. AfTA was established to promote intellectual and artistic net­works between theatre scholars and practitioners in Africa and in the diaspora. Victor was one of the founding members. His contribution to the association’s development was pivotal, taking on the roles of (the first) General Secretary, and Associate Editor of the association’s journal, African Performance Review. Victor also played a key role in hosting the association’s annual conference in 2009 at the University of Northampton where he was a lecturer at the time. Victor’s academic interests spanned African drama, Black British Drama and African Drama in Diaspora. He contri­buted several essays to reputable journals and book collections on these subjects. One of his aims was to draw attention to the growing number of plays by British writers of African descent. This was at a time when British-Caribbean narratives dominated the British stage. It was because of this that I asked him to write the introduction to my first collection of plays. Victor was interested in creating bridges between practice and academia, and between academia and the outside world. Through Jawi Theatre Collective, Victor helped to create an archive of local oral histories. I worked with him on one such project, ‘Who Can Tell?’ It was an ambitious project that included performance, archiving, and seminars over a period of years. At one of the seminars I remember Victor’s intro­ductory speech, where he spoke of the need for projects like ‘Who Can Tell?’ as a way of helping black and Asian com­munities take pride in their contribution to the UK, and also for the wider public to accept the history of black and Asian groups as an important part of British history. As well as being a family man, Victor was a devout Christian. At his remembrance ceremony in Northampton, it was humbling to hear testimonies of Victor’s character from several church members and of the many ways in which this gentle, soft-spoken man impacted their lives. A colleague, Sola Adeyemi, recalls that Victor was instrumental in bringing him over to the UK to work and study. At the time Sola was working in South Africa. He stayed with Victor for two weeks, and in the early stages of his academic career in the UK looked to Victor for guidance. There are many stories like this of Victor Ukaegbu.

Obituaries  xix

At the time of his death, Victor was Principal Lecturer in Theatre at the University of Bedfordshire. He is sorely missed. Oladipo Agboluaje Assistant General Secretary African Theatre Association (AfTA)

Sidwill Hartman, Tenor (1956–2019) A reluctant trailblazer – that is probably the best way to remember opera singer and teacher Sidwill James Hartman. An Associate Professor of vocal studies at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town (UCT), Hart­man suffered a heart attack and died while teaching in his studio at the college. He was 63. Blessed with a soaring tenor voice, Hartman overcame numerous challenges to enjoy a successful opera career locally and internationally before turning to full-time teaching at UCT in 2004. Developing as an opera singer at a time of limited opportunities for so-called coloured and black African singers at the height of apartheid was not easy. Professor Angelo Gobbato, head of the now-defunct Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB) Opera (the forerunner of Cape Town Opera), recounted at a recent remembrance gathering how Hartman was prepared to go through the humiliating procedure of applying for a permit required for coloured Africans when he started his opera studies at UCT in 1978. He was also criticised by his own community for leaving the Eoan Group, an amateur opera company for coloured Africans during the apartheid years, and was accused of crossing over to the ‘white side’ in order to sing in the ad hoc chorus of CAPAB Opera. Performing at the Nico Malan Theatre, today called Artscape, was a challenge because Hartman was one of the first singers of colour to perform in this former white venue. But as the cracks in the apartheid arts firmament began to appear, the presence of mixed-race artists of Hartman’s calibre helped to open the venue to coloured and black African performers and audiences, albeit initially through a permit system. Hartman also helped pave the way for other coloured and black African singers to pursue a career in opera today.

xx  Obituaries

At the time, racism was rampant. Hartman’s life partner, Martin Postmus, recalls how ‘Sidwill took many bullets, but he was never bitter, in spite of how he was treated’. This lack of bitterness can probably be traced to his early years, growing up in District Six in a tight-knit musical family where the Hart­man siblings were deeply involved in church choirs and youth groups. After the family moved to Manenberg in 1968 as part of the removals from District Six, their father was encouraged to bring the siblings to the Eoan Group. Hartman started voice lessons with Eoan’s voice teacher, Alessandro Rota, at the age of 16, became a church organist at 17, and sang his first opera role as Alfredo in Verdi’s La Traviata at 19. After completing his studies at UCT from 1978 to 1980, Hart­ man performed in South Africa for some years before continuing his studies at the famed Julliard School in New York from 1984 to 1986. After completing his studies abroad, he returned home and sang throughout the country. His international commitments, however, were many. In 1992 he made his professional inter­ national debut at the Nantes Opera as Don José in Bizet’s Carmen. Then followed a career which took him to Staatsoper Berlin, Opera Nice, Opera Stuttgart, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Bayer­ ische Staatsoper in Munich, to name but a few. In 1996 he made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as Radames in Verdi’s Aida. Some of the well-known names in the opera industry with whom he sang included Nina Stemme, the Swedish Wagner­ ian soprano, and Lucia Aliberti, the Italian soprano famous for her interpretation of Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. In 1999 he shared the role of Cavaradossi in Verdi’s Tosca with Luciano Pavarotti at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Besides opera roles – which furthermore included Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer, Nono’s Intolleranza, Szymanowski’s Król Roger, Verdi’s La Traviata and Nabucco, Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Puccini’s Turandot and Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage – Hartman also sang in con­certs, masses, oratorios and requiems, performing all over the world, including Moscow, Glasgow, Harare and Edinburgh, to Brussels, Bonn, Cape Town and Cologne. Part of Hartman’s success was his ability to jump in at the last

Obituaries  xxi

minute and rescue a production. Yet his partner Post­­mus says that through all his successes, which included several scholarships and awards, Hartman did not want to be famous. Instead, ‘he believed you’re only as good as your last performance’. Postmus recalled that on the day of a performance you didn’t talk to him and he wouldn’t answer the phone. He was very committed, and he never cancelled a performance until 2003, when he was too ill to perform. He never reneged on a contract, even when some­thing better came along.

Despite his success, Hartman never forgot those who were less fortunate. He was generous towards his students and, as Postmus remembers, ‘helped out with items such as food and blankets’. Although he travelled extensively overseas, Hartman always enjoyed returning home. As a singer of colour he trained the post1994 generation of African opera singers with great success. The first tribute service for Hartman was held at the Baxter Theatre at UCT on 25 May 2019, and the second was held at the Joseph Stone Auditorium, Athlone, Cape Town, on 28 July 2019.

George Stevens, Baritone (1966–2018) Cecil George Stevens, known professionally as George Stevens, enjoyed an international career as an opera singer, mak­ing his professional debut in South Africa in 1992, and in Europe in 1994. At the time of this death in a city hospital following an opera­tion, Stevens was the acting director of the Opera School at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town (UCT). He was 51. Known for his versatility in traditional and contemporary repertoire, Stevens was comfortable in performing classical masses, oratorios and operas, deploying his vocal and theatrical talents to great effect on stage when interpreting roles. George Stevens had a rich and supple voice that enabled him to excel in bel canto and verismo repertoire. He was admired for his interpretive insights and exceptional con­trol and was considered by some European critics as one of the finest Verdi singers of his time. They appreciated his elegant and expressive phrasing, velvety tone, musical intelligence and acting qualities. He excelled

xxii  Obituaries

in long, lyrical lines, and was also valued for being prepared to perform smaller roles. But an illustrious career that took him from the local opera houses to those in Europe did not happen overnight. He overcame many professional and personal challenges, including health, to build the substantial career he enjoyed at the end of this life. The second eldest of five children, Stevens grew up in a musical family in Heathfield on the Cape Flats. One of his brothers, Paul Stevens, remembers: He was enthusiastic about theatre and music from a young age, and took part in the school plays at Heathfield Primary […] George was interested in all kinds of music! He then found his passion, classical music and opera. His first classical performance was the bass role in the Mozart Requiem with Vetta Wise.

His sister Crystal Stevens says their mother, Lydia, was the biggest influence on George: Mom sang in the Eoan Group and the church choir, often as a soloist. They had a special bond. When overseas, George would play her some music over the phone. She would sing the soprano part, and he the baritone or bass part.

She also relates how George played the flute and trumpet and how he taught their brothers to play. After being discovered in a New Apostolic Church choir, Stevens started private singing lessons with Professor Nellie du Toit. In 1992 he became a member of CAPAB, singing the title role of Selim in Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia. His debut was broadcast live in South Africa. In 1993 Stevens studied with Kammersänger Wicus Slabbert in Vienna and in 1994 continued his studies with Professor Josef Metternich in Munich. There he was chosen for the final concert by Bayerische Theaterakademie and made his European debut at the Bayerische Staatstheater to critical acclaim. Over a number of year Stevens worked as guest soloist in Europe and South Africa, where he performed the entire classical repertoire in his fach (a system of classifying singers according to the range, weight and colour of their voices). From 1998 to 2006, Stevens became a principal soloist as an Italian baritone of the Theater Bremen in Germany, performing roles such as Figaro in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen,

Obituaries  xxiii

Mefistofeles in Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust, Frank in Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Demetrius in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Tarquinius in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and Lescaut in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Figaro in Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Wolfram von Eschenbach in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. He also distinguished himself in modern repertoire. In recognition of his talents, the Theater Bremen awarded him the Kurt-Hübner Prize for ‘most convincing singer and actor with extraordinary stage presence’. In the Verdi repertoire Stevens sang the title role in Rigoletto and performed parts such as Il Conte di Luna in Trovatore, Don Carlo di Vargas in La Forza del Destino, Iago in Otello and Simone in Simone Boccanegra. He also sang in Verdi’s Requiem under the direction of Sir David Wilcox with the London Bach Choir. Launching his international freelance solo career in 2007, Stevens was often booked three seasons in advance. Invitations took Stevens to, among others, Opera Festival in Macerata, Rome, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Saarländisches Staatstheater Saarbrücken and Royal Opera Copenhagen, Moscow, Vienna, Stuttgart, Berlin, Portugal and Norway. In February 2014, Stevens returned to South Africa permanently and took up the post of senior lecturer at the UCT Opera School. George had a very inclusive vision for the future of opera. He celebrated everybody’s successes, no matter how small. As a teacher he always wanted his students to be the best versions of themselves. In October 2016 he became acting director of the UCT Opera School. Stevens was also a philanthropist, involving himself in various cultural and community initiatives. These included sponsoring local Klopse and Christmas bands to go on trips, and taking church congregations on outings to have coffee or lunch at leading venues in Cape Town. At the time of his death, he was planning a feeding scheme for underprivileged children. To continue Stevens’ work, his wife Zoë created the George Stevens Opera Grant to support South African students. Michael Arendse board member of the National Arts Council of South Africa Some information incorporated in the two above obituaries was obtained from Tertia Visser-Downie and Patrick Tikolo.

Acknowledgements

A great many people assisted in the creation of this book. Apart from the writers who entrusted us with their research, many individuals in the academic publishing industry sup­ported this publication. We have benefitted from expert advice ranging from the processes of selection and peer-review, to editing, negotiation and administration. Thank you to the African Theatre series editors, Yvette Hutchison, Chukwuma Okoye and Jane Plastow, who believed in the project from the start. Our gratitude goes to managing and commissioning editor Lynn Taylor who patiently coached us, always sharing her extensive knowledge, and keeping us to our deadlines. Thank you to copy-editor Nick Jewitt for his careful reading and guidance, reviews editor Sola Adeyemi for accommodating our book choices, and to senior music editor Michael Middeke for his specialist advice. Ian Copestake was an enormous help in language edit­ ing and we thank the Universitätsverein Bayreuth e.V. and the Department of English Literature at Bayreuth who provided financial assistance for this. We are indebted to the many acts of kindness of colleagues in our respective working environments, among them are Kordula Knaus, Gilbert Shang Ndi and Georg Leube (all Bayreuth), and Stephanus Muller (Stellenbosch). Lastly, a word of special thanks to Sam Kasule who, in a late stage of the process, agreed to impart his knowledge of folk opera and musical plays in Uganda to this volume.

xxiv

In memory of Tejumola Olaniyan and Geoffrey V. Davis for your inspiration and collegiality, and for your love of music

Introduction

LENA VAN DER HOVEN, CHRISTINE MATZKE, HILDE ROOS & CHRISTOPHER ODHIAMBO

Music is often cited as a central artistic mode in African theatre and performance practices (Kerr 1995; Rubin, Diakhaté & Ndumbe 2001; Banham 2004; Agawu 2016), yet little scholarly attention has been paid to music theatre on the continent in general, and to opera in particular. Exceptions are publications on a few noted genres, such as the Concert Party or Yorùbá ‘folk opera’ of the 1960s (Collins 1976; Euba 1989; Beier 1994; Duro-Ladipo & Kóláwolé 1997; Ricard 1997; Cole 2001; Raji-Oyelade, Olorunyomi & Duro-Ladipo 2008; Nii-Dortey 2015), and research is gradually emerging on opera culture in South Africa (among others André, Somma & Mhlambi 2016; André 2018; Roos 2010, 2018). This volume of African Theatre aims at highlighting the diversity of opera and music theatre across a variety of African and African diasporic contexts and identifies some of the paradigm shifts that have been, and are currently, taking place. Above all, this collection aims at raising questions and encourages debate. What does ‘opera’ mean in African and African diasporic contexts? How do scholars and practitioners approach and utilise these terms? Where, in terms of place and space, is opera happening today? Who watches and interprets the productions, and do audiences have any influence on aesthetic transformation processes? What are the genre’s practices and legacies – colonial, postcolonial and decolonial; what is its relation to the intersectionalities of race and class? How do opera and music theatre reflect, change or obscure social, political and economic realities? How is opera connected to educational and cultural institutions and non-profit organisations? And why is opera contradictorily, at various times, perceived as both ‘grand’ 1

2  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo

and ‘elitist’, ‘folk’ and ‘quotidian’, ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘indigenous’? Coming from different disciplines, the editors of this volume soon realised that the debate was complex, if not outright complicated, and that it is often seen differently in the many academic and applied fields from which we and contri­butors are writing. These diverse fields include com­ position, perform­ ance practice, musicology, ethno­musicology, theatre and performance studies, literature, cultural studies, political sciences, (theatre) historiography and anthropology – and often various combinations of the above. Part of the difficulty relates to Ronaldo Radano and Philip V. Bohlman’s observation that musicologists ‘have commonly remained com­mitted to a historically and musically centred “Europe” whose cultural and artistic boundaries, despite centuries of global encounter, remain tidy and distinct’, with anything outside these confines being relegated to the ‘musical sub­discipline of ethnomusicology’ (2000: 3). This has often re­ inscribed discourses of alterity and ‘reinforce[d] traditional center/ periphery distinctions’ (Radano & Olaniyan 2016: 13). William Fourie’s contribution to a recent debate, ‘Decolonis­ing Musicology’, suggests ‘that the silence of musi­cology’s colonial heritage is a product of the colonial geo­politics of know­ledge’ (Venter, Fourie, Pistorius & Muyanga 2017: 131). Fortunately, the academic field is slowly changing, and with it, many scholars and practitioners are letting go of such rigid parameters. In the above debate the authors project a radical reconfiguration of ‘the discipline of musicology as a network of texts, methodologies, institutions and individual actors […] in an attempt to recognise a plurality of knowledge production’ (131–2). In our context of art music, opera and music theatre in Africa, we observe a proliferation of terms and concepts for creative cultural dialogue as seen in other disciplines (media, literature and theatre studies, for example). Ella Shohat and Robert Stam chart these as ‘usually moving from […] “multi” to “inter” – seen as more reciprocal and less additive – to “trans” with its implication of mutual transformation’ (2014: 385). Here are some early and more recent examples: while Akin Euba has looked at ‘Intercultural Expressions in Neo-African Art Music’ (1989: 115–78), Linda Hutcheon (2006: 145ff.), James Davies and Lindiwe Dovey (2010) draw on concepts of transculturation in

Introduction  3

their analysis of (South African) adaptations of canonic European operas, and Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley (2016) re-visit ideas of multiculturalism and coloniality in operatic contexts. Kofi Agawu in The African Imagination in Music, on the other hand, understands musical compositions as ‘intertextual’ per se (2016: 315). We started our editorial journey by tracing how the term ‘opera’ has been used in the field of musicology, and how composers, performers and critics in African and African diasporic contexts have been employing the term. Contemporary conversations about what we mean when speaking of ‘opera’ are complicated because only in the nineteenth and twentieth century did ‘opera’ (mistakenly) become a genre expression, often differentiated between ‘serious’ and ‘comic’ form (Fischer 2016). With its roots in the Italian word opera, simply meaning ‘work’, it was used in Europe in the course of the eighteenth century as an umbrella term for a plethora of different forms, including favola, opera scenica, opera tragicomica, dramma musicale, tragédie lyrique and dramma per musica (Fischer 2016). According to Roger Parker, whose statement is particularly relevant for our context, the ‘term “opera” underwent an important transformation during the eighteenth century, changing from a sub-species of spoken theatre into what was essentially a musical genre’ (Brown et al. 2001). The discussion is further exacerbated by a present-day internationally performed opera repertoire which mainly pertains to the ‘long’ nineteenth century and results in the genre commonly being associated with European composers and aesthetics of that period. This perception seems far removed from that of Mandisi Dyantyis, Musical Director of the South African Isango Ensemble (see van der Hoven & Maasdorp, this volume), who appears to refer to a more elementary definition of opera as drama set to music (cf. Brown 2001, Grove Music Online), often in combination with dance. His understanding is more in line with the concept of African ‘total theatre’ (Adedeji 1971; Adelugba & Obafemi 2004; Zenenga 2015), initially coined for a West African context, that encompasses a complex amalgamation of music, drama, dance and other performance practices for an ‘aesthetics of […] total integration, the gestalt of all the art forms in one performance’ (Adedeji 1969: 63). South African composer Neo Muyanga (this

4  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo

volume), on the other hand, refers to the umbrella term of musical forms related to the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries when outlining his understanding of opera, and not to its more prevalent nineteenth-century concept. The latter has occasionally also served as a reference point for certain West African composers (Klein, this volume). Our intention here is not to make sweeping generalisations, nor to elaborate further on specific definitions referred to by each of the contributors. Rather, we would like to shift the focus to the term ‘music theatre’ in the German sense of Musiktheater (Ruf 2016, see also van der Hoven & Maasdorp, this volume) as it accommodates diversity, inclusivity and the acknowledgement of the porousness of boundaries of genres which we find central to this volume. Musiktheater or, as we now call it, ‘music theatre’ encompasses wide and different relations between music and theatre, scenic productions, performance and staging.1 It not only includes genres such as opera, musical theatre, musicals or film operas, but also other scenic performances with music and thus seems useful to describe the plethora of terms and concepts used in this collection, historically and contemporarily, such as (Yorùbá) folk opera, new Yorùbá opera, African opera, ‘native air opera’, musical plays or (musical) street theatre. Akin Euba’s catalogue of Modern African Music (1993) held at Bayreuth University includes a list of ‘Art Music and Music Theatre’, and is a prime example of the diversity of concepts and how fluidly they are understood. He lists in total 16 compositions, using terms such as ‘African opera’, ‘folk tale dramatized with music’, ‘opera’ and ‘folk opera’ (1993); in an earlier publication he distinguishes between ‘opera-drama’, ‘musical’, ‘operetta’ and ‘poetry-based music theatre’ (1989: 110, 174). We share the view that opera and music theatre are themselves ‘active units of cultural discourse, contributing materially to the ways we understand and respond to issues of gender, race, and social class, constructing images for us of what the individual owes to the larger community (and vice versa)’ (Locke 1995: 76 cited in Ingraham, So & Moodley 2016: 1). Multi- and trans-disciplinary research on the topic has the potential to challenge disciplines and their concomitant methodologies. One such challenge, pertinent to this volume, concerns the discussion of music and

Introduction  5

race. Radano and Bohlman famously referred to the ‘spectre’ of race in music studies (2000: 1) and emphasised that ‘[a]s a modern discipline, however, musicology – in its historical, structuralanalytical, and ethnographic expressions – has sought to deny the racial dimension’ (2000: 1–2). In her monograph Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (2018) Naomi André paves a way for interdisciplinary opera studies which ask what ‘black opera’ could be, discussing ‘a historical context and political directive of having black voices telling their own stories and becoming full participants in a genre that had been closed through segregation’ (6) in both the US and South Africa. However, Radano and Bohlman also highlight the pitfalls of defining ‘African music’ in racial terms, and warn that ‘the ontological mapping of music onto race’ leads to stereotype and prejudice (2000: 7). Perhaps Achille Mbembe is pointing a way forward by noting that in our times of ‘cultural reconfiguration’ it will be crucial ‘for the cultural life and the aesthetical and political creativity’ to find new answers to who is ‘African’ (Mbembe 2016: 281, our translation). We acknowledge the diversity of meanings as well as the contested nature of terminology and nomenclature concerning Africa and African musics (Agawu 2016). Readers will notice that contributors to this volume each discuss possible renditions and resonances of these terms in their particular environments and contexts. We embrace inclusive interpretation that not only refers to geographical space, but also culture, history, heritage, politics, lived experiences and diasporic trajectories.

Contributions While opera scholars often explored ‘the African’ or ‘the Other’ in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European canonical operas, Tobias Klein started to challenge the representation of the continent and its people in nineteenth-century opera through a ‘postcolonial reading’ (Klein 2013). In this volume, however, we try to take analysis a step further by tracing opera and music theatre in various African and African diasporic contexts. Contributors were asked to critically engage with our list of questions above. Part of this endeavour was to get to know how opera is seen

6  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo

in their particular environments – as, for example, belonging to colonial discourses, critical postcolonial engagement or more radical decolonial moves – and to find out whether the genre was perceived as a representation of power, and if so, how and by whom. Contributions on opera in South Africa reveal that the genre was long perceived as Eurocentric. However, con­temporary modernisation of operas from the European canon as well as newly composed operas prove to have the potential to ‘protest’ against this colonial legacy and to establish new practices (Muyanga, van der Hoven & Maasdorp, and van der Hoven, this volume). Klein (this volume) illustrates how colonialism generated ‘a complex musical society in Africa’ in his overview of opera composition in Ghana and Nigeria. This chapter concurs with Agawu’s argument that ‘[c]ontemporary Africa is shaped by a bewildering diversity of inter- and intracontinental musical influences’ (2003: 22). Current day forms of colonial interventions are discussed in the contributions on Christoph Schlingensief’s so-called ‘Opera Village’ in Burkina Faso (Lehmann, Zoungrana & Reikat, this volume) and on the Cairo opera house in Egypt (Amin, this volume). While Schlingensief’s ‘Opera Village’ was initially meant as ‘protest’ against a bourgeois and elitist European opera apparatus that had lost its social relevance, the chapter demonstrates Schlingensief’s actual neo-colonial approach to ‘Africa’, in this case in a Burkinabé location. Reikat poignantly argues that ‘[t]he idea of Europeans coming to Africa to “steal from” its cultures seems to have indeed become reality’. Nora Amin (this volume), too, reads opera productions at the Cairo Opera House – particularly Aida – as a radical imposition, a symbol of contemporary Egyptian coloniality that draws on ‘Western operatic models’ to consolidate president Hosni Mubarak’s regime (1981–2011). Once seen as an emblem of nineteenthcentury Egyptian modernity, Verdi’s opera here becomes a sign of internal repression. Against this, Amin sets examples of early decolonial attempts ‘to re-root operatic art within an Egyptian cultural frame’ which she links with contemporary oppositional street performances that reclaim the space around the Cairo Opera House. Being aware of the social, cultural and often political significance of performance locations and audiences, and of the transformative

Introduction  7

energy of new locations and audiences, our inquiry included where and for whom opera and music theatre was and is performed. Furthermore, we were interested in knowing if our contributors witness(ed) transformation in operatic aesthetics, themes or agents, and asked them to address the role that audiences play in genre formations and meaning making. In this sense we concur with social anthropologist Karin Barber that [a]udiences make the meaning of the text ‘whole’ by what they bring to it. In many performance genres, this co-constitutive role is made palpable by the audience’s visible and audible participation […] The formation of genres occurs in the zone of addressivity constituted by the mutual orientation of the text to the audience and the audience to the text. Thus, new forms of address are the key to new genres. New genres take shape as writers/composers of texts convoke new audiences (or old audiences in new ways). (2007: 137–8)

Muyanga (this volume), for instance, advocates that opera should not be interpreted as genre-limiting and that opera is always aesthetically transforming. Throughout his position paper, he exemplifies how operatic music meets choir music or traditional bow music, and how new locations and audiences can be created when breaking through genre-limits and rejecting the idea of opera as elitist. Interviews with South African singers (in this volume) illustrate that the funding situation for opera productions has become so difficult that opera concerts, which are much less expensive to stage, are becoming more regular. The non-profit opera organisation Umculo has taken operas out of traditional opera houses by staging them in, for example, the town hall of the Ikageng township in Gauteng, or in the Hillbrow Theatre in Johannesburg. The South African Isango Ensemble tried to reach new audiences through film adaptations of classics from the European opera repertoire which they screen in townships and at international film festivals in the Global North (van der Hoven & Maasdorp, this volume). Omojola and Klein (this volume) both discuss transformation with regard to audiences by highlighting how the five different versions of Akin Euba’s Chaka speak to the different venues, performance occasions and spec­tators. After its premiere at the Ife Festival of the Arts Univer­sity of Ife, the composition was adjusted for each subsequent performance in Dakar, Bruekelen, Brent and

8  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo

Southwark (London) respectively. Amin (this volume) views the Cairo Opera House, with its Western opera performances held in the ‘Great Theatre Hall’, as a place for state representation for an elite audience. She describes how significant it was for her when the Cairo Opera House provided an Open-Air Theatre for contemporary independent Egyptian music bands and a younger local audience. Audience appeal and the transformation of genre in Samuel Kasule’s contribution (this volume) on Ugandan ‘folk operas’ and ‘musical plays’ are strongly connected with how music theatre reflects the new social and political realities of Uganda after independence in 1962. When Okot p’Bitek became the first Ugandan Director of the National Theatre in Kampala, he wanted to make opera more accessible for Ugandans. For this reason, he rejected foreign cultural domination and supported performances of early Ugandan folk operas and musical plays which were rooted in indigenous performances and aimed at displacing ‘Western’ opera forms. Our contributors responded in numerous ways to our interest in how opera and music theatre might reflect, change or obscure social, political and economic realities. Bode Omojola (this volume), for instance, reflects on the economic and sociopolitical realities of twenty-first century globalisation in his opera Odyssey of a Dream by showcasing the challenges and experiences of immigrant life in the United States. In contrast, Euba’s opera Chaka is a historical reflection of the conflicts and disruptions of colonial rule. For Omojola, both works are indicators of ‘the many possible representations of the African operatic voice’. A good example of music theatre being an ‘active unit of [social and] cultural discourse’ is Paula Fourie’s contribution (this volume) which responds to identity and memory formation in South African District Six musicals. This area is known for the forced removals in the 1960s to the 1980s of approximately 65,000 individuals to designated ‘coloured’ areas further away from Cape Town. She demonstrates how various musicals about the area continue to reflect and shape the ‘coloured’ imaginary on these traumatising events of apartheid.

Introduction  9

Outlook This volume can only cover a limited number of case studies and contexts. What is included here should be seen as the first stepping stones of a broader enquiry on opera and music theatre on the continent. We would like to end with an eclectic selection of examples to illustrate the potential breadth of the field, and to draw attention to the relative scarcity of scholars working on these topics. Finding contributors for this volume proved a challenge. Among the productions worth mentioning is the 1976 Opera Extravaganza by Peter Chiwona and Joseph Chaphadzika Chakanza in Malawi, staged nearly entirely in Chichewa. Adrian Roscoe noted at the time that although it is ‘[n]either as tightly woven nor as poetically rich as the bestknown Yoruba folk operas’, this production ‘clearly represents the blue-print of a form with an exciting future’ (Roscoe 1977: 273). In 2007 Bintou Were: A Sahel Opera by Wasis Diop and Zé Manel Fortes saw its world premiere in Bamako. It was filmed by Manthia Diawara and later incorporated into his film An Opera of the World (2017). Interestingly, Diawara drew on Édouard Glissant’s concept of ‘Chaos-Opera’ and raised the question as to whether film could be the new medium for opera (Diawara n.d.). In Madagascar, the hira gasy (Malagasy singing) has been described by Marjolaine Chauvaux as ‘opéra-théâtre dansé de Madagascar’ (Chauvaux 2011). Opera Mauritius, an initiative of La Fondation Spectacles et Culture (FSC) created by Guy Lagesse and Gérard Sullivan in 2007, stages creole adaptations of operas from the Western canon (Opera Mauritius 2020). Finally, while writing this introduction, headlines about the ‘first national opera in Mozambique’ appeared in the press. The 2019 opera O grito de Mueda is a collaboration between Mozambican and Argentinian composers and it tells the story of the Mueda Massacre in June 1960 in Cabo Delgado (Mundo 2019). Agawu was right when he stated that ‘the tradition of African art music nowadays exerts a global presence’ (2016: 311). Mulatu Astatke, Ethiopian musician, jazz legend and composer of The Yared Opera (Ireland 2008) is a case in point. He and other ‘composers of art music, like their creative-writer counterparts (poets and

10  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo

novelists), hold an important key to Africa’s intellectual and artistic future’ (Agawu 2016: 325). While the death of ‘opera’ has been repeatedly pronounced, the plethora of forms existing in African and African diasporic contexts, the profusion of new production and performances (as indicated above), the emergence of new composers and singers who enjoy, transform and disseminate the genre across the continent and beyond demonstrate that ‘opera’ is not dead and that it certainly calls for more in-depth critical attention. We therefore wish that this volume will serve as a stimulus to opera and music theatre studies worldwide and that many more researchers who have ‘grown up in the African tradition’ (Agawu 2016: 24) will explore these practices in their own environments.

NOTE 1 In English-language contexts, the term ‘music theatre’ is often used very generally for ‘musicals’. This usage seems to derive from the name of a musical licensing agency in the 1950s – ‘Music Theatre International‘ – specialising in Broadway and West End musicals. Since then the term has also been applied to a rather specific context, that of international avant-garde performances from 1960 to 1975 (Hall 2015: 3–20; see also Clements 2001). In this volume, we use ‘music theatre’ in the broader and more inclusive sense of Musiktheater as outlined above.

REFERENCES Adedeji, Joel (1969), ‘Traditional Yoruba Theatre’, African Arts, vol. 3, no. 1: 60–63. —— (1971), ‘A Profile of Nigerian Theatre 1960–1970’, Nigeria Magazine, nos. 107–9 (Dec.–August): 3–14. Adelugba, Dapo and Olu Obafemi; with additional material by Sola Adeyemi (2004), ‘Anglophone West Africa: Nigeria’. In A History of Theatre in Africa, Martin Banham (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 138–58. Agawu, Kofi (2016), The African Imagination in Music. New York: Oxford University Press. —— (2003), Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York, London: Routledge. André, Naomi, Donato Somma and Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi (2016), ‘Winnie: The Opera and Embodying South African Opera’, African Studies, vol. 75, no. 1: 1–9. André, Naomi (2018), Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Anon (2019), ‘Primeira ópera moçambicana estreia este sábado em Maputo. “Grito

Introduction  11 de Mueda” é o título da obra.’, Mundo, 13 September, www.cmjornal.pt/ mundo/africa/detalhe/primeira-opera-mocambicana-estreia-este-sabado-emmaputo (accessed 6 December 2019). Banham, Martin (ed.) (2004), A History of Theatre in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barber, Karin (2007), The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beier, Ulli (ed.) (1994), The Return of Shango: The Theatre of Duro Ladipo. Bayreuth: Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth. Brown, Howard, Ellen Rosand, Reinhard Strohm, Michel Noiray, Roger Parker, Arnold Whittall, Roger Savage and Barry Millington (2001), ‘Opera (i)’. In Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/ gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040726 (accessed 23 January 2020). Chauvaux, Marjolaine (2011), Le hira-gasy: Un opéra-théâtre dansé de Madagascar, DM, Ethnomusicologie from Université Libre de Bruxelles. Clements, Andrew (2001), ‘Music Theatre’. In Grove Music Online: www.oxford musiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-0000019452?rskey=NuHq3e (accessed 13 June 2019). Cole, Catherine, M. (2001), Ghana’s Concert Party Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Collins, E. J. (1976), ‘Comic Opera in Ghana’, African Arts, vol. 9, no. 2 (January): 50–57. Davies, James and Lindiwe Dovey (2010), ‘Bizet in Khayelitsha: U-Carmen eKhayelitsha as Audio-visual Transculturation’, Journal of African Media Studies, vol. 2, no. 1: 39–53. Diawara, Manthia (n.d.), ‘An Opera of the World: A Remake of Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera’, http://maumaus.org/resources/Maumaus_An-Opera-of-the-World_ Manthia_Diawara_text.pdf (accessed 24 January 2020). —— (dir.) (2017), An Opera of the World (2017). Coproduced by Maumaus / Lumiar Cité (Portugal, USA, Mali). Duro-Ladipo, Abiodun and Gbóyèga Kóláwolé (1997), ‘Opera in Nigeria: The Case of Duro Ladipo’s O̧ba Kòso’, Black Music Research Journal, vol. 17, no. 1: 101–29. Euba, Akin (1989), ‘Concepts of Neo-African Music as Manifested in the Yoruba Folk Opera’ and ‘Intercultural Expressions in Neo-African Art Music: Methods, Models and Means’. In Essays on Music in Africa, Volume 2: Intercultural Perspectives. Lagos: Elékóto Music Centre/Bayreuth African Studies: 31–72, and 115–178. —— (1993), Modern African Music: A Catalogue of Selected Archival Materials at Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany. Bayreuth: University of Bayreuth, Iwalewa-Haus. Fischer, Erik (2016 [1997]), ‘Art. Oper (Überblick)’. In MGG Online, Laurenz Lütteken (ed.), Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: www.mgg-online.com/mgg/ stable/14238 (accessed 22 January 2020). Hall, Michael (2015), Music Theatre in Britain 1960–1975. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Hutcheon, Linda (2006), A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge. Ingraham, Mary I., Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley (eds) (2016), Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance. New York, London: Routledge.

12  van der Hoven, Matzke, Roos & Odhiambo Ireland, Corydon (2008), ‘Mulatu Astatke Gives a Primer on Ethiopian Music, Culture’, The Harvard Gazette, 6th March, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/ story/2008/03/mulatu-astatke-gives-a-primer-on-ethiopian-music-culture (accessed 26 January 2020). Kerr, David (1995), African Popular Theatre. London: James Currey. Klein, Tobias (2013), ‘Discomforting Discoveries: Towards a 21st Century Postcolonial Reading of 19th Century Opera’. In The Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Seria: Metamorphoses of the Opera in the Imperial Age, Macek Petr and Jana Perutková (eds), Colloquia Musicologica Brunensia, no. 42. Prague: KLPKoniasch Latin Press: 274–289. Locke, Ralph P. (1995), ‘What Are These Women Doing in Opera?’ In En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (eds). New York: Columbia University Press: 59–98. Mbembe, Achille (2016) transl. Christine Pries, Ausgang aus der langen Nacht: Versuch über ein entkolonisiertes Afrika. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Nii-Dortey, Moses N. (2015), ‘Folk Opera and the Cultural Politics of PostIndependence Ghana: Saka Acquaya’s The Lost Fishermen’. In The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures, Derek R. Peterson, Kodzo Gavua and Ciraj Rassool (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 222–33. Opera Mauritius (2020), www.operamauritius.com/index.php/fr (accessed 25 January 2020). Radano, Ronald and Philip Vilas Bohlman (2000), ‘Introduction: Music and Race, Their Past, Their Presence’. In Music and the Racial Imagination, Ronald Radano and Philip Vilas Bohlman (eds). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1–53. Radano, Ronald and Tejumola Olaniyan (2016), ‘Introduction: Hearing Empire – Imperial Listening’. In Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, Ronald Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan (eds). Durham: Duke University Press: 1–22. Raji-Oyelade, Remi, Sola Olorunyomi and Abiodun Duro-Ladipo (2008), Duro Ladipo: Thunder-God on Stage. 2nd edn. Ibadan: IFAnet editions. Ricard, Alain (1997), ‘Concert Party in Lomé and The African Girl from Paris’. In West African Popular Theatre, Karin Barber, John Collins and Alain Ricard. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 117–44. Roscoe, Adrian (1977), Uhuru’s Fire: African Literature East to South. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roos, Hilde (2010), Opera Production in the Western Cape: Strategies in Search of Indigenization, PhD thesis Stellenbosch University, https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/37325029.pdf (accessed 25 January 2020). —— (2018), The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid. Berkeley: Univer­ sity of California Press. Rubin, Don, Ousmane Diakhaté and Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh (eds) (2001 [1997]), The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre: Africa. London: Routledge. Ruf, Wolfgang (2016), ‘Art. Musiktheater, Kompositionen, Definition’. In MGG Online, Laurenz Lütteken (ed.). Kassel, Stuttgart, New York, www.mgg-online. com/mgg/stable/13029 (accessed 25 January 2020). Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam (2014), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 2nd edn. London, New York: Routledge. Venter, Carina, William Fourie, Juliana M. Pistorius and Neo Muyanga (2017), ‘Decolonising Musicology: A Response and Three Positions’, South African Music Studies, vols 36/37: 129–56.

Introduction  13 Zenenga, Praise (2015), ‘The Total Theater Aesthetic Paradigm in African Theater’. In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, Nadine George-Graves (ed.). New York: Oxford University Press: 236–51.

Articles

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts NEO MUYANGA

Is there a point to making ‘world opera’ or new music theatre in our time of global financial and political precarity, climate change and protest? As I write, marchers voice their anger on the streets of downtown Hong Kong, on the spot where student protester Alex Chow fell and died seven days earlier; demonstrators battle police at Santiago’s (Chile) Plaza Italia; supporters of the homeless in Las Vegas (USA) were heard chanting the slogans, ‘housing not handcuffs’ and ‘poverty is not a crime’ outside the mayor’s office. Such is our context around the globe. And if that is the case, isn’t there a need to seek better justification for our inclination to keep making opera and other forms of music theatre? Opera is traditionally expensive to generate. It is also tedious to tour, while new opera is notoriously difficult to sell to both old and young audiences alike. What does an art form so precious among the world’s elite mean to do in Africa? In this opening chapter, I attempt to offer ways of reading music theatre and opera as viable platforms for exploring, rather than avoiding, the persistent asymmetries of power between the global North and South, as well as the hidden contingencies these asymmetries portend. A seemingly obvious temptation in this endeavour, then, may be to begin by offering definitions or justifications for certain recurring issues: What is an opera? How does it differ from a musical? Is new opera even music or does it instead belong in the performance arenas of the art biennale worlds of São Paulo, Kassel and Kochi? Although these might at first seem like pressing questions, they tended to attract only a tepid interest as lodestars for adjudicators during my stint as a member of the jury for the 17

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2018 Music Theatre Now competition (MTNow).1 The question of whether and how opera might be credibly differ­ en­tiated from music theatre, though a long-standing one in certain ‘scenes’, was not so much directly addressed as left to hover, some­ what unattended. Indeed, we might even wonder why a platform such as the MTNow competition should be charged with imposing crisp and categorical parameters over genre nomenclature at all? As a jury, we received entries from as far afield as Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Germany and China, to name just a few territories. Our voting therefore took into account concerns including, but not limited to, innovation in design, musicality, appropriateness of idiom to the subject, production value and thematic coherence. However, as a jury, we chose not to judge based on whether a production was presented as genre-faithful or strayed into promiscuous terrain. Why we proceeded in this manner, I argue, has to do with the fact that in the estimation of certain critics, ‘opera’ as a genre has for too long served as a code word for the ultimate in exclusionary art forms, with its pungently elitist etiquette (in certain instances) shored up by the self-invested gate-keeping strategies of powerful industry operators. Composers and interpreters began adopting strategies for making what Theodor Adorno terms ‘modern music’, often by appropriating or borrowing from global sources other ways and influences of musicking, i.e. acts of making music. As Adorno reminds us as early as 1969, [in] its heroic periods, modern music distanced itself from the production of opera for opera houses and groped toward a theatre qualitatively different from the high bourgeois representation of the nineteenth century. (Adorno 1990: 63)

Undoubtedly, in order to remain alive and relevant as a praxis for over 400 years (Brown 2001), opera as a genre has itself continually assimilated influences and conventions of and from other world musics. In this regard, the counter tenor and music critic Tom Sutcliffe describes the oeuvre of opera director Peter Sellars as exemplary of American aesthetics since, [b]orrowing, acquiring and transposing are the usual imperial processes. The variety of theatrical expression is naturally eclectic and impure […]. Even his [Sellars’] distaste for opera in English translation, his preference for the arcane challenge of original-language performance,

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts  19 reflects a New World view of culture as loaned rather than owned. (Sutcliffe 1998: 198)

To continue arguing for an understanding of opera or music theatre that remains genre-limiting and categorical, there­ fore, seems a deeply misguided project from the outset since applying such narrowly discriminating efforts risks going out of step with how musicking and music analysis has developed over the past century at least. It was, of course, due to colonialism in the guise of mission­ary schooling, that the practice of singing in choral fashion first arrived in Africa. The choir is, in many regards, the quintessential scheme by which four-part harmony writing is passed down pedagogically, with its concern being to create a complementary balance of tone, of presence, between ensemble voices. As a composer practising both Western classical and traditional Southern African modes of musicking, I have thus made an ongoing project of generating work that aims to address the asymmetries of power enacted by the foregoing processes of empire through the medium of voice. I do this in part because voice is a lens that shapes how we might understand South African modes of musicking as forms of speaking (or indeed, singing) back to the regimes of Anglo-Saxon colonialism, apartheid and neo-liberalism. In my composition Tshole: A Revolting Mass (2017), for example, I mix my favourite aesthetics of voice: protest songs, choir singing, Western classical operatic madrigals and traditional South African music (Muyanga 2017). These forms also constitute the cornerstones of my line of argument in the rest of this chapter. It was the composer and pianist Abdullah Ibrahim who famously said in a documentary that ‘[t]he revolution in South Africa is the only revolution anywhere in the world that was done in four-part harmony’ (Austin 1987), by which he was referring to different eras of South African protest song.2 While I imagine that many a Georgian would dispute any such grandiose claims on the part of South Africans, there is also much in the sentiment expressed by Ibrahim that I do share. In the South African tradition, such songs are essential ‘objects’ in the performance of any protest. The songs of my ‘uprising’ were not music per se, but rather objects for making revolution. It was through their assimilation, almost by cultural osmosis while

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growing up in Soweto during the 1980s, that I came to respond to and love their sound, their dangerous yet euphoria-engendering affect. To me, the songs represented what I understood as an intrinsic political gravitas before I even grasped what politics actually was or could entail. Their potential to bring a new valence to any gathering was always palpable and strangely powerfully emotive whenever they occurred (or combusted) spontaneously. Their effect was to electrify the present reality and to introduce something of the spark of danger as they seemed poised to ignite the very air. This was the sort of resonant politics that permeates everything, from the price (and colour) of bread, to choosing what sports were appropriate to follow – there was no reality outside the reach of this politics. Even a declaration as being a- or antipolitical would fall under the rubric of the exceedingly political as an adoptive stance. I do not consider the songs of protest (or what we termed freedom songs) I learned as a youth in Soweto to be music, because they were not tunes to be whistled while a-walking, or while taking a shower, or cleaning shoes, or any such mundane activity. These were not sounds of civilian life; they would also never be heard broadcast over the radio for entertainment or during a commercial break in transmission. During the era of apartheid, protesters sang laments directed at the racist, segregationist state of the National Party, aiming to shame it into submission and thus to bring it crashing down. The songs were expressions of pain, as much as they gave a graphic voice to the realities and indignities wrought by such a dehumanising system of racist oppression. Laments such as ‘Senzeni na?’, ‘Mabayeke umhlaba wethu’, ‘Khawuleza Mama’ and others were meant to conscientise the world about what was happening in South Africa, and to remind Africans of the work still to be done in fighting for democratic change. The interpretations one chooses to adopt in translating laments such as these bring to the surface numerous and somewhat contradictory political considerations. IsiZulu, in which they are composed, is a tonal language wherein, for instance, the upwards inflection in the middle of ‘Senzeni na?’ tends to mean ‘What have we done’ in a rather defeatist, perhaps even an at wits’ end attitude, whereas a downwards inflection in the middle could be read as signalling a challenge that is about to be mounted against the state of play.

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts  21

Similar ambiguities could be pointed out for the other two examples if space allowed. The era of laments eventually gave way to a re-invigorated protest song that seemed to electrify the youth who were on the march in the streets of South Africa during the mid-1970s right up to the era of the rolling mass action and the open-ended states of emergency of the 1980s. Then repetitive chants and foot stomps reminiscent of the indigenous songs of war or Indlamu were absorbed into, and became reinterpreted as, South African songs of mass protest. This signalled a much more determined will to fight apartheid fire with youthful fervour. As Winnie Mandela pointed out during one of her speeches, the embodied and emboldened language of ‘stones […] boxes of matches’ would be put to use in forcing the liberation of South Africa’s black majority to come about sooner rather than later (Anon. 2007). However, none of the scenarios painted above about defeating outright the ugly ogre of apartheid seem to entirely align with what actually panned out, nor do they resonate strictly with what current South African rhetoric appears to say about what ultimately brought about democracy through the general ballot of 1994. Were we to ask who ‘won’ in the revolution as outlined by Ibrahim above, the responses would arguably range from: ‘there was no revolution as such but a negotiated settlement’ and ‘the whites remain in control of the economy’, to ‘the generation of Mandela, Mbeki and others were prepared to give too much in the way of power-sharing with whites’ and ‘the corrupt within the ANC were only too eager to step onto the “gravy-train” facilitating a general era of “our turn to eat” shenanigans at both the civil service and the corporate level nationally’. All of the conflicting scenarios just mentioned might signal a chorus singing not quite from the same score or hymn book in terms of the analogy sketched by Ibrahim. After all, the four parts would most conventionally be expected to operate in a harmonised, directionally aligned manner, just as the soprano, alto, tenor and bass of the massed choir is wont to do. It also bears remembering that Ibrahim very likely chose to reiterate the metaphor of the chorus in this way as a reminder of not only the musicking conventions of the indigenous popolo but also as a nod towards the complicated legacies of missionary schooling. The latter bears

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a significant chunk of the responsibility for the birthing of choral music societies that really have come to define communal music making in large parts of black South Africa today. The strong and mutually constitutive relationship between choral music and the genres of music theatre and opera also begins to emerge strongly in research (for examples, see Agawu 2003, 2016; Jaji 2014; André, Somma and Mhlambi 2016; André 2018; Akrofi and Flolu 2007; Hammond 2007; Roos 2018). In his doctoral thesis based on years of researching the choral movement in parts of KwaZulu-Natal on South Africa’s eastern coast, Markus Detterbeck reveals how the practice of choral music in black communities today may reliably be termed a ‘mainstream’ activity since it is so widespread (Detterbeck 2002). He points to the large infrastructural support the activity receives from corporate South Africa and points to the national choir festival and other performative platforms as indicators of the widespread appeal of this genre of music among a certain demo­graphic. While opera was first ‘restricted to the own choice category, organisers of choral competitions and festivals quickly picked upon the trend [of choirs choosing to sing opera repertoire] and started to promote the idea of prescribing compulsory opera arias, recitatives and choruses for the participating choirs’ (369). Citing award-winning choral conductor Ludumo Magangane, Detterbeck also points out that it is ‘“the Italian style [of opera], which is very emotional”, that attracts black choirs’ (370). Indeed, the choir is where most young black and brown town­ ship singers who possessed no formal music education first learned to articulate the declamatory style and vocal projection which is the sine qua non in opera today. To this point in particular, Naomi André in Black Opera con­ cedes that, [l]ooking to opera as a place for exploring black experience in both countries [the USA and South Africa] is not an obvious choice. Yet it is the very unlikeliness of this situation that makes it all the more surprising and rewarding when examined closely. (André 2018: 29)

André delineates how Western classical music in general, and operatic repertoire in particular, became a viable vehicle for black self-expression and also a platform for pushing back against the

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts  23

project of racism in the United States and South Africa during the 1860s, partly due to the fact that ‘religious choral singing had less scrutiny as a subversive force, and churches provided space for black singing’ (2018: 30). André’s claim resonates well with the research of Tsitsi Ella Jaji who, during her work on the South African colonial-era singer and feminist black rights activist Charlotte Manye Maxeke writes, Manye Maxeke made her debut as a solo contralto singer at the Kimberley community concert in September 1890, barely two months after Orpheus McAdoo’s ensemble, the Virginia Jubilee Singers, had first arrived in Cape Town. The American group was sensationally popular, inspiring a number of black elite local choirs whose preferences ran toward ‘modern’ forms of leisure to adopt African American spirituals into their repertoire. (Jaji 2014: 43)

Like their American counterparts on a jaunt to Cape Town, the African Jubilee Singers from the Eastern Cape also included classical operatic fare in their concert repertoire. A mere one year later, in 1891, they embarked on a tour of England during which they remarkably garnered the opportunity of ‘singing before Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family’ (Jaji 2014: 44). What this illustrates is not only some of the close, rather fluid and rapid ties that were at play between black music performers and activists in the global African diaspora, but it also points to how pertinent the assimilation of so-called Western art forms was to the project of opposing racism and humanising blacks around the colonial world. As Jaji aptly points out, the fact that black choirs could perform art music just as well as any choirs of whites meant the jibes and taunts about African ‘primitiveness’ that was innately distinct from European civility could not hold. This reality, Jaji claims, troubled and even upset Western notions of exceptionalism; Manye Maxeke developed an ability to rivet an audience’s attention while disorganizing and frustrating their scopic and aural desires, and instead projecting before them issues they would rather ignore. If her musical performances simultaneously confused, delighted and disappointed, her interviews with the British press disarmed her audience. (Jaji 2014: 45)

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Furthermore, the ultimate effect of what Jaji outlines above seems to be the placing in jeopardy of the very concepts of ‘Europe’ or ‘the West’ as anything approaching the guise of the stable, eternally coherent and concrete realities they are usually surmised to be. What falls under the conceptual banner of ‘Europe’, suddenly and sharply comes into question. Equally, there­fore, even a super­ ficial researching of the provenance of con­cepts that are usually presumed to be iconically ‘European’ in nature – profound ideas such as freedom, democracy or feminism, for instance – can be said to lead to the loosening of a thus-far firm grip on presumed relations between the often diametrically posited ‘West’ and ‘the rest’. Scholars as varied as Stuart Hall (1992), Kwame Anthony Appiah (2006), and Achille Mbembe (2017), in their own ways, have called for a provincialising of Europe as an epistemic fulcrum. By making this construction, these authors mean to demote Europe from its pedestal as the conceptual epicentre and arbiter of what is, in effect, knowledge. Certainly this threatens to become significantly more the case when, in musico-analytical terms for instance, even the very unique­ness of an elevated European perspective is dismantled by David Irving, who writes that, [i]ncreased European engagement with the world from the 16th to the 18th centuries had a profound impact on musical taxonomies, a major legacy of which is the artificial dichotomy of ‘Western music’ and ‘World music’ – as well as the attendant distinctions between academic disciplines that focus on these fields – mediated by a discourse of modernity. (Irving 2018: 21–22)

Irving argues that such strategies were instigated in order to invent the bigger concept of European exceptionalism, as the nations of that continent vied to usurp control over Africa and indeed the whole world. The inevitable outcome of the deployment of such a power­fully destructive strategy across the entire globe is part of the reason why, to the present day, there is a discernible absence of a commensurate language of, and for, making musical analysis in indigenous African languages, for example. In a country like South Africa today, much lip service is paid to polarising yet important concepts such as ‘transformation’, which are meant to redress the extant disparities

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts  25

which are still markedly raced within society generally, and academia in particular. While on the one hand there is a professed desire to elevate the indigenous arts as spheres of knowledge making, there is on the other hand also a disconcerting and concomitant continuity with legacies of an unequal past, epistemologically. This leaves pedagogic specialists like Yolisa Nompula troubled enough to write of the arts curriculum that, [t]here is very little or no availability of African music material in the curriculum. In music and arts education there are still strong voices that stereotype indigenous knowledge as backward and proletarian. (Nompula 2011: 369–70)

To Nompula it appears that young Xhosa-speaking children are being taught rather well at certain schools to assimilate a Western or European style of singing, with its strict adherence to four parts and a constricted body. Indeed it is something they seem to be doing more confidently and adeptly than their own African-style songs. Although I would like to agree with Nompula that the formal training regime some black learners receive often seems to lead to a nervousness about expressing their musicality physically, or that it even limits or dents their confidence about extemporising, it is more likely an indication of the currently accepted conventions of Western musical expression – i.e. the habits which are either encouraged or discouraged during the course of those formal music lessons – that are at fault, rather than the intrinsic nature of European music per se. After all, the person most credited with inventing the style we now regard as opera, Claudio Monteverdi, seems to have been intent about wanting to defend Italian music from potentially similar curbs to enthusiasm around musicking as those cited by Nompula. Monteverdi’s biographer, Leo Schrade, reasons that the ‘total transformation of the madrigal became an artistic necessity, if the Italian musician was to free himself from foreign influences’ (Schrade 1979: 59). Monteverdi’s work was politically motivated and actually transformed the genre. It was not genre-limiting, calcifying or exclusionary. On the contrary, it challenged musical, political and social norms – an attitude which reflects my own understanding of opera and music theatre to this day. Making reference to this varied history of opera will, I hope, help illustrate how the genre can provide a distinct, if somewhat jarring,

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ontological pillar to this new volume on African music theatre and opera. Both opera and music theatre are currently, and have been, platforms giving rise to transgressive, unexpected and generative new forms of sonic performance in South Africa over many decades. In the 25 years since democracy in the country, composer-performers fresh on the scene such as Simpiwe Yila or Ongama Mohlontlo are beginning to come to the fore to challenge expectations. The genre and the institution are re-inventing themselves due to changes in the political landscape, but also because of unprecedented challenges when it comes to funding (see van der Hoven in this volume). Countless opera ensembles and one-off projects exist today which receive little to no mention, although their existence signals a growing and diversifying field of practice. This can be exemplified by three very diverse examples: the Township Opera Company in the Cape Town area which distinguishes itself through new community-based organisational structures; the Xhosa opera singer, songwriter and performer Bongiwe Lenga, whose project Xhopera (2016) is a hybrid of classical opera, choral music and indigenous bow music; and Braam du Toit’s opera Poskantoor (2014), which is the first Afrikaans opera buffa of this century. I would argue that such examples show precisely how opera and music theatre have managed to perpetuate and regenerate themselves around the world over their more than 400 years of existence. Some of the most exciting and boundary-pushing developments I have witnessed are taking shape outside of the architectural conceit of the opera house. While that is not to say that opera houses are no longer centres of any relevance, what I am proposing here is that theirs be regarded as only some of the terrain available that is open for exploration and experimentation. The practice of opera and music theatre in South Africa, I would therefore argue, opens up new and different possibilities of, and for, the unexpected, the transgressive within culture and society. This is because they are genres that serve to broaden what is to be expected in African musicking. As such, opera from Africa stands ready to challenge and redefine what is regarded as exceptional, and therefore what is (obviously) still generally considered unavailable to people other than those who are white and privileged. Accordingly, both opera specifically, and music theatre generally, are capable (to certain and slightly varying extents) of also representing forms of

A Revolt in (more than just) Four Parts  27

protest in music. This is because they have the potential to open up vistas that were in the past – and continue to be today – denied to a vast part of the world predominantly due to considerations of race and class.

NOTES 1 Music Theatre Now is a competition of international new opera and music theatre presented bi-annually by the Music Theatre Now Network of the International Theatre Institute. See www.mtnow.org. 2 This idea was also used for the title of the 2002 documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony by Lee Hirsch.

REFERENCES Adorno, Theodor (1990), transl. Thomas Y. Levin, ‘Opera and the Long-Playing Record’, October, vol. 55: 62–66. Agawu, Kofi (2003), Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. London: Routledge. —— (2016), The African Imagination in Music. New York: Oxford University Press. Akrofi, Eric and James Flolu (2007), ‘The Colonial Influence on Music Education in Ghana and South Africa’. In Music and Identity: Transformation and Negotiation, Eric Akrofi, Maria Smit and Stig Magnus Thorsén (eds). Stellenbosch: African SUN MeDIA: 143–57. André, Naomi (2018), Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Chicago: University of Illinois. André, Naomi, Donato Somma and Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi (2016), ‘Winnie: The Opera and Embodying South African Opera’, African Studies, vol. 75, no. 1: 1–9. Anon. (2007), ‘Winnie Mandela calls for Revolution and Violence’, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=FP_r5ET5CFU (accessed 18 November 2019). Austin, Chris (Director) (1987), A Brother with Perfect Timing, feature documentary Island, BBC TV and WDR, https://vimeo.com/211272119 (accessed 27 November 2019). Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2006), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton. Brown, Howard Mayer (2001), ‘I. Opera, Opera (i)’. In Grove Music Online, Stanley Sadie, (ed.). Oxford University Press, www.oxfordmusiconline. com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo9781561592630-e-0000040726 (accessed 11 November 2019). Detterbeck, Markus (2002), South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the Formation of Identity. PhD thesis, University of Natal Durban, https:// researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/3083?show=full. Hall, Stuart (1992), ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’. In Formations of Modernity, Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben (eds). Cambridge: The Open University:

28  Neo Muyanga 275–320. Hammond, Nicole Claire (2007), ‘Singing the Nation: Negotiating South African Identity through Choral Music’. In Music and Identity: Transformation and Negotiation, Eric Akrofi, Maria Smit and Stig Magnus Thorsén (eds). Stellenbosch: African SUN MeDIA: 21–35. Hirsch, Lee (Director) (2014 [2002]), Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony [DVD]. Ennetbaden: Trigon-film. Irving, David R.M. (2018), ‘Ancients Greeks, World Music and Early Modern Constructions of Western European Identity’. In Studies on a Global History of Music, Reinhard Strohm (ed.). London: Routlegde: 21–41. Jaji, Tsitsi Ella (2014), Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music and Pan-African Solidarity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mbembe, Achille (2017), transl. Laurent Dubois, Critique of Black Reason. Durham: Duke University Press. Muyanga, Neo (2017), Tshole: A Revolting Mass, Spielart [Festival] Munich 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkBnGfrs4w (accessed 11 November 2019). Nompula, Yolisa (2011), ‘Valorising the Voice of the Marginalised: Exploring the Value of African Music in Education’, South African Journal of Education, vol. 31, no. 3: 369–80. Roos, Hilde (2018), The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schrade, Leo (1979), Monteverdi: Creator of Modern Music. London: Gollancz. Sutcliffe, Tom (1998), Believing in Opera. London: Faber & Faber.

‘It was here, you must remember, our children played their games’ A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre

PAULA FOURIE

In April 1978, Sandra McGregor held the fourth exhibition of her work at the Stuttafords Gallery in Cape Town (Fleischer 2010: 195–6). By then, she had been painting the infamous area known as District Six for more than 15 years. Included in this exhibition was a miniature proscenium stage with a backdrop – dominated by yellow, orange, pink, blue and purple – of a street corner in District Six. Moving in and out of this bright urban scene were 56 miniature characters painted in gouache that represented what journalist Bruch Heilbuth labelled District Six’s ‘indigenous types’ (1978). These characters – which included Cape Malay choristers, Cape Coon Carnival singers,1 gangsters, vegetable hawkers, washer­ women, drunks, hajis and newspaper sellers – were attached to spatulas and moved around the stage by puppeteer Ray Querido, who had also recorded ‘appropriate music’ for the toy theatre (Heilbuth 1978). A videotape of this production survives in the District Six museum, revealing said ‘appropriate music’ to be a handful of snippets recorded by Querido on a cassette tape. These include Sonja Herholdt’s ‘Hanoverstraat’, a hawker sing-songing his wares, Klezmer fiddle music, early twentieth-century ballroom dance music, Islamic religious vocalisations, and a Cape Malay choir performing their traditional repertoire. In a real sense, these snippets function primarily as musical signifiers of the inhabitants of District Six; the Kletzmer music, for example, accompanies a Jewish caricature with a prominent hooked nose, while the Islamic vocalisations accompany the three Muslim hajis. With a focus on what have by now become stereotypical District Six characters, 29

30  Paula Fourie

1. Sandra McGregor & Ray Querido’s Little Theatre (Photo © Michael C. Hall, taken with the permission of the District Six Museum, previously published in Fleischer [2010: 196])

and on their popularised musical traditions, the toy theatre steered clear of the other musical face of the district, the one less romanticised by history owing to its infatuation with modernity, imitation and the United States. It did not, therefore, include one of District Six’s copycat singers impersonating Al Jolson in the Star Bioscope, one of the area’s cinemas that doubled as a performance venue. ‘Ray wrote the story of District Six’, McGregor’s biographer writes, ‘and the play was full of love, music, dancing and happiness […] then, one by one the figures “died” and the buildings came down’ (Fleischer 2010: 196). Looking back over a 50-year tradi­ tion of District Six musical theatre, this little-known early attempt foreshadowed future productions in more ways than one. Its nostalgic bent, basic story arc, stock characters and the musical traditions associated with them would find various reiterations in subsequent productions that likewise memorialised District Six with the help of music. Forming part of a broader exploration

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  31

of the history of Cape Town’s coloured population through the politics of nostalgia and sentimentality, these productions repre­ sent one strategy employed to grapple with a history of dis­ possession, indeed with the very historical void constructed around colouredness in the dominant narrative.2 Making use of archival research and oral history, and drawing on theatre and performance studies and critical theory, I seek in this essay to explore the musical theatre productions that have grown up around District Six. This is not intended to be an exhaustive survey, but rather a historiographic enquiry aimed at reading District Six musical theatre as historical doxa, using and reusing particular themes and/or musical aesthetics to reflect and shape the coloured imaginary on apartheid. With specific focus on the mythologised District Six of popular memory, the final part of this chapter is devoted to exploring the workings of Svetlana Boym’s (2001) ‘restorative nostalgia’ within District Six musical theatre. In its development and application, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom, ‘musical theatre’ is an umbrella term that includes numerous sub-genres such as the musical comedy, revue, jukebox musical and the integrated musical. While the productions discussed here each more closely resemble one subgenre or another, I rely on an intentionally broad understanding of the musical as ‘a stage, television, or film production utilizing popular style songs to either tell a story or to showcase the talents of writers and/or performers, with dialogue optional’ (Kenrick 2008: 14). Adopting an inclusive understanding of musical theatre in a South African context serves as an acknowledgement of its diversity and historical complexity, and moreover, its comparatively constrained receptive sphere for the performing arts which arguably lowers the stakes in identifying sub-genre boundaries. Considering the aims explicated above, District Six musical theatre is understood simply as that body of stage productions that rely on music to tell stories about District Six and to showcase the talents of its former inhabitants. The predominantly working-class area of District Six originated in the middle of the nineteenth century on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, part of Cape Town’s mountainous back­ drop. Popularly known as ‘Kanaladorp’ or, officially, as the twelfth municipal district

32  Paula Fourie

of Cape Town, the area was finally renamed in 1867 as the sixth district. The colloquialism ‘Kanaladorp’ is popularly believed to have originated either in reference to the canals bordering the area, or to the word ‘kanala’, a Cape Malay Afrikaans word derived from the Malay ‘karna Allah’ (‘for Allah’s sake’), that has come to mean simply ‘please’. In either event, the name ‘Kanaladorp’ has been linked to a culture of generosity and sharing central to the mythology of District Six. Historically, District Six was occupied by a diverse popu­la­tion. Yet on 11 February 1966 it was declared for the use of ‘whites only’ under the 1950 Group Areas Act. This proclamation would precipitate the forced removals of between 55,000 and 65,000 individuals and the razing of the vast majority of its structures (Hart 1990: 126). At the time, the largest population group in District Six comprised a diverse collection of individuals whom the govern­ ment had designated coloured, a racial category that included the predominantly Muslim Cape Malay population. Described by Don Pinnock as having been ‘the “spiritual” centre of the coloured proletariat’ (1980: 147), it is no surprise that District Six mythology would go on to privilege this as above all a coloured loss. However, this is at odds with another myth about the area, that it was really a microcosm of South Africa without apartheid, a ‘melting pot’ of people of different races, classes and religions. One text dating from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s describes District Six as ‘a place of love, tolerance and kindness’, claiming that ‘above all it was one of the world’s great meeting places of people of many races, religions and colours and it proved that none of these things really matters’ (Breytenbach and Barrow 2016: 22–3). Romanticised observations in this vein are by no means confined to outsiders, with one former resident remem­ ber­ing a cosmopolitan group of people who ‘stayed together […] needless of colour […] and we mixed. We had a beautiful relationship’ (Swanson and Harries 2001: 65). Especially when compared to South Africa at large, District Six was a very mixed area. Besides the majority population – comprised of the descendants of emancipated slaves, political convicts, and indentured Khoikhoi and San – it also housed Indians, European immigrants (including Jews from Eastern Europe), as

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  33

well as black Africans, although their numbers had already been vastly reduced by the ruling powers at the turn of the nineteenth century (Bickford-Smith 1990). Yet in the face of its reputation for non-racialism, Vivian Bickford-Smith (1990: 37–8) has argued that District Six was indeed subject to ethnic solidarity and class stratification. Countering the myth that race simply didn’t matter in the district, Bickford-Smith has also pointed to a ‘hierarchy of pigmentation […] where the lighter, in very general terms, tended to be better off than the darker’ (1990: 37). Another famed aspect of District Six is its remembered musical life. Oral historian Bill Nasson reconstructs a District Six whose ‘noises washed over pavements, alleyways and courtyards’, a world that included ‘small male voice choirs’, ‘buskers who sang and danced in front of cinema queues’, ‘mass audience participation’ at the bioscope that turned an evening at the movies into a ‘live musical event’ and ‘commercial venues with bands, choirs and singers’ (1990: 55–9). Similarly, a former resident of the area responded as follows when asked if its musical life was as extensive as popular accounts claim: On each corner you will see guys sitting with banjos and guitars singing. It was! That’s why they gave that place the name of ‘Fairyland.’ Everywhere it was just music, man, music! If it wasn’t people playing records at the loudest that they can, it was music. (Petersen 2011)

The tone of this account is nostalgic, underscoring what has been lost. It is also a testament to the ingenuity of a com­munity who – with the exception of the bioscope – had to provide their own entertainment. Denis-Constant Martin (1999, 2013) has documented many of District Six’s musical traditions, including its most famous proponents, the Coons and the Malay choirs. Over time, these practices gave rise to a distinct repertoire created through processes of creolisation, including the ghoemaliedjie, originally a dancing song which has retained its characteristic eponymous beat, the moppie, a comic song consisting of multiple contrasting sections, and the nederlandslied, an idiosyncratic fusion between Western four-part harmony and melismatic vocalisations associated with religious Muslim practices. Derelict, crowded and poverty stricken for the most part, District Six had already been an object of romance at the time of

34  Paula Fourie

the 11 February 1966 declaration, at least for outsiders. Integral to its exoticisation was its reputation for gangsterism, crime and the generally insalubrious. Subsequent decades would see a vaster and more layered mythology accrue around the area. Advocating for an oral history able to ‘penetrate the individuality of social experience’, Nasson contrasts the ‘singularly sombre picture’ of District Six presented by sociological research and Cape Town City Council enquiries with its more mythic image of ‘a colourful, legendary place, characterised by the perpetually open front door and cuddly youth from the Globe Gang’ (1990: 48–50). Yet we would do well to remember that the trans­formative power of myth is no less alive in the nostalgic memories of former inhabi­tants. As Richard Rive, author of the novel turned play, ‘Buckingham Palace’, District Six, muses: It is interesting to notice how attitudes towards District Six have changed over the years […] But a slum is never romantic especially for those forced to live in it. Once we moved we left the past behind and seldom discussed our origins. We did not wish to be recognised as someone who had ‘come out of that’. Today time has sufficiently romanticised and mythologised the District’s past. It is now a mark of social prestige to have ‘come out of that’. (Rive 1990: 111)

The concept of ‘myth’ central to this essay does not denote an ‘untruth’ but rather, in the intellectual tradition of Joseph Campbell (1993), a powerful and ubiquitous symbolic force. Oral historians Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson recognise myth as ‘a fundamental component of human thought’ that ‘has lost neither its imaginative purchase nor its living power as a historical force today’ (1990: 4). Myth is also intimately concerned with the human impulse to find meaning in lived experience. This is not unrelated to ‘the creation of coherence’ that Charlotte Linde (1993) theorises as being fundamental to the telling of life stories, nor to what Samuel and Thompson identify as the ‘construction of coherent narrative whose logic works to draw the life story towards the fable’ (1990: 8). These authors also point to the ways in which personal history is shaped by myth, offering the example of the myth of Eden. That Samuel and Thompson are not directly referencing District Six only underscores the archetypal nature of myth when they observe that

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  35 [t]he slum, for so many years a byword for poverty and deprivation, is transfigured into a warm and homely place, a little commonwealth where there was always a helping hand […] the slum recaptures the symbolic space of ‘the world we have lost’. Many, maybe most, of the facts will be true. It is the omissions and the shaping which make these stories also myth. (1990: 9)

As a symbolic force, District Six’s myths have had signifi­ cant implications, as Zoë Wicomb (1998) has argued, for the political positioning of a large segment of South Africa’s coloured population. But first, they had to be cast into narrative form. It is with reference to the most well-known musical about the area, David Kramer and Taliep Petersen’s District Six – The Musical, that Wicomb (1998: 94) makes her argument, pointing to the historical amnesia at work in the construction of District Six as the ‘ethnic homeland’ of South Africa’s coloured population. But this was not the first musical about the area, nor would it be its last. In all of them, the role of memory, myth and nostalgia loom large. In the late 1960s, Robert Davids wrote what I believe to be the first musical about the area, titled Goodbye District Six. In an author interview with Davids (2011), he describes the piece as an ‘extraordinary cabaret’, noting that it was first staged in 1972, the year after he was evicted from District Six. The agents of apartheid and government censorship loom large in Davids’ memories. He remembers, for example, that when he closed the show it was because he had been warned that he could be jailed if he did not. He also remembers that the only recordings of the piece were stolen by an infiltrator. Despite this, he describes himself as apolitical, even turning down an offer from the government’s legal opposition, the Progressive Party, to tour Goodbye District Six nationally. While no recording of Goodbye District Six could be traced, several of its features can be inferred from the memories of Davids (2011) and his son, Greg Davids (2018). Goodbye District Six had no dialogue but comprised several songs and instrumental numbers (with spoken text) written in a jazz idiom. Interpreted by the singers Terry Fortune and Zelda Benjamin, it also featured a small jazz band consisting of Davids on vibraphone, Louie Schouw on bass, Billy Pillay on drums, Aubrey Kinnes on piano and Robbie Jansen on alto saxophone. Cape Town’s Space Theatre featured

36  Paula Fourie

in its early development, and what eventually grew into Goodbye District Six went on to play at several venues in and around Cape Town. Before it closed it had proved popular enough to be remembered by Bhekizizwe Peterson (2006: 176) as among the ‘key milestones’ of black theatre of the 1970s. Before his death in 2015, Davids reworked Goodbye District Six, adding a script in which several diverse District Sixers address themselves to the audience, and rescoring it for a big band. It is this version of which documentary traces remain. Save for the odd line – ‘Hide your new cellphone’ – it is impossible to tell how it differs from the original (Davids n.d.). Nevertheless, it joins Davids’ narrative in providing key indications as to how he sought to portray the District Six of memory. While some of Goodbye District Six’s songs, like ‘Hanover Street’, fondly recall the area’s landmarks, others are squarely focused on its less savoury aspects. What is most apparent is this: Davids’ portrayal of District Six’s poverty and crime is less obviously aligned with its mythologies. Its gangsters appear more dangerous than they would in subsequent productions and so the audience is asked to take pity on its residents, but also to be wary of them. ‘They Poor Oh So Poor’, for example, exhorts the audience, ‘Yes you can share little food it’s no sin’, while ‘Seven Steps’ contains a warning: ‘Stay away it’s not safe’ (Davids n.d.). While Goodbye District Six is explicitly concerned with residents’ anguish over the forced removals, nostalgia is tempered by a nuanced view of the area’s demolition. Its title song, for example, contains the following: Goodbye goodbye District Six farewell Who cares love you or not goodbye What a city a dirty dump rightly feared Man please just die A broken down old hell hole That smells of dope Man God bless you (Davids n.d.)

What is also striking is Goodbye District Six’s near-avoidance of the Coon Carnival and the Cape Malay choir traditions. The extant version contains only one song about the carnival, intriguingly titled ‘Goons of District Six’; its text is, however, an

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  37

unremarkable riff on the theme of District Six as ‘happy today’ and ‘having fun’ (Davids n.d.). Equating Coons with gangsters, Davids stresses that he did not want to ‘glorify the Coons of District Six’, explaining that the area also housed white collar professionals – a not uncommon position among middle-class individuals who regard this particular fixation as a negative representation of their apartheid-circumscribed demographic (see Fourie 2017: 435). Subsequent District Six musicals would lean heavily on the theme of the Cape Coon Carnival. Along the way, its gangsters would become as ‘cuddly’ as Nasson feared (1990: 50), its poverty overshadowed by the joy of participating in its musical traditions, its razing the destruction of perfectly inhabitable buildings. As Taliep Petersen, one of the most well-known proponents of the District Six musical would declare some 30 years later: ‘Ek is moeg van hoor Die Ses was ’n slum – want ek kóm nie uit ’n slum nie’ (I am tired of hearing The Six was a slum – because I don’t come out of a slum) (Brümmer 2001: 8). Petersen, some 15 years younger than Davids, had a varied and in many respects back-breakingly hard career as a performer before he began successfully to mine the mytho­logical vein of the area of his birth. His earliest involvement with musical theatre, self-consciously relating to it was a skit entitled ‘District Six’, performed in 1974 in impresario Alfred Herbert’s African Follies (see Fourie 2013: 99–101), one of the large-scale touring productions that followed his African Jazz and Variety. Four years later, Petersen returned from a visit to London’s West End determined to write a musical about District Six. After joining up with comedian Dave Bestman, he wrote a script which the duo sold to the Holiday Inn. Carnival a la District 6, as it would be known, had its first performance at the Royal Swazi Spa in July 1979. The show proceeded to tour for three years, garnering overwhelmingly positive reviews (see Fourie 2013: 136–55). Its company consisted of between 18 and 32 performers, including Terry Hector, Salie Daniels and others who would feature prominently in future District Six productions. Its band, mean­ while, at one stage included celebrated saxophonist Basil ‘Manenberg’ Coetzee. Several characteristics of Carnival a la District 6 can be inferred from newspaper coverage and oral history. A nostal­gic retrospective musical revue interweaving spoken dialogue with songs, Carnival

38  Paula Fourie

was, in Petersen’s words, a ‘coloured response to the “Roots” syndrome’ (Christie 1979). Using language already infused with District Six myth­ology, he boasted that it told the story of a place ‘where even the guys on the corner are multi-talented, where even the gangsters were multiracial’ (Michell 1979a). In the end, its storyline was little more than a clothes hanger for its musical offering which consisted of traditional ghoemaliedjies such as ‘Daar Kom die Alibama’, excerpts from moppies like the familiar ‘Ronde Koeke’ refrain, nederlandsliedjies, among them ‘Rosa’, covers of popular crooner songs, and original compositions by Petersen and others in the group. Described by its performers as variously ‘a variety show with a twist’ and ‘the opening where we could tell stories’, it was intended as a portrayal of District Six before the forced removals, but also as a showcasing of the talents of its performers, most of whom were former residents (Fourie 2013: 141–2). To do this, Carnival, as its name suggests, turned to the Cape Coon Carnival and the preparations – ‘tailoring, ironing, bickering’ (Michell 1979b) – leading up to it. This show is important in the history I chart here for its explora­ tion of the potential subversive politics of nostalgia. Initially, it emphasised ‘the colour, excitement and vibrant joy of Cape Town’s District Six’ promised in its press release (Abel 1979), with very little attention paid to the issue of its razing, nor the difficult circumstances faced by its residents. Yet from this portrayal of the ‘happy coon’ stereotype amenable to the apartheid government, it increasingly struck out in the direction of protest theatre. By late 1979 it featured a demolition worker reminiscing about the area and included projected slides depicting various stages of its razing. Described by Petersen as ‘the whole nostalgic trip’, its referencing of the Group Areas Act nevertheless began to register protest through remembrance (Fourie 2013: 145). Carnival a la District 6 Part II, premiered in April 1981, went further. While the first half consisted of a variety show in the Star Bioscope, its second sketched the invasion of District Six by officials. Still described by Petersen (in Fourie 2013: 152) as a ‘happy show’, its protest was, in the tradition of the carnival’s moppie repertoire, carefully couched in humour (see Van der Wal 2009). In any event, its message was clear enough for one journalist to call it ‘the final protest of the coloured community’s

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  39

loss of District Six’ (Fourie 2013: 152). Little did he know. Hints of yet another Carnival – ostensibly intended as the third instalment – exist in the form of a script fragment. In it, Petersen was already scripting stock figures like the ‘dronkie’ (drunkard), ‘hawker’ and ‘moffie’ (homosexual) (Fourie 2013: 236). These characters, like the District Six nostalgia Carnival a la District 6 sought to commodify, would make many a future appearance on stage, its message of protest far from the final or definitive one. In 1986, District Six nostalgia was activated by several events commemorating the twentieth anniversary of its designation under the Group Areas Act, including an exhibition of Jansje Wissema’s photography. It was in this environment that Petersen ran into an old acquaintance in the form of David Kramer, an Englishspeaking white folk singer. Starting with the runaway success of District Six – The Musical in 1987, their meeting kick-started a 20year partnership, a rare example of interracial collaboration that resulted in no less than seven musicals. District Six – The Musical, the most well-documented of the Kramer/Petersen oeuvre, opened at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre in April 1987 (see Fourie 2013: 210–46). When it closed three years later, it was estimated to have played to nearly 400,000 people (Jaffer 1998: 94). A tragic love story set at the time of eviction notices and demolition, District Six – The Musical featured physical landmarks such as the Seven Steps, cultural landmarks like the Coon Carnival and Malay choirs, and by-now familiar characters including gangsters, hawkers and newspaper sellers. The area’s cosmopolitanism was referenced in the inclusion of a Jewish character alongside the show’s predominantly coloured characters, as well as in the illicit romance between a white woman and a coloured man. The musicality stereotypically associated with District Sixers likewise found its natural expression in the genre of the integrated musical, its songs probing issues both light-hearted and serious. ‘Seven Steps’, for example, contains the following lyrics: It was here, you must remember Our children played their games And the skollie gangs smoked dagga Young lovers scratched their names These Seven Steps bear witness

40  Paula Fourie Can these Stone Steps forgive The people who destroyed our homes And told us where to live (Kramer and Petersen 1986)

From a present-day perspective, it is tempting to identify District Six – The Musical as a wholesale identification with District Six’s mythologies. It is also tempting to dismiss its characters as stereo­ typical, no more three-dimensional than the cut-out characters on McGregor and Querido’s stage. Examples abound: Henry the hawker is care-free and lazy, his wife Hester god-fearing and domineering. Meanwhile, the gangster ‘Nines’ who is fatally shot in a scuffle after forcing himself on a woman is portrayed as a basically good guy who just could not come to terms with the district’s destruction. But an equally salient point is that District Six – The Musical was instrumental in the development of these types, ironically to broaden white spectator’s perspectives on the area and its characters. When coloured South Africans began to see recognisable elements from their lives on prominent white stages, their stories were also heard by an audience that, for example, had a very different and mindlessly violent District Six gangster in mind. District Six – The Musical tapped into a rich vein of collective feeling, crystallising collective memory and providing a memorialised marker around which coloured identities could be articulated. In the process District Six’s complexities were ironed out. The musical became synonymous with the place and this aspect did not escape criticism. By the early 1990s, schoolteacher Richard Dudley felt that he had to call District Six ‘the slum that wasn’t just District Six – The Musical’ (1990: 203). Wicomb’s charge was graver: that the musical encouraged coloured South Africans to forget their past of slavery and ‘miscegenation’ which had become construed as shameful. Instead it gave expression to ‘the self-fashioning of a totalizing colouredness located in a mythologized District Six’, where ‘ethnicity was constructed within a politics of nostalgia that sentimentalized the loss’ (Wicomb 1998: 95). Wicomb also criticised the musical for effecting this through ‘North American cultural conventions and musical forms’ (1998: 95), a charge unfortunate in its ascribing of musical authenticity to an environment marked by cultural encounter and transformed

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  41

by creolisation. After all, scholars such as Martin (1999) have long pointed to the central and symbolically laden role of American culture in District Six. While some of District Six – The Musical’s songs are more obviously based on Anglo-American pop, others draw strongly on traditional Cape music folk styles and instrumentation (see Fourie 2013: 210–46). Yet one might imagine that the criticism levied at the show by Wicomb has more to do with the fact that a political and uniquely South African topic was carried by the musical, a genre that has also been described as ‘single-mindedly devoted to producing pleasure’ (Savran 2004: 212). Consequently, it was seen to have been transformed into ‘vacuous, escapist and sentimental entertainment quite out of step with black political awareness and opposition’ (Jaffer 1998: 97). Yet despite its reputation in some quarters as ‘escapist enter­tain­ ment’ (Gordon 1992: 1), the musical would continue to carry both District Six subject matter and the more con­temporary concerns of the coloured population now spread out on the Cape Flats, that windswept and inhospitable area on the outskirts of Cape Town that became known as apartheid’s dumping ground. In the first instance, Kramer and Petersen went on to write Fairyland (1990), Crooners (1992), Kat and the Kings (1995), and Klop Klop (1996). While the last-named can more aptly be described as a celebratory concert featuring Kramer/Petersen hits, the three musicals engaged with the District Six of memory in different ways. Fairyland started out as a cabaret in which District Six – The Musical performers reminisce backstage about District Six the place. Crooners was about District Six’s famed copycat singers, using as its cast the imitators who had begun their careers there. Kat and the Kings, which draws on the memories of performer Salie Daniels to tell the story of a vocal harmony group in District Six, is staged as an extended reminiscence in the mind of its protagonist (see Fourie 2015). The remaining Kramer/Petersen musicals, Poison (1992) and Ghoema (2005) did not reference District Six directly, but their focus was on coloured South Africans who had been marginalised in the country’s past and who were grappling to find their place in its present. Ghoema, in particular, drew on the musical traditions and repertoire historically associated with District Six. Looking back over the tradition of District Six musical theatre

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that began with Robert Davids, it is clear that while some produc­ tions are remembered as wildly successful, others are barely remembered at all. In part this is due to timing, explained by the differing environments of, for example, the early 1970s of Davids’ Goodbye District Six and the late 1980s of Kramer and Petersen’s District Six – The Musical. In 1987 the forced removals had been completed at great financial expense, yet the government faced opposition in redeveloping the area. Large swathes of District Six stood empty, as they do today. The social problems on the Cape Flats were also becoming painfully apparent, revealing the social cost of the proclamation 20 years earlier. Petersen and Bestman’s Carnival a la District 6 of the late 1970s, meanwhile, had been primarily an economic venture, a way to commodify District Six and sell it to a broader South African audience in the hopes of securing employment for themselves and their cast. District Six – The Musical, at least initially, had no such economic imperative. Having premiered on a historically white stage, it garnered over­whelming support from coloured audiences as well, serving as a public affirmation of their cultural practices capable of erasing any slum-induced shame. The success that Kramer/Petersen achieved must also be ascribed to the strengths of their collaboration, to the combined skills of a partnership that would go on to write Kat and the Kings, a Laurence Olivier winning musical. Yet one aspect should not be overlooked: with their collaboration, the musical representation of the loss of District Six gleaned a white face. Enormous social capital accompanied Kramer, by then a beloved television personality and solo recording artist whose education and career had not been impacted by race laws and generational poverty the way Petersen’s – or for that matter, Bestman’s, or Davids’ – had. But just as musical theatre about Cape Town’s coloured population and the musical traditions practised predominantly by them did not begin with Kramer/Petersen, it did not end with them either. Notable examples include productions staged by individuals who started off in Kramer/Petersen musicals, such as Alistair Izobell, who debuted in his childhood as the newspaper seller in District Six – The Musical. In 2015, Izobell collaborated with Lara Foot on a musical tribute to the Luxurama Theatre, a venue designated for the use of coloured people during apartheid

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  43

that was beloved by Petersen and many of his peers. The extent to which Remembering the Lux belongs in this trajectory is reflected in its programme, where Foot writes that many of the Luxurama audience members ‘made their way to the Baxter when David Kramer and Taliep Petersen presented District Six –The Musical on our main stage in 1987’ (2017: 4). Another example is Satin to Sequins: More than a Minstrel (2018), a musical by Faghri Abrahams, Aeysha Anthony-Abrahams and Riyaad Peters originally staged in 2014 with performers from the Coon Carnival, and subsequently rewritten and staged at the Baxter with Izobell as its director and cowriter. Basil Appollis is another individual who came out of District Six – The Musical to stage his own productions. Not only has he been involved in more than one (non-musical) stage adaptation of Rive’s ‘Buckingham Palace’, District Six, he also has a long-running supper show, Kaapse Stories, currently at the ‘Rockwell Hotel’ in Cape Town. Night after night, stalwart Terry Hector and the rest of the cast entertain tourists by singing and dancing the forced removals, the most unashamed commodification of District Six nostalgia to date. Lastly there are the productions that Kramer has staged on his own, including the Kramer/Petersen Songbook (2007), a stage tribute to the late Petersen, as well as the musicals Orpheus in Africa (2015), District Six – Kanala (2016) and Langarm (2018). The first of these three is based on Orpheus McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers’ late-nineteenth-century tour to Britain’s southern colonies, important in South Africa’s musical history for its impact on the growth of the Cape Coon Carnival. District Six – Kanala, resembling a jukebox musical in its recycling of Kramer/Petersen hits, was staged as a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of District Six’s designation as an area for the use of ‘whites only’. Langarm focuses on the dance bands of District Six and, like several Kramer/Petersen musicals before it, uses this proclamation as a central plot device. Similarly to Kanala, it introduces the news by way of a device that goes all the way back to 1987 and District Six – The Musical, namely a newspaper headline. The historiography I have presented here finally begs a compelling question – what makes musical theatre so enduring a vehicle for popular representations of Cape Town’s coloured population and, in particular, for exploring the forced removals

44  Paula Fourie

and their painful legacy? One answer can be found with recourse to the workings of nostalgia. Rebecca Ann Rugg reminds us that ‘nostalgia is the prime drama­ turgical mode of musical theater’, noting that two dis­ tinct modes – cultural and personal – have been employed in twentieth-century musical theatre to establish a ‘particular audience relationship to a particular historical America’ (2002: 45). Along the way, she identifies the musical as ‘one of America’s primary vehicles of cultural mythmaking’ (50). While Rugg leans on nostalgia’s popular definition – a basically sentimental and rosetinted view of the past – recent work by South African writers, among them Dlamini (2009) and Walder (2011), reveal nostalgia to be a complex phenomenon and potential critical lens on the post­colonial, that ‘range of experiences and representations pro­ duced by intercultural and transnational conflict, migration, and enforced settlement since the long withdrawing roar of empire in the twentieth century’ (Walder 2011: 3–4). ‘Nostalgia’ was famously coined by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer from the Greek nostos (‘return home’) and algos (‘longing’) to describe an illness caused by social and geo­graphic displacement. It was also in a 1710 re-publication of Hofer’s thesis that the first mention of nostalgia and music occur together – in the inclusion of a Swiss folk song thought capable of effecting the onset of nostalgia. When Jean-Jacques Rousseau included Ranz-des-vaches, as it had become known, in A Complete Dictionary of Music, he concluded that nostalgia, more than anything else, involved memory. While the homesickness induced by the folk song might cause troops to ‘burst into tears, desert, or die’, he reflects that ‘[w]e shall seek in vain to find in this air any energic accents capable of producing such astonishing effects […] The music does not in this case act precisely as music, but as a memorative sign’ (Rousseau and Waring 1779: 267). Having since moved beyond the remit of medical doctors and of Europe’s borders, nostalgia is considered a widespread phenomenon. Yet it would appear particularly salient in relation to District Six subject matter, for the simple reason that ‘nostalgia does seem to be a particularly seductive phenomenon for people who have literally been displaced’ (Walder 2011: 8). Acknowledging that the memories of South Africans are

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  45

bound to be highly ambivalent, Dlamini (2009) and Walder (2011) are both concerned with nostalgia, the former in the memories of black South Africans of life under apartheid, and the latter in the work of late-twentieth-century writers impacted by colonialism. Both find a useful typology in Svetlana Boym’s concepts of ‘restorative nostalgia’ and ‘reflective nostalgia’, proposed as two extremes on the nostalgia spectrum. While restorative nostalgia is preoccupied with the nostos of nostalgia, proposing to ‘rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps’, reflective nostalgia ‘dwells in algia, in longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance’ (Boym 2001: 41). Crucial for this discussion is Boym’s contention that ‘restorative nostalgia takes itself dead seriously’ while ‘reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, can be ironic and humorous’ (49). So, too, her claim that the first category ‘does not think of itself as nostalgia, but rather as truth and tradition’ (xviii). Amplified by sentimental ballads and upbeat folk tunes, the nostalgia in District Six musicals tends towards the restorative, notwithstanding the fact that, at first glance, there is precious little palpable left to rebuild. The razing of District Six left no tangible monuments, no ruins and no half-bulldozed houses. The scar on its hillsides marks only the absence of life that once teemed there. Yet there is very little doubt or irony for the District Six nostalgic waiting for the curtain to rise, little reflexivity or relishing of memory as necessarily incomplete. That is because it will go up on a show that uses music to mourn and remourn its cast-iron truth: that from 1966 to 1987, more than 55,000 individuals were forced to leave their homes and that, in the process, a community disintegrated in which life under apartheid had been liveable. But there is a contradiction here as well. Despite important developments in the ongoing land restitution process aimed at enabling former District Six inhabitants to return, it has drawn a limited number of claimants, some of whom have opted for monetary compensation instead. Christiaan Beyers ascribes this to former inhabitants’ ‘scepticism about the possibility of having a sense of belonging in a new District Six’ (2007: 278), suggesting that District Six nostalgia is at least partially self-aware. Instead, then, of restoring a physical ‘homeland’, District Six

46  Paula Fourie

nostalgia is concerned with restoring District Six of the mind, complete with its accrued mythologies. Where it uses the musical as its vehicle, the result is nothing short of an affective monument to the District Six of popular memory that constitutes its own toe-tapping community night after night. And so it satisfies, in real time, nostalgia’s ‘affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world’ (Boym 2001: xiv). In District Six musical theatre, nostalgia operates rather differently than in Rugg’s American context, because for coloured South Africans the nostalgia is already personal. This is not just because, as in her model, audiences arrive at a revival nostalgic about their first encounter with the production and its tunes. But it is because the drama portrayed on stage belongs to their personal frame of reference, whether they, their grandparents, or their cousins were forcibly removed from District Six or from other areas in Cape Town such as Lower Claremont, or from even further afield such as Die Vlakte in the town of Stellenbosch. At the same time, Rugg’s cultural nostalgia operates powerfully in the recognition of District Six as a symbol of resistance to the forced removals and as a cultural beacon that became an expression of popular coloured identity in the late 1980s. Turning now to the phenomenon’s early discourse, how would nostalgia operate if this particular audience was confronted with its own Ranz-des-vaches? Moreover, what would musically constitute such a ‘memorative sign’? It would be reductive to identify it glibly as the beat of a ghoema drum, the karienkel of a nederlandslied, or the saccharine harmonies of a sentimental ballad, even if these would be instantly recognisable to a great many individuals concerned. The musical practices in which these elements occur are very much alive in contemporary Cape Town. In fact their continued importance accounts in part for the popularity of musical theatre among much of the coloured population. Yet it is not here where nostalgia operates most powerfully, nor where it functions as our own vehicle of cultural mythmaking. Instead one might find it in the hits from District Six – The Musical itself. Since 1987, thousands of audience members attending this show, its 2002 revival, or its 2016 reincarnation, District Six – Kanala, have listened to the show-stopping ‘When the Southeaster

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  47

Blows’ and been moved – often to tears – by these lines and their simple delivery: Tomorrow when the lorry comes to fetch our things comes to fetch our things Even though I’m sorry I will lift my head and I will try to sing There in Bonteheuwel we will start again we will start again Happy are the memories even though our hearts are filled with pain

District Six – Kanala is something of a musical retrospective in which a narrator uses a photo album that used to belong to her grandmother to recall District Six through memory twiceremoved. In a device that goes back at least as far as Petersen’s Carnival a la District 6, slides of the area are projected during the show, now not only of its heyday and its destruction, but also of its present: fields of grass blowing in the wind. Consisting of newly composed tracks written by Kramer, as well as a great many Kramer/Petersen songs from District Six – The Musical, it was performed in 2016 by a cast of hungry performers who had all come to District Six secondhand, many of them younger than District Six – The Musical itself. Yet I wager that its tunes would have been familiar to them, just as it would have been to many young audience members accompanying their nostalgic parents to the show. But this particular melody is even older than District Six – The Musical. Kramer and Petersen frequently drew on traditional folk songs that originated in colonial Cape Town, in this case, the ghoemaliedjie ‘Hoe Gaan die Padjie na die Kramat toe?’ (‘Which way leads to the Kramat?’). The reference to Kramats, the graves of Muslim spiritual leaders, the Islamic holy shrines that encircle Cape Town, reveals this song to have a much longer and more complex genealogy. This was also not the first use of this melody in a contemporary popular music context – before Kramer and

48  Paula Fourie

Petersen, Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly known as Dollar Brand) was already harmonising it (see Ibrahim 1973; 1983). When audiences heard ‘When the Southeaster Blows’ in a show otherwise characterised by levity in the portrayal of those ‘happy days of District Six’, what did this Ranz-des-vaches evoke? The cobbled streets of District Six as they crisscross the mind? A Dollar Brand concert at the Ambassadors in 1961 Woodstock? Or was it evoking nostalgia for the nostalgic heydays of District Six – The Musical during the promising final years of apartheid? It could have been all these, just as it could also have evoked a much older folk memory of practising religious freedom on the wine farms and kitchens of the Cape Colony. On the fiftieth anniversary of the district’s declaration as an area for ‘whites only’, District Six – Kanala, more than any of its predecessors, was in the lucrative business of producing nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, drawing on an arsenal of familiar tunes as it did so. But, as Sarah Holdren warns us, while nostalgia can be the aftereffect created by a performance, it is ‘not a starting point for one’. ‘Because it lives in the present’, she contends, live theatre ‘owes a different kind of attention to that moment. Theater can examine nostalgia […] but it can’t simply manufacture the drug for its viewers without any internal interrogation’ (Holdren 2018, original emphasis). Perhaps this accounts for critic Marianne Thamm – who, incidentally, had been around for District Six – The Musical in 1987 – writing that Kanala ‘lacks the raw impact of the original’ (2016). It also goes some way towards explaining Inge Engelbrecht’s labelling of the show as ‘aesthetically redundant’, so too her discomfort at the coloured stereotypes on stage that she surmises ‘escaped the audience because of the overwhelmingly emotional attachment Coloured people feel to District Six’ (2018: 354–56). District Six – Kanala reveals something about the conse­quences of the nearly 50-year-old tradition of District Six musical theatre. Not only has District Six’s history been irrevocably cemented as ‘a history of the mind’ (Nasson 1990: 46), its mythologies and stereotypes have been monu­mentalised to satisfy the demands of unreflexive restorative nostalgia. In this case, it constituted a community willing to overlook damaging representations of their apartheid-cir­cum­scribed demographic in exchange for their opium,

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  49

another chance to step into the same river, that ‘maelstrom of people’ eddying through Hanover Street (Schoeman 1994: 35).

NOTES 1 Although the term ‘coon’ has its origins as a pejorative reference to African Americans, South Africa’s carnival troupes generally self-employ this term without negative connotations. I use it here as an acknowledgement that words can travel and be re-inscribed in new contexts. Taking my cue from Martin (1999: 4), ‘Coon’ is capitalised to emphasise its acquired meaning in a South African context. 2 As a racial construct codified in apartheid law, the term ‘coloured’ has a complex history that includes its rejection as a racist label and its claiming as a self-referential term. I employ it without qualifying appendages to emphasise personal agency in identity construction, and from the perspective that the artificial levelling of experience enabled by language has the potential to undermine restitutive work. For an overview of the changing perspectives on South African coloured identity in the twentieth century, see Adhikari (2008).

REFERENCES Abel, Juliette (1979), press release for Carnival la District 6, Taliep Petersen Collection, Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), Stellenbosch University. Adhikari, Mohamed (2008), ‘From Narratives of Miscegenation to Post-Modernist Re-Imagining: Toward a Historiography of Coloured Identity in South Africa’, African Historical Review, vol. 40, no. 1: 77–100. Beyers, Christiaan (2007), ‘Land Restitution’s “Rights Communities”: The District Six Case’, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 33, no. 2: 267–85. Bickford-Smith, Vivian (1990), ‘The Origins and Early History of District Six to 1910’. In The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, Shamil Jeppie and Crain Soudien (eds). Cape Town: Buchu Books: 35–43. Boym, Svetlana (2001), The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Breytenbach, Cloete and Brian Barrow (2016), The Spirit of District Six. Pretoria: Protea Book House. Brümmer, Willemien (2001), ‘Waarheid kom nou oor Distrik 6 – Taliep’, Die Burger, 25 August: 8. Campbell, Joseph (1993), The Hero with a Thousand Faces. London: Fontana Press. Christie, Roy (1979), ‘Coons go to Swaziland’, The Star, 8 June. Davids, Greg (2018), personal communication with Paula Fourie, 28 June, telephone. Davids, Robert (2011), interviewed by Stephanus Muller and Paula Fourie, 7 September, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Paula Fourie. —— (n.d.), Goodbye District Six. Lead sheets in the Robert Davids Collection, Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS), Stellenbosch University. De Villiers, Dawid and Mathilda Slabbert (2011), David Kramer: A Biography. Cape Town: Tafelberg.

50  Paula Fourie Dlamini, Jacob (2009), Native Nostalgia. Johannesburg: Jacana. Dudley, Richard (1990), ‘Forced Removals: The Essential Meaning of District Six’. In The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, Shamil Jeppie and Crain Soudien (eds). Cape Town: Buchu Books: 197–203. Engelbrecht, Inge (2018), ‘Kramer’s District Six – Kanala: Why I Am Not Laughing’, South African Music Studies, vols 36/37: 348–61. Fleischer, Dolores (2010), Sandra McGregor: ‘Onse Artist’ in District Six. Noordhoek: Print Matters. Foot, Lara (2017), programme for Alistair Izobell and Lara Foot’s Remembering the Lux at the Baxter Theatre. Cape Town: Baxter Theatre Centre. Fourie, Paula (2013), ‘“Ghoema vannie Kaap”: The Life and Work of Taliep Petersen (1950–2006)’, unpublished PhD thesis, Stellenbosch University. —— (2015), ‘Herinnering op die Verhoog: Performatiwiteit in David Kramer en Taliep Petersen se Kat and the Kings’, LitNet Akademies, vol. 12, no. 3: 75–112. —— (2017), ‘Taliep Petersen: An Interview with Paul Hanmer’, South African Music Studies, vols 36/37: 416–48. Fuentenebro de Diego, Filiberto and Carmen Valiente Ots (2014), ‘Nostalgia: A Conceptual History’, History of Psychiatry, vol. 25, no. 4: 404–11. Gordon, Joanne (1992), Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater of Stephen Sondheim. New York: Da Capo Press. Hart, Deborah M. (1990), ‘Political Manipulation of Urban Space: The Razing of District Six, Cape Town’. In The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, Shamil Jeppie and Crain Soudien (eds). Cape Town: Buchu Books: 117–42. Heilbuth, Bruce (1978), ‘District Six’, The Argus, 19 April. Holdren, Sara (2018), ‘Theatre Review: Pretty Woman and the Trouble with Onstage Nostalgia’, Vulture, August 16, www.vulture.com/2018/08/theaterpretty-woman-and-the-trouble-with-onstage-nostalgia.html (accessed 8 November 2019). Ibrahim, Abdullah (1973), ‘Salaam Peace’, Fats Duke & The Monk, music CD, Ontario: Sackville Recordings. —— (1983), ‘Kramat’, Zimbabwe, music CD, Munich: Enja Records. Jaffer, Kay (1998), ‘Notions of Coloured Identity in Cape Flats Theatre’, South African Theatre Journal, vol. 12, nos 1–2: 91–107. Kenrick, John (2008), Musical Theatre: A History. New York: Continuum. Kramer, David and Taliep Petersen (1986), District Six – The Musical. LP audio recording, Cape Town: Banjo records. Linde, Charlotte (1993), Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York: Oxford University Press. Martin, Denis-Constant (1999), Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town, Past to Present. Cape Town: David Philip. —— (2013), Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. Somerset West: African Minds. McGregor, Sandra and Ray Querido (1996), interviewed by Sandra Proselendis, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Paula Fourie. Michell, John (1979a), ‘Coon show for Swazi Spa’, Rand Daily Mail, 1 June. —— (1979b), ‘District Six in Swaziland’, Rand Daily Mail, 19 July. Nasson, Bill (1990), ‘Oral History and the Reconstruction of District Six’. In The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, Shamil Jeppie and Crain Soudien (eds). Cape Town: Buchu Books: 44–66.

A Historiography of District Six Musical Theatre  51 Peterson, Bhekizizwe (2006), ‘Culture, Resistance and Representation’. In The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 2 (1970–1980), South African Democracy Education Trust (ed.). Pretoria: Unisa Press: 161–86. Petersen, Mogamat Ladien (2011), interviewed by Paula Fourie, 13 October, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Paula Fourie. Pinnock, Don (1980), ‘From Argie Boys to Skolly Gangsters: The LumpenProletarian Challenge of the Street-Corner Armies in District Six, 1900–1951’. In Studies in the History of Cape Town, vol. 3, Christopher Saunders and Howard Phillips (eds). Cape Town: University of Cape Town History Department in association with the Centre for African Studies: 131–74. Rive, Richard (1990), ‘District Six: Fact and Fiction’. In The Struggle for District Six: Past and Present, Shamil Jeppie and Crain Soudien (eds). Cape Town: Buchu Books: 110–16. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques and William Waring (1779), A Complete Dictionary of Music. London: J. Murray, https://archive.org/details/0043COMP (accessed 9 November 2019). Rugg, Rebecca Ann (2002), ‘What It Used to Be: Nostalgia and the State of the Broadway Musical’, Theater, vol. 32, no. 2: 44–55. Samuel, Raphael and Paul Thompson (1990), ‘Introduction’. In The Myths We Live By, Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (eds). London: Routledge. Savran, David (2004), ‘Towards a Historiography of the Popular’, Theatre Survey, vol. 45, no. 2: 211–17. Schoeman, Chris (1994), District Six: The Spirit of Kanala. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau. Swanson, Felicity and Jane Harries (2001), ‘“Ja! So was District Six! But it was a beautiful place”: Oral Histories, Memory and Identity’. In Lost Communities, Living Memories: Remembering Forced Removals in Cape Town, Sean Field (ed.). Cape Town: David Philip: 62–81. Thamm, Marianne (2016), ‘District Six – Kanala; Commemorating the Void that Still Remains’, Daily Maverick, 14 February, www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/201602-14-district-six-kanala-commemorating-the-void-that-still-remains (accessed 18 November 2019). Van der Wal, Anne Marieke (2009), ‘The Cape Malay Choir Board & their Moppies: Governing a Culture and Community, 1939–2009’. Master’s thesis, African Studies Centre Leiden, www.asclibrary.nl/docs/327/520/327520221-01.pdf. Walder, Dennis (2011), Postcolonial Nostalgias. London: Routledge. Wicomb, Zoë (1998), ‘Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa’. In Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid and Democracy, 1970–1995, Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 91–107.

‘Opera is an art form for everyone’

Black Empowerment in the South African Opera Adaptations Unogumbe (2013) and Breathe – Umphefumlo (2015)

LENA VAN DER HOVEN & LIANI MAASDORP

A sea of shacks, corrugated iron roofs held in place by tyres and stones, sprawls across the screen. Through the mist in the distance the majesty of Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain and Devils Peak emerge. Dark blue linen is blowing in the wind to dry, a single piece of plastic lies discarded among dry grass by the side of the road (fig.1).

Figure 1. Khayelitsha – screen shot of the establishing scenes of Unogumbe & Breathe – Umphefumlo. (Photo © Isango Ensemble, 2013)

This is the township of Khayelitsha, as portrayed in the establishing scenes of Unogumbe (2013) and Breathe – Umphefumlo (2015), two filmic adaptations by the South African theatre company Isango Ensemble of ‘Western classics’ of music theatre, namely Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde (1957) and Giacomo 52

Black Empowerment in Unogumbe and Breathe – Umphefumlo  53

Puccini’s La Bohème (1896). The films are instances of what James Davies and Lindiwe Dovey have described as transculturation in reference to the same ensemble’s internationally acclaimed film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005),1 which is not only the first film opera shot in southern Africa but also ‘one of the most successful post-apartheid South African films’ (Davies & Dovey 2010: 40, 42). While George Bizet’s music was not changed in U-Carmen, all libretti of the three film operas have been trans­lated into indigenous South African languages. Referring to Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation (2006), we argue in this chapter that the short film Unogumbe (2013) and full-length feature Umphefumlo (2015) are not only transcultural, but ‘indigenized’ adaptations. Our argument is based on the com­pre­hensive degree to which the material from Puccini and Britten was transformed through various techniques, including re-arrangement of the orchestration, restructuring through cuts, additional elements and aesthetic changes. In the context of the themes explored in this volume, these films show South African music theatre productions as engaged not only in aesthetic transformation, but also in transformation located in genre and medium. This happens through the engagement of existing South African practices and discourses on stage, resulting in what is often described as ‘Africanization’, ‘indigenization’ or ‘black empowerment’ (Roos 2010; Davies & Davies 2012: 64; Muller 2018; André 2018). The ‘indigenized’ film adaptations seem to be especially intriguing examples of a wider impulse to challenge the still-prevalent perception of opera as Eurocentric and elitist. Not only are they set in Khayelitsha, the biggest township outside of Cape Town where opera is traditionally performed, but they are able to reach wider and different audiences than those normally reached by stage performances. This is particularly significant as most South African opera houses are still stigmatised and avoided by many South Africans of colour because of their historical policies of only allowing white audiences during apartheid. South African opera was a predominantly white pursuit and symbol of segregation and oppression during apartheid. Opera was also a political instrument signifying power and cultural recognition, which is nowhere better illustrated than through the building of imposing theatres that were, at the time, among the

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most modern in the world. When Winnie: The Opera, the first full-length original opera by a black South African composer, premiered in the State Theatre in Pretoria in 2011, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went on stage after the performance and ‘recounted how the State Theatre had only ever crossed her mind as a possible bombing target during the struggle’ (Somma 2016: 33). The theatre had been opened in 1981 by then state president, Marais Viljoen, as part of propagandistic festivities celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the republic of South Africa, affirming the State Theatre as a symbol of power and cultural supremacy for the apartheid state. In this chapter we use a multicultural and interdisciplinary perspective that draws on musicology and film studies to analyse Unogumbe and Umphefumlo, which – in contrast to U-Carmen – have not received much scholarly attention to date. We begin by describing the emergence of the Isango Ensemble, their appropriation of the term opera and their choices of ‘Western classics’ for adaptation. We then explain the transcultural dimension of the films, before shifting to a focused engagement with ‘indigenization’. To explain why we see these two postcolonial film adaptations as ‘indigenized’ film adaptations, the focus of our analysis will be on their aesthetics, which we will put into the context of the transformation processes that South African opera and music theatre productions have undergone since the end of apartheid. In order to survive, opera needed a new ‘role’ and had to become a ‘symbol’ of a new South Africa with the transition to democracy in 1994. Against the background of this perceived need to become divested of its image as a colonial, Eurocentric, elitist genre, we discuss challenges that concern subject matter, as well as concrete ‘tech­niques’ through which the Isango Ensemble wants to create opera as ‘an art form for everyone’ (Dyantyis 2017). In the conclusion, we discuss questions concerning the intended audiences and international reception of the films. In doing so, we suggest what purpose the films could fulfil in the process of black empowerment. We also propose that the films reflect the current challenges of South African opera, which, as a genre and institution, still seems to be tightly entangled with politics under the new governments post-1994.2

Black Empowerment in Unogumbe and Breathe – Umphefumlo  55

Isango Ensemble: The appropriation of ‘Western opera classics’ The South African theatre company Isango Ensemble was formed by British Artistic Director Mark Dornford-May and South African co-Music Director Pauline Malefane within six years of the first democratic elections in South Africa. The Ensemble today is the result of several ‘rebrandings’ of the company, but its origins can be traced to when the Spier Festival3 announced in 2000 a four-year programme in collaboration with the London Broomhill Opera under the leadership of Dornford-May and Charles Hazelwood (who were then its artistic and music directors). At the time, the idea behind the project was to train singers from disadvantaged communities. Located on a wine farm close to Stellenbosch, the Spier Festival arranged free bus transport to be included in the price of tickets, and adopted a policy of ‘pay as you can’ (Le May 2000: 8, see van der Hoven in this volume). This initiative resulted in the birth of the first incarnation of the ensemble, Dimpho di Kopane (Sesotho for ‘combined talents’). Then, as now, its artists were mainly from the townships that surround Cape Town. This choice constituted a radical departure for opera in the fledgling democratic South Africa. In 2006 Eric Abraham became the sole funder of the Ensemble under the new name Isango Portobello, which in 2010 became the resident repertory company of the Fugard Theatre in District Six in Cape Town (see Fourie in this volume). Only nine months after the opening of the Fugard, Abraham expelled the company after the ‘discovery of certain financial irregularities’. Shortly after these developments, the Ensemble started anew as the Isango Ensemble.4 The Isango Ensemble, as it is today, creates theatre, musical theatre and films. Not only U-Carmen and Umphefumlo, but also Unogumbe are advertised on their homepage as adaptations of operas, although Britten titled his score of a version of the biblical story of Noah’s ark as a Chester Miracle Play. We suggest that the German term Musiktheater is helpful in describing these adaptations. As articulated in the German music encyclopaedia Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Ruf 2016), Musiktheater can function as an ‘umbrella term’ for different kinds of relations

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between music and theatre, including historical and contemporary genres such as opera, operetta, musical, musical happening, visual music, multimedia or film and television operas. But how does the Isango Ensemble position itself in relation to the term ‘opera’ and why is this especially important in a South African context? Outlining new cultural policies and reconfigurations of the arts, the first post-apartheid White Paper on Arts, Culture and Heritage (1996) states that: ‘the arts, culture and heritage are concerned with the most central aspect of humanity, the formation of identity’ (South African Government 1996). Assigning the function of ‘identity formation’ to arts and culture not only places an obligation on par­ticular repertoires or performances to enable ‘identification’, but on art forms like opera as such. Lena van der Hoven has conducted interviews with the Isango Ensemble’s Associate Director and co-Music Director Mandisi Dyantyis, and its Artistic Director Dornford-May, in which they explicate their understanding of the nature and relevance of the term ‘opera’. Dyantyis says: We want to go back to the roots of this artform. What is it [opera]? It’s a story told through singing, dancing and movement. That’s basically what it is. Forget the big instruments and everything else, because without [them] you could tell a story. Those instruments are just there to accompany […] it’s an art form for everyone. It’s to say that this is not a European art form per se, it is an art form for Africa as well – like for us. And actually, it comes more natural to tell stories this way for us. We don’t use it as an ingredient to a story, but it is the story. It’s the main thing and then everything else is sort of the ingredient in it. So, it’s hard for me to really say what it would represent because it represents everything that we stand for. (Dyantyis 2017)

By understanding opera as a natural form of storytelling in Africa, Dyantyis counters the commonly held South African perception that opera is Eurocentric and hence a symbol of the country’s colonial heritage. Furthermore, his identification of the opera genre as a representation of what black communities embrace in the art of storytelling, and his remark that opera is an art form for everyone, refer to important gestures of identity politics and selfrepresentation regarding ‘who speaks, when, how, and in whose name’ (Shohat & Stam 2014: 342). In contrast to Dyantyis’s view, Dornford-May says:

Black Empowerment in Unogumbe and Breathe – Umphefumlo  57 I think what we do is lyrical theatre. We produce theatre with a lot of music. For me the term opera means little – in the sense that in basics, it means a ‘work’ […]. It seems as something elitist, whereas actually I think opera is probably the most accessible of all art forms. It’s just been stolen in a way. (Dornford-May 2019)

Highlighting the difference in perspective, British-born Dornford-May interestingly added that ‘he [Dyantyis] feels we should own the word [opera] and I feel we should throw the word away’ (Dornford-May 2019). Despite this statement, the term ‘opera’ is consciously used in the marketing strategy of the Isango Ensemble and seems to be a selling point for their audiences, which are predominantly outside South Africa in Europe, the USA, New Zealand and Australia. In this context it is of further interest that the ensemble emphasises on their homepage its adoption of a ‘Western’ repertoire: ‘Isango’s productions reimagine classics from the Western theatre canon, finding a new context for the stories within a South African or township setting thereby creating inventive work relevant to the heritage of the nation’ (Isango Ensemble 2019). To ‘re-imagine’ classics from the Western theatre canon is not only less expensive than commissioning a new opera, it also fits into a global trend to ensure audience attraction. As Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker have put it: ‘the primary creative energies of this global industry [opera] were dedicated not to creating new works; they were to interpreting masterpieces from the past’ (2015: 557). It is especially interesting that, from the timespan of the first adapted opera premiere of the ‘Isango Ensemble’ in 2005 until 2018 (which is the latest available data in the database operabase. com), Bizet’s Carmen (with 7,939 performances) is the third most played title in the world, directly followed by Puccini’s La Bohème (with 7,390 performances in fourth place). Two of the three opera films from the Isango Ensemble thus adapted operas from the top four (‘popular’) operas in the world. Hutcheon explains that ‘the appeal of adaptations for audiences lies in the mixture of repetition and difference, of familiarity and novelty’ (2006: 114). She further argues that ‘if the adapted work is a canonical one, we may not actually have direct experience of it, but may rely on “a generally circulated cultural memory”’ (122).

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Transcultural adaptations: A change in place, time and context Unogumbe and Umphefumlo are both examples of how adap­ta­tion can add layers of meaning and open old texts to new audiences and interpretations. We argue that this is particularly true of the short film Unogumbe, which is succinct, aesthetically distinct and richly layered in meaning, in­cluding social commentary. These two adaptations did not proceed from written text to performance, from telling to showing (Hutcheon 2006: xiv), but were adaptations from ‘live’ staged opera to filmed ‘mediatized’ ‘opera’. The context, the ‘where’ and ‘when’ as it were, changes in the adaptations (Hutcheon 2006: 141ff.). Both films could be described as transcultural adaptations, as they are modernised and re-set from the historical to the contemporary, from Europe to Africa. As we will explain later, they represent a distinct form of transculturation, which Hutcheon describes as ‘indigenization’ (150). But what are transcultural adaptations? ‘Transcultural’ denotes adaptations from one culture to another, most often resulting in a change of place, time and language (45). The re-setting of the Isango Ensemble’s films to today’s South African town­ship contexts include social commentary on contemporary issues relevant to the communities represented in the films. Dyantyis explains in an interview with van der Hoven that the narrative access for the audience should be easy: Carmen, for example, features a powerful woman to whom many women in the township can relate. The story of La Bohème, as told in Umphefumlo, relates to the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) in Africa today, especially among the poor (Dyantyis 2017). Furthermore, the perfor­mance libretti are translated from Italian and English into a contemporary isiXhosa, one of 11 official languages in South Africa and the most widely spoken African language in the Western Cape, which is where the Isango Ensemble is based. This removes a communication barrier to narrative content for most isiXhosa speakers, but also introduces an idiomatic, expressive familiarity targeted at black audiences. Depending on the target market of a particular channel, most films, documentaries and TV shows broadcast on South African television have English language subtitles if the original dialogue is not in English. South

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African cinema-going and television-watching audiences are used to watching productions in languages other than their mother tongue, and also to reading English subtitles on screen as in the Isango Ensemble’s adaptations. In Umphefumlo the commentary on TB is overt. As in La Bohème, the story pivots around Mimi’s character who suffers from TB. The time and place have been changed from a group of artists in nineteenth-century Paris to a group of students from Khayelitsha who study at Stellenbosch University in 2014. In Puccini’s day in the nineteenth century ‘tuberculosis was a disease of poverty, poor nutrition, and inadequate housing’ (Hutcheon & Hutcheon 1996: 48). As a ‘classic social disease’ it became an ‘archetypal operatic disease’ in the nineteenth century (21), with famous examples such as Antonia in Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Jacques Offenbach) or Violetta Valéry in La Traviata (Giuseppe Verdi). In the film, Mimi is a victim of poverty and suffers from cold triggered by ongoing intermittent power cuts. The TB theme is introduced at the outset and emphasised in the first three minutes through titles on screen providing statistics about global TB deaths, including that ‘Khayelitsha is one of the worst affected areas in the world’ and graffiti that says ‘stop TB’, spotted by the protagonist through a taxi window.5 The overt commentary in this film extends to the anti-apartheid struggle through several references to the deaths of protesting students on 16 June 1976, jazz songs that reference South African township jazz and the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1950s and the current service delivery crisis in South Africa through repeated references to power cuts. This arguably results in a historical muddle of social and economic commentary that risks leaving the audience unsure of the central message of the film. In contrast to this, Unogumbe, which is a version of the biblical story of Noah’s ark, seems to err on the side of caution with regard to issue commentary. The synopsis of the film on the Isango Ensemble website states that ‘the threat of global warming and its consequences make the flood seem a closer reality, and maybe a fitting end for man if he continues to display inhumanity and a lack of care for the world’ (Isango Ensemble 2019). The commentary on global warming is much more subtle in Unogumbe than the commentary on TB (or the anti-apartheid struggle or service delivery, for that matter) in Umphefumlo. It is

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implied rather than stated and might go unnoticed by viewers if not for the extrinsic commentary made by the creators of the film. Socio-cultural commentary in Unogumbe is included through the recasting of Noah as female. Her husband drinks and is not interested in helping her build the ark. Dyantyis refers to the idea of a strong woman and explains that ‘“[a] lot of families in South Africa, they’re tended to by women […] We wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of kids in South Africa are brought up by single mothers”’ (Chattaway 2014). International critics and writers in particular have positively pointed out that ‘DornfordMay highlights strong female characters in his films’ (Giere 2016: 724). In South Africa the reception was more sceptical, as newspaper reviewers questioned whether these conceptual changes were only made to give Malefane, Dornford-May’s wife, the leading role in the films (August 2009; Nicholson 2011). But changing the gender of the protagonist in Unogumbe can be argued to be particularly relevant in the South African context, as women outnumber men, and female-headed households are on the rise (Statistics SA 2012: 19). As is the case in other sub-Saharan African countries, this is a consequence of several factors, including armed conflicts tending to claim more male lives, and the migration of men to find job opportunities (Nwosu & Ndinda 2018: 2). Further transculturation is induced musically through the adding of new songs and dances to the films. In Unogumbe, for example, a new cultural context is created by the traditional Zulu song ‘Siwelele Mama’ with women ululating. Also added is the Xhosa song ‘Zemk ‘Inkomo Magwalandini’ (‘There goes your cattle/ heritage, you cowards’), which, according to the governmental website ‘The Presidency’, ‘is a clarion call to Africans for African renewal as far back as 1906’ (The Presidency n.d.).6 While a white South African and ‘Western’ audience will recognise the additional songs as generally ‘African’, only an insider audience with special linguistic and cultural competencies will be able to further contextualise these songs. While social and cultural modernisations for the staging of canonical operas are common global practice, the trans­cultural adaptation of opera productions in South Africa refers to a stronger

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socio-political need to overwrite the colonial/Western association of opera as a genre in the country. As Pamela Karantonis and Dylan Robinson point out, operatic representations of ‘indigenous cultures are often entwined with ideologies of nation-building and nationalism’ (Karantonis & Robinson 2011: 2). Attempts at nation-building can not only be witnessed in newly composed operas in South Africa, which focus on historical and political figures such as Nelson and Winnie Mandela or the Zulu princess Magogo kaDinuzulu (see van der Hoven in this volume), but also in many productions of canonical operas. A famous example is the performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio to celebrate the tenth anniversary of South African democracy in 2004 on Robben Island, where Mandela had been imprisoned. It was also screened live at Green Point Track Sports Ground in Cape Town and broadcast live on SABC radio, and later televised by the national broadcaster, SABC. Fidelio’s liberation at the end of the opera thus became that of Mandela and the country as a whole. While the libretto remained in German and the score was not re-arranged, the transcultural aspect of the opera was further highlighted by including archive footage of Mandela’s famous speeches, including his presidential inauguration speech in 1994. Fidelio’s liberation concluded with a national ‘toi-toi-dance’ that ended with cries of ‘Amandla!’, thus making a clear reference to the protest movement during apartheid. As he admits in his memoir, Angelo Gobbato, the then Director of Cape Town Opera, had invited leading politicians, including Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, to the performance to amplify the political symbolism in order to rehabilitate the opera genre (Gobbato 2018: 289; see book reviews in this volume).

‘Indigenized’ adaptation: Aesthetic changes in Unogumbe and Umphefumlo to achieve cultural power Hutcheon understands ‘indigenized’ adaptations as distinctive forms of transcultural adaptation through which ownership is claimed. She uses Susan Stanford Friedman’s anthropological term ‘indigeniza­tion’ to refer to adaptation, because ‘it implies agency: people pick and choose what they want to transplant to their own

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soil’ to receive cultural power (Hutcheon 2006: 150). The term belongs to a complex spectrum of phenomena that postcolonial scholars have been vigorously debating over the last decades, using concepts as diverse as ‘cultural appro­priation’, ‘synergy’ and/or ‘syncretism’, and the idea of ‘hybridity’. Recently, this spectrum was enhanced as it has found expression in music studies through use of the term ‘black opera’ (see André 2018). In South Africa music scholars have on occasion resorted to using the term ‘indigenization’ to describe adaptive pro­ cesses in operas that reference South Africa, while opera critics have tended to use the term ‘Africanization’ to describe such processes in South African operas. The use of both terms coincides with one or more of the following: (1) performing of/as a South African story; (2) compositions or arrangements that include traditional ‘African’ instruments (often percussion, marimba); (3) a libretto that was originally written in, or translated to, one of the 11 national languages, excluding English. The two terms, while often used in over­lapping ways, have different resonances. Achille Mbembe points out the strong political meaning of the term ‘Africanization’, which was understood in the 1960s and ~ ~ı wa Thiong’o pertained 1970s as ‘decolonizing’, and for Ngug particularly to the politics of language (Mbembe 2015). A too general usage of the term ‘Africanization’, devoid of this historical meaning, could lead to simplistic descriptions of adopted operas as ‘African operas’. This entails the significant danger of embracing ‘the stereotyped idea that “Africa is a country”’ and reproduces ‘a colonial strategy to name music “African” that derived from SubSaharan or so-called “black Africa” and to project the cultures of these regions collectively as the whole continent’ (Riva 2019: 130). Significantly, since 1994 this elision of difference in the name of ‘Africa’ has led to regular press headlines announcing the ‘first African opera production’.7 We have decided to use the term ‘indigenization’ for two reasons: First, we apply Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation and, second, because the term has received some traction in academic South African opera discourse following Hilde Roos’s doctoral disser­tation Opera Production in the Western Cape: Strategies in Search of Indigenization (2010). In the next two sections we des­ cribe how changes and re-arrangements of the structure and

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aesthetics of libretti and scores, as well as to instrumentation, have resulted in moving the setting of operatic narrative, chang­ ing the language in which those stories are delivered, and have ultimately also enabled new claims regarding ownership of ‘canonical’ opera repertoire.

Changes in structure and aesthetics in respect to the change in medium Following Christopher Balme’s statement that ‘any dis­cussion of theatre’s relationship to […] new media tech­nol­ogies must engage with concepts such as “liveness”, immediacy, interactions’ (2008: 81), we note how changes in the structure and aesthetics of the libretti and scores of Umphefumlo and Unogumbe relate to the change in medium, specifically with respect to ‘liveness’ and ‘interaction’, and how these changes ‘indigenize’ the adaptations. With the change of medium from stage to film, foley (sound effects) and ambience (environmental sounds) constitute a medium-specific addition. Examples of such sound include street sounds or a radio playing in Umphefumlo or the trumpeting of an elephant in Unogumbe to signify the animals in the ark. Linguistic changes are not only made through the translation per se, but particularly through the new cultural context in which the operas are set, and the switch of gender of the protagonist in Unogumbe. Such extra-translation changes to the linguistic environment relate to, among other things, differently enabled exchanges through characters and situations, unique idioms and local language registers. Even though the libretti and the scores are broadly retained in both adaptations, significant structural and artistic changes are made, for example through changes in the sequence of numbers in Unogumbe (the numbers 27 to 29 are inserted between the numbers 6 and 7), cuts or fade-outs of scenes, additional musical material, re-arrangements of musical material or the often significantly reduced orchestration. Unogumbe also displays several cuts in the score, such as numbers 30, 60, 61 and 65, with the entrance scene of the animals into the ark (numbers 33 to 46) shortened to condense the filmic story line. Britten had stated his own wish that

64  Lena van der Hoven & Liani Maasdorp [a]s far as the number of Animals is concerned the more the better; there are forty-nine species referred to in the libretto of which thirtyfive pairs were used at the first performances […] In any performance it is essential to have seven well-balanced groups, chosen to give as much variety as possible. (Britten 1958a: n.p.)

This particular truncation in the film speaks in a particular way to the change in medium from staged performance to film. Britten wanted to have as many ‘animals’ as possible in the scene, as he wanted as many children as possible who played the animals to participate in this educational community play. As the audience of the film cannot participate in the performance, this notion is lost and the shortening of the scene helps maintain suspense for an audience. Despite the presence of the children in several scenes, all the singers/instrumentalists are members of the Isango Ensemble. The ‘community’ did not participate in the production of this film as Britten had intended.8 But the involvement of children in the process of storytelling is still vivid. They no longer play instruments or act as the animals that enter the ark, instead in the film the children cut out paper animals and an ark that are used later in a shadow play in which the entrance of the animals is shown (see Figure 3). The children are also central to the narration when the storm builds up and the rain comes pouring down, as they are painting symbolic pictures of this storm. Later in the film they paint a rainbow, which can be seen to refer not only to the Bible and the hope of a better future, but also to the hope invested in a new generation by Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu’s coinage of the now almost universally known phrase ‘rainbow-nation’. Tutu used the phrase to describe the people of post-apartheid South Africa and, according to Martha Evans, the metaphor ‘aptly describes South Africa’s diverse cultural and racial make up, in addition to recalling biblical references to Noah and the flood, in which the rainbow served as a sign of God’s oath never to wreak vengeance on humanity again’ (Evans 2010: 309). References to the rainbow are therefore very relevant to the intersection between the story of Noah and the contemporary South African setting in Unogumbe. Unogumbe could not have started more differently in terms of musical expression and atmosphere from Britten’s intended

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Chester Miracle Play. Britten indicates in his score that the beginning of Noye’s Fludde should be ‘majestic’. His score starts with an e minor seventh chord played fortissimo by solo strings, piano duet, percussion and timpani. When the congregation quietly starts singing the preludial hymn ‘Lord Jesus, think on me’, recorders, an organ and ripieno strings join in mezzo forte. In contrast, Unogumbe starts quietly, suggesting fragility, with the sounds of the wind coming closer and of chalk scratching on cement as children play hopscotch in a hand-held shot, desaturated to mute the colours. Instead of a full orchestra and choir, the musical world of the film is introduced through the unaccompanied solo performance of a young girl, singing in a tentative voice the first verse of the simple hymn, ‘Lord Jesus, think on me’, in English. The sound of the wind disappears, and the melancholy facial expression of Chumisa Dornford-May, the daughter of Malefane and Dornford-May, is matched by the facial expressions of the 15 adult choir members who take over in a devotional piano rendition of the second verse. While the choir continues to sing, visuals of Khayelitsha township, described at the beginning of this chapter, appear. After this scene, Britten’s lyrics are translated to isiXhosa, except for several iterations of ‘kyrie eleison’, which not only appear in the scene showing the entrance of the animals, but are also added to the scenes when God speaks. Subsequently the film switches constantly between the cinematic representation of the story and this staged performance for local children in the industrial hall, where the film starts (see Figures 2 and 3). From a cinematic perspective, Chumisa Dornford-May is presented in a big close up (full face from below hairline to chin), while Noah (a member of the adult choir) is shown in a close up (full face to just below chin), with the choir featured in shot sizes ranging from close up to medium shots (head and torso). Conventional cutting patterns associated with classical continuity editing is from wide shot to medium shot to close up. This allows viewers to gradually become accustomed to the setting and characters and orient themselves spatially. Here, the convention is inverted, foregrounding character and emotion over place and event. In real life most people’s respect for personal space ensures that one is far enough from a stranger to see most

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of their body upon first meeting. This is equivalent to a wide or medium shot. It is only later, when one has reached a certain level of acquaintance, that proximity becomes comfortable. These close shots of the girl and Noah thus signify both familiarity and vulnerability. The viewer is informed by the framing that the characters trust us and are ready to share their story with us, although who precisely is addressed is open to debate given that the hymn is sung in English.9 Nonetheless the framing offers a particular layer of signification, of meta-communication, that is possible in film and which is now increasingly used in live opera performances using film techniques. It further differentiates Unogumbe from Britten’s unmediated live performance of Noye’s Fludde in a public space.

Figure 2. Screen shots of performers ‘on stage’ in industrial space (top) and the audience of children (bottom) in Unogumbe. (Photo © Isango Ensemble, 2013)

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Figure 3. Screen shots of cinematic representation in Unogumbe: children crafting elements (top left) used later in the shadow play ‘entrance scene’ depicting animals entering the ark (top right), and ‘real world’ ark (below). (Photo © Isango Ensemble, 2013)

Reinforcing ownership through musical re-arrangement The scores of Unogumbe and Umphefumlo were re-arranged and not performed using the ‘original’ instruments of a Western orchestra, in this way staking a claim to a different kind of ‘ownership’ of the material.10 In contrast to the changed demographic of opera singers, professional classical orchestras in South Africa still consist predominantly of white musicians, partly because owning and learning to play an instrument is still prohibitively expensive. Dyantyis’s re-arrangements are a unique selling point of and contribute to a unique sound for the company. In both films and many of their stage productions, such as Impempe Yomlingo or Man of Good Hope, wooden marimbas constitute the main body of the

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Figure 4. Screen shot of the orchestration ‘on stage’ during the storm scene in Unogumbe using everyday objects such as a bin, paper and swung pipe. (Photo © Isango Ensemble, 2013)

‘orchestra’. Although experienced and marketed as South African instruments, marimbas are actually variations of xylophones and lamella­phones that exist on the continent and are not specifically South African. In Umphefumlo the marimba sound is not produced visibly and disappears into the overall ‘soundtrack’. Only when the protagonists stroll over to a market and listen to the appropriated and newly added live bands, the jazz singer Zoleka’s band for example, are the instruments played visibly. In this way a contrast is created between the live perform­ance of the bands and the no-longer-live perform­ances of the opera singers. By comparison, in Unogumbe, the singers are also the musicians who play the instruments in the industrial hall on stage. Mirroring their live performances on stage, the film audience also sees the singers swapping their instruments with virtuosity during the perform­ance of one song, which entails running from one side of the room where they played a marimba to the other side of the room to continue playing on another marimba. Instruments and musical production processes are thus visible in Unogumbe, a con­cept that corres­ponds well to Britten’s production notes: ‘No attempt should be made to hide the orchestra from sight’ (Britten 1958a: n.p.). Dyantyis told van der Hoven that it was important for him to connect the films to the cultural practices of people in townships by setting them in their immediate environment. Dyantyis always uses marimbas, but sometimes also djembes and even everyday

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objects like dustbins, tin cups or sections of pipe for his rearrangements. He further explains that it makes township residents ‘proud’ when they see the Isango Ensemble making ‘these rhythms using just bins or all of those other things’ to which people have easy access in their environment. It also makes them look at those objects differently in the course of every­day life and appreciate them more. Dyantyis concludes that township audiences are therefore more connected to what they are trying to do, with the consequence that the Isango Ensemble does not need to explain a lot in their pieces (Dyantyis 2017).

Conclusion: Reflections on audience and black empowerment While Dyantyis focuses in his remarks on a township audience, the appeal of the film is not limited to cultural insiders. Hutcheon points out that the attraction of adaptations – and it seems especially true for adaptations of the Western opera canon – can also reside in the ‘“intellectual and aesthetic pleasure” (DuQuesnay 1979: 68) of understanding the interplay between works’ (Hutcheon 2006: 117). Only an audience familiar with Britten’s intentions of presenting Noye’s Fludde as a community project will, for instance, enjoy the ‘intellectual pleasure’ of its cultural adaptation. If we look at Unogumbe, Britten wanted his music to be performed by ordinary people using simple scenic devices. He specifically did not want Noye’s Fludde performed at a theatre, but in a big building, preferably in a church. He intended for the experience to be vivid without necessarily being realistic. Britten divided the orchestra into a professional and an amateur section consisting of children. By adding to the strings not only percussion and a wind-machine but also recorders, a whip, slung mugs, sandpaper and hand-bells (Britten 1958b), he – like Dyantyis – had used ‘things’ that local children in Britain had access to. It is therefore possible to say that the Isango Ensemble does not only provide modes of identification for local black audiences in South Africa in their film adaptations, but also enables enjoyment of the films through ‘intellectual and aesthetic pleasure’.

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Unogumbe, an adaptation of the least famous of Britten’s works, was produced in his centennial year after a personal exchange between the Isango Ensemble and a member of the Britten-Pears Foundation, but it was neither commissioned by nor performed as part of the official programme of the Foundation (see Hilton 2019). It had its world premiere in 2013 in the shorts programme ‘To Repel Ghosts: Urban Tales from the African Continent’ at the Toronto Inter­national Film Festival and then continued to play at other international festivals such as the German International Film Festival Berlinale in 2014. Umphefumlo, the La Bohème adaptation, was produced by Advantage Entertainment and Isango Ensemble and exclusively produced by Mike Downey and Sam Taylor of Film and Music Entertainment (see Filmcontact 2015). It had its world premiere at the Berlinale in 2015 and Fortissimo Films purchased its world-wide rights outside South Africa. In contrast to Unogumbe, Umphefumlo can be bought internationally on DVD, and ARTE broadcast the film in France and in Germany. While U-Carmen had successful screenings with thousands of cinemagoers in Khayelitsha and in other South African townships in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape with ticket prices of only R10 (just under £1 Sterling or about US $1.50; see Dubowski 2005), Isango Ensemble announced that Unogumbe and Umphefumlo would be broadcast in South Africa, but it seems as if only Umphefumlo was screened on television, and then only once in 2016 (see van Niekerk 2019). That suggests that the intention of bringing these filmic opera adaptations to audiences in their cultural contexts was not fulfilled (see Filmcontact 2015), a conclusion in line with Dornford-May’s statement that the Isango Ensemble wants to change the world’s perception of South Africa (Dornford-May 2019) even if it does not adequately address the audience in the townships. Pauline Malefane acknowledges that the reception of the performances of the Isango Ensemble has been less positive in South Africa than in the UK and other countries, where their performances were praised and they regularly received standing ovations (see Malefane 2019). Several reviews in South African newspapers over the years have questioned which audiences the productions were made for. Chris Thurman (Cape Times), for example, asks whether the UK’s enthusiasm has something ‘to do

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with a taste for the “exotic”’ (Thurman 2012: 73). And Wilhelm Snyman (Cape Times) comments as follows on The Mysteries: Many a cliche [sic] about Africa is there – along the lines of: ‘The happy natives, they have such sense of rhythm, don’t they.’ Maybe this show is what they need in London to lift the recession blues, but it is clear in the conception of this show that it does have a particular audience in mind, with little thought going beyond the obvious […] a further entrenchment of a first world view of Africa takes place. (Snyman 2009: 7)

Snyman’s remarks speaks to what Ronald Radano and Philip V. Bohlman write in their introduction to Music and the Racial Imagination: [M]usic contributes substantially to the vocabularies used to construct race. The putative inseparability of dance and music in the African diaspora is an obvious case in which music participates in the construction of race. The metaphysical essence of “African music” is, therefore, physical and bodily. (Radano & Bohlman 2000: 7)

While it is more often used in their staged productions, Uno­ gumbe, in particular, is open for critique in this regard in its use of ‘traditional African songs’ display of dancing singers (as can be seen at the end of the film). Not only the Isango Ensemble, but also Cape Town Opera fund their productions in South Africa by performing over­seas where the contract fees are much higher. In 2016, Cape Town Opera was heavily criticised for this strategy, as its implementation entailed that singers were only paid the South African standard salary, and not the actual overseas fee. Apart from employment inequities, the resultant market­ing strategy has also led to questions pertaining to which audiences are served by the production aesthetics. The decision has to be considered, however, in the light of the troubled financial situation faced by opera companies in South Africa (see van der Hoven in this volume). As the funding situation is closely entangled with politics, an achievement of the international success of the Isango Ensemble has been ‘to counter “Afro-pessimism”’ in South Africa (Davies & Davies 2012: 63), which can be seen in reactions to their work. The then Minister of Arts and Culture, Pallo Jordan, is frequently quoted for his remark on opera in 2000 in which

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he asked: ‘What’s wrong with the way that Africans sing? Why should you teach them to sing like Italians? To make them into imitation whites – and poor imitations as well? […] Why are we borrowing from Bizet?’ (quoted from Davies & Dovey 2010: 40). However, he said that the film U-Carmen ‘had done South Africa proud and that it was made in Xhosa was yet another milestone in language equity’ (Mtyala 2005: 1). The former President, Thabo Mbeki, who is well-known for his politics of ‘African Renaissance’, in which he was also very supportive of the opera genre, expressed the wish that the film be screened at the South African parliament (Davies & Dovey 2010: 40). The collaboration with the famous Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation for Umphefumlo and a screening which Tutu attended, also con­tri­buted to a changed perception of South African opera produc­tions. Clearly, then, the Isango Ensemble’s ‘indigenized’ perform­ances and film adaptations have been deemed important contri­b­utions to creating a new symbolic role for opera in South Africa and globally. As ‘indigenous’ opera adaptations, these films reflect cur­ rent challenges to South African opera production and give possible explanations as to why a successful new bloom­ing of ‘indigenous’ contemporary opera is evident, even while opera is simultaneously deemed to be an institu­tion in crisis. World-wide, ‘indigenous’ operas mostly represent minorities, but it is important to keep in mind that in South Africa they actually represent the majority of people in the country who, as an opera audience, are unfortunately still the minority (see van der Hoven in this volume). For Malefane the films also fulfil a different purpose, namely as important documentations of the achievements of black singers (Malefane 2019). In South Africa the legacy of apartheid is still felt, and film and opera have been domi­nated historically by white men. While elements of their staged productions can be perceived as ‘exotic’ and therefore as addressing a non-South African audience, the films can still be seen as evidence of black empowerment, which in the last decades has acquired a new role in South African opera productions. This has been especially true since Dyantyis joined the company in 2006 and started to re-arrange its scores. It is critical for the transformation of content and production that the Isango Ensemble brings together

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creative voices of different races and genders. As has been noted, identity politics and self-representation revolve around attempts to interrogate ‘who speaks, when, how, and in whose name’ (Shohat & Stam 2014: 342). The film adaptations are relevant examples of black empower­ment through their ‘indigenization’, as they not only enable black voices to tell international audiences stories that are imbued with their own experiences and are commentary on pressing South African issues, but also communicate the fact that little has changed since 1994 in the living conditions and daily lives of those in Khayelitsha and other townships.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lena van der Hoven wishes to acknowledge the support of the Young Scholars’ Programme of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities for her Habilita­ tion project ‘Transforming South African Opera (1994–2018) – The impact of Democracy on an “elite artform”’.

NOTES 1 As ‘Breathe’ is the English translation of ‘Umphefumlo’ the authors have only used a short title here and in the following, as well as the short title of U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha. 2 For an academic historiography of these complex transformation processes see www.blackoperaresearch.net. 3 The Spier Wine estate was established in 1692 in the Stellenbosch region of the Western Cape. They support local visual and performing artists. The familyowned group includes the wine estate, Spier Films, food franchises and insurance companies. The Spier estate has an open-air amphitheater where, among others, opera productions are staged. 4 For an elaborated account of the history of the Isango Ensemble and its political and controversial links, see Davies & Davies 2012: 59ff. 5 Veronika Baxter and Michele Tameris point to the irony of problematising the current epidemic situation of tuberculosis in South Africa through La Bohème as the opera genre as well as the disease were both brought from Europe to South Africa (Baxter & Tameris 2017: 101). 6 Special thanks to Mimi Makapela and Neo Muyanga, who helped to translate and identify the songs. 7 This was the case, for example, with Enoch, Prophet of God by the white South Africans Michael Williams (writer/director and later Director of Cape Town Opera) and Roelof Temmingh (composer), which inspired the headline ‘first full-scale African opera is taking shape’ (Cape Times 1994). See Thomas M.

74  Lena van der Hoven & Liani Maasdorp Pooley’s article ‘“Never the Twain Shall Meet”: Africanist Art Music and the End of Apartheid’ for further context on how composing ‘Africanist’ art music became a strategy for white composers to survive ‘rapidly declining institutional and political support’ (2010: 45). But it also has further complexity: Achille Mbembe points out that we need to find new answers to who is ‘African’ (Mbembe 2016: 281). 8 For U-Carmen we know that some men from Khayelitsha were employed to build the set at Spier Estate as well as 1,200 extras (Peters 2005). 9 Singing the hymn in English also allows a Western audience an easier start in terms of understanding and getting settled in the story. 10 When van der Hoven asked to see the scores of Unogumbe and Umphefumlo, she was told that Dyantyis had not written down anything about his arrangement. Similarly, the Isango Ensemble could not provide van der Hoven with any material. The analysis is therefore based on a comparison of the film materials and Britten and Puccini’s scores.

REFERENCES Abbate, Carolyn and Roger Parker (2015), A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years. London: Penguin Books. André, Naomi (2018), Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. August, Tyrone (2009), ‘A Mysterious Invitation to Step Outside Our Comfort Zones’, Cape Times, 19 June: 8. Balme, Christopher (2008), ‘Surrogate Stages: Theatre, Performance and the Challenge of New Media’, Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, vol. 13, no. 2: 80–91. Baxter, Veronica and Michele Tameris (2017), ‘Essay – Tuberculosis: The Forgotten Plague’. In Applied Theatre: Performing Health and Wellbeing, Veronica Baxter and Katherine E. Low (eds). London: Bloomsbury Publishing: 99–110. Britten, Benjamin (1958a), Noye’s Fludde, Opus 59, Production Notes. Mainz: Boosey & Hawkes. —— (1958b), Noye’s Fludde, Opus 59, Full Score. London: Hawkes & Son. Cape Times (1994), ‘First full-scale African Opera is Taking Shape’, 13 June: 4. Chattaway, Peter (2014), ‘Drunk Husband and Environmental Issues: A Brief Note on the South African Adaptation of Britten’s Noah Opera’, Patheos, 5 April, www. patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/04/drunk-husbands-and-enviornmentalissues-a-brief-note-on-the-south-african-adaptation-of-brittens-noah-opera. html (accessed 13 August 2019). Davies, James and Lindiwe Dovey (2010), ‘Bizet in Khayelitsha: U-Carmen eKhayelitsha as Audio-visual Transculturation’, Journal of African Media Studies, vol. 2, no. 1: 39–53. Davies, Sheila Boniface and James Davies (2012), ‘“So Take This Magic Flute and Blow. It Will Protect Us As We Go”: Impempe Yomlingo (2007–11) and South Africa’s Ongoing Transition’, The Opera Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1: 54–71. Dornford-May, Mark (2019), interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 5 April, Caen, in person, transcribed by Mimi Makapela.

Black Empowerment in Unogumbe and Breathe – Umphefumlo  75 Dyantyis, Mandisi (2017), interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 26 April, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Mimi Makapela. Dubowski, Sandi (2005), ‘Singing the Changes’, Weekly Mail & Guardian, 19 May: 1. DuQuesnay, Ian M. le M. (1979), ‘From Polyphemus to Corydon: Virgil, Eclogue 2 and the Idylls of Theocritus’. In Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, David West and Tony Woodman (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 35–69. FilmContact (2015), ‘Isango Ensemble’s Breathe Umphefumlo in Official Selection Berlin 2015’, 29 January, www.filmcontact.com/news/south-africa/isangoensembles-breathe-umphefumlo-official-selection-berlin-2015 (accessed 5 July 2019). Giere, Samuel D. (2016), ‘Mark Dornford-May: Transposing the Classic’. In The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of the Bible and its Reception in Film: Part 1, Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.). Berlin: De Gruyter: 721–8. Gobbato, Angelo (2018), A Passion for Opera. Auckland Park, South Africa: Staging Post. Hilton, Christopher (2019), from Britten-Pears Foundation, personal e-mail, 29 August. Hutcheon, Linda and Michael Hutcheon (1996), Opera: Desire, Disease, Death. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hutcheon, Linda (2006), A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge. Isango Ensemble (2019), https://isangoensemble.co.za (accessed 2 August 2019). Karantonis, Pamela and Dylan Robinson (2011), Opera Indigene: Re/presenting First Nations and Indigenous Cultures. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate. Le May, Jean (2000), ‘Spier Hits a False Note with Artists: Plan to “Dovetail” Productions with UK Company Angers W Cape Musicians, Singers’, Saturday Weekend Argus, 29 July: 8. Malefane, Pauline (2019), interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 24 May, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Mimi Makapela. Mbembe, Achille (2015), ‘Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive’, https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20 Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20 Archive.pdf (accessed 29 July 2019). Mbembe, Achille (2016) transl. Christine Pries, Ausgang aus der langen Nacht: Versuch über ein entkolonisiertes Afrika. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Mtyala, Quinton (2005), ‘Winning Golden Bear “Like a Dream”’, Cape Times, 21 February: 1. Muller, Wayne (2018), A Reception History of Opera in Cape Town: Tracing the Development of a Distinctly South African Operatic Aesthetic (1985–2015). PhD thesis, Stellenbosch University, https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/105193. Nicholson, Zara (2011), ‘Contracts in Question: SA Artists Unhappy with Film Director’, Cape Times, 12 April: 6. Nwosu, Chijioke O. and Catherine Ndinda (2018), ‘Female Household Headship and Poverty’. In South Africa: An Employment-based Analysis. ERSA working paper 761, August 2018: Economic research South Africa, https://econrsa.org/ system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_761.pdf (accessed 9 July 2019). Operabase (n.d.), www.operabase.com (accessed 6 August 2019). Peters, Melanie (2005), ‘From the Side of the Road to Film Sets and Opera’, Saturday Weekend Argus, 2 April: 19.

76  Lena van der Hoven & Liani Maasdorp Pooley, Thomas M. (2010), ‘“Never the Twain Shall Meet”: Africanist Art Music and the End of Apartheid’, South African Music Studies, vols 30–31, no. 1: 45–69. Radano, Ronald and Philip Vilas Bohlman (2000), ‘Introduction: Music and Race, Their Past, Their Presence’. In Music and the Racial Imagination, Ronald Radano and Philip Vilas Bohlman (eds). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1–53. Riva, Nepomuk (2019), ‘The Invention of African Art Music: Analyzing EuropeanAfrican Classical Cross-over Projects’. In Music Practices Across Borders: (E)Valuating Space, Diversity, and Exchange, Glaucia Peres da Silva and Konstantin Hondros (eds). Bielefeld: Transcript: 127–50. Roos, Hilde (2010), Opera Production in the Western Cape: Strategies in Search of Indigenization. PhD thesis, Stellenbosch University, https://core.ac.uk/ download/pdf/37325029.pdf. Ruf, Wolfgang (2016), ‘Art. Musiktheater, Kompositionen, Definition’. In Musik und Geschichte und Gegenwart, Laurenz Lütteken (ed.). Kassel, Stuttgart, New York, www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/13029 (accessed 6 August 2019). Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam (2014), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 2nd edn. London, New York: Routledge. Snyman, Wilhelm (2009), ‘Sops to Potential London Audiences Jar: An African Take on the Bible Story’, Cape Times, 23 June: 7. Somma, Donato (2016), ‘“Just Say the Words”: An Operatic Rendering of Winnie’, African Studies, vol. 75, no. 1: 1–9. South African Government (1996), Arts and Culture White Paper, 4 June, www. gov.za/documents/arts-and-culture-white-paper (accessed 9 April 2018). Statistics South Africa (2012), Census 2011: Census in brief, www.statssa.gov.za/ census/census_2011/census_products/Census_2011_Census_in_brief.pdf (accessed 9 July 2019). Thurman, Chris (2012), ‘The Play’s the Thing: What Defines a “South African” or “British” Play? Does it Really Matter?’ Financial Mail, 10 August: 73. The Presidency Republic of South Africa (n.d.), ‘Walter Rubusana (1858– 1936)’, http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/walterrubusana-1858-1936 (accessed 26 July 2019). van Niekerk, Nicola (2019), from kyNET, personal e-mail, 5 November. FILMOGRAPHY Breathe – Umphefumlo (2015), [DVD] directed by Mark Dornford-May. South Africa: Advantage Entertainment, Isango Ensemble. U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (2005), [DVD] directed by Mark Dornford-May. South Africa: Spier Films. Unogumbe (2013), [screener] directed by Mark Dornford-May. UK: Film and Music Entertainment, Isango Ensemble.

‘We can’t let politics define the arts’ Interviews with South African Opera Singers

LENA VAN DER HOVEN

Introduction When sopranos Pretty Yende (b. 1985) and Pumeza Matshikiza (b. 1979) became world-leading opera singers, international press and media widely marketed their extraordinary careers as stories ‘From Township to Opera House’, in line with the eponymous video-clip from Matshikiza’s record label (see Decca 2013). The narrative of South African opera singers from disadvantaged communities who have gained fame might also be familiar to non-opera-experts. In 2019, a video of Durban Uber-driver, Menzi Mngoma, who was filmed by a customer singing opera arias while driving, became a social-media sensation. When Mngoma eventually received a job at Cape Town Opera house, even the BBC reported on his story (Allie 2019; Genth 2019; Royer 2019). Although South African opera talent and the local popularity of the genre still seem to intrigue the international media, the socio-political situation for opera in the country is much more complicated than those stories suggest. Politics has always influenced South African opera productions – during and after apartheid (1948–94). As a predominantly white pursuit, opera was a symbol of segregation and oppression during apartheid and an instrument used to display the idea of white cultural supremacy. Apartheid’s legacy can still be traced in the troubled funding situation, for example, or in the problems of developing a non-white audience: important aspects which shape the conditions of South African opera productions today. Furthermore, the current role of opera becomes more compli­ 77

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cated when seen as a colonial heritage of Western musical idioms. Before the transition to democracy the main opera houses were state-funded through the four existing Performing Arts Councils (PACs). These subsidies were phased out near the millennium, leading to a precarious new funding situation for most companies. Cape Town Opera remains the only opera company with a yearround programme. Part of its survival strategy involves overseas performances, which generate revenues that are then used to finance the few productions in South Africa. A number of smaller non-profit organisations have also produced operas, but their limited budgets only allow for the occasional staging of fulllength operas as these are very expensive. While the opera studies programme at Cape Town Opera School (UCT) is booming, with many talented black students taking the course, the South African opera market cannot meet the demand for jobs. Only a few opera singers in South Africa can solely live off their artistic engagements. Despite these financial challenges, some independent opera companies have achieved important milestones in the effort to change the connotation(s) of opera in the new democ­racy. Nationbuilding has become one of the fore­most concerns. Many new opera compositions are about historical figures such as Nelson or Winnie Mandela, as is the noteworthy opera Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu (2002), about a historical Zulu princess who was a singer, composer and musician. Commissioned by the company Opera Africa, Princess Magogo was not only sung by black singers, but was also deeply steeped in Zulu culture. Composed by Mzilikazi Khumalo, the music was influenced by traditional Zulu music, with the libretto written by Themba Msimang in Zulu. While the number of black opera singers is constantly rising, the country still needs more black opera directors and black opera composers, such as Bongani Ndodana-Breen (Winnie: The Opera) and Neo Muyanga (Heart of Redness), whose contribution opens this present volume. Most companies share similar aims. They want to promote opera as an artform, support and develop young talented local singers and they wish to develop new audiences by changing the accessibility to opera. The latter can include both structural changes, such as using venues outside tradi­tional theatres in less

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advantaged communities, and aesthetic changes to help audiences identify with opera and tell their own story. This can be done through a production’s modernisation using a South African setting, the translation of the libretto into one of the 11 national languages, musical arrangements with traditional South African music and/or instruments, or even a new composition. This chapter aims to explore the current situation of opera production in South Africa through the eyes of local practitioners. Focusing, among other issues, on the difficult working situation for opera singers and the role of opera in society and politics, it does so through selected excerpts from semi-structured interviews with three South African opera singers of different generations, gender and background who have all had outstanding international careers: tenor Kobie van Rensburg (b. 1969), soprano Pauline Malefane (b. 1976) and bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana (b. 1984).1 Musa Ngqungwana, who received critical acclaim for his leading roles at the Glimmerglass Festival (USA), the Los Angeles Opera and the English National Opera, among others, is the youngest of the three interviewees. He wrote of ‘[h]aving grown up in a complicated system of segregation in South Africa, then finding myself introduced to – and thriving in – an opulent art form that clashed with my impoverished upbringing’. Subsequently he was motivated to write his memoir Odyssey of an African Opera Singer, about his ‘unusual journey’ (Ngqungwana, 2018: ix, see Book Reviews). Born and bred in Port Elisabeth, Ngqungwana initially studied at the University of Cape Town Opera School (UCT). After graduating with Honours in Performance from UCT he received a grant to study in Philadelphia at the prestigious Academy of Vocal Arts and left South Africa for further training. He also set out to seek better opportunities, since those in South Africa were limited. A milestone in his career came in 2013 when he was the Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (USA). I asked Ngqungwana, who lives in the US today, if he still sometimes performs in South Africa. Ngqunwana replied in a personal e-mail: Not as much as I’d love to! There are fewer opportunities to perform and work in the opera industry in South Africa than in the United States and Europe. Moreover, the fees South African companies can afford are lower than those in Europe and the United States. This

80  Lena van der Hoven creates challenges, especially when you have so many singers based in South Africa who need whatever they can get just to survive. (Ngqunwana 2019)

The second interviewee, Pauline Malefane, achieved inter­ national acclaim in leading roles as part of the South African theatre company Isango Ensemble, of which she is the co-founder and co-Music Director, and its associated ensembles. One of these was Dimpho Di Kopane, which she joined in 2000. At the time it was directed by her British husband Mark Dornford-May, the Director and co-founder of Isango Ensemble, which developed in 2010 from Isango Portobello. Most stage productions and film operas of Isango Ensemble’s repertoire derived from the Western theatre canon and are re-imagined in a township or other South African setting. Malefane is especially famous for playing the role of Carmen in their film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005) which won a Golden Bear at the German International Film Festival Berlinale. Having herself grown up in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, she studied, like Ngqungwana, at the University of Cape Town (UCT) where she currently holds a teaching position. With the touring company she has not only performed on famous world stages in Europe (such as London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Royal Albert Hall and the Young Vic and Berlin’s Philharmonie), as well as New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore, but also still lives and performs regularly in Cape Town. Kobie van Rensburg is not only a celebrated singer but also a stage director of operas. After studying at the North-West University in South Africa, and winning the concert section of the 1994 International Singing Competition of the University of South Africa (UNISA), he joined the Munich Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Germany. During his singing career he has held, among others, guest engagements at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Berlin State Opera, the Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, and at the Opéra National du Rhin and Teatro Real in Madrid. Even though van Rensburg today lives in Germany, he is still regularly engaged in work in South Africa. Between 2003 and 2010 he was a Guest Professor of Music at North-West University in Potchefstroom; and he still teaches masterclasses in singing and

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historical performance practice in South Africa, such as at the Voices of South Africa International Opera Singing Competition 2018. Furthermore, he founded the Early Music Forum Africa and directed the first South African production of an opera by Georg Friedrich Händel in 2015. Since 2005 he has been Director of the non-profit organisation Umculo Opera Incubator, which develops opera in underprivileged communities in South Africa (see Agentur Milankov 2019). With their production Romeo’s Passion, which premiered in 2018 in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, Umculo won the International Opera Awards 2019 in the category Education & Outreach, the Classical Next Innovation Award 2019 and the Young Audiences Music Awards 2019.

Interviews I began asking about the recent situation, in which another independent opera company, the Gauteng Opera in Johannesburg, had just closed in 2019 after struggling for a period of time to receive funding. Gauteng Opera developed in 2013 from the famous Black Tie Ensemble (established in 1999), then known as BTE VO1SS. In the view of the Gauteng Opera founders, Black Ties had by then ‘drifted away from their core function – to sing opera’ (De Beer 2013: 5). With the new company, they had hoped to develop a new opera audience, as expressed in their slogan ‘Opera for Everyone’. They also wished ‘to be a worldclass training academy that produces voices for the future’ (5). Do you still observe the current state of opera in South Africa? If so, what is your view on the current situation of opera production in South Africa, especially given the context of the ‘Gauteng Opera’ becoming just the latest opera company to be shut down? M. Ngqunwana: Yes, I do. Several singers discussed this dilemma with me, and the consensus was that for opera to survive and once again flourish in South Africa, the government would have to get involved. Much like the past governments of the ’60s to the early ’90s, there would have to be civic involvement to re-start the

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programs of the Arts Councils across the country, in addition to a significant investment in the education, training and employment of performers and educators. P. Malefane: I think it’s beyond sad. I can’t put it into words. It’s unfortunate, you know, with all the talent and resources that we have […]. It’s financial, obviously, but why? There’s lots of money out there. Where is the Minister of Arts and Education, Arts and Culture that we fall under? K. v. Rensburg: Yes, I have mixed feelings. It’s not just in South Africa, in Europe I also often get Facebook requests and mails from somebody saying ‘save the opera’ here and there, save that. When opera needs saving from the outside, we are doing something basically wrong. I think that we need to stop thinking that it’s an external problem: it is an internal problem. We are not making opera relevant enough. We are not making the politicians and the public say ‘this is such a wonderful thing in our lives and we need more of it’. That’s the approach that I would like to take. I cannot control external factors like the rand and its current exchange rate. I can however influence how I look at the predicaments. So I want to say, with all respect to the efforts of Gauteng Opera, the way in which they approached making opera is something which I do not consider the future of opera, and therefore I was not extremely surprised when they had difficulties. It seemed to me as though they were trying to marry the aesthetics of a past era with a not-yet-formed middle-class public, and they catered in fact to a public which is retrospective. Old white people is not the audience I would like to do opera for in South Africa. And I would have to devise a programme which to my mind seems different from the programme that, for example, Gauteng Opera planned to get to that type of public. I am very glad that I did not have the problems of running a full-time opera company in South Africa, [as it] means that you have to think outside of the box. I am not saying I have solutions for the issue, but I am saying that I don’t necessarily see the writing is on the wall for opera as an art form, simply because companies like Gauteng Opera have difficulties. Also, Cape Town Opera – as far as I am concerned – is missing opportunities where they could serve the South

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African community in different ways. But, if you look at opera houses throughout the world, board structures are conservative, board structures are risk-averse and that makes it difficult. We are living in interesting times. For example, that La Scala [Milan] have to rethink their budgeting in the last couple of days because now there is a moral conscience as to where your budgeting is coming from, I find that’s fantastic and interesting. And I find that is the type of approach that one should have to do opera in South Africa as well. What I find really sad is that South African communities and South African singers have no opportunities. We try our humble best at Umculo to give opportunities and to try and help, but it is a small drop on a very, very hot surface. Perhaps I could put it together in a sentence and say that if we see the world of opera with its widest possibilities and more towards the sense of what you said in Germany is called Musiktheater, it gives us opportunities. If opera is restricted to bel canto repertoire [the Italian vocal style of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries], which requires a huge orchestra and a specific stage history linked to its libretto, that is quite constricting. If we can get away from that, as only that being seen as opera, we have lots of opportunities for opera to grow and to link up with the natural community communication form of choir singing. How important do you think opera is as a genre in today’s cultural life in South Africa? M. Ngqunwana: Extremely important because opera, as a medium to tell a story, transcends race and class. Much like Puccini and the composers of the Verismo style and era, South Africa has so many stories waiting to be told. Our diverse cultures and music have enough material to supply libretti and sources of musical compositions. [The Verismo style developed in the 1870s from Italian literature and dealt with contemporary reality. Famous com­posi­tions of the style are, e.g. Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Jules Massenet’s La ° and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.] Navarraise, Leoš Janáˇcek’s Jenufa P. Malefane: It’s very important, and the way we perceive it and the way we teach it to our students as well. It is not about the

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fact that opera originated in Europe; we have gone past that now. That’s finished. It’s gone. It’s ours too now. We have laid claim to it. We [the Isango Ensemble] have laid claim to it in a different way to what Cape Town Opera is doing; and there is no right and there is no wrong. Isango chooses stories that we can relate to: La Bohème: TB, HIV; Magic Flute: reconciliation; Carmen: a story about a woman who is trying to survive in a very male-dominated society, which it still is. [See van der Hoven and Maasdorp in this volume.] Do you think that the young South African and global discussion about opera being ‘Eurocentric’, ‘ethno­centric’, ‘indigenous’ or ‘transcultural’ is important and, if so, why? M. Ngqunwana: If opera is to thrive again in South Africa, then having a comprehensive understanding of these terms might sway the government to stop viewing opera as Eurocentric, but rather an art medium where stories of Kings Ngqika, Moshoeshoe and Shaka, etc., could be told in our languages. The Russians and Czechs have done it, and so have the English and the Americans, etc. Perhaps, then they could be moved to fund it. Do you think that opera can be a potential site for political activism, critical inquiry or social change in and outside South Africa? M. Ngqunwana: Verdi did it with his early operas, and we now have even more things to critique and talk about, including immigra­tion, LGBTQI issues, alt-right and neo-Nazis, former liberators-turned-dictators, bi-racial romance, the internet, etc. P. Malefane: You could look into a story in a way that makes sense to you. If you are, for example, political, you will find something political about a story; if you are religious you will find something religious about a story […] that’s what Isango does, that every person that comes in to watch one of their operas […] it doesn’t matter if you are young, you are old, you are political, you are not, you are religious, you are not. But there is something for everybody. Where I get quite upset is when I feel that politics is part of everything, but we can’t let politics define the arts.

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K. v. Rensburg: I think it can be many levels. One of the problems that post-apartheid South Africans face is respect; respect for yourself and for people around you. The legacy of apartheid was hatred and deep divisions, and still today [this is] casting long shadows in every aspect of South African communities. [It has] also left a legacy of, I would say, violence and general disrespect for the integrity of your neighbour and of his cattle and whatever he has. Music makes you look into your own soul and then share. And in sharing we are touching on values that are in Africa actually very well ensconced in the idea of Ubuntu. The idea of sharing is still present in indigenous law and also in the indigenous practices of people living in close-knit societies, which is very prevalent. And I see a direct connection to that with empowering people to, first of all, realise that they can express themselves. And in that wanting to express themselves and share with fellow human beings, greater respect, greater understanding is being somehow grown and garnered. In our last project that I did for Umculo, the St John’s Passion, this was really evident. The message of the St John’s Passion as an answer to violence in South African society was something that the community in which we set up the project really took to. It was a wonderful experience for me to see how lives – indeed even in the three weeks that we rehearsed – got changed. People from the community always wanted to come just to hear what’s going on with the rehearsal, not only because they knew they would get a nice cup of soup as well. But small children in the orphanage of the church were singing ‘Wir haben ein Gesetz’ [chorus 21f, free translation: ‘We have a law’] and they didn’t really know what the text meant. But they were having a great time and they knew that something was happening in the church where people of very different backgrounds came together and they shared something; and that shared idea, the shared vision in a country like South Africa with such a divisive background I find it to be very important. Music is indeed a universal language. It’s not just a cliché. It is a universal language, where people can cross other barriers – social barriers. And in South Africa we have no public transport for example where people share public transport from different communities. Rich people travel in cars, poor people travel in minibus taxis and there’s not a lot of mixing and mingling. I always say that, in the past, if South Africa had a more or a better developed

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public transport, apartheid would have never held as long as it did. But yes, it’s one of the things where it, at least, gives people an intersection in their lives with people that they normally would not meet and not socialise with. Making music together is a great way of establishing some form of rapport. Would you say that a link between opera and power exists? And do you think that the active agents of opera culture have changed in South Africa? M. Ngqunwana: Yes, to a certain extent. When opera thrived in the apartheid era, it was only meant to benefit the white performers and a few people of colour whom the government allowed to perform in some productions. But many of the black citizens were not allowed to attend or perform. When the new government of the ANC took over, they reversed many of those policies. In the process, the arts suffered even though most performers are black. For the government, the dichotomy between many performers being black and the small remaining companies being run by white stakeholders poses a challenge. Whether it is an emotional, rational or moral challenge, that is subject to interpretation. The musicologist Naomi André sees new South African opera productions as a site of black empowerment and highlights the importance of these new representations. How would you evaluate this situation? M. Ngqunwana: I agree, but we could go further and tell stories of regular people too (just like Verdi could too!) There’s only so much we can compose about Nelson Mandela and other political activists. The struggle for equality was ultimately won because regular people helped to bring about change. There’s only so much we can talk about beyond politics. K. v. Rensburg: As a white South African and especially somebody that grew up in apartheid, I am very loath to want to appropriate the position of anybody else. I would look forward to a South Africa in which your race makes absolutely no difference to what your possibilities and your aspirations can be. The fact, however, is that

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that’s not the case. And I try to find projects in which we especially give black singers and black communities access, where before there had not been any access. But in the same way I think that if we want to have a post-apartheid South Africa that works well, it should stay away from the idea of pigeonholing and typecasting. It seems to me as if that is something that would need to be addressed if an idea of, for example, black opera is formed. How do you go about incorporating minorities into your form of communication? And that, in South Africa, is an interesting situation: that people who have been oppressed for many years are the majority, and not the minority. Often oppression and minority seem to be linked in some way. In South Africa, it is not the case. And therefore it can be extremely interesting what is going to develop there. I am looking forward to good opera. And good opera should empower everybody to tell their story. It should empower people thorough listening – have a beautiful connection to their inner self through the music, and connection to everybody that they share the hearing experience with. In that sense I would be happy if future opera would develop through a situation where your race has no casting influence and your race will not end on your access and your possibilities. But we are long way from that in South Africa. To reach that point I, from my perspective, being a white person working in South Africa, try to look at objective criteria that are concerned with what people are facing within their everyday lives, and to make stories that are relevant for that. Therefore we’ve chosen things like for example rape in Schande [Shame: a scenic evening of Schubert songs for four singers, piano and video]. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Lamento [a multi-media pastiche opera based on madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi] and the idea of violence in [Johann Sebastian Bach’s] St John’s Passion. Those are things inherent to South African communities, not just black South African communities, but predominantly. We are trying to find that balance in South African society, trying to also start dialogue on levels where the dialogue has been lacking. P. Malefane: Well, I don’t want to see myself on stage as just representing black opera. I want to see myself as representing opera. That’s the fundamental part of it for me. It does happen that I am black, and it does happen that in my history black people weren’t

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allowed to build stages or to sing opera, but for me that has shaped the future. People like Virginia Davids, Sidwell Hartman, may his soul rest in peace, have helped all of us to be able now to say: ‘We’re going to France, we’re going to Germany, we’re going to America to perform’. And some of them, especially Virginia, stayed back because she believed in being South African and what it stood for. And others went out. We can’t all go away, we can’t all stay here, but for me it’s not about black opera or white opera. Seriously, I understand and I acknowledge it and I think they are writing well, but for me that’s not important, honestly not important, because if I do that then I promote the fact that I should just be doing Treemonisha [an opera by African American composer Scott Joplin, 1911] or I should just be doing Porgy and Bess. During my interview with Pauline Malefane we started talking about different transformation processes that South African opera productions and companies have been going through since the transition to democracy. In this context she started to talk about the need to ‘make opera appeal to everybody’, which very much resonates with van Rensburg’s answer to the first question, that opera needs to be made relevant again. P. Malefane: But, most importantly, people need to transform here. The way people think is so conservative; sometimes is just sickening […]. It’s difficult to fill the opera houses, so I would like the opera houses full, but as well I don’t want to be aware of how many black people there are in the auditorium or how many white people are there. I just want to go in there and see an audience that represents the community, that represents South Africa […]. Nothing is impossible if you have a vision. I think what we are lacking at the moment is vision […]. It is about developing the opera and putting it in a in a place where everyone can say: ‘I want to go to and see the opera’ […]. When there’s jazz in town, it’s buzzing and I would have thought it’s mostly black people that attend. Maybe I’m wrong, but there’s lots of black people from different backgrounds – so it is a way. What we need to look at is how we make opera appeal to everybody. If you make people feel comfortable, or present an opera in a way that people want to see it […] people will find a way

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of getting themselves into town when they want to. Yes, you can have buses coming from the township for those people who can’t. Mark [Dornford-May] did that at Spier, he used to have buses in Khayelitsha, he used to have buses in Gugulethu, he used to have buses in Langa that bussed people into Stellenbosch to come and see the shows. And all they needed to do is to pay what they can […]. If you pay even fifty cents towards it, it’s a different thing than a free ticket […]. There’s a sense of appreciation and acknowledgement. There is respect that the arts is very important.

NOTE 1 Musa Ngqungwana kindly answered my interview questions in written form, in consultation with his publicist. The other interviews were conducted live and later transcribed. Ngqungwana’s answers were therefore disproportionally shorter than those of the other interviewees.

REFERENCES Agentur Milankov (2019), Kobie van Rensburg: Regisseur, www.agenturmilankov. com/regisseure/kobie-van-rensburg (accessed 20 August 2019). Allie, Mohammed (2019), ‘The South African Uber Driving Singing His Way to Opera Fame’, BBC, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48854973 (accessed 19 August 2019). De Beer, Diane (2013), ‘Access all Arias with Gauteng Opera’, The Star, 18 October: 5. Decca (2013), ‘Pumeza Matshikiza: From Township to Opera House’, www. youtube.com/watch?v=EkLHrrSqSxM (accessed 19 August 2019). Genth, Jana (2019), ‘Menzi Mngomas Blitzkarriere: Vom Taxifahrer zum Opern­ sänger’, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/menzimngomas-blitzkarriere-vom-taxifahrer-zum-opernsaenger.2165.de.html? dram:article_id=453815 (accessed 19 August 2019). Malefane, Pauline (2019) interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 24 May, College of Music, Cape Town, in person, transcribed by Mimi Makapela. Ngqungwana, Musa (2018), Odyssey of an African Opera Singer. Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa. —— (2019) interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 8 May, written answers, authorised by Ngqungwana and his publicist. Royer, Florian (2019), Afrique du Sud: un chauffeur à la voix d’or, France Musique, https://francemusique.fr/musique-classique/le-chauffeur-a-la-voix-d-or-74807 (accessed 19 August 2019). van Rensburg, Kobie (2019) interviewed by Lena van der Hoven, 22 March, Skype, transcribed by Mimi Makapela.

Aida’s Legacy or De-/Colonising Music Theatre in Egypt The Example of the Cairo Opera House

NORA AMIN

A thumbnail history of Aida and the Cairo Opera House: Colon­ising Egyptian music theatre and early resistance Readers interested in the activities of the Cairo Opera House will find the following mission statement on the official website. The Cairo Opera House is a cultural landmark renowned for leadership, excellence and imagination. It has carved itself a significant place in the cultural landscape of Egypt and the Middle East. Its mission is to: • Provide first-class productions of ballet, operatic and sym­phonic works. • Encourage cooperation with other opera companies and orchestras. • Discover and develop the most talented young artists in Egypt. • Support learning, innovation and creativity. • Provide excellent venues, facilities and services to both artists and the audience. With its appealing mix of high-quality cultural events and its unique venues and state-of-the-art facilities the Cairo Opera House is exceptionally well-suited to fulfill its mission and be-come [sic] a symbol of art and culture in Egypt and the world. (Cairo Opera House n.d.)

While this mission was not shared online when I started working at the Cairo Opera House in 1993 as a founding member of and dancer with the Cairo Modern Dance Com­pany, the message of Westernising1 the performing arts was already present and tangible in the sense of following certain canonised performance models 90

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considered to belong to the so-called ‘high culture’ of the global north. As a critic who can use her previous – and current – experience as a performing arts practitioner, I can look back at the history of the Cairo Opera House, and to the multiple resonances of operatic arts in Egypt and analyse the situation from a critical and decolonial perspective. I will start by tracing the history of the old Khedivial Opera House – established in 1869 and destroyed by a fire in 1971 – and its relation to coloniality, and provide the example of Sayed Darwish (1892–1923) as the pioneering Egyptian composer and musician who tried to create an Egyptian music theatre and Egyptian operettas during the 1920s. Then I will move on to the new Cairo Opera House – opened in 1988 – in relation to the regime of the fourth President of Egypt (1981–2011), Hosni Mubarak, and the political instrumentalisation of music theatre. I will conclude by interpreting this state control of the arts as a new form of coloniality executed by the political regime, which was gradually confronted by waves of opposition. These new counter forces included the movement of independent music which resulted in new forms of music theatre and performance which eventually replaced the centrality of the Cairo Opera and expanded the field of performance and spectatorship outside the control of state authority. I will also explain how this movement supported and accompanied the path towards the anti-government revolution of 25 January 2011 which eventually removed Mubarak. In 1971 the old Khedivial Royal Opera House (built under the supervision of an Italian architect and opened in 1869) was completely destroyed by a fire. Just over a century after its inauguration, this iconic building that had been commissioned by Khedive Ismail (1830–1895) in an attempt to Westernise Egyptian arts was totally burned down (see Balme 2014). It took 18 years to build a new Opera House in a different district of Cairo: Zamalek. (Zamalek is an island considered to be an upper social class residential area with a geographical proximity to Tahrir Square, a major public place globally known for the 2011 political demonstrations. I will return to this location later.) The new Opera House was a gift from the Japanese government which considers Egypt a key player in the Middle East and, as such, sees the country as a vital part of its diplomacy in the region.2 In 1988 the

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Cairo Opera House was inaugurated by President Hosni Mubarak and his wife Suzan. Similarly to Khedive Ismail, Suzan Mubarak’s idea was to use the Cairo Opera House for the Westernisation of Egyptian performing arts culture. As a mastermind of cultural projects during Mubarak’s era, she therefore linked the building of an Opera House – by the Japanese government – to feeding Western operatic models to the Egyptian performing arts scene. Naming the Cairo Opera House the National Cultural Centre provided an institu­tional and politicised framing to which I will return below. The connection between the old Khedivial Royal Opera House and the new Cairo Opera House was Aida. For most Egyptians the word ‘opera’ specifically means Guiseppe Verdi’s Aida. Commissioned by Khedive Ismail for the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869, but not performed until 1871, Verdi’s opera was utilised by the Khedive for ‘a particular staging of Egypt’ (Bergeron 2002: 150). It was, and continues to be, the reference point for the average Egyptian understanding of opera. To the more sophisticated eye, however, another meaning of opera also became apparent: an artistic display of the regime’s ‘Westernised enlightenment’. Whether it was Ismail or Mubarak, the regime’s relation to opera and to opera houses seemed exactly the same. Only this time it was the Japanese who built it. A critical point that remains unconsidered is that the Egypt­ ian government gave the Cairo Opera House a secondary name that usually appears as part of its logo and in all of its publicity material: the above-mentioned title of The National Cultural Centre. The paradox inherent in giving the same place those two names as if they were synonymous invites a detailed analysis of meaning and significance in relation to Egypt’s cultural policy. On the one hand I see a paradox in naming one location as a ‘centre’ for the ‘nation’s culture’. While all modern Egyptian regimes have centralised the political and cultural life in Cairo, the so-called National Cultural Centre acts as a form of crowning of a policy of centralisation which prohibits any possibility of moving beyond the capital city. It facilitates a policy of cultural injustice by equating ‘Cairo’ and ‘National’, thus making a single city, albeit the capital, synonymous with the nation.

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On the other hand, associating the ‘Opera House’ with a ‘National Cultural Centre’ suggests that opera as a genre – and more specifically Western operatic arts – has become ‘National Egyptian Culture’, also expressed in the first line of its mission statement: ‘Provide first-class productions of ballet, operatic and symphonic works’. With this mission and naming policy, Mubarak’s regime launched a new era of ‘modernising’ Egyptian performing arts that was not so different from Khedive Ismail’s erstwhile initiative. We were again – and anew – in the times of Aida which, as Edward Said so poignantly remarks, was ‘not so much about but of imperial domination’ (1994: 114). The average Egyptian spectator knew very well that the Cairo Opera House would be a place for the elite, for the extravagantly rich and above all a place for the entourage of the President’s wife and her friend Farouk Hosny, the then Minister of Culture. As beautiful as it looked, the Cairo Opera House was inaccessible to the average citizen. For many it seemed like a fortress beyond infiltration, a place of authority and a place belonging to the authorities. The performances that were staged there were reserved for la crème de la société. A very clear demonstration of discrimination and division was taking place. The Cairo Opera House became the symbol of that divide, a division based on wealth and on the perceived connections to Western culture. However, every year the average citizen could watch Aida on national television. There came to be almost a specific season when it should be played, and when it should be attended by the Egyptian elite; the elite of the business economy, of the ruling political party, and of the Westernised upper class. Average Egyptians were astonished by the crazy expenditure lavished on international world-class opera singers to perform Aida. While the economic context of Egypt during the 1990s and until the revolution of 2011 was in continuous decline, Aida played on national television, thus exhibiting the regime’s corruption and the gigantic gap between the wealth of the ‘rulers’ and the poverty and oppression suffered by the ‘ruled’. The diamonds and real fur draped over the bodies of the rich did not differ much from the costumes and props presented in the opera itself. They were all part of a big performance: the performance of the regime’s control of the country’s wealth, and of Egypt’s projected culture

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(cf. Bergeron 2002). The opera performance functioned as a medium or ritual for any Egyptian regime to demonstrate ideas of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘civilisation’. As such it worked as a symbolic stamp of the ruling class’s authority. I experienced fellow Egyptians sitting at home and making jokes about this kind of art. As an Egyptian artist, critic and audience member I have observed this among family members and social circles since the first Aida broadcasts in the 1990s. For a population grounded in Egyptian-Arabic-Oriental music, Verdi’s music was hard to cope with. The style of singing was alien to many Egyptians, who are widely considered as belonging to a culture of profound music appreciation. For most it sounded like screaming; and the Italian lyrics did not make it any easier for them to understand. They thus used the only popular culture weapon that was legitimate at the time: irony. It seemed as if they were getting their own back at the corrupt regime by ridiculing its favourite type of music theatre, and as such it was an irony directed towards the political regime, towards the economic corruption and towards the hegemony of the West; in sum, an irony directed at diverse forms of coloniality. The opera performance thus became a performance of coloniality in the Egyptian popular imaginary. This situation is especially notable as in the history of the twentieth century, Egyptian music theatre attempts to re-root operatic art within an Egyptian cultural frame, both through translating roles and performing them in Arabic, or by creating new operas from scratch. The most iconic agent of change in the field of Egyptian music theatre was Sayed Darwish (1892–1923) (cf. Muhssin 2013). Not only did he further develop Egyptian and Arabic music, he also composed 26 Egyptian operettas that can be considered an Egyptian way of presenting opera. Among them are the, arguably, most comprehensive models Hoda (1920), Al-Ashar Al-Tayyeba (The Good Ten, 1921), Shehrazad (1920) and Cleopatra and Mark Anthony (1923) (see El-Kholy 2001; Egypt Today 2019). As Samha El-Kholy notes, ‘[h]is 26 operettas opened up new vistas for Egyptian music: the slow, repetitive, overornamented vocal style was replaced by a light, truly expressive manner, making apt use of the choir, and he introduced some (2001). spontaneous counterpoint in Shahrazad’

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Darwish was very much connected to the political resistance move­ment against British domination. He took an active part in the revolution of 1919. His political principles cannot be disconnected from his music creations, and El-Kholy con­cludes that ‘Darw-ısh’s operettas owed their immense popularity to their social and patriotic subjects, and their workers’ songs. The telling musical characterisation is essentially Egyptian and strongly reminiscent of folk music’ (2001). There is no exaggeration in naming him as the artist who revolutionised Egyptian music and connected it to the vigorous demands and protests of Egyptians today (see Fanack 2019). In his music theatre there was no divide between the music and songs created for cabaret performances, music theatre productions or for live singing in protests. Even though Darwish admired Verdi, his music seemed to reverse the false modernisation initiated by Verdi’s Aida. Instead, it created an Egyptian experience that carried the political discourse of the average citizen against a regime-ordered art which, symbolically, trans­lated into state re-colonisation. Darwish will always remain the most powerful evidence that music can decolonise, unite and revolutionise, even in the face of continuous interruption, manipulation and state control of consecutive dictatorial regimes. In this context, the iconic Egyptian female opera singer Rateeba El-Hefny (1931–2013) also needs to be mentioned, as her Arabic opera singing was one way of appropriating the form to her mother tongue and bridging the gap between Italian music, operatic singing and the general Egyptian public via the medium of the Arabic language. In 1961 El-Hefny sang the title role in an Arabic-language pro­duction of Franz Lehár’s operetta The Merry Widow, followed by her role in Verdi’s La Traviata in 1964, again sung in Arabic. And in 1970, just one year prior to the destruction of the Khedivial Royal Opera House, she again participated in an Arabic-language produc­ tion of Orfeo ed Euridice, an eighteenth-century opera by German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (cf. Hammond 2017: 31). As a woman, this appropriation metaphorically reversed the position of the female as traditionally inferior in a performance into one of power where language and identity are re-attributed and Egyptianness is reclaimed. It is of major importance that such a politically charged step was achieved by a woman, as it put her in a leadership position with regard to decolonising the

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Egyptian arts. In this sense, Rateeba El-Hefny can be considered a strategically active agent of change within the opera culture. Other agents of change are listed in a recent reference guide by Andrew Hammond (2017: 31). They include the composer of the first Arabic-language opera, The Two Kings (Beirut, 1927; now lost), the Lebanese Wadih Sabra. The first Egyptian opera was composed by the legendary Aziz El-Shawan, Antar (Cairo 1948), followed by Anas El-Wogood (written 1970, first performed in 1995), both taking place in historical contexts. In the following years, the Egyptian composer Sayed Awad presented Masra’ Cleopatra (The Death of Cleopatra) based on Ahmed Shawqi’s eponymous poetic play, with his fellow-countryman Kamel ElRemali later composing Hassan El-Basri (From One Thousand and One Nights). Finally, in 2009, Sherif Mohie El-Dine, then director of the Damanhour Opera House in lower Egypt, wrote an opera based on the famous novel by Naguib Mahfouz, Miramar, with a libretto by Egyptian poet Sayed Hegab (see Hammond 2017: 31). Despite these appropriations of opera and music theatre by Egyptian artists, Mubarak continued to use the genre to glorify himself and the power of the Egyptian state. He thus followed a tradition more generally noted for governments in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) which used opera ‘to burnish their credentials internationally and project an image of Westernized modernity and civilization’ (Hammond 2017: 30). Two performance events in particular belonged to Mubarak’s cultural repertoire of power display through music theatre: the illustrious example of Aida, and the operetta of the ‘6th of October’, Watany al-Akbar. The latter celebrated the victory of the Egyptian army over Israel in 1973, with several patriotic songs glorifying the regime in what looked like flagrant propaganda. Every year a new production was commissioned and financed by the Egyptian Armed Forces, which also provided the performance venue. Mubarak had been one of the military pilots who fought in the 6th of October war, and this celebration was meant as a tribute to him and to the army. The format of that yearly operetta included several patriotic songs glorifying the military and the Egyptian state. The songs were written and composed by prominent Egyptian artists and interwoven with choreographed ensemble dances usually representing the different regions of Egypt. With

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occasional recitals between song and dance, the operetta often looked like a prestigious state celebration or ceremony rather than a performance of music theatre (cf. Jehl 1999). The theatricality of the operetta was sacrificed in favour of saluting and flattering the only important spectator of the show: Hosni Mubarak. The presence of statesmen in both events – Aida and the ‘6th of October’ operetta – was a mark of state-owned art and constituted a colonising of the stage. Productions of Aida were no different. In the late 1990s, when the annual Aida performance had been relocated outdoors beneath the Great Pyramids (to rekindle inter­national tourism after the 1997 shooting at one of the famous archaeological sites near Luxor resulting in over 60 casualties),3 the New York Times observed that ‘in Egypt’s current international advertising campaign, scenes from a 1998 performance so dominate the screen that a viewer might mistake the “Triumphal March” for the national anthem’ (Jehl 1999). Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the majority of singers in the 1999 production were not Egyptian but flown in from Italy, including ‘a 120-member chorus from Verona’ (Jehl 1999). Compared to Ismail’s Aida, Mubarak’s was not only at the crossroads of power dynamics between Europe and Africa (and to some extent Asia, if we consider that the Japanese built the current Cairo Opera House); it was also at the crossroads of the power dynamics between his oppressive regime and Egyptian citizens. Mubarak’s government had become another ‘colonising’ facet – in the metaphorical, not the historical sense – as a ‘coloniser’ of national resources and wealth, of local culture and heritage. Just like the government under the second Egyptian President (1956– 70), Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Mubarak regime appropriated the arts once again for its own purpose. Music theatre, whether in opera performance (Aida) or in Egyptian operettas (6th of October celebrations), was a tool of government propaganda, a kind of regime-ordered art.

New developments During the second half of the 1990s, the Cairo Opera House gave more space to the emerging movement of independent performing

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arts, so that today it houses 11 resident companies.4 This change was prompted by the policy of the Ministry of Culture – under the leadership of Farouk Hosny – which started making room to host the rising movement of independent performing arts. With some pressure from UNESCO and with a state-dictated wish to polish the international image of Mubarak’s regime, Farouk Hosny created a new department in the Ministry of Culture, under the name of the ‘Fund for Cultural Development’. Through this, some independent theatre productions were financed and staged at the Hanager Arts Centre, a venue on the premises of the Cairo Opera House that was administratively connected to the Fund for Cultural Development. It served as a source for hosting and supporting emerging independent theatre companies. While the Hanager Arts Centre – situated next door to the Cairo Opera House – hosted the influential growth of indepen­ dent theatre and supported a whole community of radical theatre makers, the Cairo Opera House provided an Open-Air Theatre for independent music bands. It was an opportunity to move away from state-ordered art, and from the Western form of opera music. While the ‘Great Theatre Hall’ remained iconic for opera performances, statesmen spectatorship and lavish costumes and sets, the Open-Air Theatre – situated outside of the main building but still within the Cairo Opera House premises and management – became connected to the possibility of enjoying Egyptian contemporary music that was largely reliant on original new compositions by young artists. They gradually brought in electronic music, fusion music, spiritual Sufi music, and even extended the legacy of Sayed Darwish with their interpretations and new arrangements of his songs. Although in an almost marginalised position compared to the Great Theatre Hall’s centralised art offerings, the independent music bands attracted diverse audiences, especially from young intellectuals and the generation of the 1990s who hoped for a culture that would represent them and stand up against dictatorship. It seemed to offer a counterpoint to the operatic Westernised musical produc­ tions, and constituted an artistic opposition to the authoritarian mentality of instrumentalising art. The music was innovative – in terms of composition, arrangement or performance – yet it was linked to an Egyptian heritage of music and instruments. The

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lyrics were progressive, building up towards what would become revolutionary music and lyrics in 2011 and beyond. The popular independent music bands of today cannot be disconnected from the history of the bands of the 1990s through to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Many of today’s bands have been playing for almost 15 years, if not more. They include Wust El Balad, Eftekasat, Massar Egbary, Black Thema and Cairokee and can now be considered models of oppositional musical narratives compared to the state-ordered music productions of Aida and of the ‘6th of October’ operettas. The independent music movement – as part of the overall independent performing arts movement born since the beginning of the 1990s – can be rightly called a wave of decolonisation for Egyptian music.

Taking music theatre to the streets: The examples of Wust El Balad and Cairokee Particularly characteristic of the new independent music move­ ment was that it found rich inspiration in folk music references and the Egyptian cabaret traditions of the first half of the twentieth century. It provided a break in the connection between music production and the taste of the Egyptian elite and upper middle class. It was an attempt to free Egyptian music from false notions of a colonially inflected idea of ‘modern­ity’ and from the notion that its early twentieth-century heritage was not really ‘developed’. Wust El Balad, for instance, provides us with a model that proves how young Egyptian music makers created a voice of their own, bridged gaps and composed contemporary music aligned with a new genera­tion of Egyptians who want to reclaim their culture while moving forward beyond political and artistic oppression. In my opinion, Wust El Balad’s live concerts represent a revolution in musical performance and can indeed be seen as a new wave of music theatre. Without a ‘libretto’, characters or plot, the live musicality, emotionality and staging make those music experiences part of the bigger field of performance. They certainly provide a new experience of spectatorship where the human encounter transcends the usual hierarchy between the stage and the audience, and possibly heals the economic and social divide among the

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spectators themselves. It is a form of spectatorship that stands in opposition to the state-owned performances and to the regime’s idea of musical modernity. This form of spectatorship gradually built up and developed until it was able to occupy the street and the open public sphere during the revolution of 2011 and in June 2013. Bands and audiences forced an end to the emergency law that prohibited street music performances – and indeed all kinds of performances – while creating a powerful alternative to official music theatre and opera in the form of street music performances and mobile concerts (see Lohman ‘Der Arabische Frühling’ 2019). Consisting of seven members, including the main vocalist Hany Adel, Wust El Balad is by far Egypt’s leading independent music band. Literally meaning ‘downtown’, the band’s lyrics call on two main resources for musical inspiration; the new poetic imagery that rose as part of the new writing movement of the 1990s (connected to downtown Cairo) – where very personal issues and daily life are addressed to represent the life the younger generation is obliged to live; and local musical heritage, especially from the provinces and the south of Egypt. Therefore the band has clearly made a giant step towards speaking out about issues of social change, re-visiting the local musical heritage and providing a live performative experience that can be described as grand. In opposition to the state-sanctioned opera which usually requires obedient and silent audiences, the spectators of Wust El Balad are actively engaged in the performance, moving, singing and dancing with the band. The theatrical performance of the band’s musicians – in terms of emotional expressions, physical communication and overall staging – creates a musical performance that is much more than a regular pop concert. Each song refers to a sociopolitical context that the musicians act out during the concert. They therefore create a new kind of performativity that takes the songs to a dramatic level and provides a narrative of the struggles that are shared with the spectators. With Wust El Balad, words like ‘grand’ acquire a new mean­ ing. The ‘grand’ used here no longer refers to eco­nomic privilege, or to social class hierarchy, but rather to a grand experience of spectatorship that is created by the live com­munity of audiences. A certain kind of togetherness is felt, and it fuels the live performance

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by investing it with meaning and creating an impact and bringing musical performance back to the area of equality and collective musical enjoyment (Lohman ‘Der Arabische Frühling’ 2019). This experience can be regarded as a major shift from years of witnessing music theatre performances on national television as a distant form of power display, alienation and division. Wust El Balad has recently achieved a major accomplishment with a new album, Bantalony Eljeans (My Jeans Trousers), which includes prominent use of folk inspiration in music composition and lyrics. Songs like ‘Elgasya’ (The Cruel) and ‘Elleil’ (The Night) are obvious models of how Egyptian folk music tradition are part of contemporaneous Egyptian modernity, and even reach a ‘universal’ international audience. It is this decolonisation of creativity that enables the artists to re-visit their folk heritage and re-invent it so it avoids being pigeonholed or remaining an object of shame. If there is one Egyptian music group that could be regarded as creating music that is a site for political activism, it is Cairokee. Launched in 2003, Cairokee consists of five musicians including the main vocalist Amir Eid. Starting out with songs in English influenced by Pink Floyd and The Beatles, they quickly felt it more appropriate to sing in their mother tongue Egyptian Arabic. Their first album was released immediately after the 2011 revolution, including their major hit at that time, Sout El Horeya, with the significant title ‘The voice of freedom’. It was a joint collaboration between the band’s main vocalist, Amir Eid, and the lead singer and producer of Wust El Balad, Hany Adel. The song became one of two iconic songs of the revolution, the other being ‘Ezzay’ (Why) by Mohamed Mounir. Another hit song, ‘Ya El Midan’ (Oh you, the Square), was a tribute to Tahrir Square, featuring retired singer Aida El-Ayoubi. The official video of the song (2011) is apparently filmed in an activist’s home and ends with actual footage of the protesters’ camp on Tahrir Square. During the 2013 Egyptian protests they performed in front of hundreds of thousands protesting against President Momahed Morsi (2012–13) and the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood at the country’s main presidential palace in Cairo’s Heliopolis suburb.5 While performing, the people were singing along with them and served as backup singers with lyrics such as ‘We are the people […] and our path is right’ and ‘You

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say “justice”, and they call you a betrayer’. The popular Egyptian live music performance had clearly become part of an overall political, social and cultural revolution seeking to reclaim Egypt from its corrupt regimes. The audiences were also the singers, the chorus and the organisers of the performance. The music performance can also be seen at that moment as a performance of protest against backdrop of all the previous history of stateordered music theatre performances, indeed, against a history of multiple political dictatorships. Bringing this political spectatorship into life could only be successful as part of an overall revolution. Just as one of their iconic songs is called ‘Ehna Elshaa’b’ (‘We are the People’), the music of Cairokee can be seen as the ‘music of the people’ where the screams of both spectators and singers echo as Egyptian screams of liberation. These ‘liberating screams’ not only go against a particular Egyptian government, but also against an art form variously utilised by Egyptian leaders ‘to burnish their credentials internationally’ (Hammond 2017: 31), but often ridiculed by the public as ‘nonsensical screaming’. At a Cairokee’s concert, the public could witness a moment where street theatre expanded to include a new kind of ‘music theatre’, and vice-versa. The collective musical screams in the public sphere marked a new phase of protest in Egypt. I would argue that live music performances had become the art form closest to political protest and transformation. They moved audiences and were in turn moved by the spectators. They also created a new sense of communication, togetherness and empowerment; in Egypt and elsewhere in the world.

Postscript: ‘Dancing in the street’ or reclaiming the space around the Opera House In June 2013, the artistic descendants of Darwish took part in the massive political protests against the regime of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood which had tried to ban the performing arts. Music, dance and theatre were regarded as forbidden, shameful and sinful. It was a degrading situation which eventually led to all state theatre venues, including the Cairo Opera House, having

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activities suspended. Everything was gradually closing down. Musicians and artists however protested against this: The protests/sit-in have been taking place on a daily basis since June 5th, when the demonstrators, many of them members of the artistic community, broke into and occupied the Culture Ministry building to demand the removal of the newly appointed Minister of Culture, Alaa Abdel Aziz, whom they see as trying to ‘Ikhwanize’ the arts. Alaa Abdel Aziz, who was appointed by President Morsi during a cabinet shake-up in early May, promptly alienated the artistic community (often referred to as the muthaqafeen, literally ‘the cultured’) by firing the heads of the General Egyptian Book Organization, the Fine Arts Sector, the Cairo Opera House, and the National Library and Archives. His firing of the Opera House Director Ines Abdel Dayem, in particular, aggrieved the artistic community and catalyzed them into action. On May 27, the opening night of Aida, the Opera House curtains lifted on performers and staff in full costume holding anti-brotherhood signs and chanting for the downfall of the regime. (Hassouri 2013)

Egyptian artists were actively criticising the regime and revolting against it. They were the first community to organise themselves and stage artistic protests. They also arranged the above cited one month sit-in at the office building of the Minister of Culture which is located in close proximity to the Cairo Opera House. It was the appropriate moment for the company members at the Cairo Opera House to break the borders of their ‘House’. They performed ballet pieces in the Opera parking lot, liberating their strictly Western art from the ‘state’s stage’, and bringing it to the asphalt of the public sphere. It was also a moment where the Cairo Opera House was itself transformed in meaning and appeared as an entity made of free human beings, rather than an expensive and inaccessible physical construction which served as a symbol of (political) authority. The young dancers danced through the streets of the Zamalek neighbourhood until they reached the sit-in at the office building of the Minister of Culture. The building was entirely taken over by the protesting artists; they even created a stage in front of the building and gave live concerts and delivered spoken-word performances. The Cairo Opera House Ballet Company danced in the street in front of the sit-in building, without their Westernised costumes,

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without their ballet shoes. In their everyday casual clothes, the dancers created a new image of ballet dance – despite performing parts of their classical repertoire – an image that was more closely linked to the new Egyptian identity shaped by the revolutionary moment and fuelled by the collective occupation of public spaces. They moved out of the premises of the Cairo Opera House, and moved towards belonging to the masses of the protesting crowd. In the history of Egyptian urbanism, rich districts such as Zamalek usually have their own backyards of poor neighbourhoods. Yet during the revolution, in a kind of reversal of roles, Zamalek became the backyard of Tahrir Square in a political and metaphorical sense. The artistic protests of the Opera dancers in Zamalek, marching from the Cairo Opera House to the office of the Minister of Culture to join the sit-in, marked the transformation of the rich and diplomatic district into a political zone of revolt. It was a shift from the centrality of the state-owned premises of the Cairo Opera House, and its relation to authority, towards a de-centralisation of the concept of public performance (in the streets and among the activists), and a re-centralisation of the performing arts within a ~ ~ ı 1997). newly claimed revolutionary public sphere (cf. Ngug The performing arts of the Cairo Opera House themselves became a symbol of Egyptian freedom and cultural identity versus the religiously fundamental regime. It was a new wave of arts contribution to the decolonisation of Egypt. A wave that – within the overall solidarity of all the shades of the rainbow of the Egyptian artistic community – historically transformed Western forms of dance and music from state-ordered arts into art forms reflecting the Egyptian protests. In that sense, these artists were the true descendants of Darwish, reviving his connection to the revolution of 1919 by walking their own path towards their revolu­tion. Their revolution was not only political, but sociocul­­tural as well. Just as Darwish brought music and song to an unprecedented level of engagement and political-patriotic action, the dancers and musicians of the Egyptian revolution fought back to retrieve their human dignity and equality against the badmouthing that the Muslim Brotherhood regime orchestrated against them, and towards the larger Egyptian cultural identity. They retrieved their humanity, and the humanness of all Egyptian performers, whether they belonged to the cabaret or to the Cairo Opera House.

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It looked as if a new era was about to begin, although the struggle against censorship and socio-economic instability continues until today.

NOTES 1 When I speak of ‘Western’ or ‘Westernising’ in this chapter, it relates mostly to Europe or the US, but also generally to forces of colonialism, or to the newer forces of the world economy that are formed from alliances between Europe and the US. ‘Western’ also means that it is foreign to Egypt, as I identify Egypt as Mediterranean, Arab and African, and as Oriental for being part of the East, Middle East or Near East. 2 The two countries maintain a ‘Joint Committee’ dedicated to exploring developments in areas of mutual interest. Japan has made huge grants, loans and gifts to Egypt, among them the building and furnishing of the Cairo Opera House in 1988. 3 According to Douglas Jehl, the attack carried out at Luxor had originally been planned ‘during a performance of the opera at the temple several weeks earlier’ (1999). 4 The 11 resident companies are the Cairo Symphonic Orchestra (founded 1959), the Cairo Opera Company (1989), the Cairo Opera Ballet Company (founded 1958, adopted by the Opera House in 1966), the Cairo Opera Orchestra (1994), the Cairo Opera Modern Dance Theatre (1993), the Cairo Opera Choir (adopted by the Cairo Opera House in 1956), the A Capella Choir (2004), the Religious Chanting Ensemble (adopted in 1972), the Heritage Ensemble for Arabic Music (2004), the National Arabic Music Ensemble (1989) and the Abdel-Halim Nowera Ensemble for Arab Music (adopted in 1967). These companies were created gradually, as were the educational programmes affiliated to the Cairo Opera House. The latter cover a range of ballet classes, music and singing lessons. The children who participate in these programmes are later eligible to join the Cairo Opera Children’s Choir, for instance. Nevertheless, the lessons only serve a specific social class of clientele. The educational opportunities are neither accessible nor equally offered to children of various social backgrounds. The socio-economic hierarchy is deeply embedded within arts education as well. 5 For all their political activities, it should be noted that one of Cairokee’s most popular songs in 2013, ‘Etganen’, again featuring Aida El-Ayoubi and Zap Tharwat, was actually sponsored by Coca Cola. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss further implications here.

REFERENCES Balme, Christopher (2014), ‘Theatre and Modernization in the First Age of Globalization: The Cairo Opera House’. In Syncretic Arenas: Essays on Postcolonial African Drama and Theatre for Esiaba Irobi, Isidore Diala (ed.). Amsterdam: Rodopi: 141–57.

106  Nora Amin Bergeron, Katherine (2002), ‘Verdi’s Egyptian Spectacle: On the Colonial Subject of Aida’, Cambridge Opera Journal, vol. 14, nos 1/2: 149–59. Jehl, Douglas (1999), ‘Giza Journal; Egypt’s New Siren Song: Come to the Land of “Aida”’, New York Times, 20 October, www.nytimes.com/1999/10/20/world/ giza-journal-egypt-s-new-siren-song-come-to-the-land-of-aida.html (accessed 23 August 2019). Cairo Opera House (n.d.), ‘Mission’, www.cairoopera.org/mission.php (accessed 23 August 2019). Cairokee, ‘Cairokee ft Aida El Ayouby Ya El Medan’, www.youtube.com/watch? v=umlJJFVgYVI, (accessed 27 October 2019). Egypt Today (2019), ‘Remembering the Golden Voice of the Region, Sayed Darwish’, 17 March, www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/21990/Rememberingthe-golden-voice-of-the-region-Sayed-Darwish (accessed 23 August 2019). El-Kholy, Samha (2001), ‘Darw-ısh, Sayyid’, Grove Music Online: www.oxford music online.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo9781561592630-e-0000040726?rskey=Yj0hna&result=1 (accessed 25 July 2019). Fanack (2019), ‘Independence Comes at a Cost for Egypt’s Underground Musicians’, 9 January, https://fanack.com/music/egypt-underground-music/ (accessed 23 August 2019). Hammond, Andrew (2017), Pop Culture in North Africa and the Middle East: Enter­ tain­ment and Society Around the World. Santa Barbara CA and Denver CO: ABCCLIO. Hassouri, Parastou (2013), ‘Culture protests’, The Arabist, 18 June, https://arabist. net/blog/2013/6/18/culture-protests (accessed 23 August 2019). Lohman, Laura (2019), ‘Art. Ägypten, Modernes Ägypten, Städtische weltliche Musik, Das 20. und 21. Jahrhundert, Der “Arabische Frühling”’. In Laurenz Lütteken (ed.). MGG Online, Kassel, Stuttgart, New York: 2016ff, published 3 July, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/ 9781 561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040726 (accessed 23 August 2019). Muhssin, Saed (2013), ‘The “People’s Artist” and the Beginnings of the TwentiethCentury Arab Avant-Garde’. In The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity, Thomas Burkhalter, Kay Dickinson and Benjamin J. Harbert (eds). Middletown: Wesleyan University Press: 121–44. ~ ~ Ngug ı wa Thiong’o (1997), ‘Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance Space’, TDR, vol. 41, no. 3: 11–30. Said, Edward W. (1994), Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.

Towards an African Operatic Voice

Composition, Dramaturgy and Identity Strategies in New Yorùbá Opera

BODE OMOJOLA

Introduction The integration of multiple elements of performance to achieve a total theatre effect and generate intertextual meanings speaks to an agelong operatic conception of performance in Africa. But although African operatic practices predated colonial rule, the genre has, one might expect, continued to explore new directions. While indigenous examples like the Dagbamba drum history of northern Ghana and the Yorùbá Alárìnjó theatre of western Nigeria were enacted in specific religious or social contexts, African operas of the colonial era were created in ways that made them accessible to audiences beyond their ethnic affiliation. Duro Ladipo’s O᷂ ba Kòso was, for example, performed to great acclaim when it toured Europe and the United States in the 1970s (Duro-Ladipo & Kóláwolé 1997). The trend towards greater stylistic inclusivity has however been strongest in the works of Western-trained African composers and dramatists who compose and produce for global audiences. In Nigeria, these include Akin Euba, Okechukwu Ndubuisi, Meki Nzewi, Samuel Akpabot, Laz Ekwueme, Adam Fibe­re­sima and this writer. Ndubuisi’s two-act opera, The Vengeance of Lizards, for example, is defined stylistically by the incor­pora­tion of traditional African (Igbo) theatrical resources within the framework of a Western operatic form to achieve a considerable musico-dramatic effect. The same description would apply, albeit in varying degrees, to Akpabot’s Opu Jaja, Nzewi’s The Lost Honey, Laz Ekwueme’s A Night in Bethlehem, and Fiberesima’s Jaja of Opobo (see Omojola 1995, 2000; Irele 1993). 107

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Focusing on Akin Euba’s opera, Chaka, written in 1970, and my most recent opera, Odyssey of a Dream (aka Ìrìn Àjò), written in 2018, this chapter examines how two modern Yorùbá composers have represented and sought to define the African operatic voice in the postcolonial era. By ‘operatic voice’, I refer to the use of music and dramatic narrative to perform and reflect on Africanist experiences in ways that are socially contingent and historically dynamic. Akin Euba, emeritus professor of music at Pittsburgh University, studied music in Nigeria before proceeding to Trinity College of Music (London) to study piano and composition. He followed that up with a Master’s degree in composition at UCLA, and a PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Ghana, Legon.1 Considering the strong European content of his education in Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, it is not surprising that many of Euba’s works are significantly influenced by Western art music tradition. It was not until later in his career, when he studied ethnomusicology, that he began to pay more attention to the musical resources of his own Yorùbá culture, which include the abundant resources of music drama, ranging from the traditional Alárìnjó theatre through the musico-dramatic tradition of Alo song-storytelling genre to the folk operas of figures like Hubert Ogunde, Duro Ladipo and Kola Ogunmola (Omojola 2004: 633–49). Commenting on the motivation behind his operatic works, Euba has observed that he seeks to ‘Africanize the standard symphony orchestra’, to project a ‘symphonic celebration of Yorùbá culture’ in ways that would ‘help to generate greater appeal from African primary audiences’ (2000b). But even without the benefit of a testimonial corroboration from a composer like Euba, it should be clear that a desire to Africanise a key element of European music by a citizen of a former European colony should not be seen as an apolitical activity or a disinterested exercise carried out in conformity with the tenets of musical autonomy. I should also note that a key objective of my work as a composer is to share my musicality – my musical horizon, including my understanding of it – as uniquely shaped by my Yorùbá and Nigerian experience. Employing a musicological analytical approach and drawing on my experience as a composer, this discussion explores the dramatic significance of intercultural

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musical syntax as presented in the two operas under consideration. I discuss compositional style, form, musical instrumentation, the role of dance and dramaturgy with a view to explaining the strategies for, and the challenge of, achieving an African operatic voice in works whose aesthetic paradigms draw on diverse cultural resources. My discussion here relies on the unpublished score of Chaka (see Euba 2000a), as well as a 1998 recording.2 Although my discussion of Chaka makes references to different parts of the opera, I focus mainly on the second major section (Chant II) because it is in that section that the intercultural character of the work comes to full blossom in ways that demonstrate the dynamic relationship between music and drama.3 My analysis of Odyssey of a Dream is based on the unpublished score as well as the performance of the work that took place in the United States in April 2018. Based on their similarities and differences, these operas illustrate the multiplicity of approaches through which modern African operas have aspired to achieve an African operatic voice and how the operatic genre has responded to important developments and issues in African social and political history. The two operas reveal some strikingly different techniques. Chaka presents many moments of traditional African musical experience through inserted preperformed Yorùbá vocal and instrumental performances, including, an oríkì chant and a dùndún performance. The opera also resonates with a strong pan-African identity deriving from the use of a libretto written by a Senegalese author, a thematic focus on a South African historical figure and the use of cross-cultural West African musical resources from Ghana and Nigeria. Euba’s opera is also strikingly modernist in its pervasively fluid tonal spectrum, speechoriented vocal techniques defined through aleatoric procedures and used in response to the poetic character of the libretto. Elements of the work’s modernist techniques and resources – for example, aleatoric and speech-oriented vocalisa­ tions – simultaneously affiliate with Yorùbá and Euro­pean performance practices. Euba’s aleatoric technique draws attention to an important feature of the opera: the pervading engage­ment, perhaps even tension, between orality and nota­tion; between a musical composition conceived through notation and its moderation through oral procedures that leverage European modernist techniques with indigenous Yorùbá

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performance elements. This notation-orality dynamic, also present to a limited extent in Odyssey of a Dream, is key to Euba’s strategy towards achieving a modern African operatic form in his work. In Odyssey of a Dream, Yorùbá musical instruments are used as part of a much bigger, European-dominated symphony orchestra. Exceptions are the wedding scene (Act I) and the Aládúrà scene (Act II, Scene 2) where Yorùbá instruments are used as the principal medium of instrumental performance. Furthermore, the opera’s musical language presents a highly diversified style template, covering Yorùbá folkloric, con­ven­tional European choral and symphonic writing as well as the West African highlife idiom – all of which highlight the use of music to respond to the different cultural and social contexts of the dramatic action. Unlike Chaka, which centres on the political struggle of an ancestral figure, Odyssey of a Dream focuses on the challenge of immigrant life in the United States, while managing to draw attention to the problem of leadership on the continent. The two works thus provide different facets of Africa – one a historical reflection based on the conflicts and disruptions of colonial rule, the other a social reflection on an issue topical in the postcolonial era. Each opera must be seen as representing just two of the many possible representations of the African operatic voice.

Chaka: Plot, Characterisation, and Musical Exposition Composed in 1970, Chaka has been revised several times since then. Prior to the 1998 recording mentioned previously, the work had received its premiere at the Ife Festival of the Arts University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in 1970. It was later presented at a command performance in the presence of Léopold Senghor in Dakar in 1972. The third performance of the work, which I attended, was in London, at Brent Town Hall, in 1986. The libretto of the opera is based on the epic poem ‘Chaka’ by former Senegalese president, Léopold Senghor. The opera, like the poem, is in two sections, Chants I and II. The central character of the poem is Chaka, a nineteenth-century Zulu leader who courageously and vigorously resisted European intervention. Chaka was, however, also allegedly notorious for a dictatorial

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personality as well as an often brutal domina­tion of his people. For instance, he was denounced as a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered his wife-to-be, Noliwe, in order to consolidate his hold on power. Chant I details the confrontation between a European and Chaka. As Chaka lies dying, having been attacked by three African assassins, White Voice condemns him for murdering his own people, including Noliwe. Chant II is a romantic rendition by Chaka in memory of his late woman, Noliwe. Another poem by Senghor, ‘Man and the Beast’, is incorporated into the libretto as a bridge between the two chants. In addition to Senghor’s poem, Euba incorporates a Yorùbá oríkì praise poem into the second part of the opera, employed as a praise chant in honour of Chaka. The main characters of the opera are Chaka (bass), White Voice (jointly taken by two tenors), the leader of the Chorus (bass or mezzo-soprano), Noliwe (soprano) and a Yorùbá chanter. The opening prelude is particularly significant in highlighting how Euba conceives of the relationship between drama and music. It functions as a musical exposition and sets the musicodramatic parameters of the opera. It presents the Chaka leitmotif, designated the ‘Conscience theme’, and introduced by a bass trio; the ‘Dies Irae theme’, which functions as a symbolic reference to the activities of the European racists in Zululand; and the ‘Noliwe theme’. The opening prelude also establishes the significantly – exploratory tonal spectrum of the opera. While the African percussion instruments provide a lively polyrhythmic texture within which variants of the Yorùbá konkolo rhythm (the bell pattern) feature prominently, Western brass instruments provide incisive punctuation derived from two predetermined 12-tone rows. The ‘Conscience theme’, although derived from one of the tone rows is, however, not atonal. It prominently features the intervals of the fourth and fifth, providing motivic cells for extensive melodic development in the course of the piece. The recurrences of these opening features (see Examples 1a, 1b & 1c and 2a & 2b) help to unify the different sections of the opera while serving to propel the dramatic action, a point to which I return later.

As above As above. There is also tension drum group II. The Yorùbá chants are accom­ panied by African percussion.

Chaka’s poem for Noliwe; praise Chants for Chaka: Kí ló s᷂e tóò jó, O᷂ mo᷂ Bashò᷂ run and Erínwó, Àjànàkú ròrun

Part II: pp. 123–41 O my Beloved, I have waited so long

As above

As above

Chaka, Chorus and Chanter

Chaka, Chorus and Noliwe Solo and choral recitative with instrumental links African and Western instruments layered

Modal/varied

Atenteben theme/ speechlike vocals

Chaka’s Night is Coming

Part I: pp. 114–22 Night is Coming

Orchestra

Chorus

Media

Consistent repetition of the main theme taken in turns by different instruments

Woodwind and brass

Modal

Xylophone modal music of p.70 now played by the woodwind/ brass orchestra

Instrumental

Prelude: section II, pp. 103–13

A ternary format; the Yorùbá chant separates the two renditions of the Man and the Beast poem.

African percussion

Choral rendition of indeterminate speech tones; solo rendition of oríkì

Recitative rendi­ tion of Man and the Beast; Yorùbá oríkì, Erínfolámí, Mákánjúolá Chaka

Element of Form

Instruments

Pitch Structure

Man and the Beast, Yorùbá praise poem for Chaka

Poetic/ Dramatic Musical Themes Themes

Prelude: section I, pp. 96–102

Sections

Table 1. Chaka (An Opera by Akin Euba)

112  Bode Omojola

Modal, with a focus on B-flat, the opening pitch

Praise for Chaka

Part VI: Finale: Kí ló s᷂e tóò jó, pp. 203–16

Kí ló s᷂e tóò jó theme; ends with the conscience theme

Atenteben theme, Modal, indeterminate indeterminate (pitch) rendition speech of poem

Chaka’s poem for Noliwe; his political vision

Part V: O my night, pp. 197–202 Orchestral fanfare ending

Noliwe

Media

Progresses in callSong leader responsorial sequences and chorus

Chaka and Chorus

ABAB form: Noliwe’s Noliwe, Chanter theme is A, while and Chorus Ogun song is B. Ends with African percussion section.

Strophic form. Melodies continuously respond to changing text.

Element of Form

Revolves around Atenteben, poem woodwind and percussion

Woodwind/ brass; African percussion section

Modal

Noliwe’s second an third songs, Òrishà l’ògún and Ògún rínú

Noliwe’s caution

Part IV: Yé S᷂ óra, pp. 170–96

Woodwind/ brass

Modal

Noliwe’s first song, Ara ò má lo᷂, accompanied by the orchestra

Instruments

Pitch Structure

Starts with the woodwind/ brass music of p. 103ff (itself the xylophone music of p. 70)

Poetic/ Dramatic Musical Themes Themes

Part III: Ara ò má lo᷂ : Noliwe’s scene, pp. 141–69

Sections

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Dramatic significance of intercultural musical material The dramatic impact of the opera derives significantly from the use of culturally diverse instrumental sounds to develop the plot, identify characters, and recall relevant historical and politi­cal contexts. By integrating and alternating African and West­ern instruments effectively, Euba is able to explore musical instru­mentation as a medium for developing the plot, sustaining dialogue and enhancing the oratorical power of dramatic narratives. Western instruments used in the opera are the flute, B-flat clarinet, bassoon, B-flat trumpet, horn in F, bass trombone and amplified double bass, while African instruments include agogo (bell), slit drum, gourd rattle, hourglass membrane drum, gúdúgúdú (a small kettle drum), single-headed membrane drums, and the Ghanaian atenteben (bamboo flute) ensemble. As expected, these instruments are assigned melodic and rhythmic materials that are idiomatic of their musical attributes. New scenes of the opera often bring in a different set (or new combinations) of African and European instruments in ways that constantly vary tonal and rhythmic resources. The use of culturally varying instrumental (and vocal) resources thus provides the means for generating and mixing varied pitch material and melodic structures, which are comprised of modal, tonal and quasi-atonal systems. Chant II, for example, begins with two prelude sections that are culturally distinguished through their instrumentation. As shown in Table 1, the first one features African percussion while the second features European woodwind and brass. This Chant II prelude is followed by two new sections (Parts I and II, see Table 1) in which African percussion instruments and Ghanaian atenteben flutes are alternated and layered with Western woodwind and brass to support Chaka’s love song for Noliwe and Noliwe’s response. The use of multiple vocal styles in the same prelude which begins with the poem ‘Man and the Beast’, rendered in a Western recitative style. This is immediately followed by the Yorùbá oríkì rendition of the chant, ‘Erínfolámí Mákánjúolá’ in honour of Chaka. The ternary form of the first part of Chant II prelude derives from the interpolation of Erinfolami between the two renditions of the ‘Man and the Beast’.

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Euba employs aleatoric techniques – not unrelated to tradi­t­­ ional Yorùbá extemporisational procedures – to further vary the pitch and rhythmic vocabulary of the vocal parts and, consequently, to enrich the dramatic potency of vocal rendi­tions. Singers are given the freedom to choose their own pitches as well as rhythms, a technique which the composer had explored successfully in an earlier work, Àbíkú.4 In the preface to the score of Chaka, Euba explains this element of indeterminacy, noting that the vocal parts ‘are imprecisely notated and singers are free to choose their own rhythms (based on the rhythms of normal speech) and often their own pitches’. Thus, instead of using the normal five-line clef, the composer often employs three-line subjective, clefless contour levels (low, middle and high), akin to the inflectional levels of the Yorùbá language. This notational symbol merely indicates a contour guide, rather than being pitch-specific. Singers are expected to intone pitches of their choice with a view to articulating the intended meaning of their lines very effectively and as deemed fit in each performance.

Musico-dramatic discourse A description of some sections will bring to light certain aspects of the relationship between music and dramatic text. Following the end of the opening prelude in Chant I (not to be confused with Chant II’s prelude), White Voice’s rendition begins with a recitative (‘Chaka, there like the panther’, Euba 2000a: 55ff.), which establishes the allegation that Chaka is a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered his people for political power.5 This opening rendition, as well as the brief response by Chaka, is unaccompanied but for the dramatic punctuations provided by the cymbals and drum rolls. The brass then plays the ‘Conscience theme’, the Chaka leitmotif. Chaka’s response is accompanied by a wind trio of flute, clarinet and bassoon, which plays different permutations of a set of motifs derived from the opening prelude. These motifs are combined polyphonically, resulting in dissonant relationships which, with further punctuations by the timpani, help to enhance the confrontation between White Voice and Chaka. A horn rendition of the ‘Noliwe theme’ anticipates Chaka’s

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next rendition, ‘I hear the noonday cooing of Noliwe’ (Euba 2000a: 59), while a temporary foil to the ensuing confrontation is provided by a passage of brass music (59–61). When White Voice says, ‘Her heart like butter […] You have killed her to escape from your conscience’, his line is punctuated again by side drums and cymbals on the words ‘killed her’ (63). Again, the ‘Conscience theme’ is played before Chaka renders the line, ‘And you talk about conscience to me? Yes, I killed her while she was telling stories of the blue lands […] A flash of fine still’. Side drums and cymbals again come in to punctuate Chaka’s line. The chorus later takes an ostinato rendition based on ‘A flash of fine still’, which leads to White Voice’s response (65). The description above establishes some important elements of musico-dramatic construction: the use of associative leitmotif to anticipate character and evoke feeling in a manner reminiscent of Richard Wagner, the use of different musical sequences to articulate dramatic conflict, the rhetorical use of music to punc­ tuate dramatic texts, the conversion of poetic text into ostinato patterns for dramatic emphasis, the use of instrumental passages to delay or support the dramatic action, and the use of constantly shifting palettes of musical sonorities as a corollary to the emotive landscape of the dramatic action.

The use of leitmotifs The use of associative motifs is a prominent feature of the opera and therefore deserves further explanation. Three par­ticular motifs are significant: the ‘Conscience theme’ (Example 1a), the ‘Noliwe theme’ (Example 1b) and the ‘Dies Irae theme’ (Example 1c). While the ‘Conscience theme’ is generally associated with Chaka, the ‘Noliwe theme’, as the name suggests, is associated with Noliwe and, by implication, Chaka. The ‘Dies Irae theme’ evokes the activities of the European interventionists as represented by White Voice. The interplay of motifs often underpins the dramatic action. The first moments of the exchange between White Voice and Chaka in Chant I feature a dramatic use of such motifs. White Voice sets the opening and pervading conflict of the opera when he refers to Chaka as, ‘the evil-mouthed hyena’ and suggests that,

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Example 1a. Akin Euba, Chaka, Conscience theme.

Example 1b. Akin Euba, Chaka, Noliwe theme.

Example 1c. Akin Euba, Chaka, Dies Irae theme.

Example 2a. Akin Euba, Chaka (Recurring Motif)

Example 2b. Akin Euba, Chaka (Recurring Motif)

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‘the stream of blood that bathes you be as a penance for you’ (Euba 2000a: 55). This is immediately followed by a brass rendition of the ‘Conscience theme’, which anticipates Chaka’s reply. The same theme is recalled at the end of Chaka’s reply and just before White Voice launches his second verbal attack on Chaka. Chaka refutes White Voice’s accusation: ‘White Voice […] there is no need for your false daylight’. His response is then followed by the ‘Noliwe theme’. The appearance of the ‘Noliwe theme’ is meant to bring back to Chaka’s memory both the good and the ugly sides of the relationship between the two. While on one hand, the ‘Noliwe theme’ reminisces on the romance between the two, it inevitably evokes memories of the tragic killing by Chaka of the woman who was to be his wife. The ‘Dies Irae theme’ is, unlike these two, not associated with any particular character. Rather, as European musical material, it functions as an associative theme that constantly depicts the role of Europe in the generation of socio-political conflicts and structural dislocations from which Africa is yet to recover. Its appearances in the form of punctuating choral fragments that accompany Chaka’s self-justification of his actions are noteworthy in this regard.

Odyssey of a Dream: Instrumental and vocal resources Ìrìn Àjò is about Káyò᷂ dé, a Nigerian engineer who emi­grates to the United States in search of a better life. He leaves behind Ìyáb᷂ò, his fiancé, and his aged parents who had spent their entire life savings to pay for his college education in Nigeria and now look to him to take care of them and other members of his family back home.6 Káyò᷂ dé’s story of adaptation and survival is spoken and sung in English and Yorùbá and scored for an intercultural orchestra, following a similar approach to instrumentation as Akin Euba’s Chaka. While the events and tensions depicted in the opera may echo contemporary political developments relating to immigration around the world, the desire to capture the complicated experiences of immigrant life has been with me since I was studying in the UK. I am particularly interested in drawing attention to the lonely conversations and introspection

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Figure 1. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò), ‘Stage and Orchestra Pit’. (Photo © Joanna Chattman, April 2018)

that immigrants engage in as they struggle to cope with difficult situations in a country far away from home. In composing the opera, I reworked melodic and rhythmic material that I wrote many years ago, combining it with newly written music. The opera presents African drumming, features Yorùbá rhythmic and melodic procedures, recalls West African highlife music, and adapts Western harmonic, choral and symphonic procedures while acknowledging the tonal demands of the Yorùbá language in vocal renditions. The work’s intercultural orchestra features a symphony orchestra comprised of woodwind, brass and string instruments. The piano is also featured. African components of the orchestra are Yorùbá dùndún drums, hand drums and agogo (gong). Vocal organisation follows the European SATB system (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass), while the two main characters, Káyò᷂ dé and Ìyábò᷂, sing tenor and soprano respectively. In the April 2018 US production, the performance arena was arranged to accommodate these instrumental and vocal resources as follows: an offstage chorus shared the orchestra pit with the orchestra, while

120  Bode Omojola Table 2. Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò) (An Opera by Bode Omojola) Lineup Title

Roles

Act I Music/recitative: 1.1 Musical Greeting: Drummers Káàbò s᷂ é Dáadáa le᷂ dé 1.2 Èdùmáre Ìyábò᷂ , Villagers 1.3

Drumming

Drummers

1.4

Ìyábò’s oríkì

Village Head

1.5

Àwa n´ Súre

1.6

Mó Mò Kú

1.7

Àwa n´ Jayé

Village Head, Villagers Ìyábò᷂ , Káyò᷂ de, Villagers Ìyábò᷂ , Káyò᷂ de, Villagers

Act II Scene 1 2.1

Hope is My Hope

Act II Scene 2 2.2 2.3

Aládúrà Yorùbá Chant 1

2.5

Ìjès᷂ a Ré 1

2.6

Aládúrà Yorùbá Chant 2

2.7

Ìjès᷂ a Ré 2

2.8

Aládúrà Yorùbá Chant 3

2.9

Ìjès᷂ a Ré 3

Aládúrà, congregants, drummers Congregants, drummers Aládúrà, congregants, drummers Congregants, drummers Aládúrà, congregants, drummers Congregants, drummers

Instrumental and Vocal Resources

Village scene: Orchestra/choir/ engagement soloists ceremony; celebrating village life; Káyò᷂ de’s farewell

Káyò᷂ de, Airport scene: (Mr/Mrs Táíwò) arrival in the US; singing hope.

Congregational Káyò᷂ de, procession congregants Musical Greeting Congregants

2.4

Action Summary

Aládúrà: Nigerian community: religious worship/prayer for Káyò᷂ de

Orchestra/choir/ soloists

Yorùbá dùndún

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Lineup Title

Roles

Act II Scene 3 2.10 Kíló S᷂emí o, Kíló Káyò᷂ de, Mr S᷂emí Jàre Táíwò

2.11

When will Flowers Bloom?

Káyò᷂ de

Action Summary

Mr Táíwò’s place: Káyò᷂ de’s frustration; Mr Táíwò advises him to marry an American Káyò᷂ de sings frustration

Instrumental and Vocal Resources

Speech and recitative dialogues

Orchestra/choir/ soloists

Act III Scene 1 3.1

Olódùmarè E᷂ mà Káyò᷂ de and his Gbà Mí American wife, Taylor

3.2

Life of an ‘Alien’ Káyò᷂ de, observer 1

Act III Scene 2 No music Act III Scene 3

Immigration officer; Káyò᷂ de; an applicant, security officer

Home with American wife: Taylor unhappy with Káyò᷂ de; throws him out Homeless: Káyò᷂ de sings about the woes and frustration.

Speech and recitative Dialogues Orchestra/choir/ Soloists

Immigration office: immigrant visa no show

3.3

Èdùmàrè 1

Káyò᷂ de

Sings nostalgia

Orchestra/soloist

3.4

Èdùmàrè 2

Káyò᷂ de

Speaks nostalgia

Orchestra/choir

Act IV Scene 1 4.1

Crime’s the Only Non-singing Job Gang of Death (Criminals); four criminals, Káyò᷂ de and two victims

Robbery scene: Orchestra/choir Gang members Quartet try to initiate homeless Káyò᷂ de; rob a couple/ police siren ends scene

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Lineup Title

Instrumental and Vocal Resources

Roles

Action Summary Ìyábò᷂ now in the US

Drummers/ orchestra/duet/ chorus

Ìyábò᷂ and Káyò᷂ de final dialogue and song Dance of the Crossroads

Orchestra/duet/ chorus Orchestra (minus drummers)

Finale

Tutti

Act IV Scene 2 4.2

Ìjès᷂ a Ré 4 [stage singing alone]

Ìyábò᷂ , Káyò᷂ de, worshippers

4.3

Oyin Kò Kárí

4.4

When will Flowers Bloom?

Ìyábò᷂ ᷂, Káyò᷂ de

Ìyábò᷂ , Káyò᷂ de

4.5

Dance of the Crossroads

Dancers

4.6

Sahara Wind

Full cast

the African percussion section of the orchestra was stationed close to the stage to facilitate the mobility of drummers between the stage and the orchestra pit (see Figure 1). Generally, the orchestra sets the mood in successive scenes, provides brief reflections on the dramatic plot through instru­ mental interludes and postludes and helps to influence the dramatic impact of scenes through the diverse cultural and timbral quality of its sounds. Often European instruments simulate African rhythmic procedures thus adumbrating the Yorùbá cultural spaces germane to the plot and stage action. This technique is best exemplified in the ‘Dance of the Crossroads scene’, where the orchestra – acting without its African components – functions as a surrogate African ensemble to accompany choreographed dance. However, it is through the use of African instruments that Yorùbá spectacles are more vividly enacted. In the Aládúrà scene (Act II, Scene 2, see Table 2), for example, the drummers proceed on stage to accom­ pany singers and dancers, enacting in the process Yorùbá spectacles marked by proximity between vocalists, dancers and instru­ mentalists. In the scene, dùndún drummers help to generate tranceoriented energetic dances typical of the Yorùbá Aládúrà church. Many of the songs are set to Yorùbá text to create vocal melodies that follow the tonal contours of the Yorùbá language. Vocal melodies so generated combine musical appeal with

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linguistic articulation whether expressed in a solo performance like ‘Èdùmàrè’ (Act I) or within polyphonic choral pieces like, ‘À wa n´ Jayé’, and, ‘À wa n´ Súre’, also in Act I. Thus, although most of the Yorùbá songs of the opera are originally composed, they are conceived to capture the tonal and speech qualities of Yorùbá music in ways that make the semantic meanings and dramatic intention of musical renditions clear and impactful. Songs that are set to English texts help to capture the bi-cultural experience of the main characters and the different cultural scenes of the plot. English songs prevail for example when the action moves to the United States following Káyò᷂ dé’s arrival there.

Musical style, plot and dramatic action Similar to that obtaining in Chaka, Ìrìn Àjò presents multi­culturally sourced musical styles as a strategy for responding to the changing cultural contexts of dramatic action. Act I of the opera focuses on life in a typical Yorùbá village, a cultural ambience that returns later in the opera when Káyò᷂ dé nostalgically recalls the good old days of Yorùbá village life as he struggles to survive in the United States. The choral performances of the scenes are conceived to capture village life through communality-evoking polyphonic singing, call-responsorial musical dialogues and dance. For example, ‘Mó Mò Kú’, a call-and-response song, is performed by Káyò᷂ dé, Ìyábò᷂ and Villagers, to express joy over the engagement of the couple while also providing a warning to Káyò᷂ dé to be careful and act with caution when he gets to the United States. In polyphonic songs like, ‘À wa n´ Súre’, and, ‘À wa n´ Jayé’, the modal-tonal idiom of Ekiti music is presented within a Europeanstyle polyphonic choral performance (see Examples 3 and 4).7 In Act I, Scene 1, when Káyò᷂ dé arrives in Boston in the United States, he sings an African American gospel-style music, ‘Hope is my Hope’, to express his joy and sense of opti­­mism. The opera also presents highlife music, a West African popular genre common in Nigeria and dating back to the colonial era. The main highlife-style piece of the opera, ‘Life of an “Alien”’, is sung by Káyò᷂ dé in Act III, Scene 1 as part of his reflection on the challenge of living in the United States as an immigrant. The use of highlife music in such an emotional way deserves a brief

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Example 3. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò), ‘À wa n´ Súre’, Act I.

comment because of the unique history of the genre in Nigeria. A symbol of political nationalism in Nigeria in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, highlife music became the staple genre of nightclub music, notably in the 1960s and 1970s in cities like Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt. In the 1980s and 1990s, the genre acquired a religious significance when many former highlife musicians became born-again Christians and brought their musical talent and skills to church. In the process, highlife transformed to become an important genre of Christian worship, preparing the ground for its status today as the main idiom of recorded gospel music. Highlife music has a laidback and reflective character deriving from its slow-to-moderate tempo and simple European tonal harmonies. The music also carries an element of dance that derives from the ostinato patterns of conga drums and agogo bells,

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Example 4. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò), ‘À wa n´ Jayé’, Act I.

which in turn provide the framework for the cyclical approach to the use of European harmony. These qualities make the genre amenable for use in both sacred and secular contexts and able to generate either sad or happy moods. Káyò᷂ dé, supported by the chorus and orchestra, sings the highlife piece to convey the painful experience of immigrant life and to ascribe blame to African political leadership whose failure is a major reason why African citizens seek greener pastures in Europe and the United States. These different themes are conveyed in the song as follows: ‘Life of an Alien’ (Káyò᷂ dé, Observer 1 and chorus) Life of an ‘alien’, life of misery. Few may be lucky, many live in penury. Labour in pain, there’s no road to sustenance.

126  Bode Omojola Dreams of a better life are held in abeyance. Choices are limited, survival is hard Jobs are rare just like water in the desert. Hope of a big dream may never come Food and shelter, prime luxury. Crime is a gift everyone gets. Food and shelter prime luxury Prime luxury, no shelter. Food and shelter prime luxury. We need leaders who really care for the people Who will lead Africa to promise land? Food and shelter prime luxury.

In addition to giving voice to Káyò᷂ dé’s absolute sense of frus­tra­ tion, highlife music, in its allusive quality, should help members of the audience recall Nigeria’s history of colonial rule, the brief moments of respite and hope that followed the gaining of independence, and the dashing of that hope partly because of poor political leadership in the country. Watching Káyò᷂ dé’s performance of the piece should help audience members contextualise the problem of African immigration. Káyò᷂ dé, when he sings this song, elicits an empathic response from the offstage choir and orchestra to drive his appeal and analysis home. Highlife music is also recalled in ‘Crime is the Only Job’, the music that accompanies the crime scene (Act IV, Scene 1) in which a gang of criminals use the music as a symbolic description of their act of terror. ‘Dance of the Crossroads’ is an orchestra piece performed to accompany on stage choreographed dance in a way that is similar to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet works which are conceived as orchestra pieces as well as music written to accompany dance (see Joseph 2008). This is the only scene of the opera in which dance is all that we see on stage. There is neither dialogue nor song. It comes after the dramatic plot has basically ended: Ìyábò᷂ has arrived in the US, reunited with Káyò᷂ dé, and performed two duets, ‘Oyin Kò Kárí’ and, ‘When will the Flowers Bloom?’ (Act IV, Scene 2); songs of sadness and consolation. But the opera is inconclusive because we are not sure how Káyò᷂ dé’s immigration battle will end. That is left to the imagination of the audience. ‘Dance of the Crossroads’ thus comes as a buffer between the inconclusive ending of the plot and the ensuing finale. The musical syntax of the dance highlights a significant change too, moving away from

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Example 5. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream (Ìrìn Àjò), ‘Dance of the Crossroads’, Act IV, Scene 2.

the tonal clarity or modal simplicity in its more exploratory tonal and rhythmic language as shown in Example 5. The piece is characterised by dance-oriented patterns, often layered to generate polyrhythmic textures based on musical material derived from Yorùbá traditional music, including the Ifa divination drumming. But although this dance employs a new musical syntax, it recalls some of the musical material that we have heard earlier in Act I. The most important of these is, ‘Mó Mò Kú’, the song of warning. In this way, ‘Dance of the Crossroads’ recalls previous thematic and dramatic moments even as it helps to enable a transition to the finale. The finale, ‘Sahara Wind’, is a

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song of optimism and hope. It is in a ternary form in which the middle section provides a reflective moderation to the exuberant outer sections. Again, as in many pieces of the opera, this song is marked by a dual character highlighted in the opposite tendencies of tune and lyrics: the music is joyful, while the lyrics are restrained in their reflective and prayerful mood, as shown below: ‘Sahara Wind’ (Tutti) Bless my soul, the wind of grace coming from Sahara. Bless my soul, the wind of grace coming from Sahara. Wind of grace with blissful breeze. Blessed Sahara! Wind of grace, wind of joy, joy unlimited. Wind of grace, wind of joy, joy unlimited. Bring to us a new beginning, morning afresh. We want now a new beginning, blessings Africana. We want now a new beginning, blessings Africana.

In this duality, the finale combines dramaturgical and musi­ cal functions. Its strongly diatonic character and stable dance provides a musical resolution following the dissonant world of ‘Dance of the Crossroads’, while its prayerful and appealing theme helps to reconnect with the unresolved issue of Káyò᷂ dé’s immigration battle.

The role of dance Conceived as an integral part of the opera, dance is deployed variously, depending on the focus of particular scenes. In Act I, for example, dance is employed to enhance the supplicative theme of the action as conveyed in ‘À wa ń Súre’: À wa n´ Súre’ (Chorus) À wa n´ súre, súre fún un yín o, ló᷂jó᷂ òní À wa n´ ko᷂rin láti gbàdúrà fún un yín o. O᷂ mò᷂ rere, ìdùnnú tí kò lópin O᷂ mò᷂᷂ rere, ìdùnnú fún un yín O᷂ nà àrà ìbùnkú tí kò lópin Kí baba fún un yín English translation: Bless the newly engaged couple

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Let their road be smooth Suffer them not Joy unlimited Bestow upon them Dance movements basically support the music and song text. Dancers move reverently, with hands raised in suppli­ca­ tion to Olódùmarè, the Yorùbá God of creation. They form a slow-moving circle around the couple, Káyò᷂ dé and Ìyábò᷂ , who both kneel with hands cupped to symbolically receive the blessings. Later in the very long act (Act I), when both action and music become celebratory, dance retains its supportive role by responding to the song texts of ‘Àwa n´ Jayé’, a song of celebration. Dance movements become more expansive in the use of the body and exploration of space. Dancers begin by forming a line facing the audience before curving into a semi-circle and finally folding into a full circle. Movements feature the use of the full arm and a greater level of interaction among the singer-dancers. Dance acquires a more invigorated display in the Aládúrà scene where rigorous dance becomes the means for attaining a state of trance (see Figure 2). As common in the Yorùbá Aládúrà worship that the scene recalls, rapid body vibrations and handclaps are performed to the equally energetic accompaniment of drummers.8 The most elaborate dance of the opera, ‘Dance of the Cross­ roads’, is choreographed to the music of the same title. The dance features individualised and group-oriented movements are conceived to capture the polyrhythmic elements of the music, and characterised by an array of multidirectional explorations of space. In responding to the overall form of the music, the opening part of the dance projects a unisonal group movement before unfolding into multiple movements done by individuals or sub-groups within the ensemble. Individualised movements are juxtaposed and overlapped in ways that visually depict the layered and stratified character of the musical texture. Towards the end of the music, the movements become more unified and relaxed in response to the closing ostinato patterns of the music. As I mentioned with reference to the music, ‘Dance of the Cross­ roads’ is conceived to provide a reflective commentary as the opera approaches the finale. The idea of the crossroads is

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Figure 2. Bode Omojola, Odyssey of a Dream ( Ìrìn Àjò), ‘Aládúrà Scene’. (Photo © Joanna Chattman, April 2018)

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linked to the Yorùbá notion of oríta, literally, a road junction, but symbolically, a space of transition, a liminal space. In the Yorùbá religion that space is the dwelling place of Ès᷂ù E᷂lágbára, the deity of the crossroads who acts as the mediator between humans and deities and between lesser deities and Olódùmarè (Olupona & Rey 2008). Although I mentioned earlier that the music for this dance is purely instrumental, I wrote a poetic text as a compositional aid towards my invoking the concept of oríta in the process of writing the music. The poetry is as follows: Poetic inspiration for ‘Dance of the Crossroads’: The crossroads Ès̩ù, Yorùbá deity of the gates Liminal, transmuting The no-space cosmos of the two-color god Precinct of the square zero.

This is the position that Káyò᷂ dé finds himself at the end of the inconclusive plot. The finale of the opera, ‘Sahara Wind’, is modelled along the closing glee of the Yorùbá neo-traditional opera, in which both song and dance provide a hopeful closing reflection on the entire opera (see Adedeji 1981; Euba 2003).

Responses by cast members The responses of some of the participants who were inter­viewed by a campus newspaper attest to the unique cultural and artistic features of the opera (see Cooper 2018). For example, Emily Roles Fotso, one of the lead characters, who played the role of Ìyábò᷂ , explained that she ‘was really excited about the performance’ and ‘couldn’t wait to get involved’. Commenting on the inter­cultural character of the opera she noted that the opera ‘merges Western and West African music tradition to make something unique and powerful’. Cora Moss, a member of the orchestra explained that the opera was different from the ‘more traditional orchestral music’ she was used to. In addition, she observed that it ‘was a lot of fun’ playing and coming in contact with ‘the new styles of music that the opera presented, as well as experiencing what it’s like to play with other people, and learning how to balance the music not just with

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the other parts in the orchestra, but with the chorus and soloists as well’. She concluded thus: ‘I really enjoyed learning some traditional Nigerian music styles and expanding my horizons as a musician’. Another participant Kaussar Rahman, who was part of the ‘Crime Scene’, observed as follows: The opera ‘has taught me elements of my culture that I didn’t know the origins of’. She continued: ‘To me, I have gained a family by doing this show and I’m thankful for the opportunity to be part of an amazing crew’.

Conclusion As shown in my discussion, these two works are, in spite of unique individual characteristics, conceptually similar on a number of grounds. The re-interpretation of European and African (especially Yorùbá) musico-dramatic material in the two operas registers as postcolonial discourses forged in response to the challenge and impact of colonial rule in Nigeria. A mode of representation in which Western and African elements are made to engage with one another is no doubt a natural result of the lived experiences of the two composers (Akin Euba and myself). We both grew up in Nigeria and were trained within a predominantly European educational system.9 More significant, however, is the fact that the representation of Africanism in these two works (and indeed in other similarly conceived works) is marked with compositional intentionality – a form of cultural nationalism that carries latent political meanings. The process of Africanising these works is enacted in concert with, or in spite of, the adaptation and use of West­ern operatic and musical elements – for example, proscenium-stage presentation, symphony orchestra/Euro­pean instrumentation, recitative singing in the Eng­lish language, European harmonic procedures and, crucially, European music notation. Both works therefore simul­taneously embrace and contest the tenets of European music, while departing significantly from traditional Yorùbá operatic performance practice. In the process, the two works rhetorically suggest the formulation of a new mode of mediation, one that invites us to contend with the social, cultural and aesthetic implications of reconfigured musicodramatic material. This draws attention to how multiculturally

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sourced works such as these, whether or not they emanate from, or carry political considerations, become vulnerable when subjected to conventional standards of criticism. One of the expectations of a Wagnerian opera, for example, is for it to reveal a remarkable fit between musical form and dramatic narrative, to achieve a coherent musical form within the unfolding sequence of the dramatic action. The use of multicultural material as is the case with these two operas further compounds that challenge since the composer is expected to think about how to synthesise diverse material effectively within a musico-dramatic narrative. In his review of Chaka, Kofi Agawu speaks to this issue when he observes that ‘[t]he listener is […] made to reckon with discontinuity as an organizational principle’ and asks whether ‘the discontinuity of parts of Chaka is a purposeful dis­continuity, or whether [the opera] acquires its form from the forced cohabitation of isolated, internally coherent groups’ (Agawu 2001: 198). This raises a multitude of questions that draw attention to the challenge and implications involved in composing and mediating a musicodramatic discourse grounded in intercultural procedures. I would like to state that these two works were neither conceived with the intention of meet­ing the structural expectations of the European operatic idiom (for example, the Wagnerian opera style; see Grey 1988) nor formulated to re-invent the wheel of indigenous Yorùbá performance practices. They both seek to set new parameters of valuation, thus representing part of the process of defining a new African operatic voice in which multiple musical discourses are brought together for a purpose that may penetrate – but definitely not evade – the boundaries of aesthetics and musical form. The tension, accommodation, fragmentation and connection that we may experience in such works speak to the historical and social conditions that made the works possible in the first instance, and which draw attention to how modern African composers respond to and depict the historical and existential reality of life in postcolonial Africa.

NOTES 1 See Clague (1999) and Uzoigwe (1992) for basic biographical information. Akin Euba passed away on 14 April 2020, shortly before his 85th birthday.

134  Bode Omojola 2 The recording was based on a 1998 performance of the opera by the City of Birmingham Touring Opera. 3 Akin Euba, following the libretto, labels the two sections parts of his opera as chants rather than acts. 4 Composed in 1968, Àbíkú is set to John Pepper Clark’s poem of the same title. A very striking feature of Euba’s Àbíkú is the exclusive use of Nigerian instruments, namely agogo (bell), gúdúgúdú (bowl-shaped membrane drum), ikoro (wooden xylophone); and igbin and osugbo (single-headed drums). As in Chaka, Euba uses clefless notation with the instruction that singers choose their own pitches in the course of performance. 5 The reader is encouraged to consult the CD recording of this work to follow the description here and elsewhere (see Euba 1998). 6 Details of the April 2018 US premier of the opera are as follows: Composer, librettist and artistic director, Bode Omojola; conductor and music director, Ng Tian Hui; choreographer, Amir Hall; Assistant choreographers, Adwoa Aboah, Aniekan Effiong-Akpan, Aya B. Razzaz. The opera was performed by Mount Holyoke College and Five College Consortium students of MUSIC-228 (African Opera), and the Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra. The soloists were: Adedeji Adetayo, tenor; Agatha Holland, soprano; Uriah Rodriguez, baritone; and Emily Roles Fotso, soprano. The opera was performed on 12 and 13 April 2018 at Chapin Auditorium. 7 The Ekiti are a sub-group with the Yorùbá ethnic group with a distinct musical tradition. For further discussion of Ekiti music, see Omojola 2012. 8 For a discussion of the Yorùbá Aládúrà Religious practice, see Ray 1993. 9 I received my first degree in music from at the University of Nigeria in a European-type music department. After my Master’s degree in African music at the University of Ibadan, I proceeded to the UK for my PhD degree at the University of Leicester, followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cologne, Germany.

REFERENCES Adedeji, Joel (1981), ‘Alarinjo: The Traditional Yoruba Travelling Theatre’. In Drama and Theatre in Nigeria: A Critical Source Book, Yemi Ogunbiyi (ed.). Lagos: Nigeria Magazine: 221–47. Agawu, Kofi (2001), ‘Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants’, Research in African Literatures, vol. 32, no. 2: 196–8. —— (2003), Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York: Routledge. Alaja-Brown, Afolabi (1995), ‘A History of Intercultural Art Music in Nigeria’. In Intercultural Music, Akin Euba and Cynthia Tse Kimberlin (eds). Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies: 79–86. Clague, Mark (1999), ‘Euba, Akin’. In International Dictionary of Black Composers, vol. 1, Samuel A. Floyd Jr (ed.). Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers: 424–32. Cooper, Emma (2018), ‘African Opera Ìrìn Àjò Debuts at the College with Diverse Student Cast’, Mount Holyoke News, 20 April, www.mountholyokenews.com/

Composition, Dramaturgy and Identity in New Yorùbá Opera  135 global/2018/4/20/african-opera-rn-j-debuts-at-the-college-with-diversestudent-cast (accessed 1 October 2019). Duro-Ladipo, Abiodun and Gbóyèga Kóláwolé (1997), ‘Opera in Nigeria: The Case of Duro Ladipo’s Ò᷂ ba Kòso’, Black Music Research Journal, vol. 17, no. 1: 101–29. Euba, Akin (1970), ‘Traditional Elements as the Basis of New African Art Music’, African Urban Studies, vol. 5, no. 4: 52–62. —— (1998), Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants, music CD, City of Birmingham Touring Opera, conducted by Simon Halsey. Point Richard CA: Music Research Institute. —— (2000a), ‘Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants’, unpublished musical score. —— (2000b), ‘[Composer’s notes in] Orunmila’s Voices: Songs from the Beginning of Time’ (for orchestra, soloists, and chorus), unpublished. —— (2003), ‘Concept of Neo African Music as Manifested in Yoruba Folk Opera’. In The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective, Ingrid Monson (ed.). New York and London: Routledge: 207–41. Grey, Thomas S. (1988), ‘Wagner, the Overture, and the Aesthetics of Musical Form’, 19th-Century Music, vol. 12, no. 1: 3–22. Irele, Abiola (1993), ‘Is African Music Possible?’, Transition, vol. 61: 56–71. Joseph, Charles M. (2008), Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention. New Haven: Yale University Press. Olupona, Jacob K. and Terry Rey (eds) (2008), Òrìşà Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Omojola, Bode (1995), Nigerian Art Music. Ibadan: Insitut Francais de Recherché en Afrique. —— (2000), ‘Afrikanische und europäische Elemente in neuer nigerianischer Musik’, MusikTexte, 86/87: 18–33. —— (2004), ‘Yoruba Opera’. In Understanding Yoruba Life and Culture, Nike Lawal, Matthew N.O. Sadiku and P. Ade Dopamu (eds). Trenton: African World Press: 633–49. —— (2012), Yorùbá Music in the Twentieth Century: Identity, Agency, and Performance Practice. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Ray, Benjamin C. (1993), ‘Aladura Christianity: A Yoruba Religion’, Journal of Religion in Africa, vol. 23, no. 3: 266–91. Uzoigwe, Joshua (1992), Akin Euba: An Introduction to the Life and Music of a Nigerian Composer. Bayreuth: E. Breitinger, University of Bayreuth.

The Phantom of the West African Opera A tour d’horizon

TOBIAS ROBERT KLEIN

‘When you go to India and to the interior of Africa you will hear Il Trovatore’, Giuseppe Verdi playfully boasted in May 1862 (quoted in Budden 1978: 112). Would the maestro then be disappointed to learn that ‘to a child reared […] in western Nigeria in the 1930’s and 40’s, the name Verdi or Puccini probably meant no more than some exotic candy or a new brand of tinned pilchards in the local expatriate shops’? Wole Soyinka (1999), to whom we owe this mischievous recollection of the genre’s ‘Otherness’,1 does not hesitate however to describe ‘the European operatic form’ as the ‘most accessible vehicle even for the most distinctive African themes from antiquity and mythology’: Nothing is more ‘natural’ than the expression of the adven­tures of the deities in a medium of music, elliptical dialogue, movement and spectacle, elements central to the Western opera. This alliance of presentation idioms has always been present in traditional African theater, and the contemporary artist merely takes them along the path of stylistic refinements, in some cases borrowing boldly from the artistic idioms of a totally different culture. (Soyinka 1999)

In spite of opera’s recent discovery as ‘an unlikely space for voicing black experiences’, as Naomi André proposes in her study on Black Opera (2018: 28), this newly found enthusiasm is hardly reflected in the available research literature. Other than in the settler colony of South Africa, there has never been a considerable institutional representation of European opera on the west coast of the continent; and, unlike the eagerly embraced novel or drama, the genre held little attrac­tion for a new generation of musicians. The staging of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in Victorian Lagos or at the elite boarding 136

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schools of Umuahia, Ibadan or Achimota probably formed the closest point of contact, while the cultural policy of the missions and the colonial school system kept the achievements of extended tonality at bay. As Kofi Agawu notes, ‘[l]imited and limiting […] the language of [church] hymns, with its reassuring cadences and refusals of tonal adventure, would prove alluring, have a sedative effect, and keep Africans trapped in a prison house of diatonic tonality’ (2016: 337). West African opera may thus be described as a ‘phantom’, not only for the sake of a salient headline or its scant repre­sentation in scholarship: its marginal position has prompted it to constantly change forms and negotiate its relation with both the pre-colonial heritage and the ‘popular, modern, commercial, travelling musical theatre which com­bined elements of indigenous and imported culture in a creative and innovative fusion’ (Barber, Collins & Ricard 1997: 1). As a selected, quasi-chronological tour d’ horizon along Anglo­phone West Africa, this chapter aims to assemble the scattered information on some of these operatic ventures in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria, and put their particular musico-dramatic outline into a larger historic perspective. I will begin this overview with an opera by a Sierra Leonian composer, George Ballanta, staged at the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1936. The chapter will then proceed to discuss concert parties and folk operas, amalgamations of colonial vaudevilles and traditional storytelling or performances and thereafter comment on operas by Adam Fiberesima and Akin Euba, which adhere to the paradigms of Nigerian Art music rather than those of popular theatre. In the final section I will look at the course which West African opera has more recently taken outside the continent, with particular focus on two works by Olabode (‘Bode’) Omojola and Helen Parker-Jayne Isibor respectively.2

‘Juju again’: Ballanta’s pioneering attempt George Nicholas Ballanta from Sierra Leone (1893–1962), who has of late been rediscovered as an unduly side-lined pioneer of African Music research (Klein 2008: 46–68; Busse Berger 2020), was also a prolific composer. He began to study Euro­pean music as a teenager and, with the aid of patrons such as Adelaide Casely-

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Hayford and George Foster Peabody, and the musicians Frank and Walter Damrosch, enrolled at the New York Institute of Musical Art in 1922. Supported by a Guggenheim scholarship he travelled throughout West Africa where he completed a couple of shorter articles and a manuscript entitled ‘The Aesthetics of African Music’ (see Wright 1995). In order to put his theoretical insights into practice, Ballanta eventually composed various works for the stage. In a letter to the Guggenheim Foundation, dated 5 July 1938 (quoted in Beckley 2016: 63), he mentions the performance of four ‘musical plays’; Feri Ghine (Lagos, December 1932), Efua (Lagos, May 1933) and Bangura (Onitsha, September 1933) were staged in Nigeria, while Afiwa (November 1936) was premiered in Keta at the edge of the then Gold Coast Colony. Later, it was repeated in neighbouring Lomé (Togo) and performed several times in Ballanta’s home country Sierra Leone. As Joseryl Beckley records: Ballanta’s own stagings in the 1930s were done at Wilberforce Hall, in the heart of Freetown. They involved various casts: students at the Annie Walsh Memorial School at one time, and different groups as well in the surrounding area, like the Grammar School Old Boys Improvement and Endowment Committee […] Ballanta usually put together an orchestra for Afiwa productions using whatever instrumentalists he could find, and he conducted from the piano. (Beckley 2016: 47)

The plot centres on the fate of princess Afiwa and combines modern concerns such as the emancipation of women with the Christian rejection of polygamy or superstition (Wright 1995: 27–30). As an unwanted female heir, Afiwa is thrown into a river, but rescued and raised by Ayele, a village woman. The grown-up princess eventually confronts her father and succeeds him on the throne following the performance of an ordeal. Similar to the libretto, which contains a wide range of registers stretching from that of the King James Bible to varieties of West African English, the music of Afiwa mingles European and African elements (cf. Beckley 2016: 43). The initial bars of ‘Why tempt ye me’ (No. 6), a fierce exchange between Kushiwoo (Afiwa’s biological mother) and the king’s other wives, who accuse her of engaging in witchcraft (‘juju’), are an apt example of this musical blending:

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Figure 1: George Nicholas Julius Ballanta, Afiwa, ‘Why tempt ye me’ (No. 6), bars 1–7, reprinted in Shine like de Mornin’ Star, ed. Logie E. Wright, Freetown 1995, p. 26.

1. The main melody is pentatonic, a feature on which Ballanta elaborates at length in his theoretical writings. In accordance with his theory of the second tone in a pentatonic scale as the centre of a ‘septimal progression’ (e.g. E-A-D-G-C), the co-wives respond to Kushiwoo in parallel fourths. In spite of Ballanta’s conviction that a ‘great difference between African music and that of the Caucasian races is that of the leading note’

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(quoted in Klein 2008: 61), the piano accompaniment is clearly based on E minor harmonies. 2. In a similar vein, and with the sole exception of drums, the instruments prescribed in the score are predominantly Euro­ pean: trumpet, clarinet, alto saxophone, euphonium (saxhorn), violin, bass and piano. 3. The exchange is arranged with a call-and-response structure and using intersecting phrases (Koshiwoo entering into the final note of the co-wives’ part). The call-response principle, which Ballanta describes in his theoretical writings, is therefore used to fuel the dramatic conflict, rather than confirm an initial statement (Avorgbedor 1990: 212–13). The different length of the two phrases and the syncopated accentuation in the piano accompaniment further introduce notions of cross-rhythm and off-beat phrasing. It is perhaps easier to appreciate Afiwa if we contrast it with a performance two-and-a-half years earlier at a studio theatre in New York’s 23rd Street. In May 1934 Kykunkor, or the Witch Women was composed, choreographed and marketed to an American audience as the ‘first African opera’ by Asafora Horton, a singer, dancer and, like Ballanta, a member of the Europeaneducated upper class (Needham 2002: 233–4). His arrangement of songs, dances and acrobatic performances was perceived as a kind of ethnographic display of unadulterated West African life. The protagonist Bokari, played by Horton himself, is courting Otobone who is about to undergo her puberty rites. Their marriage ceremony is interrupted by Kykunkor, a witch woman, who curses and kills Bokari. While a ‘devil dancer’ fails to bring him back to life, a ‘witch doctor’, playing on a reed pipe, overcomes the evil spirits (Needham 2002: 243–4). It is almost inconceivable that Ballanta would not have heard of his countryman’s American success. His own opera, however, was not addressed to an urban American audience, but to members of the African elite (at least as far as the Freetown performances were concerned),3 and it did not contain dances. It also used a fixed score for European instruments, in contrast to the four drums forming the orchestra for Kykunkor. Those parts of the song interludes, which were apparently written down (Needham 2002:

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246–7), were met with clear reluctance on the side of American critics, since the appropriation and variation of hymn singing, or the performance of early highlife music inevitably questioned their exoticised image of Africa. Herein lies a remarkable con­ nection between Horton and Ballanta, despite their vastly different approaches. The latter’s engagement ‘in the music of my race […] which should not only be preserved but also developed’ (Ballanta writing to George Herzog, 8 September 1930, quoted in Klein 2008: 53), was cold-bloodedly obstructed by anthropologists such as Herzog, to whom he addressed the above letter (Busse Berger 2020). It is not surprising, then, that Ballanta’s achievements were hardly noted in (Western) scholarship, contrary to some popular genres, which have routinely been labelled as operas. These will be addressed in the following section.

On the road: Nigerian folk opera and Ghanaian concert party The form of musical theatre in Nigeria, which Ulli Beier (1954) describes as ‘Yoruba-folk-opera’, emerged in the course of the 1930s and 1940s and was, in contrast to classical drama, largely known as ‘native air opera’. In the article quoted at the start of this chapter, Soyinka claims: ‘I was weaned on opera’ (1999) and then proceeds to describe its tripartite composition. An extensive preand postlude – the ‘opening glee’ (cf. Adedeji 1975) and the ‘closing glee’ – announced and interpreted the main play to be performed. The opera itself was never called plain opera but went under a variety of names – Concert Party, Folk Opera, Cantatas. Its contents ranged from biblical tales (Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel in the Lion’s Den were favorites) to history and epic to mythology and fantasy (‘Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves’ was a staple). Certainly this was not opera in the manner of La Scala in Milan or the Metropolitan Opera in New York but a local evolution from the traditional theatrical forms, which used every conceivable performance medium – ritual, dance, music, mime and mask. (Soyinka 1999)

In his acclaimed standard work on Yorùbá Travelling Theatre – whose leading figures were Hubert Ogunde, Kola Ogunmola

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and Duro Ladipo (see Barber, Collins & Ricard 1997: 39–41) – Biodun Jeyifo4 links the masked perfor­mances and acrobatics of the Alárìnjó theatre,5 with the ‘comic songs, romantic songs, dramatic sketches excerpted from longer plays, comic monologues and duologues’ of music hall entertainments favoured by a small coastal elite (Jeyifo 1984: 42). Together with the creation of Yorùbá drama, mostly in the realm of both missionary and independent African churches (see Adedeji 1973), these traditions gradually merged into a popular entertainment theatre which appealed to a growing strata of (semi-)educated and (semi-)urbanised audiences (Barber 2000: 204–39). Jeyifo thus proposes to restrict ‘the term “opera”’ as only ‘very loosely applicable to one phase of the development of the performance idiom of the Travelling Theatre when the dialogue was entirely sung and the text was conceived as a form of “libretto”’ (1984: 10). Both the commercially successful, sometimes politically allegorical productions of Ogunde (cf. Coates 2017) and the mythologically inclined productions of Ogunmola and especially Ladipo (see Duro-Ladipo & Kóláwolé 1997) balanced the ‘visual monotony of the frontal picturisation’ with dances, mime and ‘the great physical effervescence of movement within the linear formation’ (Jeyifo 1984: 17, original emphasis). There was no strict separation between actors, singers, dancers, instrumen­talists or stage technicians; new members had to acquire their expertise through a form of apprenticeship in the entire production process (Barber 2000: 87). Similar to the ‘Yorùbá opera’, the Ghanaian concert party is an amalgamation of traditional storytelling, vaudeville, music hall entertainment and school theatre. Kwamena Bame pins the begin­ nings to a headmaster Yalley, of Sekondi, who ‘began to act in his school’s “Empire day”-concerts in 1918’. Supported by a tap dancer and a harmonium player, the ‘performances interwove jokes, singing, dancing, and he wore fancy dress, wigs, false moustaches and the white make up of a minstrel’ (Bame 1985: 8–9; cf. Collins 1976: 50, Cole 2001: 20–5). The name for their performances and its variety show structure was adopted from the musical entertainments of the coastal high society. Already in the 1880s, Cape Coast and Lagosian newspapers vividly reported on the performance of ‘grand concert[s]’. These included pieces such as a trio entitled ‘Music hath its charms’ or ‘The death of Nelson’, a popular song excerpted from

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John Braham’s 1811 opera The American (Anon. 1883). Acting in ‘concerts’ was not restricted to the biblically based ‘cantata’, but also formed an essential part of school performances: A ‘scene Ali Baba played in four parts’ and shorter sketches such as the exchange of a shoemaker with his customer (called ‘Tight boot’) are mentioned as part of a concert at the Centenary School (Anon. 1905). From the 1920s to the 1980s the concert party turned into the major performance mode of travelling bands and theatre troupes; actors on the move were entertaining audiences, who found themselves immersed into a complex and conflicting process of social transition (Barber 2018: 86–8). The core cast of the post-1920s ‘concert party’ was made up out of three staple characters played by the exclusively male actors of ensembles such as the Akan, Ahanta or Kumasi Trios. Concert party characters were Gentleman, Lady and the ‘Bob’, a comedian in the role of a manservant or ‘houseboy’ named after Ishmael ‘Bob’ Johnson (Collins 1976: 50–1). Beginning with E. K. Nyame and his Akan Trio current highlife songs and a greater number of instru­ ments – (electric) guitars, maracas, tom-toms, bongos and a jazz drum set (Bame 1985: 40) – were added to the plays throughout the 1950s and 1960s (Cole 2001: 143). Perform­ances thus exhibited a ‘four-part structure’ which included a warm-up with highlife songs, a series of smaller sketches, scenes or playlets often involving face painting and difficult dance movements, and the main musical comedy with its sentimental or reflective songs, followed by another roundup of highlife music (Bame 1985: 50–4). Several years before, John Collins (1976) had referred to concert parties as ‘Ghana’s comic opera’, another genre of ‘folk opera’ enjoyed that considerable institutional support. Kwabena Nketia mentions a small but significant outcrop of musical plays based […] on a mixture of ‘fine art’, popular and traditional idioms [such as] Konkonsa by Robert Danso performed by students of the Presbyterian Training College in the 1940s, Twer Nyame by Ghartey and Entsua Mensah, and recent series of musicals by Saka Acquaye: Obadzeng, Bomongo and The Old Witch. (Nketia 1965: 46)

Similar to the advanced form of the concert party in the 1950s, Saka Acquaye, a renowned sculptor, initially made use of ‘highlife music to hold the interest of the audience as well as to hold the

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story together’ (1971: 60). In his chef-d’oeuvre, The Lost Fishermen, a so-called ‘folk opera’ (see Nii-Dortey 2012), a group of ten defies the traditional taboo to sail out on the open sea on Tuesdays and is caught in a storm. After the accidental sacrifice of one of the men, the group gets stranded on a mysterious island which is inhabited by ten women who once accompanied their husbands on a similar trip. When their hesitant leader finally agrees to perform a ritual required to appease the Gods, the ambitious and trickster-like Kotey kills his fellow man, Sakie, with whom he vies for Koshie, as well as the woman herself. While Sakie is left to die on the island, the rest of the party is led home. Moses Nii-Dortey (2012, 2015) has convincingly situated this work within the cultural policy of Kwame Nkrumah’s post-­ independence Ghana (see also Klein 2008: 69–110), with its amalgamation of songs, dances and instruments from different regions aimed at boosting national identity and weakening the authority of traditional rulers. The com­bina­tion of Ga- and Fante fishermen songs – with Asafo dances from Akan speaking areas, Ewe dirges and Agbekor rhythms and gyil-xylophones from the North – markedly differs from the regional and lingual scope of the Yorùbá ‘folk opera’, despite Duro Ladipo having been a potential source of influence. Concert-party-like wit may for instance be felt in the fishermen’s fantasies on ‘meaty women’ during the first encounter with their female counterparts, while Acquaye himself points to Africans’ ‘ability to easily combine seriousn­ess and humor’ (1971: 62). A review of his third major musical play, Hintin-Hintin (1976), a series of intrigues surrounding the succession of an ageing village king, referred to it in much lighter terms as a ‘folk operetta’, even though its cast comprised ‘the entire ensemble of the national folkloric dance company’ and ‘an auxiliary choral force of two professional soloists attached to the National Symphony Orchestra and a freelance soprano’ (Bedu-Addo 1977: 29).

Kings fall apart: Nigerian opera in the idiom of African art music Bibliographies and books on African Art Music list a number of post-independence Nigerian operas by Samuel Akpabot, Lazarus

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Ekwemue, Akin Euba, Adam Fiberesima, Meki Nzewi, Okech­ ukwu Ndubuisi, etc. which appear to have left few traces behind (although one would love to catch a glimpse of Nzewi’s operatic version of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart). Ndubuisi’s The Vengeance of the Lizards has at some length been discussed elsewhere (Omojola 1997: 117–29), while the two pieces at the centre of this chapter’s analysis, Adam Fiberesima’s Opu Jaja (1973) and Akin Euba’s Chaka (1970), have not only elicited critical responses but also attracted the attention of the classical recording industry.6 In spite of their vastly different musical styles, the two compositions share some remarkable characteristics: both were performed with considerable institutional support in the early 1970s and both are concerned with pre-colonial African resistance against European rule. Both also remain markedly detached from the ‘folk opera’ tradition. Bode Omojola records that Fiberesima’s ‘predilection for the operatic genre dates back to his college days – the period during which he wrote The Rascals’, whose premiere in 1945 ‘featured a cast of Nigerian, English and American performers’ (1997: 74). This debut was later on followed by a number of operettas and three full-fledged operas (Fiofori 1986). After his graduation from Okrina Grammar School, Fiberesima went to England to study electrical engineering, but switched to music and later on worked with Radio Nigeria and the Rivers State University in Port Harcourt (Eboigbe 2019). In his younger years he was also known as a highlife musician, performing with the Sky Rockets in Lagos, and as a pianist in Ambrose Campbell’s band West African Rhythm Brothers in London. These styles are remarkably absent from Opu Jaja (produced in 1973 by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation at Glover Memorial Hall in Lagos), which unmistakably clings to the language and musical formulas of nineteenth-century Italian opera (slight aberrations may be ascribed to either regional or historical distance, depending on the stance of the listener). This results in the somewhat paradoxical (and yet aptly operatic) situation, that the protagonists of a bitter colonial encounter share a European musical idiom, together with the African language of the libretto, Ijaw. The opera’s plot is based on the historic figure of Opu Jaja (1821–91, cf. Cookey 1974). The self-made ‘merchant prince’ and

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King of Opobo in the Niger Delta is ruthlessly persecuted by the British, who are desperate to break his trade monopoly on palm oil. After an exchange with the British Consul, it is decided to send a delegation (including the king’s son) to Victorian London. Unable to reach a conclusive agreement with the British, the group is entertained with a number of sporting activities, such as cricket, lawn tennis, billiards and golf. The king is finally lured on board a navy vessel, where he is ungallantly arrested and deported to the West Indies. In Fiberesima’s conviction, ‘every nation has its tradition of opera, and opera is not foreign to Nigeria’. He explains that ‘Italians performed their operas in arenas like our village squares used for traditional dancing, masquerades and ceremonies’, and proceeds to contextualise his artistic ambi­tion ‘to come up with a music that fits the times, and still retain the best qualities of our vast traditional music’ (quoted in Fiofori 1986: 1980). In a both provocative and stimu­lating essay, Abiola Irele, Nigeria’s foremost literary and cultural critic, argues that the attempts of twentiethcentury Nigerian composers to create an ‘African Art Music’ are inevitably prone to failure. While a reiteration of nineteenthcentury folk-based, nationalist composition falls short of con­ temporary standards, its evasion results in an equally undesir­able alienation of African audiences. Fiberesima’s opera is men­tioned as a case in point: Opu Jaja certainly contains passages of some interest – the vocal passages, for all their conventionality, could conceivably have drawn their inspiration from the melodic patterns of the musical tradition of the Rivers area of Nigeria. But the work, as a whole, does not have sufficient expressive power to match the subject. What is more serious, it fails to adequately integrate elements drawn from the different musical traditions, as Mussorgsky did in his masterpiece, which we discussed earlier. This weakness is obvious from the very beginning, in the way that the overture introduces Nigerian elements as if irrelevant intrusions into its progression, instead of weaving them into the orchestral texture. (Irele 1993: 67)

For this texture, Fiberesima employs a European orchestra (with the piano as an additional instrument and harmonic base), while the use of African drums is restricted to a couple of colouristic interludes.7 Things may look slightly different if one does not seek out African

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influences on the aural surface, but take a look at the opera’s formal organisation instead. In spite of Opu Jaja’s strong leanings towards mid-nineteenth-century (Italian) opera, the musico-dramaturgical scheme of closed scenes – formally structured by variations of ‘La Solita forma’ with introduction, cavatina (adagio), tempo di mezzo and cabaletta (Powers 1987), is flatly ignored. Within a mere 47 bars, a C major cantilena by Jaja’s wife (bars 192–210) – whose evasion into minor evokes Bellini’s melancholic ‘melodie lunghe’ – is interrupted by a response of her husband (bars 211–17, a variation of bars 205–9) and leads over into an ad libitum cadenza (bars 218–21). This solo passage is immediately followed by intersections of Prince Jaja, Opu Jaja and the British Consul (bars 222–9) and another short duetto section (Opu Jaja and wife, bars 230–9). Another even more compelling example (even from a purely musical perspective) is provided in bars 416–84: bars 416–30: B major: antiphonal exchange of Prince Jaja and British Consul/Chief Warrior etc. with final chorus passage (427–30); Jaja’s wife enters; bars 431–49: C major: duet Prince Jaja-Jaja’s wife, modu­lating to G major and (with intersections of Opu Jaja) expanded to a trio with a final tutti bar; bars 455–63: cadence of Jaja’s wife with flute solo and final chorus passage (462–3); bars 464–7: C major: instrumental interlude (piano), followed by an antiphonal exchange of Opu Jaja/British Consul and Chief Warrior (468–9) and a modulating chorus passage with a final solo bar for Jaja’s wife (475); bars 476–84: second cadence of Jaja’s wife with ornamented trill, followed by instrumental postlude (480–4). Based on these excerpts from the first act, the overriding principle of Opu Jaja turns out to be that of the ‘permanent ensemble’: there are no long-stretched arias, and solo passages are either immediately responded to or sometimes reduced to a mere link between chorus and ensemble sections. With some caution one might link this formal organisation with the pertinent performative conception of ‘call and response’, in which repetition and variation results in what Daniel Avorgbedor calls the ‘intensifying, verifying and

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Figure 2. Adam Dogoro Fiberesima, Opu Jaja, Act I, bars 482–95 with cadenza of Jaja’s wife accompanied by a solo-flute (reminiscent of the adaptation of the ‘mad scene’ in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor). [Iwalewa-Haus, Universität Bayreuth, IWA M 00096]

diversifying [of] the affective imports of the text’ (1990: 213). Fiberesima’s score equally displays a strong inclination towards a ‘thinking in patterns’ (J. H. Kwabena Nketia quoted in Kubik 2010: 23), most visibly in those sections which are explicitly marked and bracketed by repetition signs. Far more experimental in nature than Opu Jaja is Akin Euba’s Chaka, a composition based on a translation of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s dramatic poem about the famous Zulu warrior king, which was suggested to him by Irele, also a scholarly authority on Senghor. Like Fiberesima’s Opu Jaja, Euba’s more oratorical than operatic setting of this text was met with some reluctance after its

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first performance at the third Ile-Ife arts festival in 1970. With a notable air of superiority, Swiss critic Renato Berger complained about the historical ‘impossibility of the tonic-dominant system’ and an outmoded style of recitation. The cultural conscious European at least cannot help to see the straight way to the same impasse in which European music during the centuries has engaged, in detaching itself from its formally functional roots, and in becoming a show piece for a society living on welfare and boredom. In this regard, the two speaking voices, changing sometimes in singing, were like a concentration of this thought: this kind of pompous recitation has run out in Europe since long time, and the singing of similar pathetic kind could be forgiven when performed by artists of highly professional quality, but performed to parameters in the Nigerian-English slang, this makes simply vomit. (Berger 1970: 193)

Criticism of this kind appears to be hopelessly trapped in the ideological fallacy of Africa as the ‘Other’, prone to ‘complete Europe’s lack’ (Agawu 2003: 104). It may be fruitfully contrasted with Euba’s own comments on the adaptation and five different versions of his composition. Linked by an interlude (Senghor’s poem ‘Man and the Beast’, which is rendered twice in choral speaking style) the composition is divided into Chant I (for Chaka and a contrasting white voice combining spoken and sung passages) and Chant II (for Chaka, a chorus and a praise singer), according to the structure of the poem. The vocal parts are accompanied by four different sets of instruments. In a 1989 chapter on his approach to ‘Neo-African Music’ Euba gave this explanation: In setting the work, I made use of soloists, chorus and an instru­mental ensemble that consisted of four components: (a) a trio comprising flute, clarinet and bassoon (b) at least one brass instrument (trumpet) and timpani (c) a Yoruba dùndún hour­glass tension drum ensemble (d) an ensemble of assorted African instruments, including Ghanaian atenteben bamboo flutes, xylophone, slit drum and membrane drums. (1989: 79–80)

Among the central features of the Ile-Ife-version is the chang­ ing organisation of the African percussion group in strict or free rhythms. Euba explains that in ‘some sections of Chant I […] Chaka’s part is accompanied by African per­cussion playing in strict rhythm, coupled with European winds playing in a different

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metre’ (1989: 80). The medieval Dies Irae melody is alluded to in Chant I, while there are two different Atenteben melodies for the two Chants. The second melody appears together with a steady sequence of low and high slit drum beats during Chaka’s part and, towards the end of the piece, is combined with an alternating drum motive (recorded at Ikoduru, Lagos State) used in the chorus sections. The latter culminates in an interchange of leader and chorus, which, accompanied by a dùndún ensemble and the Ikoduru drum theme, links formulas of rárà praise poetry with Senghor’s poem text. When preparing the composition, I approached a rárà chanter in Osogbo and, after explaining the story of Chaka, asked him to compose a praise poem that would fit such a personality. […] The part of the chanter consists of periods of free rhythm chanting, culminating in the leader-and-chorus song with the accompaniment of the dùndún ensemble. The structure is used twice in Chant II. The solo chant in Yoruba is rendered simultaneously with sections of Senghor’s poetry in which the Leader of the Chorus speaks a eulogy to Chaka, with the Chorus punctuating with refrains of Bayete Baba! Bayete O Bayete or Bayete Baba! Bayete O Zulu!, and the drum theme assigned to the Chorus backing the entire vocal component. (Euba 1989: 81)

Agawu aptly observes that many of ‘[t]hese styles are pre­domi­ nantly West African […] making this an Akan or Ewe or Yoruba Chaka, not a Zulu Chaka’ (2001: 197). Each of the five different versions of Euba’s composition has, however, been tailored to the venue and occasion of its performance, while it also reveals aesthetic trends and opportunities. For a fully dramatised performance at Senegal’s capital Dakar at the invitation of President Senghor, though with a reduced instrumental ensemble, Euba portrayed Chaka as a modern anti-colonial liberator; a workshop at Bruekelen in the Netherlands (1980) only saw the performance of Chant II in the form of a ‘dance drama’. Two British performances – at Brent and Southwark (both London) in 1986 – showed marked differences in the instrumental accompaniment: while the Brent version (the closest to the Ile-Ife one) com­bined the spoken voice of Chant I with woodwind parts in a modified 12-tone style, the Southwark performance by the Brixton-based Zuriya Theatre Company replaced the instrumental sections:

The Phantom of the West African Opera   151 The parts for western instruments (almost totally confined to Chant I) in the version performed at Brent were written in a modified 12-tone idiom and I felt that a more popular idiom was needed for Chant I in the Brixton workshop. This decision led to a new setting of Chaka for speakers, singers, dancers, pop combo and an ensemble of African instruments. We also included much modern dance; the prelude had an extended section of dance and there were other sections of dance in Chant I, occurring either as interludes or in accompaniment of passages of spoken poetry. (Euba 1989: 82)

By this time Euba had already completed Bethlehem, a kind of ‘gospel rock opera’ premiered with a reduced instrumental ensemble at the Lagos National Theatre in 1984, which transforms the story of the birth of Christ into a contemporary African environ­ ment (including an elaborate display of Mary and Joseph’s wed­ding celebration). Interestingly enough, it is not the far more experi­ mental Chaka, but rather this musical which provided Euba’s definition of an ‘African opera’: a work a) that is based on an African or Africanized story […] b) that employs music, dance, drama, costumes and other artistic means that are modelled on African traditional or contemporary practice, c) whose realization depends on the performing expertise of Africans, and d) with which average Africans can identify. (Euba 1989: 95)

In a footnote, however, Euba hastens to add – perhaps with Fiberesima’s work in mind – that this ‘definition of African opera’ is not meant ‘to discourage African composers from writing forms of opera that might, for example, require the kind of resources available at Covent Garden or the New York Metropolitan’ (1989: 99). In the final section of this overview I will now turn to works predominately staged outside the African continent.

Out of Africa: West African opera on the global stage The consecutive adaptations of Chaka charted above under­line yet another important trend. Similar to contem­ porary ‘Afropolitan’ writing, recent West African operas are not necessarily composed and staged in Africa itself; as repre­sentatives and showcases of African culture these pro­duc­tions may in some cases appear more ‘African’ in essence than various of their predecessors. Ethnically

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mixed and cosmopolitan audiences in particular seem to long for a certain kind of ostentatious ‘authenticity’ that compositions like Opu Jaja may deny them. It is here where another important trend of postcolonial African music history comes into play: the standardisation, assemblage, staged display and combination of different regional traditions which (for example in Acquaye’s Fishermen) aim at promoting a (postcolonial) national identity. In a second step this trend also informs and facilitates the global presentation and re-contextualisation of African traditional music and dance (see Klein 2008: 69–110). Some of these tendencies can already be observed in the first US production of Ballanta’s Afiwa at Cottey College (2010). Here, the ubiquitous djembe drum (Polak 2000) was added to the orchestra while a marimba ensemble provided the accompaniment for several interludes, with dancers miming various key events of the plot (Beckley 2016: 57). Similar to Afiwa, Bode Omojola’s Queen Moremi (2014), which premiered at another American college, Mount Holyoke, also centres around the achievements of a strong woman. The opera ‘is based on the legend of Moremi, a mythical heroine of the people of Ile-Ife’ (Programme notes) who is honoured with a festival every October. Her story has been handed down orally (Brooks 1989: 137–47), and also features prominently in Johnson’s History of the Yorùbá People (1921: 147– 8). Moremi has also inspired several productions for the stage, including the eponymous music drama by Duro Ladipo (1973), which will be returned to below, and plays such as Femi Osofian’s Morountodun (1979). In Omojola’s libretto, which considerably diverges from Ladipo’s version, Moremi is abducted by warriors of the neighbouring Ajoji kingdom. The community is summoned and the deity of Orunmila consulted for advice. Meanwhile the king of Ajoji makes advances to Moremi and forces her to marry him. Soon Moremi discovers that staying near to fire with an unclothed body is a religious taboo for the Ajoji warriors. She manages to escape and is led home by Osun, the deity of female power and fertility. The invaders are finally defeated through the use of fire as a means of warfare, and the opera ends with a lavish victory celebration. Omojola explicitly refers to his work as a ‘folk opera’. This links Queen Moremi to the (waning) tradition of Yorùbá musical theatre,

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in particular the ‘serious’ sub-genre intro­duced by Duro Ladipo. In a personal correspondence, the composer gave the following explanation: ‘I conceived this opera as a folk opera and a significant part of it was realized from a skeletal libretto. So there’s no formal score as is the case with my most recent opera – Irin Ajo, which is fully scored’ (e-mail to the author, 21 March 2019). In the programme notes for the Mount Holyoke production he further elaborates on the sources and genesis of Queen Moremi: The music of Queen Moremi derives mainly from Yoruba folksongs that I collected and arranged to reflect on specific actions and scenes in the opera. Examples include the opening song of the opera, ‘Eru Oba Ni Mo Ba’ (Our King is Supreme). […] Another example of a folksong is ‘Orunmila A Ji Ginni’ (Orunmila, I Worship), which is performed in Act One, Scene Three to welcome the diviner (Babalawo) on stage and as a solemn accompaniment to the rituals of divination. It is a song of praise for Orunmila, the Yoruba deity of knowledge and custodian of the Ifa Oracle. In addition to folksong-arrangements are a few songs with known composers. These include the song ‘Moremi Ajasoro’ (by Duro Ladipo), which recurs throughout the opera as praise for Moremi. Other original songs include ‘Kon Kon Oloyinmomo’ (Sweet Like Honey) and ‘O To Ge’ (Enough is Enough), both of which I wrote in the course of rehearsing for this production. ‘Kon Kon Oloyinmomo’ is sung by the market women to advertise their wares, while ‘O To Ge’ is performed by the people of Ile-Ife to express their frustration over the crisis that has befallen their community. The final song, ‘Mase Da Ni Lejo’ (by Segun Gbatie) preaches against gender discrimination and functions as a song of celebration. (Programme notes)

At this point it is useful to briefly compare Ladipo’s version (for a detailed discussion see Brooks 1989: 147–62) with Omojola’s libretto to indicate the different purposes to which the legend has been put. Ladipo’s Moremi was staged with an ethnically mixed cast in Osogbo in March 1966, between the January coup d’état and the outbreak of civil war in the following year. It was a tumultuous time politically, and this considerably influenced his re-telling of the legend; instead of being mistaken for spirits, the masked invaders acquire supernatural powers from the contact with the ancestors that their masques personify. After their defeat they are actually integrated into the community, their king is given an Ife chieftaincy title, and the opera ends with a grand

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celebration of unity which ingeniously combines the different instrumental resources of the two conflicting groups: various Yorùbá drums and calabash horns (Brooks 1989: 207, 240). Fifty years later and on a different continent, Omojola’s libretto omits an essential element of the legend which Ladipo had maintained: before Moremi deliberately places herself into the hands of the enemy in order to discover the secret of their military invincibility, she vows to sacrifice her only son, Oluorogbo, to the river goddess Esinmerin in exchange for assistance. (The sacrifice and Olurogbo’s subsequent deification form the raison d’être behind the festival in Moremi’s honour.) Omojola’s twenty-first-century version does not explicitly mention this sacrifice, but tends to put greater emphasis on gender relations, and the strength of the heroine. This is evident, for instance, in the scene in which the captured Moremi ridicules the sexual advances of the Ajoji king. (In the written version of the libretto, Moremi compares his head with a palm-wine gourd.) For emphasis, their encounter is staged as a dance scene rather than performed verbally. In line with the institutionalisation of traditional music outside the continent, including the global outreach of Yorùbá drumming (Klein 2007), the production also features Bisi Adeleke, a master drummer and leader of a dùndún ensemble. He verbally addresses the American audience to introduce ‘the talking drum from the Yorùbá people of Nigeria’, and in a solo performance unrelated to the action of the opera demonstrates ‘how we make the drum talk and how we make the drum sing as well’ (recording of the Mount Holyoke performance). The use of musical instruments as emblems of African performative culture is even more constitutive for Helen ParkerJayne Isibor’s The Song Queen, performed at London’s New Opera Festival in 2015. The opera also exhibits its ‘Africaness’ through the introduction of Nigeria’s unofficial lingua franca. As the ‘first ever opera in pidgin’, it combines, perhaps in response to Wagner’s conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk, dancing and a video installation with a series of songs on the cross-culturally familiar story of the siren and sea nymph ‘Mummy Water’ who lures unsus­pecting sailors and fishermen to their watery graves (see Mark 2015). Isibor and a male singer (who appears at the end of the performance) are accompanied by a small vocal group (soprano,

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mezzo, tenor) and an instrumental ensemble. The Song Queen’s orchestra combines strings (an occasional harmonic base) with an electric guitar, various percussion instruments and the Kora bridge harp, like the dùndún and djembe drums or the Zimbabwean mbira, yet another cross-continental and deliberately eclectic icon of African music (see Ebron 2002). In the second section of the London performance a trancelike atmosphere is created. The interaction of Isibor playing the Udu water drum and the vocal group (supported by a descending D-minor ostinato of the strings: F-E-D-A, in the simplified vein of a baroque sequence to be harmonised as: i5-v-iv-v(3)) contrasts with the changing visual impressions on the screen and the movements and gestures of the solo dancer. In spite of its futuristic appeal, Isibor still combines her aim to overcome cultural barriers with an emphatic claim to performative authenticity. In a newspaper interview she states: I don’t have the kind of face most people link to opera. I hope that people look at me and even if they don’t go into opera music specifically, they can think: you don’t have to shake your bum-bum, take your clothes off, it doesn’t have to be auto-tune. (Isibor, quoted in Mark 2015)

The observation, according to which the internationalisation of African opera may result in an ‘Africanisation’, should perhaps not be unduly generalised. Omojola’s latest opera Ìrìn Àjò, on which he writes in this volume, is fixed in a score that returns to the historically established model of blending African instruments and glimpses of highlife music with a European orchestra. A change of topic from pre-colonial settings to the unsentimental issues of global migration, alienation and brain drain may have inspired or even necessi­tated a re-orientation. It also opens up yet another chapter in West Africa’s history of a reluctant, but steady, entanglement with what used to be seen as a core cultural emblem and achievement of the European upper class.

NOTES 1 Soyinka’s semi-fictional memoirs (1994: 72–9) display this ‘otherness’ in yet another humorous episode about the antics of a pompous diva, who vows to beautify the celebration of Nigeria’s independence with her fading voice.

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For Omojola see also his chapter in this volume. Unfortunately next to nothing is known about the first performance in Keta. For a critical appraisal of Jeyifo, see Olakunle George (2018). The Alárìnjó theatre itself is said to have developed out of egúngún-rituals in the seventeenth-century (Adedeji 1972). 6 Excerpts from Opu Jaja were recorded on a now rare LP by DECCA, while Euba’s Chaka was made available on a CD from the Music Research Institute in 1998. 7 In contrast, however, African drums form the structural basis of the composer’s Kiri Owu symphony (Fiofori 1986: 1980).

REFERENCES Acquaye, Saka (1971), ‘Modern Folk Opera in Ghana’, African Arts, vol. 4, no. 2: 60–3. Adedeji, Joel A. (1972), ‘The Origin and Form of the Yoruba Masque Theatre’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 12: 254–63. —— (1973), ‘The Church and the Emergence of the Nigerian Theatre 1866–1914’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. 6, no. 1: 387– 96. —— (1975), ‘Trends in the Content and Form of the Opening Glee in Yoruba Drama’. In Critical Perspectives on Nigerian Literatures, Bernth Lindfors (ed.). Washington: Three Continents Press: 41–56. Agawu, Kofi (2001), ‘Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants’, Research in African Literatures, vol. 32, no. 2: 196–8. —— (2003), Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions. New York and London: Routledge. —— (2016), ‘Tonality as a Colonizing Force’. In Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique, Ronald M. Radano and Tejumola Olaniyan (eds). Durham: Duke University Press: 334–55. André, Naomi (2018), Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Anon. (1883), ‘Echoes’, Gold Coast Times, 31 March: 3. Anon. (1905), ‘The Centenary School Concert’, Gold Coast Leader, December 2: 4. Avorgbedor, Daniel K. (1990), ‘The Preservation, Transmission and Realization of Song Texts: A Psycho-Musical Approach’. In The Oral Performance in Africa, Isidore Okpewho (ed.). Ibadan: Spectrum: 207–28. Bame, Kwamena N. (1985), Come to Laugh in Ghana: African Traditional Theatre in Ghana. New York: Lillian Barber. Barber, Karin (2000), The Generation of Play: Yorùbá Popular Life in Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —— (2018), A History of African Popular Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barber, Karin, John Collins and Alain Ricard (1997), West African Popular Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Beckley, Joseryl Olayinka Lucy (2016), African and Western Aspects of Ballanta’s Opera ‘Afiwa’. PhD thesis, Vancouver, University of British Columbia. Bedu-Addo, Ato (1977), ‘Play Review: Hintin-Hintin’, Sankofa, vol. 1, no. 1: 29–30.

The Phantom of the West African Opera   157 Beier, Ulli (1954), ‘Yoruba Folk Operas’, African Music, vol. 1, no. 1: 32–34. Berger, Renato (1970), ‘Reflections on Third Ife Festival’, Nigeria Magazine, no. 106: 186–98. Brooks, Christopher A. (1989), Duro Ladipo and the Moremi Legend: The SocioHistorical Development of the Yoruba Music Drama and its Political Ramifications. PhD thesis, University of Texas Austin. Budden, Julian (1978), The Operas of Verdi, vol. 2, London: Cassell. Busse Berger, Anna Maria (2020), Search of Medieval Music in Africa and in Germany: Scholars, Singers and Missionaries, 1891–1961. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Coates, Oliver (2017), ‘Hubert Ogunde’s Strike and Hunger and the 1945 General Strike in Lagos: Labor and Reciprocity in the Kingdom of Oba Yéjídé’, Research in African Literatures, vol. 48, no. 2: 166–84. Cole, Catherine M. (2001), Ghana’s Concert Party Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Collins, John E. (1976), ‘Comic Opera in Ghana’, African Arts, vol. 9, no. 2: 50–7. Cookey, Sylvanus John Sodienye (1974), King Jaja of the Niger Delta: His Life and Times 1821–1891. New York: Nok. Duro-Ladipo, Abiodun and Gbóyèga Kóláwolé (1997), ‘Opera in Nigeria: The Case of Duro Ladipo’s O̧ba Kòso’, Black Music Research Journal, vol. 17, no. 1: 101–29. Eboigbe, Epa Ogie (2019), ‘The Opera Opu Jaja – Remembering Adam Fiberesima’, https://epa.com.ng/2019/07/08/the-opera-opu-jaja-remembering-adamfiberesima (accessed 4 August 2019). Ebron, Paulla A. (2002), Performing Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Euba, Akin (1989), ‘My Approach to Neo-African Music Theatre’. In Essays on Music in Africa: Intercultural Perspectives, vol. 2, Akin Euba (ed.). Lagos and Bayreuth: Elékóto Music Centre and Bayreuth African Studies: 73–113. —— (1998), Chaka: An Opera in Two Chants, music CD, City of Birmingham Touring Opera, conducted by Simon Halsey. Point Richmond: Music Research Institute Fiofori, Tam (1986), ‘The Operatic Tradition’, West Africa, 22 September: 1979–80. George, Olakunle (2018), ‘Returning to Jeyifo’s The Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria’, Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 12, no. 1: 14–22. Irele, Abiola (1993), ‘Is African Art Music Possible?’, Transition no. 61: 56–71. Jeyifo, Biodun (1984), The Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria. Lagos: Federal Ministry of Social Development Youth, Sports & Culture. Johnson, Samuel (1921), History of the Yorubas: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate. London: Routledge. Klein, Debra L. (2007), Yorùbá Bàtá Goes Global: Artists, Culture Brokers, and Fans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Klein, Tobias Robert (2008), Moderne Traditionen: Studien zur postkolonialen Musikgeschichte Ghanas. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Kubik, Gerhard (2010), Theory of African Music, vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ladipo, Duro (1973), Moremi: A Yoruba Opera. Ibadan: School of Drama, University of Ibadan. Mark, Monica (2015), ‘“I’m Going to Pidgin this up”: Performer Brings Voice of Africa to New Opera’, The Guardian, 27 July, www.theguardian.com/ music/2015/jul/27/performer-brings-voice-of-african-pidgin-to-new-opera (accessed 15 June 2018).

158  Tobias Robert Klein Needham, Maureen (2002), ‘Kykunkor, or the Witch Woman: An African Opera in America, 1934’. In Dancing Many Drums, Thomas F. De Frantz (ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 233–66. Nii-Dortey, Moses N. (2012), ‘Historical and Cultural Context of Folk Opera Development in Ghana: Saka Acquaye’s The Lost Fishermen in Perspective’, Research Review, vol. 27, no. 2: 25–58. —— (2015), ‘Folk Opera and Cultural Policy Development of Post-Independence Ghana: Saka Acquaye’s The Lost Fishermen’. In The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories and Infrastructures, Derek R. Peterson, Kodzo Gavua and Rassool Ciraj (eds). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press: 222–33. Nketia, J. H. Kwabena (1965), Music, Dance, and Drama: A Review of the Performing Arts of Ghana. Accra: Ghana Publishing Corporation. Omojola, Bode (1997), Nigerian Art Music: With an Introductory Study of Ghanaian Art Music. Ibadan and Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies. Polak, Rainer (2000), ‘A Musical Instrument Travels Around the World: Jenbe Playing in Bamako, West Africa, and Beyond’, World of Music, vol. 42, no. 3: 7–46. Powers, Harold S. (1987), ‘“La Solita Forma” and “The Uses of Convention”’, Acta Musicologia, vol. 59, no. 1: 65–90. Soyinka, Wole (1994) Ibadan: The Penkelemess Years – a Memoir, 1946–1965. London: Methuen. —— (1999), ‘African Traditions at Home in the Opera House’, New York Times, 25 April, www.nytimes.com/1999/04/25/arts/african-traditions-at-home-in-theopera-house.html?searchResultPosition=1 (accessed 25 July 2019). Wright, Logie (ed.) (1995), Shine Like de Mornin’ Star: N. G. J. Ballanta of Sierra Leone, Composer and Ethnomusicologist. Freetown: Ballanta Academy.

The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten Three Perspectives on a Controversial Project in Burkina Faso FABIAN LEHMANN, WILFRIED ZOUNGRANA & ANDREA REIKAT

When one mentions ‘opera’ and ‘Africa’ together in Germany, most people immediately think of the work of German film and theatre director and controversial action artist Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010) and his ‘African Opera Village’ project. This project began when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008 and he began a ‘cancer diary’ entitled So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein (Heaven could never be as beautiful as here). In his diary recordings, Schlingensief recounts visiting his father’s grave and vowing to build a church, a school, a hospital, a theatre and an opera house in Africa (2009: 17). This vow gained the aura of a ‘divine’ vision, one that cannot be taken back and has to be fulfilled, no matter where and when. Thus, his idea of the ‘African Opera Village’ was born. This chapter will consider the project’s genesis, critically analyse its early ‘manifesto’ (2009), which contained an ‘extended opera concept’, and the implications for this manifesto for the encounter between Schlingensief and Burkina Faso; and finally assesses the effectiveness of the Opera Village as a dynamic cultural entity that would include the viewpoints and cultural expressions of neighbouring communities. Schlingensief’s vision is controversial, particularly insofar as it high­ lights ongoing neo-colonial perceptions and engagements with Africa, which Schlingensief, in the early stages of the project, seemed to see as some unified, romantic place that could heal and renew him as an individual and German opera as an art form. This was picked up by German journalists who often compared Schlingen­ sief to the eponymous protagonist from Werner Herzog’s 1982 film Fitzcarraldo to stress the bizarre and neo159

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colonial character of the project. However, while Fitzcarraldo buys a steamboat to go deep into the Amazonas, with the aim of building an opera house and staging European grand operas in the midst of the Peruvian rainforest, Schlingensief was not interested in bringing elaborate stage spectacles to Africa. Instead, he aimed at creating a space for local artistic expressions in whichever form and genre they took, as part of his extended opera concept. Sibylle Dahrendorf accompanied Schlingensief during the early stages of the realisation of the Opera Village in Burkina Faso, and created the documentary film Knistern der Zeit (Crackle of Time 2012), in which Schlingensief admits that the term ‘opera’ in the project’s title raised specific expectations, especially since he had directed Wagner’s opera Parsifal in Bayreuth between 2004 and 2007. Schlingensief was convinced that even if those expectations were not fulfilled, they would contribute to the experience of Europeans who visited the Opera Village. He particularly liked the idea of irritating Wagnerians coming to Burkina Faso to see a ‘proper’ opera building and instead finding themselves in a lively West African village. This suggests that from the start the Opera Village was meant as a counter-concept to bourgeois notions of opera as a formalised European institution, and Africa provided Schlingensief with a context to break free from a sluggish European opera apparatus with all its conventions and unwritten laws. To get an idea of how Schlingensief conceived of his ‘opera’ in Africa project, one may refer to his often cited assertion that the first cry of a baby at the maternity ward echoing in the Opera Village would be closer to the essence of opera than any staging of an European repertory opera ever could be. Aiming at a radically extended understanding of opera, the African Opera Village was thus loaded with unrealisable expectations and imaginations of a liberating space allowing anybody who was to be part of the village access to fundamental artistic forces. As naïve and romanticised as Schlingensief’s fantasies of Africa had initially been, in 2009 he was much more reflexive of his position as a European artist than he had been a decade earlier. In 1995 he had shot a film in Zimbabwe with the programmatic title United Trash. When later asked about the film, he was very clear that it had been a failure, particularly when it came to the portrayal of ‘Africa’. As Schlingensief admitted, by the time of

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shooting, he was not interested in the local context of Zimbabwe; instead, he wanted to capture stereotypical images of Africa to use as background for the absurd, cartoon-like story of the film (Schlingensief 2012: 169). However, the question remains whether the quality of Schlingensief ’s work in Africa had fundamentally changed since then, particularly when it came to the continent’s representation. Not only did Schlingensief later dissociate himself from his earlier Africa-related works, in 2010 he worked with a cast of nine performers from Burkina Faso to create the theatre production Via Intolleranza II that allowed him to rethink his vision of the Opera Village. In Schlingensief’s typically ambiguous manner, the play critically reflects the Opera Village project, dismisses its presumptuous attitude and, at the same time, advertises the project as a forum to support local artistic expressions that aim to create images which run counter to the dominant perception of Africa by the German public. However, Via Intolleranza II revealed that Schlingensief’s interest in the African continent remained naïve and highly problematic because his narratives suggested that, prior to colonialism, Africa was virgin ground, untouched by European modernity and devoid of the extensive baggage that came with European colonisation and industrialisation. Via Intolleranza II demonstrates the contradictions at the heart of Schliengensief’s work most clearly (see Lehmann 2013: 26–32 for a detailed reading).

The genesis of the project In 2009, already heavily weakened by his illness, Schlingen­sief travelled through various African countries, including Mozam­ bique, Tanzania and Cameroon, to find a suitable location for his African Opera Village. He found his location some 30 kilometres outside of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouaga­dougou, which is home to the Mossi ethnic group.1 Together with Burkinabé government representatives, Schlingensief chose an area of five hectares in the hot semi-arid savannah next to the long-established open-air Laongo sculpture park for his village, which would eventually include a school, a medical centre and other facilities.

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Through the German Goethe-Institute, Schlingensief got to know Burkina-born award-winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, now based in Berlin, who is known for his use of natural West African building materials or particular local construction methods to allow for the natural ventilation and cooling of buildings in hot climates. Kéré became responsible for the realisation and actual appearance of the Opera Village. The foundation-stone ceremony of the Opera Village took place in February 2010; and since then, it has developed further. In 2011, a primary school with a canteen was the first completed building which today allows 300 pupils to gain a basic education. Since 2014, an infirmary, with a dental practice and a maternity ward, has been operating as a nearby medical centre for the neighbourhood. Other parts of the ‘village’ include a recording studio, smaller residential buildings for the teachers and the artistin-residence pro­gramme that brings artists from Germany and other African countries to Burkina Faso. Eighteen employees, among them six teachers, the infirmary team, a cook, a janitor, a cultural programme director, security guards and administrative employees form the team in Burkina Faso (Operndorf Afrika 2019a). Ironically, the eponymous opera house has not been built, but remains an absent presence due to a lack of funding; it is uncertain if the building will ever be built. After Schlingensief’s death in August 2010, his widow Aino Laberenz took charge of the project. An advisory board with luminaries from the German cultural scene and an artistic board consisting of six artists, filmmakers and choreographers from Burkina Faso assure the quality of the project. At the heart of the artistic dimension of the Opera Village are a public cultural programme and an additional school curriculum which goes beyond the usual primary education in Burkina Faso. Pupils are taught cinema, music and performing arts subjects, and attend creative workshops. According to the official website, the cultural programme offers three to four public theatre and dance performances, film screenings or concerts per month. This project has been analysed by a number of academics in book chapters and journal articles, mostly in German;2 an early, comprehensive monograph on the project, Schlingensief und das Operndorf Afrika (Schlingensief and the African Opera Village), was

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Figure 1. Festspielhaus Afrika, published by Christoph Schlingensief in January 2009. The collage resembles the Wagnerian Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and was created by Schlingensief’s artistic assistant Thomas Goerge. (Photo © Thomas Goerge, www.mea-culpa.at/09_docs/festspielhaus_afrika_ mappe_deutsch.pdf, accessed 13 August 2019)

Figure 2. Centre of the Opera Village in Burkina Faso. The empty space marks the site for the projected festival hall. (Photo © Sarah Hegenbart, October 2015)

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written by Jan Endrik Niermann (2013). Niermann draws on Enrique Dussel as a pioneer of postcolonial philosophy and looks for equivalent ideas in the conception of the Opera Village. Articles in English are rare, but Sarah Hegenbart introduced Schlingensief and the Opera Village to an English-speaking audience in an article that includes a longer interview with Aino Laberenz in which she explains her understanding of her late husband’s plans (Hegenbart 2012).3 An entry on the architecture of the Opera Village for a Routledge compendium followed (Bauer 2018). A comprehensive body of texts can also be found in the third part of Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa (Lehmann, Siegert & Vierke 2017). This collection of essays, artistic contributions and interviews with cultural activists addresses the connection between Africa and Richard Wagner in Schlingensief’s oeuvre and includes chapters by the present authors. We now turn to look at the first decade of the African Opera Village, focusing on the concept behind it and the project’s realisation after Schlingensief’s untimely death. As our academic disciplines – cultural studies (Fabian Lehmann), political science (Wilfried Zoungrana), and anthropology (Andrea Reikat) – are as heterogeneous as our connections to the project, this contribution presents three different perspectives on the Opera Village. First, Fabian Lehmann analyses the project’s early ‘mani­festo’ (2009) which contained an ‘extended opera concept’ and formed part of the project’s promotional campaign before construction work began. In a close reading of the mani­ festo, Lehmann identifies three main topics: bourgeois and exclusive European opera, Joseph Beuys’s idea of ‘social sculpture’, and development cooperation. Second, Wilfried Zoungrana looks critically at the en­counter between Schlingensief and Burkina Faso. He high­ lights the cultural-diplomatic strategies and neo-Oriental­ist narratives that underlined the presentation and early imple­ mentation of the project: Schlingensief’s discourse as an amateur Panafricanist who emphasised the indebtedness of European art forms to African culture(s), his embedding of opera in the African ‘reality’, and the tweaking of the initial idea of the Opera Village in order to include social facilities. Burkina Faso’s prospects of increased cultural

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cooperation with Germany legitimised and laid the foundation for the realisation of the project. Finally, Andrea Reikat assesses the effectiveness of making the Opera Village the dynamic cultural entity it was meant to become by including the viewpoints of neighbouring communities. This raises the question of appropriation (in the sense of ‘ownership’) – considering that ownership would be the crucial factor to obtain a sustainable project and the vital, vibrant organism that Schlingensief had envisioned.

The manifesto: What the African Opera Village was meant to become (Lehmann) The Opera Village project existed virtually on the internet before the first stone was laid in Burkina Faso in early 2009. The early website was not as fashionable and informative as the current official web presence,4 but instead contained a longer text entitled: ‘Jedem Menschen seine Oper – Der erweiterte Opernbegriff’ (‘Opera for everyone – the extended opera concept’) which can be read as the project’s early manifesto.5 Given the limited scope of this chapter, I will discuss selected extracts from this text that illustrate the three conceptual cornerstones for the Opera Village project: bourgeois European opera, Joseph Beuys and his idea of ‘social sculpture’, and development cooperation. Similar to Schlingensief’s other direction-setting texts – often written by his dramaturge Carl Hegemann – the manifesto draws on very different sources. It is a complex conglomerate of intellectual associations and borrowings – sometimes obviously and directly, sometimes subtly and artistically, linking to political discourses – and the cultural sphere or the history of visual arts. The manifesto aimed to capture the reader’s attention, to legitimise an unconventional, even controversial idea and to help bring about the African Opera Village. The first paragraph defines a key formula for the project, namely the ‘Resozialisierung europäischer Hochkultur’ (social rehabilita­tion of European high culture). According to its juridical origin, the German term Resozialisierung designates the process of reintegrating a person into society, usually after a longer prison

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sentence. In the context of the Opera Village, however, the term refers to the revitalisation of opera’s social relevance and the impact of this musical genre that seems to have become an exclusive entertainment for the upper echelons of European society. In this understanding of opera, nobody expects anything but elitist amusement for privileged members of society. This notion of opera as an art form estranged from the needs of the social majority has a long tradition and can be traced back to Richard Wagner’s writings from the mid-nineteenth century. In Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Artwork of the Future) Wagner refers to opera as ‘egoistisches, selbstgefälliges Treiben’ (egoistic, complacent activity) (Wagner 1850: 184), nothing but ‘Luxus, Ueberfluß, eigensüchtiger Zeitvertreib’ (luxury, excess, selfish pastime) (184). Long before the Opera Village project, Schlingensief was fascinated by the iconic figure of Richard Wagner and his controversial popularity in Germany (being famous for his opera compositions and the Gesamtkunstwerk concept, but also infamous for his undisguised anti-Semitism and the subsequent role of his music during the Nazi regime). In 1999, Schlingensief had already made the connection between Wagner and Africa and played his music as part of a ‘Wagner Rallye’ in Namibia. Later, Schlingensief signalled his serious interest in Wagner’s works when he was asked to stage Parsifal in Bayreuth, which he did over four consecutive seasons from 2004 to 2007. Despite his view that the thoroughly bad experiences he had had with members of the Wagner family and the deep emotional impact of Wagner’s last composition were responsible for his cancer, Schlingensief took the staging of Parsifal very seriously. However, in his manifesto, the African Opera Village is projected as dismissing its bourgeois burden and liberating the ‘Kolonie Oper’ (opera colony) from its historical stagna­tion. According to the manifesto, the Opera Village would not colonise Burkina Faso with a European definition of opera, but instead European opera would be colonised and subverted by irrelevance, decadence and conventions. It would not be an isolated enclave of European ‘high culture’ in Africa, but a relevant home for the local and international arts which are in constant exchange and communication with their environment. Meant as a down-to-earth alternative to a patronising l’art pour l’art understanding of opera, it was envisioned

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as a ‘lebendiges Gefäß’ (living container) that is integrated within an ‘organischen Kreislauf’ (organic circulation). Thus Schlingensief signals his intent to liberate European opera from its current artistic roots and reintegrate it back into the wider society. The view that ‘Africa’ was the right place for the recuperation of the creative roots and genuine impact, which according to the manifesto early opera still had to offer,6 reveals Schlingensief’s romantic view of Africa as ‘the cradle of humankind’ that still possessed its original primordial forces that could facilitate wider cultural healing. A second prominent topic in the manifesto relates to German postwar avant-garde artist and theorist Joseph Beuys and his idea of the ‘social sculpture’ (Soziale Plastik). Like Schlingensief, Beuys hailed from the Ruhr area, and was an important artistic influence for Schlingensief, as the following passage from the manifesto makes clear: ‘Jeder soll sein Leben sozial und künstlerisch gestalten können’ (everybody should be able to socially and artistically organise their life). Speaking of the ‘extended opera concept’, the manifesto’s title alludes to Beuys’s extended concept of art and his dictum that every human being is gifted to creatively influence their environment. It is important to note that Beuys had such a broad understanding of art that he described immaterial activities, such as thinking, as an operation of plastic figuration. As a consequence, if everything human beings do can be called artistic then everything created by people – including rules, institutions and society in general – is malleable and thus open to change (Harlan 1986: 81). Indeed, in a conversation with Volker Harlan, Beuys says that art’s responsibility is to form society like a sculpture. If humans fulfil their potential, they are capable of shaping everything social and societal (107). In his posthumously published autobiographic sketches Ich weiß, ich war’s (I know, it was me 2012), Schlingensief expounds on the relation of social sculpture to the Opera Village. Here he argues that the Opera Village in Burkina Faso would be a visualisation of a social sculpture that already existed prior to its physical construction (Schlingensief 2012: 175). Schlingensief, therefore, not only reproduces Beuys’s understanding of art as relevant for the formation of a society, but also argues for the power of the local community and stresses its ability to bring about positive change. Similar to Beuys, Schlingensief blurred well-established borders

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of art and life which gained him a lot of momentum for his works (Leupin 2007: 225). At the foundation-stone ceremony in February 2010, he spoke of the necessary con­nection between art and non-art, and the need to break with institutionalised European art categories (cf. Schlingensief 2011: 105). From the beginning, the Opera Village was meant to be dependent on the active contribution of local communities and Burkinabé artists. Again, Schlingensief had learned from Beuys, both working against a passive, consumerist audience and trying to ‘recruit’ co-actors for their projects among spectators, passersby or local residents (Leupin 2007: 241) – a practice common to many theatre projects on the African continent. This description of the Opera Village as a non-hierarchical, non-institutionalised place for art practice may provoke questions regarding the actual role of the Opera Village within the local community which Andrea Reikat addresses in more detail below. If meant as a free and open space for art to take place, how can the Opera Village be prevented from becoming a mere conventional art institution? How does it differ from other establishments, and what already was practised culturally in Burkina Faso? Is the Opera Village itself the artwork? Or is the inclusion of artistic practices only a means to implement an ambitious ‘intercultural’ project with rather lopsided power dynamics? The manifesto does not provide any answers to these questions. That last question, in particular, leads to the third theme of the manifesto: that of development aid. When the text speaks of ‘Initiative zu Eigeninitiative’ (initiative for self-initiative), development rhetoric inevitably comes to mind. In the develop­ ment discourse, help for self-help is a slogan going back to the 1970s when economic growth was seen to be the only way to assist a country’s development (Müller-Mahn 2011: 764). Today, bottom-up development, which aims at the inclusion of the local population to take an active part in ‘their own’ fortune, is an established concept for the success of any development cooperation project, with the conventional discourse holding that external help should only provide the impetus for the use and strengthening of the local population’s potentials (Scholz 2006: 104–05). This basic conviction means that no actor within the development sector can do without the consent and active participation of people on the

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ground. Reikat will discuss the significance of these approaches in greater detail later. However, when the manifesto speaks of a ‘längst überfälligen neuen Art von Entwicklungshilfe’ (a long-overdue form of development aid), the text makes an unexpected move character­ istic of Schlingensief, who liked to take well-known concepts and provocatively invert and openly disagree with them. The manifesto calls for Europe and its development aid to ‘rob or steal from Africa’ (the words used are ‘beraubt’ and ‘ausbeutet’) rather than transferring money and means to the continent. The text here refers to the idea of the Opera Village being a living container with an organic circulation where the traditional roles of donors and recipients are turned upside down. To ‘steal from Africa’ here means to make use of the cultural richness Africa has to offer. The idea is to acknowledge the artistic value of African societies as a resource for a culturally richer life in Europe. Schlingensief uses the unsettling term ‘stealing’ as a provocation to stress Europe’s dire need for external help regarding what he perceives as its loss of creativity and artistic relevance. It can also be understood as a reaction to the self-conception of an altruistic European development aid that patronisingly shares part of its wealth with the ‘poor’. The aims of the Opera Village instead are to promote and benefit from innovative local artistic expressions. In this understanding, Europe, not Africa, needs help and support from the latter’s creative wealth. The Opera Village will, therefore, establish a link with people in Europe and allow them to access and consume these artistic expressions to gain new insights, ideas and fresh momen­tum for their own creativity. Even though the project tried to harmonise this aspiration with the claim to support local pupils, inhabitants and visitors of the Opera Village from Burkina Faso, it demon­strates that the Opera Village was first and foremost meant to serve the needs of the German cultural scene. The early manifesto was intended to provoke a revaluation of intercultural cooperation. Resorting to cultural references like European opera, Beuys or development aid, and em­ploying irrita­ tion and contradictions, Schlingensief aimed to trigger a self-reflexive response in the manifesto’s readers. In allowing for intellectual experiments, dominant dis­ courses were challenged

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and thus new perspectives of well-established concepts like opera and development-sector procedures are provoked (cf. Hochreiter 2011: 450). Especially when it comes to the idea of ‘stealing from Africa’, the calculated violation of discursive conventions makes the everyday borders of thinking visible and palpable. Pervasive, commonplace terms and processes, in danger of becoming meaningless in their everyday usage, gain new impetus in the manifesto which itself calls for alternatives to the relation between Africa and Europe as it is known. The quotes taken from Schlingensief’s video address to Burkina Faso, cited by Zoungrana in the following section, demonstrate which images and metaphors Schlingensief found to broach his arguments.

The encounter: The artist, ‘his people’ and soft power (Zoungrana) Schlingensief’s encounter with Burkina Faso yields further insights that recapitulate and simultaneously go beyond the state of European opera and development aid. It sheds some light on the wider engagement of Western postmodern/poststructuralist scholars and artists with the non-Western Other, the cultural genius loci of Burkina Faso as well as suggesting the function of cultural cooperation as a feature of soft power.7 The first aspect is about Schlingensief and his rapport with Burkina Faso (in particular) and Africa (in general). The second aspect of the encounter sheds some light on Burkina Faso’s specific cultural milieu. The third aspect will illustrate the role of culture as a means of development (in Burkina’s case) and the extension of Germany’s soft power in the Francophonie. Schlingensief’s encounter with the Burkinabé reproduces a pattern that can be observed in Ian Almond’s conceptualisation of the new Orientalists and their relationship with Islam or the Muslim Other. Almond posited that nine of those he considered new Orientalists (Nietzsche, Foucault, Baudrillard among others)8 were drawn to the Muslim world primarily because of the activity of self-critique, which Almond broadly under­ stands as the critique of one’s own society, its values, philosophical and intellectual traditions. This critique has led

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new Orientalists to re-assess the non-European Other, the alien, the unfamiliar Other, which, he argues ‘partly springs from a concerted, selective, at times not wholly convincing sympathy with the Islamic Other’, and is ‘a means of obtaining some kind of critical distance from one’s own society’ (Almond 2007: 1–2). Schlingensief’s engagement with the ‘African Other’ bears the characteristics Almond ascribed to his new Orientalists: selfcritique, distance from one’s own formative culture, and a (not so wholly convincing) sympathy with an idealised Other. Schlingensief approached the ‘Burkinabé Other’ by setting himself up as an amateur Panafricanist. He emphasised the indebtedness of European art forms to African culture(s) rhetorically, embedded the opera in the ‘African reality’, and tweaked the initial idea of the Opera Village to include social facilities. He ultimately pointed to the prospect of furthering Burkinabé cultural cooperation with Germany. For instance, in his first address to Burkina Faso in 2008,9 Schlingensief introduces his idea of the Opera Village by referring to Beuys’s idea of Soziale Plastik, a social sculpture, and his project to build a multipurpose venue where different art forms could inter­ penetrate and artists (he mentions sculptors, painters, musi­cians and actors) could dialogue with one another. How­ever, Schlingensief then abruptly proclaims that one should steal from Africa, ‘Afrika beklauen’, as he says, and criticises the repre­sentation of the African continent in the (Western) media. So far, Schlingensief’s message is reminiscent of his early manifesto on the state of European opera, as analysed above. Schlingensief went a step further to adjust his message to the local context despite the fact that he had no specific knowledge of Burkina Faso and barely spoke French, the country’s official language. The controversial theatre director believed that touching on the victimisation discourse of Africa, its colonial and neo-colonial despoiling by foreign, mostly Western powers, the alleged purity of its cultural forms, the myth of African cultural and historical backwardness,10 its glorious past (trade between African kingdoms and yonder continents in the Middle Ages for example) and the often-repeated mantra of Africa as the cradle of humanity would systematically secure him the sympathy of his Burkinabé audience.11 Schlingensief’s address also showcases elements of self-critique, such as the critique of his own society, its values, philosophical and intellectual traditions. He criticises

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late German modernity, picking at material overabundance, emotional and creative fatigue, the loss of spirituality and cultural over-sophistication.12 In his view, Burkina Faso, and by extension Africa, was the panacea to the social ills of late-modern German society. Another aspect that is not as emphasised as it should be is the importance of Burkina Faso’s thriving cultural scene, which is especially outstanding in Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso. It hosts diverse cultural initiatives, among others the festival for theatre Récréâtrales, the Panafrican film festival FESPACO, the handicraft fair SIAO, and the Laongo granite site with its open-air sculptures adjacent to the Opera Village. The country has maintained its internal and external cultural openness despite the ambient political instability that characterised the country at least since the assassination of Burkinabé revolutionary, Pan-Africanist and then-President Thomas Sankara in 1987. In 2009, when Schlingensief was first approaching Burkina Faso, the spectre of destabilisation was already looming over the country in the form of mutiny. The then-President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, was eventually ousted in 2014; like the rest of the Sahel region, the country has been battling with terrorism ever since. Terrorism is not only a security threat to the political stability of the country, but also to the cultural cohabitation between the multiple ethnic groups of this country. To be sure, and as Andrea Reikat, an early critic of the Opera Village reminds us below, Burkina Faso is characterised by its ‘outstanding reputation for cultural and religious tolerance’. The multiple ethnic groups in the country have managed to devise a range of cultural techniques to facilitate the cohabitation of different ethnic groups in the country. Terrorism, more than any controversial cultural project, is the major threat to the cultural uniqueness and attractive­ness of Burkina Faso. One could wonder, whether, under conditions of terrorist insecurity, the Goethe-Institute would have recommended Burkina Faso as the host for the Opera Village. This takes me to the third aspect of my argument: Germany’s interest in soft power on the one hand and the develop­ ment expectations of Burkina Faso on the other. Peter Stepan, who was then the head of the newly opened Centre Culturel Allemand (Goethe-Institute) in Ouagadougou, recounts how he saw

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Schlingensief’s project as a chance to ‘add a spot of German colour to Ouaga’s cultural palette’ (Stepan 2017: 224) which, in his opinion, was completely dominated by the Francophonie. Schlingensief’s iconoclastic and unconventional art seemed to be the right instrument to provide a counterbalance to the Francophone influence in the country (224). That most Burkinabé had never heard of Schlingensief and his film experiments in Africa, or could barely relate to the eccentricity of opera as an art form did not apparently matter much in the wider cultural-diplomatic stakes. Seen from the perspective of soft power diplomacy, the opportunity to introduce German cultural influence, was not one to be missed, because dissemi­nating one’s culture increases a state’s non-military power and its credibility and acceptance among its peers. As such, initiatives even by controversial artists enhance the international prestige of a reluctant hegemon like Germany. Meanwhile, since 2013, Germany had extended its engagement in the Sahel region to a military presence. One is tempted to ask, what Schlingensief would have made of it.

The reality: Why the Opera Village is no village (Reikat) As elaborated above, Schlingensief founded his Opera Village in a country that has a particularly vibrant cultural scene with an impressive number of cultural events. As the Opera Village wanted to be inspired by the ‘creative treasures of Africa’ from its very beginning, it is worth considering the cultural ground from which the project emerged. Burkina Faso has a long and outstanding reputation for cultural and religious tolerance. Around 60 different ethnic groups live in this fairly small country, each with its own culture, and often enough with significant cultural differences within these groups. This cohabitation has been possible because of a range of cultural techniques designed to appease potential tensions, such as the famous rakiré (joking relationship) that allows members of different ethnic groups to create links to one another even if they have no parental relationship (see Hagberg 2006). Even after the decades of colonialism and the different waves of ‘modernisation’ under French influence, these different ‘traditional’ cultures are still strongly present in daily life especially in the rural

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areas:13 ceremonies mark the beginning of the agricultural or the harvest period, rites are employed to call the rain or calm tensions in a village, mask dancers not only dance during ceremonies, but intervene to maintain order within the communities. Most importantly, there are traditional chiefs who still play a major role especially in Mossi society,14 the major ethnic group in Burkina Faso. Schlingensief’s ‘village’ is located in a region where Mossi live. This is the cultural ground where Schlingensief (and his comrades-in-arms) could have realised their project if being in ‘exchange and communication with [the] environment’ had been effectively implemented, as noted in the first part of this chapter. To refer back to the idea of ‘stealing from Africa’, this could have been the cultural treasure from which the Opera Village initiators could have ‘stolen’ in order to relieve European bourgeois bore­ dom. However, looking deeper into these ‘traditional’ cultural practices also brings to light that tolerance towards the ‘Other’ does not necessarily translate into equality within a society. ‘The arts’ – or rather, cultural practices – are a field where inequality is an indubitable fact. As in many African societies, art and cultural practices in Burkina Faso, particularly in the Mossi culture that surrounds the Opera Village, are split into two very clearly distinguished spheres: one that is ‘popular’ in the sense that it is open to everyone, such as dance and storytelling; and one that is restricted to specific social groups, mainly related to the notables and court ceremonies. These include sculpture, some forms of drumming and – to a certain extent – mask dancing (see Pacéré 1991; Roy 2015; Sissao 2010). On the one hand, this split is deemed to have an almost tragic connotation for Schlingensief’s project: in his quest for inspiration from Africa, and in his attempt to overcome the gap between ‘high’ culture and ‘ordinary’ people in Europe, he stumbled into a cultural environment where this gap also exists, where large parts of the population are excluded from certain cultural practices dominated by a (male) ruling class. On the other hand, the exclusive character of some aspects of local culture makes it questionable if the chiefs and notables of the adjacent villages really accepted the ‘Opera Village’ concept: from their perspective ‘art’ should not be

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generally open to the ‘common’ parts of the population, especially to women, children and to strangers coming from abroad. In actual fact, the extent to which local residents had been involved in the conception, preparation, and realisation of the Opera Village project is not clear. Whereas the initiators claimed to have thoroughly discussed the idea with neigh­bouring villages,15 the latter maintain that they had never been informed properly. At least this was the result of a small study my colleague AbdoulKarim Bandaogo and I conducted in September 2015 in villages adjacent to the Opera Village, especially in Laongo and Tambi Yargo.16 The objective of the study was to assess the level of know­ledge and appropriation by the local population in order to consider the Opera Village’s chances of becoming sustainable and self-contained or, to quote Schlingensief himself, to become the ‘living container’ he had envisioned. We therefore spoke to village chiefs, earth-priests and other notables, to parents of pupils attending the Opera school, to patients of the health centre and a number of project staff. Interviewees unanimously told us that at the start of the project they had only been informed that people would come from outside to build a place to ‘work’. In addition there would be a school, where children would not only learn, but also ‘play’ and ‘have fun’. For the majority the greatest benefit of the project was the wage labour to be created during the construction phase, followed by the educational and medical benefits expected from the school and the health centre.17 According to our interviewees, nobody spoke about art or even opera, nobody about the artistic/cultural activities going on at the centre, and nobody drew attention to eventual problems or opportunities that could potentially arise. But perhaps it is misleading to insist too much on the artistic/ cultural aspects of the project. As the Opera Village advanced, Schlingensief himself broadened his vision and gave everincreasing importance to its social impact (school, health centre) (Operndorf Afrika 2019c). One of the project’s objectives was to overcome the type of development aid that arrives with prefabricated answers, and to replace it with the ‘long-overdue form of development aid’ that instead allows for questions and responds to people’s wishes and ideas.18 If we follow the project’s arguments from Schlingensief’s early manifesto to the current website, the

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intention of creating a space for people to determine their own development before the ‘Opera Village’ is handed over to its local inhabitants remains a leitmotif.19 It is evident that this concept of development cooperation and not ‘development aid’ is considered praiseworthy; yet it is far from being an innovative approach, but is now considered the norm in development work. Since the Paris Declaration of 2005 (cf. OECD 2019) development interventions should be guided by the three principles; that of ‘ownership’ (the beneficiary develops and pilots the project), the principle of ‘alignment’ (projects supported from outside should be in line with national development strategies) and of ‘harmonisation’ (if there are different donors, they have to harmonise their actions and approaches). Seen in this context, Schlingensief’s objective to change to a long-obsolete form of development aid seems to go against practices that (or at least should) no longer exist. Today’s guiding principles of development intervention correspond rather precisely to what Schlingensief imagined earlier on – especially concerning ‘ownership’. It would need actual local ‘ownership’ to realise Schlingensief’s dream of a vibrant ‘living container’, and of a project that should be handed over to and filled with life by local residents. Unfortunately, nearly ten years after its inauguration, the ‘opera’ is still no ‘village’ and there are few encouraging signs of the bottom-up development that was initially announced. First, there are no local inhabitants (apart from some waged staff and – mostly European – visitors) and there are no ‘spontaneous’ expressions of social and cultural life. People in the surrounding villages only make use of the services provided (school, health centre), but do not feel engaged by the overall project and least of all by its cultural aspects. Worse, making the Opera Village their own was not even attempted; and it is questionable if it would have been achieved if we consider the divergent attitudes towards ‘art’ in Mossi and ‘European’ (or at least ‘Schlingensiefean’) culture. Regarding other possible stakeholders, the ‘modern’ Burkinabé cultural scene does not seem to care about the project. Even though a national steering committee was created in 2011 (which included some of Burkina Faso’s most eminent cultural celebrities such as the film producer Gaston Kaboré, the actor Etienne

The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten  177

Minoungou and the dancer Irene Tassambedo), this committee has never really been a driving force behind the Opera Village or the arts projects it ostensibly hosted.20 For the most part, the programme is designed and funded either by the Operndorf social enterprise based in Berlin or, in the first years, by the GoetheInstitute in Ouagadougou. All project activities seem to be topdown enterprises. They are far from the autonomous scenario Schlingensief initially dreamed of and that for which his successors claim they are striving. Ownership is crucial for the success of any development (or artistic) project, even more so for an enterprise that wanted to create an ‘organic circulation’ of inspirations coming from both local and international contexts. For the moment, the Opera Village is pretty much what it never wanted to be: a ‘regular art institution’ in the sense that there is no spontaneous, self-directed creativity, but a scheduled programme of activities and interventions planned from the outside. At least one of Schlingensief’s visions seems to have been realised. When we look at the activities undertaken in the Opera Village over the last few years and how they are marketed on the current website, we can see that foreign, mostly German, visitors are enthusiastic about and feel really inspired by the ‘African’ culture they experience in the ‘village’. The idea of Europeans coming to Africa to ‘steal from’ its cultures seems to have indeed become reality.

Outlook In our contributions, we have tried to look back at the genesis of the Opera Village, its reception in the German cultural scene, its implementation in Burkina Faso and its develop­ment since. Lehmann has shown that Schlingensief’s conception of the Opera was based on subversion, détourne­ment, the belief in the omnipresence of art in everyday life and the postulate that every human being is an artist. As Schlingensief saw culture not only for the artists, his conceptions of opera and the Opera Village bear social and political dimensions. Zoungrana has tried to outline how the idealisation of African culture was Schlingensief’s critique of his own German formative culture. Furthermore, he argued that

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the Opera Village was directly embedded in a wider net of cultural diplomacy, critiques of development aid and cultural fatigue. Reikat’s acerbic critique has focused on the implementation of the project, and its low level of appropriation by the local population. Can we offer a final, conclusive assessment of the Opera Village? What did Schlingensief’s project contribute to the understanding of opera? The answer to these questions ultimately depends on the epistemological assumptions one is guided by: Schlingensief certainly did not strive for an incremental, positivist improvement of European opera. His was a radical subversion of the operatic idea, a projected liberation even though he failed to tell us to where his new opera concept would lead. Furthermore, he has not tried to affiliate his project to a pre-existing (professional) opera tradition in West Africa. On the contrary, he tried to free opera from professionalism and searched for an (ill-defined) authenticity that he believed he had found in Burkina Faso. His untimely (though expected) death has certainly destroyed the momentum of his vision, turning it into another Western project managed and steered from the outside, and without any further meaningful contribution to the subversion of opera as an art form, which would have delighted the cultural critic. To be fair, the project manage­ment has sought to integrate film, music or theatre into the educational and cultural programme of the Opera Village. Is this the way to liberate the subversive spirit Schlingensief first released on the Land of the Upright? Time will tell.

NOTES 1 In this article we apply the term ‘Mossi’ to designate the ethnic group living in the area where Schlingensief set up the Opera Village (and the majority group in Burkina Faso, representing half of the country’s population). However, even if ‘Mossi’ is the term most commonly known and used nowadays, it is in effect a French bowdlerisation of the emic term ‘Moose’. 2 Texts include a chapter on the Opera Village in Franziska Dübgen’s Was ist Gerechtigkeit? (2014), Fabian Lehmann’s journal article in polylog (2015), and chapters by Natalie Bloch (2016), Koku G. Nonoa (2016) and Marcel Beuler (2018). 3 The first part of this article was also published in French (Hegenbart 2013). 4 See www.operndorf-afrika.com/en. 5 The text can still be accessed online via the help of archive.org. See http://

The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten  179 web.archive.org/web/20100828102445/http://www.festspielhaus-afrika.com/ weblog/?page_id=23 for the German text. 6 Before Schlingensief decided to realise the Opera Village in Burkina Faso, he only spoke of ‘Africa’ in very general terms. The manifesto only states that the Opera Village shall be built in ‘Africa’. 7 Soft power is a conceptualisation of power that tries to go beyond military might to include ‘soft’, cultural elements, such as German science and cultural policy (cf. Nye 2004). 8 The ‘old’ orientalists had been castigated by Edward Said who revealed the complicity of their knowledge output on the ‘Orient’ and the project of Western imperialism (see Said 1978; Zoungrana 2017: 163–4). 9 Schlingensief’s address was recorded on DVD and sent to the Goethe-Institute in Burkina Faso where it was transcribed by Peter Stepan. For a published translation see (Stepan 2017: 226–9). 10 In his video address, Schlingensief held two superimposed photos in front of the camera. One shows the façade of the Manaus opera house (where Schlingensief had staged The Flying Dutchman), the other the Ginna (house) of a Hogon (spiritual leader) from the Dogonland in the southeast of Mali. Schlingensief believed he could discover parallels between the two buildings and prove that Dogon architecture had influenced the façade of the Manaus opera house in Brazil (Stepan 2017: 227). He further believed that Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal, was full of cultural references to Africa, especially to the drums. 11 Consider the following excerpt from the transcript: I think it’s time to announce officially that Africa is being robbed. It was our idea: we want to steal from Africa. This could easily be misunderstood, and perhaps it ought to be, to get a discussion going, for up to now we have often lived at Africa’s expense, and it would be interesting to just make that official. The question is, what can I steal now? … Oil in the Congo or in Nigeria or wherever. I think that what’s important are these ideal things, what’s important is art, and art in Africa is existential, it’s powerful art, it has everything that we in Europe have skimmed off since colonial times or even long before that. I’ve heard that in South Africa … Chinese porcelain was discovered there even … produced before Christ. They were trading with China while in Europe we were still wielding clubs and pouring cups of beer down our throats, but otherwise our heads were empty. So you see, Africa is far ahead, it’s the cradle of mankind, that’s how I see it for myself. I have done a lot of work in Zimbabwe, in Namibia, in Zambia, in South Africa. But I’ve never been to this part of Africa … And now there’s going to be a building here, where artists from Germany can meet. (Schlingensief quoted in Stepan 2017: 227)

12 The following excerpt illustrates the argument above:

In Germany we’re overfed, and we just spend our time going round the shops looking for paints. Then we feel bad, and we can’t paint because we’ve run out of ideas, then we run to a psychologist, then we need a hot bath, then we need an Ayurveda session or a massage just so we can get going. I think that’s rubbish, and I think that this Africa is a place where people need to look around and where they’ll be infected with the best kind of mental bug. Yes, and this mental bug must be encouraged. People must come here when they’re young and not when they’re eighty. (Schlingensief quoted in Stepan 2017: 227)

13 The term ‘traditional’ is often put in quotes in ethnographic literature to indicate that the term is not designating a static state, but that tradition can also be dynamic and changing. In the case of African societies, it would eventually be better to talk about ‘autochthonous’ vs ‘imported’ practices, even if ‘imported’ features can also enter into ‘tradition’. 14 The fact that, after Burkina Faso’s Sankara ‘revolution’ (1983–87) the role of the

180  Lehmann, Zoungrana & Reikat traditional chiefs is no longer defined has paradoxically led to an increase in their position and to strengthening their influence (cf. Reikat 2002). 15 Concerning the interaction with the chiefs of neighbouring villages, Aino Laberenz even stressed that she herself became a mediator to calm quarrels between them (cf. Adorján 2012; Operndorf Afrika 2019b). 16 In the 1990s, Abdoul-Karim Bandaogo was one of my research associates. He later trained as a historian and is now counselor at the Burkina Faso Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For a more detailed analysis of this small-scale study see Reikat (2017). 17 Curiously enough, these are also the only points mentioned by the coordinator of the Opera Village’s cultural (sic!) activities in his contribution to the project’s website (www.operndorf-afrika.com, accessed 6 April 2019). 18 Cf. Henning Mankell’s interview still to be seen in the current (6 April 2019) version of the Schlingensief project website, where he claims that he would never have accepted supporting the project (he would have even fought against it) if the approach had not been to ask questions and not to deliver pre-fabricated solutions. 19 This stated intention, to create a space for people to determine their own develop­ ment, remained on the website until at least April 2019 but was subsequently removed (cf. Operndorf Afrika 2019c). 20 Today (2019) neither this committee nor any member designated at the time is featured on the project’s website, which is strongly dominated by European supporters.

REFERENCES Adorján, Johanna (2012), ‘Weit und breit keine Oper’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 19 May, www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buehne-und-konzert/schlingensiefsafrika-projekt-weit-und-breit-keine-oper-11756924-p3.html (accessed 9 September 2019). Almond, Ian (2007), The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard. London and New York: I. B. Taurus. Bauer, Susanne (2018), ‘The Opera Village Africa: Christoph Schlingensief and His Social Sculpture’. In The Routledge Companion to Architecture and Social Engagement, Farhan Karim (ed.). New York and London: Routledge: 87–101. Beuler, Marcel (2018), ‘Raum der unüberwindbaren Differenz? Christoph Schlingen­ siefs Arbeit in Afrika und das Operndorf-Residency 2016’. In ent/grenzen: Künstlerische und kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Grenzräume, Migration und Ungleichheit, Marcel Beuler and Anita Moser (eds). Bielefeld: transcript: 171–94. Bloch, Natalie (2016), ‘Schlingensief, das Operndorf und Afrika: Inszenierungen eines komplexen Verhältnisses’. In Theater und Ethnologie: Beiträge zu einer produktiven Beziehung, Natalie Bloch and Dieter Heimböckel (eds). Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto: 113–26. Dübgen, Franziska (2014), Was ist Gerechtigkeit? Kennzeichen einer transnationalen solidarischen Politik. Frankfurt, New York: Campus. Hagberg, Sten (2006), ‘The Politics of Joking Relationships in Burkina Faso’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. 131, no. 2: 197–214.

The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten  181 Harlan, Volker (1986), Was ist Kunst? Werkstattgespräch mit Beuys. Stuttgart: Urach­ haus. Hegenbart, Sarah (2012), ‘A New Idea of Art: Christoph Schlingensief and the Opera Village Africa’, The White Review, no. 5: 27–35. —— (2013), ‘Christoph Schlingensief: Surmonter la séparation de l’art et de la vie’, Outrescène, no. 14: 127–31. Hochreiter, Susanne (2011), ‘“Den Skandal erzeugen immer die anderen”: Über­ legungen zu künstlerischen und politischen Strategien Christoph Schlingensiefs’. In Der Gesamtkünstler Christoph Schlingensief, Pia Janke and Teresa Kovacs (eds). Vienna: Praesens: 435–59. Lehmann, Fabian (2013), ‘Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf in Burkina Faso: Eine innovative Form interkultureller Zusammenarbeit?’ Master’s thesis, http://opus.uni-lueneburg.de/opus/volltexte/2013/14256/pdf/Masterarbeit FabianLehmann.pdf (accessed 11 December 2019). —— (2015), ‘Christoph Schlingensiefs Operndorf in Burkina Faso: Missverständnisse als Potential für interkulturelle Aushandlungsprozesse’, polylog, no. 33: 107–22. Lehmann, Fabian, Nadine Siegert and Ulf Vierke (eds) (2017), Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa. Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst. Leupin, Rahel (2007), ‘Grenzgänge zwischen Kunst und Politik: Joseph Beuys und Christoph Schlingensief’. In Theater im Kasten, Andres Kotte (ed.). Zurich: Chronos: 219–86. Loimeier, Manfred (2013), Szene Afrika: Kunst und Kultur südlich der Sahara. Frankfurt/Main: Brandes & Apsel Verlag. Lubrich, Oliver (2014), ‘Das Wuchern der Imperien: Alexander von Humboldts Kosmos als postkoloniale Theorie’. In Postkoloniale Germanistik: Bestandsaufnahme, theoretische Perspektiven, Lektüren, Gabriele Dürbeck and Axel Dunker (eds). Bielefeld: Aisthesis: 193–21. Müller-Mahn, Detlef (2011), ‘Die Auflösung von Norden und Süden: Neue Raumbilder als Herausforderungen für die Geographische Entwicklungsforschung’. In Geographie: Physische Geographie und Humangeographie, Hans Gebhardt, Rüdiger Glaser, Ulrich Radtke and Paul Reuber (eds). Heidelberg: Spektrum: 763–75. Niermann, Jan Endrik (2013), Schlingensief und das Operndorf Afrika: Analysen der Alterität. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Nonoa, Koku G. (2016), ‘Christoph Schlingensief’s Operndorf jenseits des Post­ kolonialismus?’ In Postkolonialismus und (Inter-)Medialität: Perspektiven der Grenz­ übersch­reitung im Spannungsfeld von Literatur, Musik, Fotografie, Theater und Film, Laura Beck and Julian Osthues (eds). Bielefeld: transcript: 155–64. Nye, Joseph S. (2004), Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. OECD (2019), ‘Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action’. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/ parisdeclarationandaccraagendaforaction.htm (accessed 6 April 2019). Operndorf Afrika (2019a), ‘Project Structure’, www.operndorf-afrika.com/en/ about/structure (accessed 10 July 2019). —— (2019b), ‘Aino Laberenz’, www.operndorf-afrika.com/vision/%23laberenz (accessed 6 April 2019). —— (2019c) ‘Christoph Schlingensief’, www.operndorf-afrika.com/vision/ #schlingensief (accessed 6 April 2019).

182  Lehmann, Zoungrana & Reikat Pacéré, Titinga Frédéric (1991), Le Langage des Tams-Tam et des Masques en Afrique (Bendrologie). Paris: Harmattan. Reikat, Andrea (2002), ‘Das Naam oder der Wille zur Macht: Der Fall des Königs von Tenkodogo’, Paideuma, vol. 48: 77–99. —— (2017), ‘The Schlingensief Opera in Burkina Faso: A (Poisoned?) Gift?’ In Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, Fabian Lehmann, Nadine Siegert and Ulf Vierke (eds). Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst: 151–8. Roy, Christopher D. (2015), Mossi. Milan: 5 Continents. Said, Edward (1978), Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Schlingensief, Christoph (2009), So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein! Tagebuch einer Krebserkrankung. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. —— (2011), ‘Rede von Christoph Schlingensief anlässlich der Grundsteinlegung des Operndorfs am 8. Februar 2010’. In Christoph Schingensief: Deutscher Pavillon 2011: 54. Internationale Kunstausstellung La Biennale di Vinezia, Susanne Gaensheimer (ed.). Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch: 102–5. —— (2012), Ich weiß, ich war’s. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Scholz, Fred (2006), Entwicklungsländer: Entwicklungspolitische Grundlagen und regionale Beispiele. Braunschweig: Westermann. Sissao, Alain-Joseph (2010), Folktales from the Mossi in Burkina Faso. Mankon: Langar RPCIG. Stepan, Peter (2017), ‘“We Want to Steal from Africa”: Christoph Maria Schlingensief’s First Visit to Ouagadougou’. In Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, Fabian Lehmann, Nadine Siegert and Ulf Vierke (eds). Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst: 224–39. Wagner, Richard (1850), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft. Leipzig: Wigand. Zoungrana, Wilfried (2017), ‘Rescuing Schlingensief from the Critics’. In Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, Fabian Lehmann, Nadine Siegert and Ulf Vierke (eds). Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst: 159–68.

FILMOGRAPHY Fitzcarraldo (1982), directed by Werner Herzog. Munich: Filmverleih der Autoren Knistern der Zeit: Christoph Schlingensief und sein Operndorf in Burkina Faso (Germany 2012), directed by Sibylle Dahrendorf. Berlin: Filmgalerie 451. DVD. United Trash (1995), directed by Christoph Schlingensief. Berlin: Filmgalerie 451. DVD.

‘I smoked them out’

Perspectives on the Emergence of Folk Opera or ‘Musical Plays’ in Uganda

SAMUEL KASULE

Opera, as it is discussed in Western academic contexts, still focuses on Western forms of composition and performance; to the ordinary Ugandan, it is for the elites, academics and students of Western art music and does not make sense. Their musical matrix is usually rooted in indigenous performances. Folk operas and musical plays in Uganda incorporate these local forms. Therefore, European and Asian artists based in the local cultural industry who could neither speak local languages nor understand the metalanguage of the people have been unable to estimate and appreciate the aesthetic complexity of these indigenous performances, including local folk operas and musical plays. Conversely, a similar dearth of semiotic aptitude to interpret the information encoded in the indigenous performances may explain why non-indigenous audiences find it difficult to interpret and understand folk operas or musical plays. The ‘Western concept’ of opera does not fully explain the interrelationship between music, language, poetry, song, and dance in Uganda. Too often, this performance genre has been seen from within the West by Eurocentric scholars as creating naturalised links between the texts and ideas, or defining a space in which Eurocentric concerns are foregrounded. In this respect, the significance of Wole Soyinka’s observation on the compartmentalisation of these performances by theatre and ethnomusicology studies scholars is relevant to this discussion. He states that the scholars ‘acknow­ledge quite readily the technical lip service paid to the corres­pon­dence of African music to the tonal patterns of […] the language, but the aesthetic and emotional significance of this relationship has not been fully 183

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absorbed’ (1988: 31). This critical observation relates to the informing statement to this essay, ‘I smoked them out’, i.e. foreign performing artists (Okot 1980),1 derived from a conversation I had with the poet and critic Okot p’Bitek concerning his radical changes at the National Cultural Centre in Uganda, which includes the National Theatre. Between 1959 and 1963 the National Theatre in Kampala was dominated by European and Asian artists until Okot p’Bitek was appointed as its first Ugandan Director. Okot’s radical rejection of foreign domination underlined the cultural crisis that emerged in the difference between what was staged at the National Theatre and what most Ugandans could recognise and enjoy as performance. For Okot, artists had to perform and speak in ways familiar to them and to their audiences. However, he provoked antagonism with non-indigenous Ugandan artists when he organised and staged various indigenous dances, music, and songs by professional artists from villages across Uganda. In a way, Okot’s statement maps the journey through which Ugandan theatre artists moved and negotiated their way, travelling around an intense sociopolitical landscape and localised foreign artistic contexts that sought to contain their art, creating an intersection between indigenous creative worlds and foreign art forms. Building on Okot’s comment about ending the total occupation of the National Cultural Centre by non-indigenous Ugandan artists, this essay explores how early Ugandan folk operas or ‘musical plays’ challenged and generally displaced Western opera. Collectively, yet differently, the works discussed here demonstrate the creative potential and relevance of Cosmas Warugaba (born 1930), Solomon Mbabi Katana (1922– 2019), Byron Kawadwa (1940–1977) in collaboration with the composer Wassanyi Serukenya (1937–2018), as they ‘poached’ Western genres, creating alternative centres and/or forms that were located within the existing colonial margin-centre spaces (see Ngũgĩ 2008; Okagbue 2016).2 Like Okot, the instinct that drove Katana, Warugaba, and Kawadwa and Serukenya to compose operas was to find forms of rhythm, words and meaning that would create a new and distinctive theatre aesthetic and form. For these artists, therefore, ‘going a piece of the way’ (Boyce Davies 2002) at the beginning with Western theatre practitioners, and negotiating for spaces in the National Theatre was more satisfying than imitating Western

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plays such as those performed by the Europeans’ Kampala Amateur Theatrical Society (KATS). Intriguingly, to distinguish his work from European opera, Kawadwa created the neologism ‘musical plays’ (see Kasule 2013) to describe his work and draw attention to the intersections of Western opera forms and Kiganda orature which, like many Ugandan theatre and performance forms, is characterised by the strong presence of song, dance and related performance practices. In this way, he identified how the work brings indigenous performance forms and scripted drama into con­ versa­tion with each other. ‘Musical plays’ has since then become a general Ugandan cultural expression that indicates a prioritisation of indigenous dances, music and voices from various ethnic groups over imported forms. It is a form of highly rhythmic vocalised story­telling accompanied by rhythmic drum/pot and/or stringed instrument ethnically based music. In sum, the intrinsic practice of Ugandan artists is to create new forms that call upon and respond to European genres; but as a strategy to resist the urge to simulate the Western forms the artists return to their indigenous forms and styles of performance. Most notably, since independence in 1962, artists including Kawadwa, Kiyingi, Okot and Elvania Zirimu have sought to reject the domination of the performing arts and the National Theatre stage by non-indigenous Ugandans. Katana was the first composer of folk opera in Uganda, writing several unpublished compositions in his language, Runyoro. These included The Marriage of Nyakato (1957), Omuwalajjana Kintu (1967) and Kabiito (1969). According to Sidney L. Kasfir, Omuwalajjana Kintu, based on a folkloric tale ‘used operatic techniques with music and dances based on Ugandan tradition, and songs in several local dialects’ (1969: 13). Kabiito centred on the old Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara and its pre-colonial wars with Buganda and other neighbouring states. Katana used specific indigenous music traditions to represent the ethnic states involved in the battles (Pier 2016). In his autobiography, In the Service of God, Cosmas Waru­ gaba, born in Ibanda, Ankole, traces a genealogy of his training and apprenticeship as a student, church choir member, teacher, choir conductor and composer. Among encounters with critics of his radical approach to sacred music, Warugaba recounts the confrontation with adherents of Western art music when, at the

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Ibanda Teachers’ College Chapel, in 1952, he sung the Latin Kyrie Eleison in ‘a typical Kinyankore rhythm, tone and voice’ (2010: 15). He recalls how ‘the student congregation caught unawares […] burst out in loud laughter’ until the priest celebrant, who was also laughing, ‘stood up and gave a stern warning to everyone: “Stop laughing. Anyone laughing again will be sent out of the Chapel”’ (2010: 15–16). Watching his opera Omuhiigo (1969), however, one soon starts to notice that it is not just the Western roots of church music that Warugaba seems to aspire to uproot, but that a whole range of Ugandan folk performances are being drawn upon and explored, and that the call-and-response pattern is integral to his new approach to theatre composition and performance. On the premise that Ugandan artists were positioned to end colonial domination of music and performance in theatre and the church, Warugaba immersed himself in writing sacred and secular music and dramatic narratives in search of the most effective voice to articulate a distinctive indigenous performance heritage. His interest in writing musical songs and narratives rooted in his Kinyankore heritage reflects the significance of place and tradition to his peer groups of artists. Indigenous songs, legends, folktales and rituals were suitable sources for aiding an emerging rhetoric of ethnic/national pride. Although, unlike Kawadwa, Warugaba was not known as a political agitator, a close study of the opera confirms that his interest in national politics predates this period. For example, the reference to a rainstorm in Act II in his opera Omuhiigo – to which I will come later – is an indication of Warugaba’s view on the state of the nation. According to Christopher Nsubuga (2019), one of the original members of the cast, interviewed by the present writer, Warugaba was drawing on the political crisis to foretell the end of Milton Obote’s government. In the case of Kawadwa, who was briefly imprisoned for his support of the deposed Buganda Kabaka (king), it has been assumed that he projected into his musical plays Makula ga Kulabako (1970) and Oluyimba lwa Wankoko (1971) his imagination of the old kingdoms and criticism of class inequalities. Warugaba’s opera Omuhiigo, similar to Kawadwa’s musical play Makula ga Kulabako, contains some of the traits of music, dance and movement as well as the call-and-response patterns central to the forms of orature, and, as a result, demonstrates therefore

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the emergence of folk opera. As a case study in the Ugandan creation of folk opera, Omuhiigo can be analysed productively against the backdrop of Kawadwa’s Makula ga Kulabako written in collaboration with the musician Serukenya. The links between Warugaba’s Omuhiigo and Kawadwa’s Makula ga Kulabako are particularly resonant. Both were highly musical and theatrical responses to Uganda’s post-indepen­dence condition that were developed after 1966 when the Central Government, aiming to create a Republican government of unity, abolished king­doms. Contrary to its intention, this policy became a way of foregrounding ethnic identities, pitting Buganda against other regions and, most significantly, of creatively retrieving ethnic cultures. The ‘pacifica­ tion’ of Buganda after the attack on the Kabaka’s Mengo Palace by Idi Amin in 1966, that involved the destruction of valuable cultural symbols by the Uganda Army and Special Forces, affected the other pre-colonial nation states of Bunyoro and Ankole. People compared their behaviour to that of wild beasts and hence they were often euphemistically referred to as ‘beasts’. To the initiated audience, Omuhiigo may obliquely refer to a people’s uprising against the totalitarian government just as Kawadwa’s song, ‘Omuntu Muntu’, in Oluyimba lwa Wankoko, as well as describing the difference between people and non-human creatures, cryptically calls upon the former to rebel against the tyrannical rulers. Makula ga Kulabako, set in the King of Buganda’s palace, explores Kiganda abadongo music,3 song and dance, to expose the rivalry between a wealthy old man and a musically gifted boy over the love of a princess (see Kasule 2013). The Princess Kulabako marries Nnyonyintono, a handsome, courteous but ordinary court dancer (played by Eclas Kawalya), instead of Semuvubi, the King’s elderly and wealthy tax collector. Kawalya was cast in this role due to his appeal to audiences as a popular music performer who would also allow the composer and playwright to blend popular Luganda jazz music and indigenous Kiganda music ensembles.4 Thus, while it is not possible to go into detailed analysis here, Kawadwa’s play not only articulates a womanist cultural politics emerging in the 1960s but also reflects the Baganda’s royal institution, and the institutionalised patriarchal attitudes. Omuhiigo – The Great Hunt, premiered in Kampala at the National Theatre in a Theatre Africana production, was written

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and produced by Warugaba to mark the visit of Pope Paul VI to Uganda in July 1969. Omuhiigo, in the Runyankore language, was the first opera by a Ugandan composer to be fully scored in solfa notation, staged and performed.5 Warugaba scored his opera in three acts. It ‘tells a hunting story – hunting as it used to take place many years ago’ (1969: 2). In a production, which according to Warugaba, is clearly styled as a Kinyankore ‘comic opera’, song and dance elements are more idiomatically centred, engaging music, speech, several techniques of call and response (discussed below), syncopation and dance. The dances and songs are per­formed by the chorus, which we meet in Act I, and will be addressed in more detail below. The melodic inflections are definitely Kinyankore and are inspired by Kinyankore kitaaguriro dance rhythms.6 Rutemba, the main protagonist and the leader of the hunting group, is at home with his wife Mataba, their two daughters, Baataatsya and Kentwiga, and their son, Rushanju. Rutemba is with his dog, Garana. It is the morning after the embogo (a buffalo) has damaged the farmers’ crops. Rutemba announces to the audience that he will first consult with Mufumu, the village diviner, before hunting the buffalo. Mufumu predicts that the buffalo will attempt to evade the hunters but in the end, they will kill it. The chorus sings ‘Nyambura’, a recitative calling on the goddess Nyambura to guide them. This is followed by the performance of a call-andresponse chorus, ‘Mwije Tuhigye’ or ‘Come let us go and hunt’, which invites the hunters to join Rutemba. Immediately, the hunters, dressed in ragged clothes and carrying sharpened spears, sticks, machetes and nets, rush to the stage. The hunters include Rugateera and his dog Makara, Munamba and his dog Rukamba, Beitwanengoga and his dog Barwanotungire, and Nshemereirwe. All of them carry ox horns which they blow as they march off the stage. Hunting bells are tied around the dogs’ necks. Act II is in two movements – the first movement is in a domestic setting in Rutemba’s compound. The girls, Nshonga and Kenyangyi, Rutemba’s daughters, and their friends, Keizooba, Kemigisha, Tinsheka, Kizaana, Baataatshya, Tibun­ denga and Bindeeba play a children’s game. The chorus of women, that includes Mataba (Rutemba’s wife), and the cultivators Kyabatuku, Kengyeya and Kentarure, grind millet as they sing various

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parts of the theme songs ‘Kansindike Eirebe’ (‘Let us grind’), ‘Nimuhumbye’ (‘Pray for their safety’), and ‘Imwe Bahingi’ (‘You cultivators’). Some verses, for example, ‘Kiri kuhanda ni ki?’ (‘What is in the forest?’) and ‘Nutiniire ki?’ (‘Why are you afraid?’), are sung to express their anxiety concerning the hunters to the audience. The audience hears yells and shouts by hunters mingled with sounds of hunting bells worn by hunting dogs, and the sound of hunting horns blown by the hunters to indicate that the chase is in progress. Overarching this act is an ominous tropical thunderstorm characterised by claps of thunder, lightning, and fierce winds. The opera reaches its climax as the embogo is struck and killed by the hunters. They turn their collective anger on the buffalo as the symbol of the tormentors and destroyer of their crops. Near the end of the act, when the women hear the horns signalling the killing of the buffalo, they sing, ‘Abahiigyi baita’ (‘The hunters have killed [the buffalo]’), and dance in celebration. Act III is a celebration of the successful hunt of the buffalo symbolised by indigenous Kinyankore dances, music and song. The opera ends with the villagers/chorus feasting on the buffalo meat as they, drum, dance and sing the final section of the theme song ‘Ni mwiije mureebe’ (‘Come and See’), ‘Nkabagambira’ (‘I told you so’), ‘Boojo nkagiita’ (‘Friends I killed it’), and ‘Nimwebare Omuhiigo’ (‘Thank you for the hunt’). This act is stunning for its variety of song, dance and musical styles that present a range of indigenous Kinyankore musical experience. Warugaba unquestionably knew all the Kinyankore musical styles and forms and each section of the opera shows an ability to work through a range of styles of musical expressions. Just as he used elements of his life experience, knowledge and culture, Warugaba exploited his rural background and folklore to construct Omuhiigo. The theme chorus has a rhythmic pattern like the syncopated patterns heard in a traditional Kinyankore folk song and is worth quoting at length. Chorus: Yeimwe, Yeimwe, Yeimwe abahiigyi Yeimwe muhiigye kurungi Amacumu gatyaarize nigaryeenya Ayi banyaruganda, mutagitiina!! Rugatera, naRutemba, Nsyemereirwe, Namunamba, Rushazu Baitwanengoga

190  Samuel Kasule Yeimwe! Men: Obunagyenda, obunagyenda Omwabazyo negundeeta x2 Chorus: Omwabazyo negubareeta x3 Men: Naanyo obunaagyenda Omwabazyo negundeeta x3 Chorus: Eego, omwabazyo negubareeta Men: Yee nanwye Obunagyenda Chorus: Yee naanyo, omwabazo nengubareeta Men: Mwizye turebe, Runyonyi wa munamba Mwizye tuhiige, Runyonyi wa Munamba Nimwebare omuhiigo, Runyonyi wa munamba Chorus: (ecstatic joy) Ayinunu, ya ya ya, ayinwengye, ya ya ya Nimwebare omuhiigo, ya ya ya x2 Ayinunu, ya ya ya, ayinwengye, ya ya ya Nimwebare omuhiigo, ya ya ya x2 Ezooba niryeri, ya ya ya x2 Mwizye tuze kuzaana, yay ya ya Twosye, tuzaane, ya ya ya Teme emiti tukore emizito Nimwebare okwizya, abahiigyi Bahiigi rugambwa Abeisire embogo (Translation) Chorus: You, you, you, hunters You, hunt well The spears are sharpened and are shining My brothers do not fear this buffalo Men: I am going and I will be back in the evening Chorus: The dark hours will bring you The dark hours will bring you The evening time will bring you Women: Yes, it will bring you x2 Men: I am going, and I will be back in the evening Chorus: Yes, now that you are gone Come and see Runyonyi wa munamba Come let’s hunt Runyonyi of Munamba Chorus: Thank you for the hunt, Runyonyi wa Munamba Ayinunu, ya ya ya, ayinweje, ya ya ya Thank you for the hunt, ya ya ya x2 This is the day, ya ya ya

The Emergence of Folk Opera or ‘Musical Plays’ in Uganda  191 Come let’s dance Cut the branches lets roast some meat Thank you for coming, hunters You have killed yourself a buffalo.

In this seemingly simple call-and-response song, in which Warugaba draws on indigenous performance, he constructs an inherently Kinyankore narrative that condenses the meaning and power of song and the lyrical grounding of his own imagination. Call-and-response patterns are linked to the communal style of orature, which is rooted in the art of improvisation and audience participation. The success of the performance depends on a shared understanding of the indigenous forms, narratives, and songs. The chorus, therefore, offers us a way of understanding the call-andresponse musicality, the primary aesthetic which has shaped the creative context for most of the writing by Katana, Kawadwa and Serukenya. Both Omuhiigo and Makula ga Kulabako demonstrate a selfconscious expression of ethnic pride often evident in Ugandan musical and dramatic works of the time when artists turned to their indigenous cultural heritages for inspiration. Both works use indigenous folktales, folksongs and dance, which are elastic and porous enough for innovative composers and playwrights seeking to exploit their form for different purposes. Warugaba, for example, was at the intersection of various performance mediums: he was a dancer, a choreographer, a poet, and a musician with the latter dominating the other functions. He was a seminal force among Ugandan performing artists of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly since his intersecting theatre skills elevated him from being one of the pioneers of folk opera composition to directing stage and choral performances. Nevertheless, his practice, which integrated Western and non-Western indigenous idioms, has not been widely reviewed and recognised in the canon of Ugandan theatre and music tradition. This could be attributed to the fact that opera written in the Runyankore language was not accessible to the theatre-going audiences at the National Theatre in Kampala, where it was mainly staged, because the majority did not speak the language. In contrast, popular playwrights, and composers such as Kawadwa, Serukenya and Wycliff Kiyingi were writing and performing in the Luganda language.

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The development and reception of Warugaba and Katana’s operas, who are both from western Uganda, contrasted with that of works by Kawadwa and Serukenya, from Buganda; for example, their Makula ga Kulabako (1970) and Oluyimba lwa Wankoko (1971) are perhaps the most popular musical plays ever staged in Uganda. Katana and Warugaba, through their reworking of folk music and song, mainly through the music choruses that make use of ‘chordal harmony’, intervene in the audience’s reception of hybrid chorus forms. To the initiated audiences, therefore, the performances are displayed in a different frame since the compositions are more aligned to Western than African harmony. Kawadwa’s and Serukenya’s compositions are much more rooted in the Baganda tradition; as Gerhard Kubik states, ‘the Baganda do not use chordal harmony, all their music being in unison and octaves’ (1994: 267). Nonetheless, texts like Omuhiigo and Makula ga Kulabako create an ongoing cultural conversation on questions of form, style and aesthetics, a dialogue that challenges the assumed cultural homogeneity of Ugandans.

NOTES 1 Okot’s metaphor for this change is a powerful but non-violent reminder to us of his use of the pen, and performance to effect change. 2 Okagbue (2016) states: ‘In doing this [creating alternative centres] postcolonial­ ism restores subjectivity denied by colonialism to the coloniser. Thus, post­ colonialism asserts that whatever one stands and speaks for becomes their centre. Postcolonialism recognises that centre and its relationship with other centres’ (5). 3 Kiganda describes the Baganda people’s culture. 4 Luganda, widely spoken in Uganda, is the language spoken by the Baganda. 5 Solomon Mbabi Katana, the first African Ugandan Professor of Music, in a private note to the composer, a copy of which the composer kindly sent to me, refers to Omuhiigo as a ‘folk opera’. This form of folk opera is different from the Nigerian folk opera described by Wole Soyinka in Biodun Jeyifo’s Conversations with Wole Soyinka (2001). The Nigerian folk opera, as Soyinka states, ‘developed out of the normal, secular masquerade, the traditional secular masquerade of our society, and moved into contemporary society’ (9). 6 Warugaba is a Munyankore from Ankole, one of the old kingdoms, in western Uganda, who speak Runyankore. Kinyankore refers to the culture of Ankole.

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REFERENCES Boyce Davies, Carole (2002), Black Women, Writing and Identity Migrations of the Subject. London: Routledge. Jeyifo, Biodun (ed.) (2001), Conversations with Wole Soyinka. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Kasfir, Sidney L. (1969), ‘Nnaggenda: Experimental Ugandan Artist’, African Arts, vol. 3, no.1: 13. Kasule, Samuel (2013), Resistance and Politics in Contemporary East African Theatre: Trends in Ugandan Theatre since 1960. London: Adonis & Abbey. Katana, Solomon Mbabi (1957), The Marriage of Nyakato. Unpublished. —— (1967), Omuwalajjana Kintu. Unpublished. —— (1969), Kabiito. Unpublished. Kawadwa, Byron (1970), Makula ga Kulabako. Unpublished. —— (1971), Oluyimba lwa Wankoko. Unpublished. Kubik, Gerhard (1994), Theory of African Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ~ ~ı wa Thiong’o (2008), Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom. Ngug London: James Currey. Nsubuga, Christopher (2019), interviewed by Samuel Kasule, 2 December, London, in person, transcribed by Samuel Kasule. Okagbue, Osita (2016), ‘The Margin in the Centre: Of Diaspora, Betrayal and Homelessness’, Inaugural Lecture delivered at Goldsmiths College, University of London, 14 June. Unpublished. Okot p’Bitek (1980), interviewed by Samuel Kasule, 12 September, Kampala, in person, transcribed by Samuel Kasule. Pier, David G. (2015), Ugandan Music in the Marketing Era: The Branded Arena. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Soyinka, Wole (1988), Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture. New York: Pantheon Books. Warugaba, Cosmas (1969), Omuhiigo. Unpublished. —— (2010), In the Service of God. Mbarara: Nyamitanga Printing Press.

‘Home is where the memory persists most’ Introducing Zainabu Jallo’s We Take Care of Our Own CHRISTINE MATZKE

The opening setting: a Viking-themed birthday party at a plush retirement home somewhere at the convergence of central, eastern and western Europe. The characters: three men from various diasporas with distinguished careers. Nonagenarian birthday boy Bajran from south-east Europe (‘The Balkans’, WTC)1 is a former chemist with a prominent Swiss pharmaceutical company; octogenarian Moon-So is a South Korean filmmaker obsessed with his unfinished documentary on dragonflies and, at 87, is the youngest of the group; and Dr Youssouf Sadio, aged 89, is a renowned Senegalese astrophysicist who awaits approval of the naming of a star he discovered before his retirement. These three men are thrown together by fate (and sufficient financial means) in a nursing facility that does not feel like ‘home’ but rather like a golden cage, expressed in the overall sentiment: ‘“How the hell did we end up here?”’ (WTC). These men present the audience with interesting paradoxes. They are both wise and infantile at the same time; as representatives of a highly accomplished group of transnational experts they look back on professional privilege and success while suffering from existential anxieties in their twilight hours. While they bicker and reluctantly bond, they gradually begin to share memories of former selves and imaginaries of their homelands. Each has a skeleton in his closet, and all suffer from private angst. Youssouf believes that he is observed in a panopticon; Moon-So is haunted by voices; and Bajran wants to be cleansed by a second, fully immersive baptism. This ceremony – into which Bajran bullies the others for reasons of solidarity rather than religious conversion – sets off a series of events which 194

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brings them closer to dealing with their deepest regrets and fears, including their fear of dying. Few plays and performances put the (very) elderly and their concerns centre-stage, even if Miriam Bernard and Lucy Munro argue that, ‘older people feature strongly in the theatrical cultures in many countries and eras, both as performers and characters’ (2015: 61). In the context of theatrical work engaging with ageing and the elderly based in the global North, Anna Halprin’s more recent dance pieces may readily come to mind, also Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone (all characters ‘at least seventy’), Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (with Krapp being ‘only’ 69) or, in a wider sense, Shakespeare’s King Lear. These works reflect the focus of recent scholarship on old age in dramatic literature and performance studies which, on the whole, is fairly limited and tends to centre on dance and well-known playwrights from a white Euro-American canon.2 Older characters are, of course, also regular features in African and African diasporic plays – examples are evident in works by Ama Ata Aidoo, Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan or John Kani – and yet African and African diasporic dramatic literature with an exclusive focus on the (very) elderly is equally rare.3 In June 2019 Zainabu Jallo told me about three things which set off her desire to write We Take Care of Our Own. The first was when the production team of her play White Elephant (2018) reduced the age of the oldest character, a mother in her mid-seventies, by ten years because it was apparently too difficult to cast an ageappropriate actor.4 The second was a friendly chance encounter she had at a station with a distinguished elderly man who died shortly afterwards on a different platform, and to whom she wants to dedicate the play. And the third is a general fascination with older people evident in a photography project she embarked on with octogenarians in 2017. For Jallo there is beauty in old faces as ‘every line has a story to tell’ (5 June 2019).5 She enjoyed it when the people whom she was photographing started to share their insights, memories and unceasing curiosity about life, but also their sense of fragility and their fears. As playwright, poet, documentary photographer and scholar currently based in Switzerland and Brazil, Nigeria-born Jallo can be described as a person constantly on the move. As a doctoral researcher at Bern she studies performance of diasporic

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consciousness through Brazilian Candomblé, with special interest in the intersections between theatre, spiritual performance, iconic criticism and material culture. As a playwright she is known for her deeply poetical plays that explore the complex psychological workings of individual characters across the globe. Among her plays are Onions Make Us Cry (2013), shortlisted for the 2010 Nigerian Prize of Literature and winner of National Theatre Studio London Africa Project; Holy Night (2013), The Revolutionary Carrot (2018), and There Goes My Bowtie by the Storm (2019).6 Her creative and academic work has been supported by a number of fellowships at, among others, the Global Arts Village New Delhi, the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, Harvard University, the Swiss Chateau Lavigny (Foundation Heinrich & Jane Ledig-Rowohlt), the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) in Berlin, and the Munich Residenztheater. We Take Care of Our Own was first developed during a Camargo Foundation Cultural Diaspora residency in Southern France, to which eight black playwrights – four from the USA and four from the African continent, three men and five women – had been invited. Co-directed by well-known playmakers and theatre directors Chuck Mike and Carlyle Brown, both based in the US, the residency aimed at bringing together artists ‘“from opposite ends of the Africanist Diaspora [to quote Brown]”’, to engage ‘them in debates about identity and authenticity’ and to explore ‘the different ways in which international boundaries shape the African experience’ (Carlyle Brown & Company 2019). Jallo focuses on the ageing diaspora in her play, but complicates the narrative by including other diasporic communities, Asian and Eastern European, which reflects the impact of transnationalism and ‘the globalisation of international migra­tion’ (Torres 2019: 23). Together with the works of two fellow residents, the play was then chosen for a rehearsed reading at the Afro-Atlantic Festival in Minneapolis the following year (12–14 July 2019).7 The Festival ran in conjunction with the Camargo Cultural Diaspora residency and was hosted by the Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center (PWC) and Carlyle Brown & Company. At the Festival’s closing roundtable, Jallo drew attention to how complex the idea of diaspora has become in this day and age (PWC 2019), with people embracing multiple histories and identities that often

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appear antithetic to each other. While citing the case of Brazil – where Afro-Brazilian culture is an acknowledged part of Brazil’s ‘national heritage’, but ‘Africa’ still considered the community’s ‘homeland’, due to six centuries of traumatic Afro-Brazilian history – she wondered whether people with an African legacy would ever be anything but ‘diasporic’, whether they could ever ‘belong’. Youssouf, Moon-So and Bajran certainly do not belong. They have a deep ‘sense of placelessness’ (WTC), and yet they belong everywhere. As members of a highly skilled transnational mobile workforce, though first-generation immigrants with firsthand experiences of a ‘homeland’, they are at home in the world in general and certainly do not fit into any of the loaded categories prevalent on the European continent where they are now based; ‘economic migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’ or ‘refugees’. Except for Moon-So, whose nationality is clearly identified, Jallo remains deliberately vague when it comes to rooted locations; if anything, roots become routes, or rather, a search for direction. Youssouf is ‘African’ (though his homeland of Touba eventually makes him Senegalese); Bajran is from ‘The Balkans’ (which could encompass any country from Croatia to Bulgaria);8 and the retirement home is ‘by the lake instead of the one with the view of the Alps’ (WTC), the latter spreading over eight national borders, with France to the west and Slovenia and Austria to the east. For the three characters, the idea of ‘home’ thus remains vague and associated with their pasts; it is a place in memory rather than a physical site to which they can return. As Jallo pointedly puts it: ‘Home is where the memory persists most’ (interview, 5 June 2019). While for the three men the idea of home is infused with retrospective nostalgia (about childhood, an early marriage), it is also related to the wrongdoings they committed in the past. All of the characters are unreliable narrators when it comes to their personal histories. All have secrets they do not want to divulge; and when they do so, it is reluctantly. While the three men are exact in their scientific work and fastidious with regard to nutritional intake and personal grooming, they obscure and layer what is closest to their hearts. Revelations and personal confessions are related in parables rather than directly and appear piecemeal, never in full. Moon-So ‘might have killed a man once’ (WTC). Bajran ‘behaved badly’ (WTC) towards his family. Youssouf left his grieving wife on the

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death of their infant daughter, and his regrets make him want to name a star after his abandoned spouse, Khadidatou (meaning ‘fearless’ or ‘bold’ (Jallo 16 October 2019)). The voices they hear, the hallucinations they have are echoes of the real or imagined atrocities they have committed, roaring and resonating in their heads. Bajran is perhaps the most brutally outspoken of the three as he asks the most overtly existential questions, because he is the most disturbed and the one most afraid of dying. Their inner turmoil – and outer irritations – are conveyed in a style for which Jallo is already known: terse, lyrical dialogues often open to a plethora of meanings, fast-paced verbal sparring matches with a great sense for language rhythm and linguistic puns that are often huge fun. When I asked director Carlyle Brown what struck him most about the play he replied: ‘I was attracted by Zainabu’s use of language. It’s playful, poetic and has a percussive slightly heightened nature, which to my ear contributed to the African-ness within the play’ (e-mail 15 August 2019). To me, some scenes are also reminiscent of the witty verbal exchanges between Didi and Gogo in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot which often work on an aural and affective level: characters ‘entertain’ themselves to pass time; monological tendencies in dialogues (cf. Pfister 1993: 129) further quirky miscommunication rather than genuine interaction. And yet, the three characters draw closer together towards the end of the play. The title, We Take Care of Our Own, is to be read almost literally: we, the residents of this nursing home, take care of our own because no one else will. ‘This here, is not commonplace’, Bajran points out, to which Moon-So replies, ‘Neither are we common men!’ (WTC) Readers and theatre goers might also be reminded of The Physicists (Die Physiker 1961, 1980) by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt which centres on three patients in a psychiatric clinic – renowned scientists in their previous lives – who pretend to be mentally ill in order to keep their potentially life-destroying discoveries concealed.9 While both plays are about (human or scientific) secrets and the responsibility that comes with them, and both convey the sense of a claustrophobic prison-like atmosphere from which there is no escape,10 We Take Care of Our Own ends on a much more hopeful note than Dürrenmatt’s play. Youssouf, Moon-So and Bajran cannot realise the ‘big escape’ they plan at

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some point (‘Situation IV’, WTC), but they do develop a greater serenity and acceptance of life and death in the face of Youssouf’s passing. Michael Mangan has called attention to the ‘light that can be thrown upon our understanding of ageing [and old age] by looking at it from the perspective of drama, theatre and performance studies’ (2013: 5); in a second step he also wonders what reflections on the elderly can teach us about our own academic field, (African) theatre. In answer, I would argue that We Take Care of Our Own makes us question normative expectations regarding social and biological ageing (and age), of physical conditions and mental attitudes, of home and diaspora, decision making and responsibility, and how all these things play out in the construction of social identities that are multi-layered and never complete. To close with the words of director and playwright Carlyle Brown, ‘We Take Care of Our Own, is the kind of play I like, theatrical, authentic, grounded in simplicity, its themes are relevant and it has something to say. It makes you think. It causes you to wonder […] It needs and deserves a full on production’ (e-mail 15 August 2019).

NOTES 1 Quotes refering to Zainabu Jallo’s playscript We Take Care of Our Own, reproduced in this volume, are referenced as WTC. 2 Michael Mangan (2013: 31–2) provides a short selection of book-length studies on age in theatre and dramatic literature from the Northern canon: Antony Ellis’ Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama (2009), Maurice Charney’s Wrinkled Deep in Time (2009) and Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance, and Film (2010, Valerie Barnes Lipscomb and Leni Marshall, eds). Dance Studies include The Aging Body in Dance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (2017, Nanako Nakajima and Gabriele Brandstetter, eds), and a recent special issue of Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 24.3 (2019) entitled ‘On Ageing (& Beyond)’. This issue covers a wider geographical context, among others Egypt, Israel, Singapore and Japan (with the Egyptian contribution by Nora Amin, also featured in this volume). We can expect more research, particularly on African and African diasporic drama, soon to come as the Annual International Conference of the African Theatre Association (AfTA), planned for 23–25 July 2020 at Humboldt-University, Berlin (rescheduled to 14-16 July 2021, due to COVID-19), is on ‘Ageing, Old Age, and Disability in Africa and African Diaspora Performance, Film and Festival’. See www.africantheatreassociation. org/pages/2020 (accessed 29 April 2020). 3 There seem to be more examples when it comes to narrative prose, such as Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye’s Homing In (1994) or Yewande Omotoso’s more

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4

5 6 7

recent The Woman Next Door (2016), both exclusively focusing on women. John Kani’s most recent play, Kunene and the King (2019), centres on two elderly men. White Elephant is a play about the claustrophobic relationship of an elderly exnun and her blind, middle-aged son in an unidentified, isolated location. It was written as part of the Welt/Bühne project at the Munich Residenztheater, Germany, and premiered on 28 June 2018 at the Marstall, part of the Residenz­ theater. See www.residenztheater.de/inszenierung/white-elephants (accessed 17 August 2018). For a thought-provoking chapter on ‘How (Not) to Shoot Old People: Breaking Ageist Paradigms Through Portrait Photography’ see Gullette (2017: 22–53). Other plays include the above-mentioned White Elephant, Saraya Dangana (2010) and My Sultan is a Rockstar. For more information see https://zainabujallo.com and www.facebook.com/zainabujallo (both accessed 17 August 2019). The reading took place on 13 July 2019, directed by Carlyle Brown, with Adolphus Ward as Youssouf, Richard Ooms as Bajran and Sab Shimono as Moon-So (see pictures). About this collaboration Jallo writes:

I feel the need to emphasise how very thankful I am for the commitment to, and interpretation of this play by Carlyle, Sab, Richard and Adolphus who went on to share some of their own personal experiences in between rehearsals. Working with this constellation enriched my rewrites. The importance of working with actors within the liminal space between the final draft and production/publication presented myriad ways of interpretation. (E-mail 15 December 2019)

On 5 December 2019 the play saw a second reading at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, directed by Melissa Crespo. 8 The NYU Tisch School (2019) identifies Bajran as Albanian. 9 When in early 2019 I asked Jallo whether she knew Dürrenmatt’s work she replied that she only got to know about it when talking to others about her play. On reading Die Physiker she found the similarities ‘uncanny’ (e-mail 6 March 2019). 10 Cf. Jallo’s comment shared in an e-mail (6 March 2019): ‘I have only been brought to the awareness that my plays are set in some sort of confined spaces’.

REFERENCES Beckett, Samuel (1976), Krapp’s Last Tape. London: Faber & Faber. Bernard, Miriam and Lucy Munro (2015), ‘Theatre and Ageing’. In Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology, Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin (eds). London and New York: Routledge: 61–8. Brown, Carlyle (15 August 2019), personal e-mail to the author. Camargo Foundation (2018) ‘The Cultural Diaspora: African-American and African Playwrights Creative Residency at the Camargo Foundation’, https:// camargofoundation.org/programs/cultural-diaspora-program (accessed 18 August 2019). Carlyle Brown & Company (9 May 2019), ‘Camargo Foundation’s Cultural Diaspora 2018 Fellows Participate in Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival (Minneapolis, July 12–14, 2019)’, http://carlylebrownandcompany.org/news/ camargo-foundations-cultural-diaspora-2018-fellows-participate-inafro-atlanticplaywright-festival-minneapolis-july-12-14-2019 (accessed 12 August 2019).

Introducing Zainabu Jallo’s We Take Care of Our Own  201 Churchill, Caryl (2019), ‘Escaped Alone’, Plays: 5. London: Nick Hern Books, Kindle Edition. Dürrenmatt, Friedrich (1980 [1961]), Die Physiker: Eine Komödie in 2 Akten. Revised version, Werkausgabe, vol. 7. Zurich: Verlag der Arche. Gough, Richard and Nanako Nakajima (eds) (2019), ‘On Ageing (& Beyond)’, special issue of Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, vol. 24, no. 3. Gullette, Margaret Morganroth (2017), Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Halprin, Anna (n.d.), ‘Performances’, www.annahalprin.org/performances (accessed 12 September 2019). Jallo, Zainabu (5 June 2019), unrecorded Skype interview with the author. Notes 6 June 2019. —— (6 March 2019), personal e-mail to the author. —— (16 October 2019), personal e-mail to the author. —— (15 December 2019), personal e-mail to the author. —— (2020), We Take Care of Our Own, this volume. Kani, John (2019), Kunene and the King. London: Nick Hern Books. Macgoye, Marjorie Oludhe (1994), Homing In. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Mangan, Michael (2013), Staging Ageing: Theatre, Performance and the Narrative of Decline. Bristol: Intellect. Nakajima, Nanako and Gabriele Brandstetter (eds) (2017), The Ageing Body in Dance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. London and New York: Routledge. NYU TISCH (2019) Events Drama: We Take Care of Our Own, 5 December’, https://tisch.nyu.edu/drama/events/we-take-care-of-our-own (accessed 30 January 2020). Omotoso, Yewande (2016), The Woman Next Door. London: Vintage. Pfister, Manfred (1993 [1991]), transl. John Halliday, The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PWC – Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis (2019), ‘The Afro-Atlantic Playwright Festival Closing Roundtable’, posted 14 July, video, hosted and produced by PWC, https://howlround.com/happenings/afro-atlantic-playwright-festivalclosing-roundtable (accessed 18 August 2019). Shakespeare, William (2007 [1606]), King Lear, ed. R. A. Foakes. London: Arden Shakespeare. Torres, Sandra (2019), Ethnicity and Old Age: Expanding our Imagination. Bristol: Policy Press.

Figure 1. Adolphus Ward as Youssouf, Sab Shimono as Moon-So, AfroAtlantic Festival reading rehearsal, Minneapolis, July 2019. (Photo © Paula Keller, 2019)

Figure 2. Richard Ooms as Bajran (with Adolphus Ward in the background), Afro-Atlantic Festival reading rehearsal, Minneapolis, July 2019. (Photo © Paula Keller, 2019)

Playscript We Take Care of Our Own

ZAINABU JALLO

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden. ( Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) This play was written during the Cultural Diaspora’s resi­dency programme at the Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France).

Project notes The ageing diaspora is the focal point of this play. It stems from my curiosity about intersections; of humans and how they operate outside their distinct cultural elements. In this case, three men in diaspora battling with the difficulties of retiring to a nursing home in Europe.

Some facts There are nearly 220 million first-generation migrants around the world: that translates to around 4 per cent of the world’s population. If they were to make up a nation, its population would be a little larger than that of Brazil. Over the years of rapid migration, for several reasons, the daily lives and individuation processes of those ageing in diaspora are being negotiated and renegotiated. Among a large number of ageing immigrants, their various migration and transnational histories become entangled with a nostalgia for the 203

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homeland. In most cases, it is a homeland that has begun to be vivid, yet illusory.

Synopsis Three first-generation immigrants from Africa, The Balkans and South Korea who have all had a distinguished career as an astrophysicist, a chemist and a filmmaker respectively, find them­ selves in a nursing home in Europe. ‘How the hell did we end up here?’ In their seclusion (that’s how they understand it), they form an unusual bond where they explore/share their existential anxieties. Youssouf agitates over the omnipresence of people in the panopticon, Moon-So has sleepless nights over haunting voices and Bajran just wants to get baptised one more time.

Dramatis personae YOUSSOUF SADIO: 89, an African observational astro­physicist. He has a tall and imposing frame. His long grey beard is well groomed. He awaits the International Astronomical Union to approve ‘Khadidatou’ as the name of a star he discovered shortly before his retirement. Khadidatou is also the name the first woman he ever loved and left in his homeland of Touba. MOON-SO: 87, South Korean filmmaker. His wish is to finish a documentary on dragonflies he had begun a few years before getting into the nursing home. Moon-So is not as tall as Bajran and Youssouf but has the habit of always tucking his shirt in his trousers neatly. BAJRAN: Just turned 91, a former chemist who worked in Sandoz Basel when LSD was discovered by Albert Hoffmann. His wish is to get baptised one more time. He is tall lanky, he has a slight limp from a knee replacement surgery that took time to heal. They are all very well-dressed men and wouldn’t let anything be out of place.

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SUNDAY, SITUATION I, THE BIRTHDAY (YOUSSOUF, BAJRAN and MOON-SO are wearing Viking party hats. BAJRAN is dressed in full Viking costume. There are remnants of a cut-up cake and plastic cups on the table. The floor is covered with confetti. They all stare tiredly into space.) Bajran Overcame the raging seas, fellas. Moon-So Ever think you would come out this far? Bajran No. Youssouf 91 and standing straight! (They all say a disorderly ‘cheers’ and clink their faux Viking drinking horns.) Youssouf Turned out not so ridiculous after all. Bajran My Viking-themed party took 80 years to realise. Not quite the crowd nor place I imagined. Youssouf This cake is all sugar! Bajran 12.99. Off the shelf. Half price. Moon-So 91 deserves more exertion… you know, a homebaked plum cake would have been nice. Good thing none of us has diabetes. Youssouf They promised to throw you a party here with the others. The cake must be better. Bajran I do not want an institutionalised birthday party. Moon-So (Tasting some of the cake) Sugar! Youssouf He wasn’t expected to eat it. It was for the pictures. Will Sam send us the pictures? I think my eyes were closed half the time. Bajran I like sugar! His name is Zamir, not Sam. Youssouf Samir. Bajran Zzzz.zzz. Zamir! Moon-So Your eyes are always closed half the time anyway! Youssouf What did you wish for? Moon-So That wish took too long! Youssouf You do not have to tell us. Bajran Then why do you ask? Moon-So Because it was a rather long wish. Bajran (Hesitant) I want to get baptised again. Youssouf You’ve had too much sugar! Bajran One never knows! We might as well just get baptised, you know… too much accumulated dirt. So much!

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(BAJRAN begins to mumble inaudible words to himself.) Moon-So Are you feeling unwell Bajran? Youssouf Can you hear us Bajran? Bajran First time I was baptised, I was three, it was considered too late, I was told it tamed my tantrums. The child sinner I was! Moon-So And now? Bajran I have piled up some grime. I need to be washed clean again. You don’t want to be the one clambering up the seraphic gates and not allowed in just because of some speckles of dirt on your cloak… it would be a bloody waste of all my years. Youssouf You have never believed! Bajran I have my ins and outs… and in-betweens. When the clock struck 12:00… it ticked all the way to 12:01 and I became 91 and 91 brought with it, the need to be scrubbed again. I do not know why either. I am puzzled, just as you both are by this new unfounded need. Moon-So Never have I experienced it… Youssouf If you want – Bajran It is not a want, it is a requirement… a need! Moon-So I only recently begun to follow Confucian ethics. Youssouf Whatever for? (MOON-SO makes to say something.) Bajran We appear to be on the same ship my friend. Moon-So Heading where? Bajran That’s what we don’t know. Being prepared is enough. Moon-So I only want some composure within myself… to mend my person. Bajran And then? Youssouf So there’s a fear of dying. It is commonplace. Let’s enjoy the party. Bajran What the hell are you doing assuming the role of a pacifier? Who wants to be pacified? (to MOON-SO) Do you? Moon-So I don’t want to be pacified. Bajran No one here wants to be pacified Youssouf! Always wanting to be the judicious one. It is my party and I am enjoying talking about getting baptised, Moon-So wants harmony within himself. Why should any of these come from the fear of death? This here, is not commonplace. I have many other important things I am afraid of!

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Moon-So Neither are we common men! (Silence) Bajran Let’s play a game. (Silence) Let’s take turns in sharing the things we are most afraid of. Youssouf How is that a game? Moon-So Right! What makes that a game? Bajran An act, for the sole purpose of amusing ourselves. Moon-So I am not amused. Bajran Are we playing or not? It is my birthday! Are you both going to keep giving me a rough time?! Youssouf Start then! Start! Bajran It is my game and I say who starts. Moon-So, start! Moon-So I have dedicated half of my life to my documentary about dragon flies. I have a fear of not ever finishing it and now – Bajran Youssouf! Youssouf Is this a timed-game? Moon-So hasn’t finished what he was saying. (Silence) As you both know, I pray each day that the International Astronomical Union approves the name Khadidatou for the star I discovered… I also pray it happens in my life time – Bajran I am appalled! You have both failed! Moon-So How could we have failed? You haven’t played yet. Why have you become so vile and unfair towards us? Bajran Do you think so too Youssouf? Youssouf Think what? Bajran This thing he is saying about me being vile. Youssouf I cannot discern what you are getting at! It is getting late, I would rather go to sleep before someone comes to ask me to. Moon-So I hate being told when to go to bed. Bajran Each time I get into the shower, I have the devastating fear of slipping and falling, more so because of my new knee. Should that ever happen, I shall suffer… I shall suffer considerably. (Pause) Now that is fear. I do not know how you could both put forth hope as fear. This is a serious game fellows. Do you want to try again? (Silence)

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Hope is not fear!!! Your turn again Moon-So. Moon-So I fear those babbling… horrifying voices from the belly of the earth. They have been preying on me for a long… long time. Bajran Ah! Hence the quest for harmony… er, tranquillity. Youssouf And the rigid clasping of your ears while you sleep… if you do sleep at all. Bajran Youssouf? Youssouf It has to be the panopticon. The people in there, watching, even as we speak. Those eyes never blink. They observe, same way we’ve been observing the stars and celestial bodies. Bajran What is there to be afraid of? Being observed is not a new phenomenon. From your first thumbprint to your ID number as an active, corporeal entity on this planet… you are never alone! Youssouf Something invisible, an omnipresence controlling human relationships over there. Bajran Where? Youssouf Everywhere! Moon-So The panopticon is invisible? Youssouf They wouldn’t want to be noticeable. Bajran Is that what has controlled us into this retirement home by the lake instead of the one with the view of the Alps? Moon-So The mystery novelist from below was carried away by the lake, it is a bad idea to be by the lake. Youssouf Nobody gets carried away by the lake as such. He had a seizure! Moon-So Could have been those people in your panopticon. Youssouf How is it my panopticon? Moon-So You alone are aware of it. Youssouf That does not make it mine! Moon-So How could he have died the exact same way he described a death by the lake in one of his bestsellers? Youssouf You have read his book? Moon-So My nurse told me. Bajran I do not like your nurse. You both still lose this game. Your fears are impalpable… all structured on your illusions and buoyant imaginations. No objections. (A few beats) I asked

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Zamir to get a priest to come by… and you know what? He did not object nor ask any stupid questions. Youssouf Wouldn’t contest anything with his grandpa, would he? Bajran So, I generously extend the baptising hands of the priest upon you two. We can all get baptised. Moon-So Youssouf cannot! He prays on a mat. Bajran And you? Moon-So What is it like? Bajran I barely remember but… he poured water over my head. It trickled down my nose… I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he said. And like an insane dog after a long bath, I have been rolling around in mud ever since… Youssouf Not insanity, rather, in obeisance to the one who owns them, they sit and when they become free, it’s natural for them to exercise their innate will. Moon-So What are you saying? Youssouf Two things, most dogs do not like getting shampooed and you simply followed your innate will. Moon-So He said nothing about being shampooed by the priest. Bajran Someone’s coming! Quick! The lights! (MOON-SO is closest to the switch. He turns off the lights.) Youssouf’s Voice Something is going amiss with the way you understand things Moon-So, you must try to sleep more. Bajran’s Voice You know they’d still find us here as always. But we keep doing this anyway. Are we stupid or what? Moon-So’s Voice Just a trio of crazy, harmless men. Youssouf’s Voice You alone are crazy Moon-So. (BAJRAN lets out a loud laugh.) Youssouf’s Voice Shhhhhhh! Now stop laughing like you own some of Moon-So’s craziness! (Lights out.) MONDAY, SITUATION II, ALL ONE MATTER (All three men sit in the conservatory; an extension of their living room. There is more natural light and more potted plants. Like their living space, the conservatory is also luxuriously furnished. A man and a woman in white bring pitchers of water and a fruit platter. They exchange pleasantries

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and leave. BAJRAN looks about after them to see if everywhere is clear.) Bajran All clear. (YOUSSOUF produces a large pillow case which he wraps around his neck to serve as a shaving apron and hands an eager MOON-SO a Swiss army knife. MOON-SO produces a brush from his pockets and begins to brush YOUSSOUF’s beard and then with utmost caution he begins to trim YOUSSOUF’s beard.) Youssouf Do not make a mess. Moon-So This is slightly blunt. Youssouf I have barely used it. You are holding it at an awkward angle. Bajran They took my razor off me. How could the guys in the panopticon have missed that? Youssouf A well calculated tolerance. With the expectation that I might slit my own wrists. Bajran You carry on with so much self-importance. You rascal! Moon-So Stay still Youssouf. Bajran He is still as a statue. Your hands are trembling. How could you be trusting of those hands Youssouf? Youssouf You stay still Moon-So. Just a neat trim. Moon-So That’s what you are getting. Stay quiet! Bajran With a bit of patience, you could wait for the rescheduled date for your hair cut. This is too agonising to watch. Youssouf Not one more day of looking like I was pulled out of a blizzard. Bajran Who cares? Who cares if you looked like you were thrown out by a vortex? You are too self-absorbed. (At this YOUSSOUF turns sharply and is scratched by the scissors. He yelps. MOON-SO, in his agitation, cuts himself and drops the army knife and lets out a cry. BAJRAN also lets out a cry of panic and reaches for his pocket handkerchief and hands it to YOUSSOUF who places it over his bruised ear. YOUSSOUF’s ear is bleeding, so is MOON-SO’s finger.) Youssouf (Tending to his bleeding ear) You choose to be comfortable looking like a stray dog. Not me! Bajran A stray dog?! Moon-So (In sotto voice as he examines his hand) How can I tell my blood from yours Youssouf? Look how they have run into each other. (Sniffs) There is no dissimilarity in smell.

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Bajran This is madness! Moon-So Perhaps under a microscope their histories can be seen. (MOON-SO is animated, he shows his hand to YOUSSOUF) Is that not fascinating? Youssouf I am spellbound. Moon-So This region is the Atlantic coast. Look how the waves have conveyed all these lovely sea shells to the shore! Youssouf (Tending to his ear and gesturing at MOON-SO to examine it) Is it a deep cut? Moon-So Just a scratch. See, Youssouf, look at the stretch of palm trees along the coast and many footprints in the sand! Youssouf That is a multitude of footprints! Where are they going? That’s a rather large one over there, do you think that belongs to a human? Bajran Are you both joking with me here?!! Youssouf And if you looked much closer, you’d find another distant coastline. The yellow one. Moon-So Crescent shaped with such fine sand. Ah!!! The refreshing breeze. Do you feel that? Youssouf Ahhhh! Wonderful! Moon-So Bajran, prick yourself immediately and join in. Bajran I am not subjecting myself to your insane occultist act. Clean up your hands at once Moon-So. Moon-So (To YOUSSOUF) He is scared of needles. (They share a laugh) Youssouf He screams like a baby owl when he sees a needle. (They both hoot like owls) Moon-So Are we having a drop of blood or not? Bajran I am anaemic!!! (They ignore him and continue to examine MOON-SO’s palm.) Youssouf Is that you surfing on a monsoon towards me? What a wild rider you are! What is that in your hand? Moon-So A butterfly catcher. Youssouf What in the world are you doing with a butterfly catcher in such a monsoon? Moon-So They are for my dragon flies… my grandfather gave it to me. What an impressive grace you sail with Youssouf. What’s that robe you are wearing. You look like a messiah. Look at you! Youssouf Your fogginess is forgiven just this one time! That is my

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mbubb. I wore that all the way from Touba. (BAJRAN is clearly frustrated and picks the army knife from the floor and pricks himself.) Bajran There! Moon-So Well... quite large drops. Bajran Should I faint, loosen my waist belt and lay me cautiously on the sofa. Moon-So Look at that! (Sniffs BAJRAN’s hand.) Smells slightly spicier than ours. Is that turmeric or ginger? Bajran Now it won’t stop pouring, you both are going to dry me up! Youssouf Those guys in the panopticon would sniff us out... clean up now! Bajran Ginger and turmeric, is all I get??? Youssouf (Examining BAJRAN’s palm) Look! A fleet of ships belonging to Ali Pasha! Do my eyes fail me? Moon-So Ah! On a peninsula. (Looks harder) Certainly Ali Pasha and his army! Little wonder you are the fiercest of us. (They are exasperated from this exercise and all sit, each tending to themselves.) Bajran (Absent-minded, he cleans his palm) I am part of a people. I have resided in a succession of episodes. I have lived upon times loosely linked to each other with fatigued threads… called courage, ambition, quest. Upon these times, I have lived. Today I live in the solitary cage I inadvertently built around myself. Could I not have been a happier man today if I stayed tilling the soil for sugar beets and picking crates of figs from trees that know me to my roots? Moon-So (Clasping his ears) I am wrought… I am distraught by a million and more voices, shrill, epileptic, hoarse, mystical, broken, fearful, indignant… I am a body of a ghost of voices. Youssouf I am a constellation of emotions, a cluster of thoughts and a single piece of breath that has stretched a very… very long distance. Moon-So Last night I could not wait for dawn to break. Sleep doesn’t come. Awake at night. Awake at daytime. The earth revolves nonetheless. Doesn’t even wait for me to put a slipper on. I sit as a hermit would for half a day. I do not mind that at all. I am a watch man. Watching for the day these voices would

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manifest into things I can see and touch and strangle. Would they then… eat me up? Would they trample upon me? Would they tear my brains out and leave me out on the terrace? Bajran I like to be amongst those who sit and think precisely what I am thinking… those who know that the Nebbiolo is king over Shiraz… who can guess the final thoughts of the sacrificial lamb before it is slaughtered. Some forty-five years ago, I dreamed of retiring to a house with a balcony where I could sit and try to read or look at maps from the wars my father fought. Six decades ago I was boy whose only dream was to own a red car… I got my red machine. Its wires are being eaten up by rodents as we speak. With all of my intelligence, I took for granted the most important thing. Youssouf (To MOON-SO) Do you want to finish trimming? Moon-So No. Bajran You must always complete a mission. Always. Be a competent man and finish the mission. Youssouf I’d finish it myself. Bajran You have to be at the chapel by 11:00 tomorrow. I am indebted to you both for offering to stand in as witnesses. Youssouf You demanded it of us. We did not offer. Moon-So I don’t see why you need us there. Your grandson and his fiancée will be there. Bajran We have… all three of us, become one matter. Youssouf That does not sound convincing. Bajran We are atoms who seek fellow atoms to become matter… Hmm? (Silence) All one matter individualised from within? Hmm? (Silence) Well then, just come! Watch me get purified for a few minutes and that’s it. Then you can return to watching your Hubble Space Telescope images and you (To MOONSO) you can go back to your voices. Moon-So Do not make light of that. Youssouf I know a neurologist. Bajran You are going mad Moon-So, you need your brains checked before the voices make noodles of them. Moon-So I am getting to understand why you need to get baptised. Bajran I do not deny that! I am foul. I have a ceramic left knee – I was allergic to the metal one – I love sugar and I still have

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nocturnal emissions and if I heard voices the way you do I would simply report myself to the first psychiatric hospital in the phone book! Youssouf Do you recognise any of the voices? Bajran How could he? He said there are many of them shouting at the top of each other. Moon-So I might have killed a man once. Youssouf (to BAJRAN) What did he just say? Bajran He is right here, ask him! Youssouf Moon-So? Moon-So What? It’s almost dinner time, we have little time to freshen up! (Removing the pillow case from around YOUSSOUF’s neck) We have been playing a fascinating game! Youssouf What do you mean? Moon-So Mind games? Bajran About latitudes… and longitudes. Moon-So Abstract exercises. What is on the menu today? Bajran Steak! Moon-So I have begun to have problems with digesting steak. (Lights out.) TUESDAY, SITUATION III, THE BAPTISM (BAJRAN, YOUSSOUF and MOON-SO are all wearing white robes. Their hairs are slightly damp. BAJRAN is animated as he talks about his experience.) Bajran And for those three seconds my head was under water, I opened my eyes and saw something strangely familiar. Some outlandish creature with bright bulbous eyes and blue shabby claws reaching out for me. Youssouf Even the devil is impatient to get his hands on you. Moon-So It must have been the images on the tiles below. Youssouf The tiles were a plain blue colour. What did the creature want from you? Moon-So You saw this evil creature when you were first baptised? Bajran I didn’t say it was evil. It is just a peculiar creature. It is an old friend I first met at the lab. I haven’t seen it in a very long time until today. Youssouf Did it recognise you? Bajran It must have. I had seen it quite vividly in my days at the

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lab with Hoffmann. After 0.10 milligrams of LSD and there was it was! It sprang upon me, I was aghast, but then I soon realised it wasn’t harmful as he began to stroke my hair. Moon-So You had hair! Bajran And he disclosed to me that no one would hold my hand by my dying bed. I laughed but then stopped when I saw fumes emanating from his eyes. ‘What can I do? What can I do?’ I implored, it told me it was going to be the way of the world, and my clan, who I was working so hard for, will surely throw me into a lonely cage, where I shall have to eat cold dinners by myself. Youssouf You were working for yourself. Moon-So He likes chemicals. Bajran It said I shall remember funny situations and laugh by myself, I shall watch a television documentary featuring the city of Zagreb where I drove through with Danica one summer on my first wedding honeymoon but she wouldn’t be there for me to remember events with. She isn’t… wasn’t. She wouldn’t be there. She is not. My psychological abuse of her would drive her into the arms of another a man called Georgios and after forty years I would be on the edge of my new in-law’s sofa trying to convince them to allow Lena, my second wife, return home and then I get a message that Danica had died in her sleep the night before. It was hard, I left the sofa, I left Lena and her parents. Zamir, whom you have both met, is my grandson from one of the two sons I had with Danica. I behaved badly, so badly. Moon-So How did you carry out the psychological abuse? Bajran I quacked at her often because she had webbed toes. Once in a while I threw angry looks at her just to make myself feel good. Things like that. Youssouf We are also abused by you constantly. Moon-So But now you have been washed. Bajran I shall eat cold dinners all alone. Youssouf The meals are always warm Bajran. Moon-So He eats very slowly, then they always get cold. Like your steak at dinner yesterday. Bajran I – Youssouf And what did the creature say to you today?

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Bajran We only had three seconds. Its expression was one of surprise. Why would he choose to return on the day of my second baptism? Moon-So What was he surprised about? Bajran I don’t know. Youssouf To give you the thumbs up. Moon-So Do you feel well laundered? I feel no different. Youssouf I think I caught a cold. We were just meant to be witnesses Bajran. Bajran One never knows fellows, nothing to lose at all. Okay, Mark and Luke are not particularly well-thought-out names but I had to think of names in a breath. You can switch names if you like, you can be Mark and he, Luke. Youssouf I would never have any need for that. I hope you are fittingly amused. Moon-So No one would believe us if we were to present our­ selves as Mark and Luke. Bajran you make fools of us. Youssouf I am no fool. I do not feel good. Moon-So I do not feel good either. Youssouf I have a fever. Bajran (He appears oblivious to everything that’s being said) In the land of my father, I’d be encircled by my offspring, I’d have a special soft carpet beneath my feet. My grandson would massage my feet with eucalyptus oil. They’d pay attention… just like I did with my own babagyish… I’d clean out his pipes and refill the tobacco. On the terrace where we ate, I would watch how the fresh figs we ate got in between his dentures. His eyes always held something called contentment, my eyes miss that. So, the creature that returned today… Moon-So This is what he meant. (Referring to the nursing home) But you are not lonely, are you? Bajran Remember that morning when we went to pick up the lamb shanks from the butchers… and (he laughs uncontrollably) and we came home with two heads of pigs instead? Youssouf What has come over you Bajran? Moon-So What do you mean? Bajran (Straight faced) I didn’t think you’d remember… this is what he meant! My memories would remain mine to remember, to laugh or to cry about. This here, is all superficial.

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You really think I am interested in your stupid dragonflies? Or Youssouf’s stars? Hell no! Hell no! This is the phase for contemplation, for pondering and processing for remembering the bag of memories I have accumulated… for sieving through those I want to keep… telling them to someone who bloody understands… who will retell the others… and those others would genuinely understand. (His voice has risen considerably) Not this! Not this! (Silence) (Quietly) Not this. Moon-So The baptism was a bad idea. Youssouf We have shared medical histories, that was genuine enough. Bajran You discovered a star, does that make things easier? Being in this opulent nursing home… is this why you toiled all your life? To end up in Europe as a renowned scientist and teaching your offspring that that is what is of utmost importance… and then they, in turn, make that their priority. When you come to realise how deep your sense of placelessness is… too late! But surely, you have made discoveries for the rest of humanity. Youssouf I do not have any offspring. (Silence) Bajran What a shame Youssouf! Moon-So Shut up Bajran! Youssouf I have to return home. Bajran Why are you still here? Youssouf (Looking rather pale) The letter. I want to receive it with my very own hands. Moon-So When? Youssouf I am making plans, once the letter gets here – I might be catching a fever. Bajran What is a home if there are no people in it? Moon-So Home is many more things. Youssouf I feel sick. Bajran I apologise I cajoled you into being baptised. I do not feel too well either. Moon-So Do you at least feel clean? Bajran Water in my left ear. Damn irritating!! (YOUSSOUF is visibly sweating and shaking.) Moon-So Do we have a thermometer? Bajran Don’t be preposterous. Call the nurse!!! Moon-So (Reaches the phone and dials with shaky hands) Yes… it’s

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a call from the Eichenholz lounge. Our friend, Dr Sadio requires medical attention immediately… Thank you. Youssouf It’s just a slight fever. I will be fine. Bajran We shouldn’t have got baptised. Youssouf It was an unwise idea. Moon-So Youssouf and I don’t believe. Logically, all we just did was get our heads dipped in cold water like tea bags. The water could have been made warm. It’s winter! Youssouf There was nothing logical about that. We were stupid. Bajran He admits to being human! The holy water could have altered something. (We hear people coming in and a voice ‘Dr Sadio?’) Moon-So Yes, he’s in here! Bajran I itch for a roll around in mud. This exercise was futile. Dear God, what have I done? (Lights out.) WEDNESDAY, SITUATION IV, THE CONFESSIONAL (YOUSSOUF, BAJRAN, MOONS-SO are all in the common room in their pyjamas. YOUSSOUF is uneasy, he roams the room peering through the glass.) Bajran They are giving you quite a stir today. Youssouf Their eyes are closing in rapidly. Don’t you feel them? Moon-So Is there a time you don’t feel them so close? Bajran Sit Youssouf! Don’t work yourself up. You just had that bad fever. Youssouf Don’t tell me to sit! I am not your dog. I am no one’s dog! Moon-So You are not a dog. Bajran Nobody cares about you! Stop hallucinating. Moon-So Why would anyone want to keep an eye on you? Youssouf Something invisible… controlling human relationships. Smaller and smaller the world has become. Like a cumulus cluster. Our edifices sit magnificently up on the hills. We are too exhausted to climb up to them. Let alone live in them. Bajran I have a bad knee. Youssouf I had a daughter with Khadidatou… my only offspring. Moon-So I might have killed a man… 41 years ago. (They stare at him.)

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Bajran You keep telling us that and not saying any more. I do not want to be an accomplice. Youssouf (Carrying on) She was born on the eve of Tabaski. Bajran (To no one in particular) In war? Moon-So On a shore. Ran him over with a ski boat. Youssouf No. In a home close to the mosque where me and my father took turns as muezzins. I had just called out the Adhan for Ishaà when the news came. Bajran Were you pleased? Moon-So I was drunk but terrified. It was already sun down. Youssouf Mashallah! I cried. I cried and prayed more Du’as. Bajran All of this happened in the twilight? Youssouf Yes. Moon-So Yes. Bajran Did you see the face? Moon-So I didn’t dare look. I raced back to the other side of the shore and handed the keys to the rental company manager. Youssouf Her face lit up like the Moon. On the seventh day, we named her Nour. Bajran That is a beautiful name. Moon-So I didn’t know who he was… I didn’t know his name. I didn’t dare look at his face. Youssouf It means light. Moon-So It was getting dark! Bajran Why did you run away? Moon-So If I got caught, my can of worms would have exploded. Youssouf Nour’s light went out before the next Tabaski. I had been following the stars to find her light again. Bajran You have travelled far. Moon-So I have ridden on wild typhoons, my butterfly catcher in hand. Youssouf After I sailed on the ocean waves, I rode on a supergiant star. Bajran I flew in a Nimbostratus and was delivered by a giant rain drop. So, here we all are. I need a stiff Scotch. (Silence) Youssouf How do you run someone over on a shore? Moon-So How do you leave a grieving wife? Bajran How can we get some liquor? Youssouf How do you live with such guilt?

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Moon-So How do you live with such iniquity? Bajran How clean do you feel? Moon-So I do not feel clean. On the contrary, I feel dirtier than before the baptism. Bajran Now that we got baptised there’s much greater dirt all over the place. Youssouf Enough with the baptism talk. Bajran These confessions ought to precede the baptism. (YOUSSOUF gets up and raises both hands in the air, palms facing up. BAJRAN and MOON-SO instinctively follow suit.) Youssouf Oh Ye, Beneficent the Merciful. Bajran and Moon-So Oh Ye, Beneficent the Merciful. Youssouf We seek forgiveness for all those sins of which you have knowledge of our good deeds or evil deeds, knowledge of our whole life, or from first to last, knowingly or unknowingly, little or great, big or small, old or new, secret or open and those sins of which we are guilty of. Bajran We… we seek forgiveness. Moon-So Especially for those we have knowledge of… of those ones we consciously carried out. I am not sure he died. He might have just been temporarily knocked out… You know, a speed boat is something enormous to be knocked by. Youssouf Forgive our sins as You desire, Oh most Merciful of all the Mercifuls. (They all sit down and remain quiet. YOUSSOUF moves towards the window and weeps quietly.) Moon-So Is he weeping? Youssouf never weeps! Bajran Not everyone can cry a good genuine cry. The kind that storms from within… taking you… transforming you into a well. The kind that leaves you dehydrated. Moon-So Do you feel dehydrated Youssouf? Bajran He is a well. Moon-So Is there a storm within you Youssouf? Bajran He is a cyclone. Youssouf To trace paths backwards to the point where I am back in the bed I shared with Khadidatou in Touba. To that moment when she asked me not to look back. How was I to know she did not really mean those words? And how benumbed I was not to have turned back.

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Bajran Did you get that idea from the story about the woman who turned into a lump of salt from turning back? Moon-So You are cruel. Bajran I am what I am! Lot’s wife looked back and turned into a mound of salt. That’s something to be afraid of! Youssouf Who is Lot? Moon-So It’s Bajran trying to make a joke out of everything. Must be one of his many made-up stories. Bajran You didn’t look back then, why now? Youssouf Who forgets the point of departure, if not a witless vagrant? Like a dog it sniffs you out. Moon-So What’s with dogs Youssouf? How about moles and moths? They are good at sniffing too. Bajran What sniffs you out? Youssouf The smoke from our incenses. Moon-So The sound of fishermen in their boats heading out before the break of day. Bajran The smell of home brewed coffee in that semi-conscious state. Youssouf We are reputable elders confined in feeble luxury. There is still so much to offer. Moon-So I am not emptied out yet. Bajran You’ve played your part, discovering celestial things. People in here think I am just a debilitated human garbed in decent clothing. When I try to crack a joke, they laugh, only out of politeness and I see all the snigger in their eyes. You saw, you saw how I shovelled the cake with a fork into my mouth the other day… the glaring fear in their eyes as they thought I would either choke myself to death or poke myself in the eye with my cutlery. Hideous! Moon-So Being here makes me feel like an invalid. The voices became louder after I got here. Youssouf Shan’t we plan an escape? Bajran I have always wanted to see the Andean mountains! Moon-So Are you crazy?!!! Bajran I cannot steal that from you, you are the crazy one! Youssouf We can all go our separate ways. I don’t want to go to South America. Moon-So This is giving me anxiety.

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Bajran We could just find the closest casino, drink some good liquor and return to our beds. Moon-So We do not drink! Bajran Well you could watch me drink and then haul me back. Youssouf We have given enough of that reluctant support. Let’s make a concrete plan. Once my letter comes, I shall leave immediately. Bajran Tomorrow, in the conservatory, come with your pens and notepads. Moon-So I have all my money cards with me. Youssouf This is such a thrill! Bajran Contain yourself. Moon-So Maybe we could all go with you to Touba. Bajran Why? I have a bad knee! Youssouf But you were offering to climb the Andes a minute ago! Moon-So First, we need to plan… tickets… and what to take. Bajran We cannot take too many things with us. Moon-So We should rent a car. Bajran A red Porsche! Youssouf There is an excursion to the Botanical Gardens in two weeks. The map is in the brochure! Moon-So I feel so alive! Bajran Excellent! Youssouf It is a place where we could conveniently get lost for thirty minutes before anyone realises. Moon-So (Getting quite animated) Yes! We can start off with a road trip to Pisa. Bajran I prefer we head to Monaco first. Youssouf I want to go home after the letter comes. Bajran It has to be on one of our outings. But who cares if you both leave? You can simply leave. My family threw me in here. You came here out of your own volition. Moon-So After a second fire in my house, my insurance company made sure there wouldn’t be a third one, they connived with my physician to ensure I made the daunting decision to be here. Youssouf The guys in the panopticon forced me in here. Bajran That’s a shame!

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Moon-So It’s been a long day. Bajran Do your voices want to go to sleep? Youssouf We should retire to our separate quarters. We are falling behind our alone moments. Bajran We have already established that we are never really alone. You have your observers in the panopticon… (to MOON-SO) and you have your voices. Youssouf Alone from each other here. Bajran Hey! But we are planning a big escape here and now the solitarian in Youssouf has risen. Moon-So Bajran it is time also for you to stop your babble. Bajran Babble? Babble?? Youssouf Stop! Bajran Babble? Babble?? Babble???! Moon-So Keep your voice down! Bajran Apologise to me! Babble? Are you so damaged?!!! Moon-So What’s eating you up? Bajran Babble??? How dare – Youssouf (At the top of his voice) STOP!! STOP!!! STOOOPPPPP! (Lights out.) THURSDAY, SITUATION V, THE HEART ATTACK (Sound of a heart rate monitor, it goes on for a few beats. Lights on. The beeping goes on till the end of the scene. MOON-SO and BAJRAN are sitting facing opposite directions. Spots are on their faces. We cannot make out what room it is. The silhouettes on the walls do not give any information away either.) Bajran If this was karma, you would be the one connected to a life support machine. You killed a man! Moon-So I said I might have! You had him baptised against his will! Bajran What do you mean against his will? Moon-So You left us no choice! It was only an act of comradery. Bajran I feel bad. Moon-So You should. Bajran You should comfort me! Moon-So Why? You made him get baptised in ice cold water. Then you made him howl. Bajran You made me upset and consequently, I made him howl,

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it all goes back to you. Moon-So Youssouf, Youssouf, can you hear me? Bajran What are you doing? Stop with the foolishness! (Silence. Sound of the monitor beeping.) Moon-So Do you suppose he can hear us? Bajran And if he could? Moon-So We should apologise to him. Bajran Whatever for? Moon-So For what? For getting him so upset. Bajran I suppose we could. Moon-So Sorry for getting you upset Youssouf, you know how irrational Bajran is growing. Since he turned 91, his tongue lost its grip. (BAJRAN stares at MOON-SO in disbelief and budding anger. He makes to say something but remains grudgingly silent.) Bajran I apologise Youssouf. You know how Moon-So crawls under our skins. How, with the precision of a guileful rodent he takes his screws into our brains and begins to undo things in there. I think he will go completely mad soon. But now, we want you to get better so we can continue to plan our great adventure. (The sound of the monitor keeps beeping. MOON-SO and BAJRAN stare at each other with indignation, they make fighting fists at each other.) Moon-So I am not going mad! Bajran I am not irrational! Moon-So Ok. Calm down! When Youssouf wakes up we should sit on the pier more often. Bajran Do not calm me down! In the evenings, you can see the lighthouse blinking from the other end. Moon-So It gets too cold in the evenings and the winds wouldn’t be good for Youssouf. Bajran For us neither. Moon-So Do you think about your mother sometimes? Bajran My mother? Moon-So Yes. Bajran If your madness really needs to know, I think of my mother, my father, my grandfather all the time. Moon-So What kinds of thoughts do you think? Bajran The thoughts that accompany the smell of the fig pies she

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baked, the thoughts of eating them with the rest of the brood. The thoughts that accompany the feeling of my grandfather’s beard on my face and those that accompany the smell of patchouli oil on him. Moon-So Those are better than the thoughts of feeling dirty. Stick to them instead. Bajran There is never a return to that stage of purity. Moon-So Not even baptism can – Bajran No! No! Moon-So Unsoiled at the entrance. Bajran And a murky exit. Moon-So Does the end not matter more than the beginning? Of what use is a good beginning if the end is solitary? What is a good beginning? What would have been a bad beginning? To stay back? Where, like elephants, we exit with communal support? Where loneliness does not choke out what is left of my mortality. Bajran Do not get emotional. Moon-So I am sorry for upsetting you Bajran. Bajran See? That didn’t cost you anything, did it? (Beeping monitor) I shouldn’t have let you get under my skin like that. I shouldn’t have bawled in such a self-disrespecting fashion. I stood the risk of being the most lunatic of us three. As you know, that is quite far from the truth. You know that, don’t you? Moon-So Yes Bajran. Bajran Do you sleep better these days? Moon-So No. Bajran You should try some liquor. Moon-So I am envious of Youssouf’s deep sleep. Bajran When last did you have a good sleep? Moon-So I cannot remember? Bajran And the pills? Moon-So They don’t work. Bajran And the voices? Moon-So They are getting louder. (Beeping monitor) Bajran When we get to Monaco, we’d fix you a few shots. You’d sleep like a tranquilised warthog. Moon-So But we do not want to go to Monaco. Bajran There should be good bars in Pisa.

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Moon-So I do not want to go to Pisa anymore. Like Youssouf, I just want to head home. Bajran You keep changing your mind, this way tomorrow you’d want to go to Timbuktu. (Beeping monitor) Let’s leave him to sleep better? I have a feeling he’s heard us all along. Moon-So (Looking towards YOUSSOUF) Sleep is also a lonely experience. Bajran An individual mission. Moon-So An isolated expedition. Bajran Just like dying. (Lights out.) FRIDAY, SITUATION VI, THE MEMORIAL (Spots on BAJRAN and MOON-SO sitting in darkness and both facing the audience. They speak as though YOUSSOUF is physically present in the room… as though they were both facing YOUSSOUF in a conversation.) Moon-So They still placed your bowl on the breakfast table today. Bajran The way you always insisted… one cube of brown sugar on a saucer. Moon-So You see, No one forgets you Youssouf. Bajran Your old nurse came back. Moon-So She asked about the tall African. Bajran The gentleman. Moon-So The wise African man from Touba. Bajran She really asked that? Moon-So She did… she knows about your home Yussouf. And I said… I said you’ve returned to Touba to seek the bed you shared with Khadidatou. Bajran And I said, you are already walking backwards to the beginning… and… and, maybe you’d start over again. Moon-So And I pondered, what if you cannot find your way back home? Bajran He had his quiblah compass in his pocket. Don’t you Youssouf? The waves of the Atlantic will take you to JoalFadiouth. Then you can continue to walk backwards on the red earth to Touba. Moon-So What if you do not recognise anything or anyone on

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your passage? Will you return to us? Bajran One never forgets the path. Moon-So If you cannot find your way home, go over to my coastline… go to Jeomchon, walk down Dang Gyeo-Ro. Wait for me at the corner. Bajran (To MOON-SO) He will find his way to Touba, stop confusing him, his memory leads him there. Moon-So Was the baptism of any benefit? Did it wash off any dirt? Bajran Does it make your journey smoother? Moon-So Perhaps the supplication? Bajran Or the heartfelt plea? Moon-So Have you built your own panopticon? Bajran Unlike you, we have decided to grow a little older. Moon-So Is that a good idea? Bajran Your new shoes came after you left. Moon-So And the letter too! Bajran They wouldn’t allow us to open it. Moon-So We certainly wanted tear it open! Bajran But we asked them to place them in your travel box. Moon-So Have you read it? Bajran What does it say? Is there a star up there named Khadidatou? Moon-So And we asked them to trim your fingernails. Bajran You never like them overgrown. Moon-So Always neat. Bajran Do you like them? Moon-So Maybe shorter? Bajran Did you hear when I whispered in your ears? Moon-So Perhaps you didn’t… amidst all of Bajran’s sniffing. Bajran (To MOON-SO) And yours too! (To YOUSSOUF) I asked if your shoes were the perfect fit. Moon-So I asked if you were comfortable in them. Bajran And this morning I thought it was you at my door… the sound of new shiny shoes. Moon-So Did you forget something important? Bajran And then there were steps of walking away. Moon-So Of walking, backwards. Bajran Like the shuffling of the seven sleepers. (MOON-SO breaks down. He cries like a child.)

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Bajran What is this about? Moon-So Wait for me at the corner Youssouf… Bajran You are dissolving Moon-So, think about your dragon flies. Moon-So The fortune cookie told a fatal lie. Bajran What fortune cookie? Moon-So (Still sobbing) It said, ‘One day, you shall sit at your kitchen table, eating a tuna steak and thinking about people you have come to know with gratitude…’ Bajran You know me, you know him. (Gesturing towards an invisible YOUSSOUF) We do not have access to the kitchen table here but we can ask for a tuna steak. Moon-So I want to go home Bajran. Bajran Your house is being sold! (Silence) There is no one at home. That escape plan wasn’t a good idea. It is best to leave honourably… like him. Moon-So Last night I heard the seagulls squawking from Jikjicheon River. Bajran Did they overshadow the voices? Moon-So Yes, they did. Bajran Remarkable! Did you hear that Youssouf? The voices went away. Did you take them with you? Moon-So They returned this morning. Bajran See, you need to finish your film about dragon flies. What will you call it? Moon-So I do not know. Why are you now interested? Bajran Tell us about it. Moon-So It is too long. Bajran The part you like the most. Moon-So Do you want to hear about it Youssouf? Bajran Absolutely! He is waiting… Moon-So (Sobbing softly) So, there are two groups of foliage plants at the shores of the creek and first the females come early in the morning and position themselves left and right… just by themselves. Bajran Just the females? Moon-So Then the males come and those have beautiful wings, spotted blue, the female has transparent wings, and then the male has a proper courtship… he demonstrates a proper courtship.

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They are gentlemen, just like you Youssouf. They show how strong they are, how beautifully they can fly, how long… long they can fly, so they can be seen. Have you been flying long Youssouf? Do your wings ache? Bajran (Trying hard to control his own emotions) His wings do not ache. Go on… Moon-So On my fourth birthday, I got a butterfly catcher from my grandfather. It caught dragon flies instead. When you have a butterfly catcher… all you want are butterflies. I smashed every dragonfly I caught and put them out on the terrace for boobies and seagulls. It was a massacre Youssouf! Bajran You never told us – Moon-So I was cruel… ruthless. I forgot about butterflies and my goal was to exterminate all the dragonflies first, so I aimed for them I killed them off!… A multitude each day. I am so ashamed. (He buries his face in his palms and sobs louder) Bajran You told us you had killed just one man… were there more? Moon-So On this day, I thought I had killed them all off and laid them out to be eaten… I saw the boobies approaching and then… This meganeuropsis came back to life and bit me between the eyes… yes Youssouf, they bite… and then it became a third eye. It planted a new sight… right here. I remember falling onto my back as the dragonfly flew into my face, it was the first time I experienced fear… vividly. A mutiny. It flew sideward, backwards, hovering, turning at right angles and flew straight. It did many fascinating things before my eyes. Bajran As if to say, ‘You were wrong about us Moon-So’. Moon-So The one-dragonfly revolt altered my sight. I live in penance for them. (There is an abrupt sound of waves) What is that?! Bajran Where? Moon-So Do you not hear? Are you in a storm Youssouf? (The sound gets louder and strong winds blow MOON-SO and BAJRAN hold on to their chairs.) Bajran Hold on Youssouf. Moon-So No, sit, and hold on to the rail. You look magnifi­cent in your robe. (BAJRAN stands up and looks straight ahead with a wide smile. Tears

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run down his face. The sound of the waves gets stronger. MOON-SO is crying helplessly. As the waves quiet down chants synonymous with Touba are heard. MOON-SO stands and holds on to BAJRAN. They hold on to each other until there is absolute silence.) Moon-So I am people, I train in the art of living… death, it comes of course. Bajran He slipped out carefully… Moon-So Through his mouth… Bajran And left it ajar. Moon-So The length of him and all of his handsomeness remained. Bajran He did not return. Moon-So He heard our call. Bajran He did not return. Moon-So He ruptured into a million lights. Bajran To defrost our dense impending nights. Moon-So And when he lays his journeying body on the bed he shared with Khadidatou tonight, the squeak will make every­ thing right again. Bajran Welcome home Youssouf. (Lights out.) THE END

Book Reviews

Chima Osakwe, The Revolutionary Drama and Theatre of Femi Osofisan Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, 94 pp. ISBN 9781527515963. Hb £58.99

Committed art has been the core of postcolonial African writing. The drama and theatre of the Nigerian-born play­wright and critic, Femi Osofisan, corroborate the works of other African playwrights such as Bole Butake, Bate Besong, Samuel Kasule and Alemseged Tesfai, among others, who critique the lofty vision of nationalism through experimental techniques of theatre. Hence African theatre and drama from across the continent engage satiric tropes to echo the plights of people driven to the borders of society because of abortive nationalist projects. Chima Osakwe’s critical assessment of the drama and theatre of Osofisan in The Revolutionary Drama and Theatre of Femi Osofisan emphasises the relevance of arts in the social, political and cultural transformation of nations that are emerging from colonial violence. In situating Femi Osofisan within the category of the second generation of Nigerian playwrights, Osakwe avertedly expresses the view that critics’ encounter with the thematic of Osofisan’s works share the playwright’s experience of the transformation of his society at critical stages of historical and political development; subjects that Osakwe states are conveyed through specific language paradigm, the trope of the market-place and role-playing techniques that are often rooted in the metatheatrical quality of the playwright’s works. It is along this line that Osakwe perceives Osofisan’s drama 231

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as revolutionary, highlighting how such an approach is delivered in a mood that consciously manipulates the ‘content and technique to empower the underprivileged, whether as an individual or a group, to gain socio-political and economic rights and privileges or overthrow an oppressive political system or repressive institutions of civil society’ (1). Osofisan’s use of total theatre which Osakwe states is characteristic of most of his dramatic pieces, is debated in the book for its advancement of the revolutionary agenda. Propagating notions of human rights and equality which he argues are deeply rooted in the selected works of Osofisan, Osakwe employs Marxist critical construct and Frantz Fanon’s ideological understanding and approach to decolonisation (3–4) as a strategy to not only highlight Osofisan’s disillusionment with the nationalist project, but also to interrogate the role of the postcolonial elite in nation-building. The author argues in the Introduction and Chapter One of the book that nationalism, which contributed, legitimately, to the independence of nations previously under colonial rule, only replicates the same oppressive colonial infrastructure against which it was formulated. Therefore in the second chapter of the book, the author again associates Marxist and Fanonist ideological framework in order to pursue the intricacies of class struggle in Morountodun and The Chattering and the Song – both plays which, according to Osakwe, project characters who vie to not only dismantle a dictatorial political regime, but also to claim a voice through which political demagogy is wrecked in favour for a peaceful co-existence among the citizenry. Pursuing ‘Class Antagonism, Oppression and Revolution’ in the third chapter, Osakwe explores the impact of military dictatorships in the society. In such circumstances, the chapter speaks about the characters’ application of intellec­ tual strategies – ‘verbal argumentative confrontation’ and ‘a subtle elimination of the symbol of oppression’ (45) – instead of overt violence in No More the Wasted Breed and Aringindin and the Nightwatchmen respectively, to canvass for change in a tumultuous social and political setup. Osakwe defends the versatility of Osofisan’s art, a strategy engaged not only to contribute to the aesthetics of the genre, but also to interrogate hegemonic power elusiveness that continue to permeate administrative infrastructures in postcolonial societies. The Revolutionary Drama and Theatre of Femi Osofisan by Chima

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Osakwe is a valuable contribution to the already existing research on the works of Osofisan. Its concise structure and accessible language make it a resourceful material for postcolonial research, teachers and students of African literature as a whole. Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong

Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany

S. M. Mofokeng, Senkatana Cape Town: Oxford University Press, Southern Africa, 2018, viii + 88pp. ISBN 9780190742560. Pb. £9.99

Senkatana is one of eight volumes in the Africa Pulse series from Oxford University Press, new translations (in many cases, the first translation) into English of classic southern African literary texts. It’s a fine project; the translations read like original works (as literary trans­lations should: in translating literary texts, competence and verve in the target language are the most vital criteria for success) and the books are beautifully produced. Mofokeng’s play is the only drama text out of eight, sitting alongside seven novels and a poetry anthology, but this is not as surprising as it might seem, as the predominant language of drama in southern Africa has been English. Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng was a South African Mosotho, writing in Sesotho, who published just two volumes (the play and a collection of short stories) before his death from tuberculosis in 1957, aged 34. A collection of his essays was published posthumously. He was a member of the New African Movement, a term used to describe African intel­lectuals and creative artists who intervened in the con­struc­tion of modernity in southern Africa. As Ntongela Masilela puts it, this aspiration left members of the movement faced with ‘a profound historical conundrum whether it was possible to embrace European modernity while struggling against its hegemonic forms which expressed themselves through colonialism and imperialism’ (Ntongela Masilela, ‘The New African Movement: The Early Years’ n.d.: 1). The movement was, consequently, highly vocal in the anti-colonial and antiapartheid struggles; as well as appearing promi­nently in the pages

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of Drum magazine, it was a major influence in the establishment of the ANC Youth League. As I discuss Mofokeng’s play, the relevance of his participation in the Movement may not at first be clear, but I shall return to it at the end of this review. Senkatana has as its starting point the Sotho legend of Kgodu­ modumo, the people- and animal-devouring monster who is slain by a young hero, thus releasing all the humans and creatures it had swallowed, who are still alive. The hero becomes king, but some of the people turn against him and depose him, the motivations for which treachery vary from one telling of the legend to another: an open-endedness that well suits Mofokeng’s purpose. Oxford University Press prefaces Mofokeng’s play text with a version of the legend given by S. M. Guma in his book The Form, Content and Technique of Traditional Literature in Southern Sotho, which ascribes no motiva­tion for Senkatana’s enemies’ hatred of him. Other versions have Senkatana accidentally stabbing one of the men the beast has swallowed before releasing him and thus provoking his resentment, but Mofokeng takes the legend in a different and more compelling direction. The play opens with two aged Seers, who function as a Chorus throughout, discussing the nature of time: The [time unit] of tomorrow and the next day, The one of the day before yesterday and yesterday, until today: All these are contemporaries of time, which does not change, They are the same because the humanity in them is one. Today’s mistakes are the same mistakes of tomorrow and yesterday’ (6)

This gives an idea of how nimble Mofokeng’s mind is, but also of how wordy Senkatana can be, a point to which I shall return. In Mofokeng’s play, Senkatana is the son of a woman who had escaped Kgodumodumo before it swallowed everyone and everything in sight. He resolves to rescue the trapped beings and Mofokeng depicts his mother’s anguish at the prospect of losing him: ‘He would rather die carrying out his goal, sacrificing himself and dying in the attempt to free all’ (13–14), one of a number of increasingly explicit parallels, as the play progresses, between Senkatana and Christ. Senkatana carries out his mission and the Seers comment:

Book Reviews  235 He is the one who will carry their hardships, The hardships from which he frees them. He is the one they will hate because of his fame, Simply because he freed them’ (17).

Once he becomes king, three of Senkatana’s friends warn him that another man, Bulane, is disaffected, a warning he elects to ignore; Bulane is urged to depose Senkatana by his wife, Mmadie­ petsane, who is motivated by her hatred of the king’s mother. Mmadiepetsane is characterised in full Lady Mac­beth mode (one remembers that Macbeth was a clear inspira­tion behind the greatest work in Sesotho literature, Thomas Mofolo’s novel Chaka). She and a group of fellow plotters agree to look out for any ‘mistakes’ Senkatana might make (39). There follows a scene in which Senkatana conducts the cus­tom­ ary court, the khotla, demonstrating his wisdom and fairness (and – a point for his enemies to latch on to – his clemency) as judge. He proclaims: ‘There is no judge greater than [the lamp of conscience]. True judgment is what ignites that lamp […] Such judgement must also be supported by the conscience of the judge, because he has to satisfy his own conscience with regard to a judgement’ (45). In the last section of the play, when Senkatana’s mother urges him to resist his enemies, he protests: ‘If I kill them, I will be dead. I will have killed my soul; I will have finished the power to fight evil; I will have killed justice, killed myself’ (64). These lines support an argument that sees the play as relevant to a discussion of Nelson Mandela’s legacy and the experience of post-Mandela South Africa. But at the end of the play, with Senkatana’s death, it is another parallel that is foregrounded, as his last recorded words are: ‘My God! My God! / My God! Why have you forsaken me!’ (85) and one of the Seers comments: ‘I saw him crucified on a tree, Golgotha. / Crucified by those he had redeemed’ (86). I am aware of the dangers involved in seeing parallels with the Northern heritage in texts from a Southern corpus (in this case the – very considerable – corpus of Sesotho literature). There is here the risk of cultural expropriation; surely the texts should stand for themselves? But in the case of Senkatana, the parallels with the gospel story are explicit, and the echoes of Macbeth are unmistakable (with at least one verbal echo of Hamlet. As an aside, the khotla scene in Senkatana makes clear the hero’s wisdom in leadership; it

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always seems to me regrettable that the standard cuts in stage and film productions of Hamlet – though these are not made in the Kenneth Branagh film of 1996 – include the ambassadors’ scenes, which make it clear that, whatever his crimes, Claudius is a wise leader, thus deepening the moral dilemmas the play explores). Senkatana is certainly not a play lacking in dramatic tension, and there are a few moments of real theatrical vitality. But it is very much a dialogue play – what used to be referred to as drawingroom drama – most suited to solitary reading, or to group reading aloud, with the parts cast among family or friends. I cannot imagine a staged production being viable, without cuts to many of its long speeches and an injection of more idiomatic dialogue. When it comes to emotional and intellectual appeal, though, there is no doubting the quality of this play; and it has remarkable resonance, reaching beyond its place and time. A commendation from Njabulo Ndebele – one of South Africa’s most prominent writers of fiction and essays – is printed on the back cover. This reads, in part: How can people in pursuit of social justice save themselves from their own evils? In this play, which he published in 1952, four years after the system of apartheid was established, Mofokeng throws this vital question at contemporary South Africans from his grave. Decades after South Africans created a visionary constitutional democracy on the hot ashes of apartheid, Mofokeng’s question will haunt them with the brilliant prescience of a twenty-year-old seer.

It might seem a bit of a stretch, Senkatana as a kind of parable for apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa (Kgodumodumo as Verwoerd, and Senkatana as Mandela?). But if one reads a recent book such as Chielozona Eze’s Race, Decolonization, and Global Citizenship in South Africa (or the vibrant discussion of this published by the Book Review Forums) the pieces seem to fall into place. It is certainly no stretch then to see Senkatana as a Mandela figure and his oppo­nents (Bulane as Zuma?) as those who have eroded Mandela’s legacy. Chris Dunton Formerly of National University of Lesotho

Now in England.

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Victor N. Gomia & Gilbert S. Ndi, eds, Re-writing Pasts, Imagining Futures: Critical Explorations of Contemporary African Fiction and Theater Denver: Spears Media Press, 2017, 245pp. ISBN 9781942876182. Pb.; ISBN 9781942876199 e-book £22.45

When I took up this book, I thought I was going to be reading about Afro-futurism or a Sci-Fi on the continent. Re-writing Pasts however addresses sociological challenges from a much more downto-earth perspective. The futures being imagined by the authors are from the point of view of past and present realities. The futures are being projected from specific situations, critiquing recognisable scenarios and current political perspectives. Comprising 14 chapters, this book is dedicated to, and published in memory of, Professor Eckhard Breitinger (1940–2013), one of the most notable German scholars of the twentieth century, whose works on African Studies is highly regarded. Testimonies of the African literary theorists that make up the book indicate that Breitinger played a key role in the area of decoloniality in the scholarship of African studies. The interest in fostering South-South collaborations in the field and the focus on narratives that are of interest to African audiences first and foremost shapes the book’s content and informs its tone. The ‘common ground’ between the literary essays, according to Susan Arndt, writing in the preface, are ‘the patterns of artistic visions’ which are ‘shaped and given impetus by the peoples’ economic, political, social technological and cultural realities’ (xi). The first chapter, entitled ‘Bayreuth-Africa Summer School: Model for North-South/South-South Partnerships and Cultural Knowledge Production and Transfer’ by Chris­topher Odhiambo outlines how the summer school con­­ceived by Eckhard Breitinger sought to re-set the power dynamics of knowledge transfer between the global North and global South. After the first summer school in Germany in 1999, the subsequent summer schools took place in different centres in Africa, including South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, Malawi and Botswana. This, according to the writer, allowed the participants to imagine the world from their centre. The idea supported initiatives which had direct impact on theatre profession in Africa, and destabilised Eurocentric policies around practices such as Theatre for Development. It also fostered

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trans-regional networks and cross-generational and cross-sectorial discussions between university scholars, graduate students, and theatre practitioners. The essays in this book come from academics engaged not only with writing but with engineering social change in the area of knowledge pro­duction. Several chapters explore the idea of change, the lack of it, the desire for it, and the possible routes to it in postcolonial Africa. The work of several established African writers such as Femi Osofisan, Ayi Kwei Armah and Mongo Beti (chapters three, seven and eight by Onwukah Benjamin Orji-Mba, Gilbert Shang Ndi and Eric Nsuh Zuhmboshi respectively) are critically discussed in the book. Orji-Mba’s article on Osofisan for example investigates the relationship of his writing to history. Drawing on four of his plays, he shows how Osofisan places his characters in real historical events or involves them in indigenous practices associated with the pre-colonial era not for reasons of nostalgia but to depict the agency of the African subject. Osofisan’s protagonists act on ethical reasons rather than on an unreflective commitment to tradition. Forti Etienne Langmia in chapter five considers social change in post-apartheid South Africa as represented in the novels of Nadine Gordimer and Nicholas Mhlongo. Divine Che Neba and Didymus Dounla (chapter eleven) reflect on how Yusuf, the main character in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise re-invents himself after traumatic experiences through a reflection on, reworking and rethinking myths, both about the world as projected through religion, and about people. Though the title suggests a continental focus, the book in actuality contains writings from Africa and the African dias­pora. Dontatus Fai Tangem’s article, ‘Historical Mytho­poeia as Dramatic Resource: A study of selected plays by Amiri Baraka and Bate Besong’ (chapter two), is an example. Tangem sees a similarity between African American Amiri Baraka and Anglophone Cameroonian Bate Besong in that they are both minorities in their respective countries as well as being writers of historical realist plays. He explores The Motion of History by Baraka in which Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammed argue their different approaches to the fight for civil rights, with Besong’s Zombie, a play about the subjugation of western Cameroonians within their nation. Tangem points out that both playwrights use history as a background against which

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their characters play out their lives, but also as an integral aspect of the creative work. Yimbu Emmanuel Nchia’s article ‘“As it was in the beginning…”: Religious Fanaticism and the Quest for a New Messiah in the Plays of Derek Walcott and Bate Besong’ compares ‘the messianic protagonists’ of O! Babylon by Walcott and Requiem by Besong. Nchia argues that the protagonists of both plays suggest that salvation is in the hands of the people, not in Christianity or any other religion. The comparisons between the work of African and diasporic writers are effective, though at times the similarities between them seem a little contrived. They are nonetheless refreshing in that Africa is not presented as the past of the diaspora, as is often the case in popular culture, but as its contemporary reality. The re-occurrence of themes across some chapters allows the reader to consider them from the perspective of different authors. The minority status of Anglophone Cameroonians is also the subject of Kenneth Toah Nsah’s chapter. There are two chapters that explore gender politics: chapter nine by Eleanor Anneh Dasi interrogates female representation in Abobwed’Epie’s The Day God Blinked; and chapter ten by Edwin Tangwa looks at gender issues in Africa arising from globalisation, using Tess Onwueme’s Tell it to Women. Chapters twelve and thirteen by Victor N. Gomai and Victor S. Dugga respectively look at what is broadly called Theatre for Development and historicise (and theorise) the practice as it relates to Africa. Irmagard Achange Langmia discusses the protest drama and the possibilities that social media offers this genre in chapter fourteen. I would have liked more engagement by the theorists with the language and the literary conventions used by the authors and possibly the way lesser known authors sit within the literary landscape of their countries but that would make for a different type of book. This is an informative, useful and at times provocative collection of articles. The book would be of interest to students of literature, theatre, as well as those interested in postcolonial and decolonial studies. ‘Funmi Adewole De Montfort University

Leicester, UK

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Angelo Gobbato, A Passion for Opera Johannesburg: Staging Post, 2018, 368 pp. ISBN 9781928440024. Pb R330, £18.50

A Passion for opera is a memoir of Angelo Gobbato’s life-long involvement and engagement in opera. In this book made up of various forms of memories, the author traces his involvement and deep love for opera from his childhood up to when he retired from actively engaging and participating in multiple roles and activities in opera. For Gobbato, opera is in his genes: part of his DNA. It is quite interesting the way he attempts to explain where his talents and skills of opera came from. He cheekily notes that it must have come from the genes of his maternal grandfather. He muses: Although my only physical memory of my maternal grandfather (and my namesake), Angelo Meazza, is centred on a striking photographic portrait in a black oval frame of a strong face with trimmed dark moustache, many anecdotes were passed on to me[,] his wife and his only daughter. Born in Milan, he was renowned for his great sense of humour, and frequently entertained his friends with renditions of comic theatrical sketches such as ‘II sciur pastissa’ and ‘Tecoppa’ – then made famous by the great Milanese dialect. Although he died at an early, truck down with bronchitis – all too common in those days – it is surely his genetic influence that has given me my theatrical sense of fun and my comfortable ease in performing operatic comic characters. (Gobbato 16–17)

Gobbato started showing his passion for music and singing when he was three years old. He was born in Italy but moved to South Africa together with his mother to join his father who had settled earlier in search of opportunities. Gobbato studied sciences at the University of Cape Town and graduated with Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. But paradoxically, though he performed very well in the sciences and was awarded a scholarship to study Chemistry at postgraduate level, he opted instead to pursue his passion: music; and more specifically opera. According to Gobbato, opera was more than just a brand of specialised vocal music but one of theatrical performance with strongly characterised physical interpretations. Gobbato pursued opera music with frenzied obsession throughout his life. Everything in his day-to-day life revolved around opera

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music. His name and life became synonymous with opera in South Africa. He received several accolades and awards because of his centrality in the development and growth of opera in South Africa. Gobbato proclaims that the writing of this book of memoirs was to permanently replace the physical memorabilia associated with opera that he had collected and kept in his house for all the years such as programmes, articles, adverts, art works, photographs, drawings and recordings. All these are inscribed in this book that can be described as an archive/museum of opera music. The book is in four broad parts each consisting of chapters that mark specific events or experiences in Gobbato’s life and the way these intersect with his involvement in music. In total, the book is made up of thirty-three chapters as well as a prologue and an epilogue. The photographs, art works, performance adverts and brochures putatively serve as evidence to support the credibility of his narration. The book provides detailed information on the opera activities and roles he got involved in as a singer, director, teacher, manager and producer, as well as his numerous tours and travelogues. The narration reads like a roll call and inventory call of opera singers, directors, producers and performance spaces that he encountered and worked in at different times in South Africa, Italy and other parts of the world. The book also provides a lot of information about the institutes where he taught various aspects of opera and music, and organisations which were supportive in the development of opera in South Africa. He shows how he participated in encouraging black South Africans to get involved actively in opera. Among the black students who passed through him and one whom he seems to be extremely proud of is Pretty Yende, who he uses as the catalyst for his memoir in the prologue and also to end it in the epilogue. In this book he celebrates his role in the growth and development of opera in South Africa and simultaneously in introducing the black South African into the art of opera. Gobbato shows how opera requires a lot of commitment and how it makes one to get alienated from those around him. Though A Passion of Opera is an extremely informative book especially on opera, it tends to be tedious and weari­some because the opera events that are narrated through­out the book are presented without much variation. The author’s roll call and inventory kind

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of style that follows presentation of dates, venues and the cast of performance, directors and producers, tend to make the narration banal and monotonous. This style of presentation unfortunately pre­pon­derates throughout the book. This is because Gob­bato is more interested in presenting the different opera performances that he participated in rather than sampling the most outstanding ones. Ironically, it is this mono­tony in the narration of events that affirms his passion for opera. Because Gobbato is singularly interested in opera and what it means to him, he hardly engages much with social, political and economic issues that happened around him unless they directly affected or had some direct effect on the performances of opera. For instance, the ailments and eventual deaths of his parents are mentioned not as major events on their own but as they intersect with his life as an opera personality. This also affects the way that apartheid is mentioned in the book. One does not really get the feel that apartheid was a major problem in South Africa in as much as it affected the happening of an opera event. This applies to other major events such as the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York. Ironically, Gobbato provides detailed descrip­tions of landscapes, events and activities related to opera performances. One thing that Gobbato’s memoir does so well is to entrench the perception that opera is an elitist art form meant exclusively for the most privileged in the society: both performers and its audiences. This book would be a valuable resource for those inter­es­ted in opera as performers, directors, students of opera, musicologists, music curators and art museums and galleries. Gobbato writes for those who have knowledge of what opera is; and he assumes that the reader is already familiar with opera as an art form as well as with the opera personalities that he mentions in the book. Christopher J. Odhiambo Moi University

Kenya

Book Reviews  243

Koulsy Lamko, Bintou Wéré: African Opera Amsterdam: Prince Claus Fund, 2018, 203pp. ISBN 9789082291353. Pb £20.00, $27.90

Bintou Wéré: African Opera by Koulsy Lamko has a journey that parallels in more ways than one, the journey of the people whose lives it chronicles. In both cases, the journeys are a response to a call from Europe. Prince Claus (founder of the eponymous fund) had what his son describes as a ‘wild idea’ – to fund and support the production of an Opera of the Sahel. Wild, because it appeared to be imposing a European structural form onto an already flourishing African creative world, and yet the idea itself raised numerous questions, not least of all would it even be possible? The response from the diverse group of people who made the opera happen was a resounding yes. In the same way that the large numbers of people who cross the Sahel every day in order to fashion an answer to their economic challenges make the journey their own, the opera was a collaborative effort that resulted in two intertwined stories; Bintou Wéré’s story and the story of how the opera came into being. The ambitions of this project are reflected in the book which contains much more than the libretto. The three-part book is beautifully illustrated and interspersed with striking photographs of the productions that took place both on the African continent and in Europe. Part One covers the idea itself, Part Two introduces the reader to music in the Sahel, and Part Three the technical aspects of the libretto and production. The book usefully closes with biographies and a glossary. It also has opening and closing chapters written by key figures involved in the production – funders, dreamers and creatives. Despite being both attractive to look at and engaging to read, there are structural aspects of the book that would have made it easier to navigate. Given the constant referrals about the length of time it took for the production to come into being, a standalone timeline would have helped to clarify the production process. Coupled with the artistic decision to eschew page numbers, the journey through the book (perhaps unintentionally) mimicked an outsider’s journey across an unfamiliar desert landscape. It was not possible to fully appreciate the overall shape of the journey until reading the libretto which only comes right towards the end of the

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book. Readers might benefit from reading the libretto first: the story itself is not unfamiliar and the sharp tongued Bintou Wéré is a powerful character not least because she is a girl child soldier when boys are the more common image seen of child soldiers. The whole story rests on her being a girl, her pregnancy being the consequence of both poverty and war and an important reminder that those who get dubbed ‘migrants’ by European media are often victims of circumstances that they did not create. However, Bintou Wéré defies victimhood and is firm in her resolution that she has ‘never belonged to anyone’ and as such will only answer to herself. This is confirmed by the powerful ending where she chooses Africa for her child’s future even as she tragically loses her own life. Despite the heart-rending ending, the opera speaks to a hope that the continent must continue to cultivate. There are possibilities alluded to in the songs sung throughout the opera. Retellings of a great African past with the implicit reference that it could rebirth a new and more promising future even if it is one that will need great sacrifice. Bintou Wéré, a symbolic Mama Africa is willing to risk it all for the future of her child, but in turn her children must also choose her. As Diallo the ferryman asserts while trying to uncover the paternity of Bintou Wéré’s child, ‘True a child can have only one mother / But it can have many fathers’. If one is to read the libretto first, then there would also be a call to the imagination and, much like the African people who do eventually make it across the Sahel and into Europe, the reader would then be invited to see if the production met with, surprised or diverged from their expectations. In the current format, this is an opportunity lost. This is only a small point in what is otherwise a rich book that skilfully straddles many boundaries. Part production manual, part anthropology, part ethnomusicology, the book is individually African in its syncretism. By lifting the lid on the process that allowed this unlikely seeming dream to come into being, it offers a much wider possibility. Not just conceivable pathways into making dreams come true, but also reflecting the magic that is seen when they do. JC Niala Honorary Research Fellow, Theatre and Performance Studies

University of Warwick, United Kingdom

Book Reviews  245

Musa Ngqungwana, Odyssey of an African Opera Singer Cape Town: Penguin Books, 2018, 195 pp. ISBN 9781776092970

As the title indicates, this memoir traces the life and struggles of Musa Ngqungwana in becoming an opera singer. The book is made up of twenty chapters and a postlude. Each chapter marks a particular important stage in the life of the author and how that particular moment intersects, affects and influences his quest to be an opera singer. The author does not isolate his quest to become an opera singer from the social, cultural, religious, political and eco­nomic situations and conditions that define his everyday existential circumstances as a black South African. His experiences as an individual clearly attest to the fact that self-narration is similarly the narration of the nation. As such, his own personal experiences and the history of the nation are at several points inextricably intertwined. A reading of Ngqungwana’s memoir and his drive to become an opera singer in South Africa overtly reveals the problems that black people face in South Africa. Indeed, his narration of his pursuit to become an opera singer is ostensibly a visual portrait of poverty that defines the everyday lives of black South Africans in the townships and country sides. He asserts: I know what it’s like to grow up with deprivation and depravity surrounding you because of your social-political conditions: to look at your grandmother, tears of pain streaming down her wrinkled, defeated and worn-out face, her once ever-present dimples hidden under the yoke of yearning for a better life. She had no money and no one she could ask for resources to help her survive. Prayer was all we had to get through those days, but even that wasn’t enough. Our rumbling, singing stomachs, resulting confused minds, weren’t in tune with the Holy Spirit. (2)

This is in sharp contrast to the memoir of Angelo Gobbato’s A Passion for Opera (reviewed above) that presents whites in South Africa as a privileged class. Unlike Gobbato’s story, Ngqungwana’s is one mainly marked by persistent deprivation, abjection and lack of privilege. However. Ngqungwana’s life story is also one of possi­bilities; a story that affirms the maxim that all dreams are valid. Though his

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family would have preferred that he pursued a career in medicine, circumstances seem to have conspired against him. Given his strong will and resolve, he decides to change his earlier desire and opts to follow a completely different trajectory as an opera singer. Though he had no initial training in opera, he worked extremely hard under very difficult conditions to eventually achieve his goal, becoming a polished and celebrated professional opera singer on the global stage. In his memoir, he reveals the debilitating effects of apartheid on social interactions and how this system adversely affected black South African families. His memoir narrates the breakdown in African cultural values and practices. Most men abandoned their families and as such most homes were headed by women. The author himself is a good example of a child who was brought up largely in a home that was headed by a matriarch after his father abandoned the family. Through his grandmother, the matriarch of the family, the author surfaced out the agency of women in the society. Ngqungwana seems to suggest that without his grandmother he might never have achieved his desire to become such an opera singer, even though initially his grandmother pressured him to pursue what she considered the more prestigious training of a medical doctor. Other than telling his story to be an opera singer, Ngqun­gwana is critical of certain practices in his community. He is for instance extremely critical of the communal lifestyle of the blacks in South Africa. He finds this a major burden to the few members of the family who are employed. Thus, while narrating about his journey to success as an opera singer, he is equally quite conscious and critical of certain socio-cultural structures that obviously hinder growth and progress of the black communities in South Africa. This is unlike Gobbato’s memoir (above) that does not critically engage with social, political and economic issues unless such issues directly affect the management and performance of opera. Ngqungwana’s memoir in a way also argues for the power of the arts in individual transformation and community develop­ ment. Through his life story, Ngqungwana debunks the myth that success can only be achieved through the study of hard sciences such as medicine and engineering. In fact, his life story is a powerful testimony that the pursuit of any discipline, with single-mindedness,

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commitment, diligence, determina­tion and resilience, would still lead one to success. This is manifested in his climb to the top in the world stage of opera singing. On the flipside, he reveals that success as an opera singer is not a bed of roses as it also leads to isolation and alienation as there is usually very little time for socialisation as the enterprise is truly time consuming. This is also revealed in Gobbato’s memoir. Odyssey of an African Opera Singer is both an important and significant reader for those interested in opera singing as well as in what it takes for a black person to become a notable opera singer. The book is similarly recommended for those interested in history of South Africa, musicology, social and cultural studies, education, politics and self-motivation. The narration is linear and follows the growth and develop­ ment of the author-narrator’s quest to become an inter­nationally acclaimed opera singer as well as his total life as a human being. The book is written in simple language and is an easy read. However, there are some spelling mistakes that could have been corrected through keen proofreading. Christopher J. Odhiambo Moi University

Kenya

Mary I. Ingraham, Joseph K. So and Roy Moodley, eds, Opera in a Multicultural World: Coloniality, Culture, Performance New York and Oxford: Routledge, 2016. pp.270 ISBN: 9781138905023. Hb £125; 9781315696065. e-book £44.99

Opera in a Multicultural World is a collection of essays that takes ‘multicultural representations of European operatic genres’ (1) in its purview. Edited by three Canadian scholars, Ingraham, So and Moodley, it forms part of the Routledge Research in Music series that approaches research on music from a variety of angles, including neuroscience, identity, film, gender, technology and popular music. Within opera studies more specifically, this book finds itself

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in the company of a burgeoning collection of publications that focuses on opera on the margins of mainstream composition and production. Such publications include Opera Indigene: Re/presenting First Nations and Indigenous Cultures (edited by Pamela Karantonis and Dylan Robinson, 2011), Blackness in Opera (edited by Naomi André, Karen Bryan, and Eric Saylor, 2012), and ‘New Voices in Black South African Opera’, in African Studies (convened by Naomi André, Donato Somma, and Innocentia Mhlambi, 2016). In fact, this edition of African Theatre adds to a field of scholarship where the focus moves to opera production on the periphery, investigating how opera might be re-imagined in contexts away from its Western centre and how (if at all) it talks back to that centre. The contributions in Opera in a Multicultural World pre­domi­ n­antly explore the manifestation of the ‘racial other’ in canonic opera production and composition, with two chapters touching on the use of jazz as opera’s ‘musical other’, in its composition. The former largely concerns the way in which members of communities other than white (Christian) Europeans – in this book pertaining mainly to African American, Jewish and Chinese characters – are represented in historical and contemporary opera, as well as reportage on the lived experiences of singers of colour in canonical opera performance. The way in which cultures other than European find their voices in the genre also receives some attention. Geographically and culturally, the book covers Europe, North America and China, and most examples come from the operatic canon from the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, with Wagner, as usual, receiving a large portion of attention. Contemporary American and Canadian operas however are also discussed. The discussions on the use of jazz in opera further illustrate how genre and race are often conflated in music performance and scholarship. The wide scope of this book, conceptually and method­ ologically, is both an asset and a weakness. The book fore­ grounds interdisciplinary approaches in opera studies and the diversity of methodologies employed by the contributors guided the main sections of the book. The disciplines of the editorial team (musicology, anthropology and psychology) reflect this too. The first two sections deal with works and/or performances from a variety of approaches, ‘Opera as Tradition’ and ‘Critical

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Case Studies’ respectively, while the last section ‘Opera in the Real World’ comprises a reception history, a composer’s personal reflections, and the book ends with a consideration of current opera scholarship itself. Limited space for this review does not allow for further elaboration on the content but I particularly enjoyed the contributions on opera in (and on) China in chapters three and nine. John Stenberg’s article ‘Returning to Where She Did Not Come From: Turandot on the Chinese Stage’ is one of the few case studies that illustrates how opera travels beyond the European ambit and returns to it in a new form. The chapters discussing African American subjects (one, two and twelve), immediately offered conceptual comparisons to my own work on opera in South Africa and references a largely under-researched scholarly field. It is in these chapters that we read about new opera compositions that challenge existing norms regarding content and style, and the difficulties experienced by the composer comes as no surprise. Similarly unsurprising, the chapter on the emergence of African American singers on the operatic stage tells stories of hardship and blatant racism. The contributions on anti-Semitism in Strauss and Wagner’s operas are fascinating and insightful but, as historical case studies, they speak less well to the theoretical theme of multi­culturalism than some of the other contributions. In my reading of this book, race as a category of ‘other’ is the common thread running through the book. Furthermore, most articles remain firmly embedded in the tradition of opera as Western art music with its concomitant aesthetic and philosophic values. The theory of multiculturalism, the focus on race, culture, coloniality and the use of other music genres in opera all have the potential to challenge dominant scholarly narratives and the hegemony of European operatic aesthetics that continue to hold sway today. Yet, I found it hard to reconcile the concepts of equality and co-existence, as espoused by multiculturalism and as set out in the convolutedly written introduction, with the picture that emerged from the chapters. The theory discussed in the introduction unfortunately obscures rather than illuminates. It is clear from the various chapters that ‘co-existence’, ‘equality’ or ‘power sharing’ in opera production has been and still is largely absent. Rather, the narrative of ‘othering’ or ‘exoticising’ the non-Western subject in opera, and in a few instances, the

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struggle against such energies, seems to lie at the heart of much of the writing of this book. The charged nature thereof is also acknowledged by the editors when they state that engaging with such topics are ‘seldom (if ever) received joyously’ (1). A further weakening of the work that the theoretical framework could do, is the editors’ uncritical acceptance of the principles of opera as an art form from the West in a multicultural setting. It undermines the potential of the theory to create alternative scholarly narratives on opera. Therefore, multiculturalism as the theoretic ‘glue’ so to speak, struggles to bind the disparate foci of the contributions together in a satisfactory way. Notwithstanding these framing issues, Opera in a Multi­cultural World offers much to ponder and to inform. Opera as a genre continues to be relevant in a world that is continuously sensitised to the inequalities of power relations inherent in culture and society. This book highlights a number of such scenarios in the operatic setting. Hilde Roos Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation Stellenbosch

South Africa

Hilde Roos, The La Traviata Affair: Opera in the Age of Apartheid Oakland: University of California Press, 2018, 264pp. ISBN 9780520299894. Hb $75; Pb. $34.95

Hilde Roos provides a valuable social and institutional history of the Eoan Group, a long-standing South African cultural group with a troubled history. While this book does trace the ways in which the Group subscribed to the agendas of the apartheid regime on the surface, Roos makes an important intervention in illustrating the often-blurred lines between complicity and resistance that characterised apartheid South Africa. British immigrant Helen Southern-Holt founded the Group in 1933 in Cape Town to uplift the coloured population in South Africa

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through what she characterised as the ‘civilising qualities’ of Western culture (18). ‘Coloured’ in both this book and in its usage during apartheid refers to people of mixed race, or to people who do not fit clearly into the racial categories of white, black or Indian. Under apartheid, the coloured community had fewer rights than white people, but more rights than black Africans. While the term is still in use today, it is a contested one, as it is viewed by some as an artificial construct left over from the apartheid government. Southern-Holt’s founding of the Group on coloured uplift­ ment through the ‘civilising qualities’ of Western culture was indicative of the complex nature of coloured identity under apartheid – a theme that permeates this book. Some coloured people sought to emulate Western culture through activities such as opera performance as a means of advancing their sociopolitical station to the status of white South Africans, though such a lofty goal was impossible under apartheid. This created tensions both between the African and coloured communities, and within the coloured community itself. Politically active members of the coloured community criticised the Group as a tool of the apartheid government and as disloyal to the coloured community because it accepted apartheid government funding, performed to segregated audiences, and performed Western operatic repertoire with utmost fidelity to the text. There were members of the Group who were politically active, though some later left the Group over political disagreements. The Group members were barred from making public political statements due to Southern-Holt’s insistence that the Group was apolitical, and Italian-born artistic director Joseph Manca upheld this ideal throughout his tenure as Director. Evidence of political disagreements within the Group comes from the Eoan Group Archive, from which Roos draws extensively as her primary source material. Cultivated by Manca during his roughly 30-year tenure with the Group, the archive was originally held at the Joseph Stone Auditorium in Athlone, Western Cape. In 2008, the archive was moved to Stellenbosch University, where Roos and other members of the Stellenbosch-based Eoan Group History project conducted interviews with former Eoan members and their families to supplement the archive. Roos also relies on

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these interviews. Interwoven with the stories of Eoan members is the spectre of La Traviata’s Violetta, a connective device Roos employs to describe the fate of the Eoan Group: Being socially and politically of ‘dubious’ standing and living on the fringes of ‘respectable’ (and in the case of Eoan, white) society, both the character Violetta and Eoan itself were enchanted by a utopian world for which they sacrificed all they had, were forced by figures of authority to give up that world, were publicly scorned and humiliated, and had their demise hastened as a result of their voices. (5–6)

Violetta as connective device enmeshes art with the every­day – with apartheid politics, with the mechanics of opera productions, with the lives of the Group’s performers. Such an enmeshment works against Southern-Holt’s and Manca’s insistence that the Group was apolitical. Violetta can therefore be seen as a restorative and performative device that showcases the ways in which opera, politics and the everyday were indeed deeply connected in the lives of Eoan’s opera singers. Chapter one, which focuses on the period 1933–54, details the Group’s first 25 years before their first opera production. At this time, the Group focused on classes in physical education, elocution, ballet, literature and drama. Public exhibitions of physical prowess and ballet performances began during this time as well. The Group also drafted their first constitution containing the present motto, ‘We live to serve’. This period also saw the slow development of the Group’s amateur choir into an opera company. Chapters two and three focus on the periods 1955–56 and 1957–63, respectively, and detail the overwhelmingly positively reviewed opera productions, with the first and most frequent opera production being Verdi’s La Traviata. The Group’s acceptance of the apartheid government’s funding and unwillingness to publicly engage with anti-apartheid politics lays the groundwork for their reputation as an apartheid group. This becomes a reputation the Group cannot shake. Chapter four focuses on the period 1964–71, and sees the Group establish their opera repertoire, which is primarily com­ prised of canonical nineteenth-century Italian operas. This chapter also examines more closely the sacrifices that the Group’s singers had to make in order to perform opera. The singers were

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unpaid and had to travel long distances after work to attend rehearsals. The apartheid government enacted several legislations during this period, including an edict that forced and restricted many coloured people to the outskirts of Cape Town. Chapter five focuses on the period 1971–80. It discusses the Group’s twilight period. The Group was physically, artistically and socially isolated. Segregation pushed the Group away from Cape Town’s centre and disallowed them from experiencing opera outside of their own performance experiences, as segregation extended to performing venues and to membership in white opera companies. The Group’s reputation as an apartheid group further socially isolated them from their own community. In 1975, they performed their last opera, La Traviata, and five years later, they stopped performing operatic works and opera excerpts altogether. This book also contains a postscript and two appendices. In the postscript, Roos contemplates the Eoan Group’s lack of presence in the public domain and in academic research and what this means for its legacy. The appendices consist of rich archival materials; Appendix 1 contains a full list of opera productions by the Group and Appendix 2 contains the Group’s full 1973 constitution. While this book is an informative social history of the Eoan Group, the postscript paints too rosy of a picture of the con­ temporary state of opera in South Africa. Progress has cer­ tainly been made in access to music education, in inter­national and artistic exposure for opera singers, in the racial diversity of singers on stage, in the development of audience members, and of opera composers, but there is still much to be done to further the development and relevance of opera in South Africa. There is still a huge lack of coloured and black representation in managing, producing, conducting and composition positions in South African opera; moreover, an internal segregation in opera companies still exists. Though apartheid has ended, unofficial racial segregation in the country has not. Many people from the black and coloured communities live in townships on the outskirts of major cities and have trouble accessing opera that primarily takes place in city centres. Roos intermittently discusses the foregrounding of the race of Eoan’s singers as a marketing tactic – a practice that

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is still in use today in South Africa. Perhaps more theoretical probing on Roos’s part examining the disconnect between racial foregrounding on the opera stage and racial segregation in the every­day could provide a more sound connective tissue between Eoan’s legacy and contemporary South African opera. Overall, this book is a valuable addition to a growing body of academic works on coloured politics and music under apartheid, as it deals closely with the role that coloured identity played in Eoan’s fate. Written with clarity, this book is readable to students and scholars, those with little knowledge of South African politics or of opera, and the general public. Roos artfully engages with the impossible situation that Eoan found itself in – perform opera under apartheid’s rules or don’t perform opera at all. With remarkable insight, pathos, and encyclopaedic knowledge of the Eoan archive, Roos reminds us to remember the accomplishments of the Eoan Group. Allison R. Smith School of Music

Boston University, Massachusetts, USA

Naomi André, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2018, 269pp. ISBN 978025208357-0. Pb $27.95; 9780252050619. e-book $14.95

In her conclusion to Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement, Naomi André writes in reference to a production of Bizet’s Carmen in which the title character is a transgender person, that it seems as if ‘opera is approaching a new frontier’. This book – and André’s previous writing on gender and blackness in opera – already charts opera’s journey towards this new, ever-evolving frontier. The manifestations of opera both musically and theatrically (its performance practice) has been ever changing in spaces outside the Western European setting of its origin and the zeitgeist within which those operas had been composed. It seems logical that beyond the time and space of nineteenth-century Italy, the Risorgimento operas of Verdi would take on a different meaning to

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audiences. But this could be said of many operas (or performances of historical music) – although it had been composed within a specific context, a contemporary context alters our understanding and value of a work so that it in fact becomes an artistic expression of the present. Reading this book as an opera scholar living in Cape Town has contributed much to my thinking of how opera is practised in South Africa, but it also creates a bias as to how I have experienced the matters addressed in this book, especially the comparisons between American and South African opera productions and the specific compositions by composers from these countries. In Black Opera, André frames her discussion with sensible para­ meters. As the title suggests, she covers manifestations of black­ness in opera, explores its history, how power (political in nature on various levels) has impacted performances and negotiated a history of blackness (or the lack thereof) in opera, and she proposes a vantage point that she calls engaged musicology. This type of musicology André defines as being involved with ‘the current diverse publics interpreting a work’ (198). These parameters are outlined in chapter one, where she explains that she applies this perspective to four case studies, being the operas From the Diary of Sally Hemings by American William Bolcom, Porgy and Bess by the Gershwins, Bizet’s Carmen (various incarnations) and Winnie: The Opera by South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen. Central to the analyses throughout are the questions: Who is in the story? Who tells the story? Who interprets the story? Woven into this narrative is André’s view on why black histories have been neglected, and specifically the lack of historical documentation of black histories – an aspect that stretches beyond opera or musicology and is evident is disciplines from medicine to sports. How does one write black histories when little information can be found in the archives? In a country like South Africa, where racial segregation as an official policy only came to an end in the 1990s, research on the histories of people of colour has only started to be exposed in the past two decades. Today, therefore, historians and scholars such as André, endeavouring to write these histories, deal with what she calls ‘the shadow culture’. In (former) spaces of racial segregation, this

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does not only refer to questions around whose histories are told and by whom, but encompasses how gender has shaped those histories because, André emphasises, ‘men’s stories are preserved and told more frequently than women’s histories’ (55). As she shows, the portrayal of women in opera too, over the course of about 200 years, has perpetuated a gender bias. In all her case studies, women stand central, but these women remain captured within the shadow culture – they are subservient slaves, women trapped by men’s obsessive love, and women caught in political systems that render their activism as criminal. Although Black Opera has as one of its premises to lay bare the commonalities of blackness in opera between the United States and South Africa, the focus indeed leans more towards a discussion of the American examples. Being a South African, my bias often led me to notice some omissions that, had they been included, could have elucidated even deeper commonalities of how blackness on the opera stage has played out in the two countries. In her chapter on From the Diary of Sally Hemings, André refers to the story of Sarah Baartman (whose name has varied spellings). While the stories of the slave Sally (1773–1835) who is said to have had a relationship with Thomas Jefferson, and the ‘Hottentot Venus’ (c. 1789–1815) – who was exhibited as a kind of circus curiosity in Cape Town and Paris – share commonalities, the lives of two South African slave women, Krotoa (1643–74) and Ansela van de Caab (or Caep or Caap, who lived c. 1655–1735), would have been more apt examples. Both Krotoa and Ansela were slaves who married their masters and bore these men’s children – much like the story of Hemings. The lives of Krotoa and Ansela have not been brought to the opera stage but have been portrayed on film and in theatre. But having chosen Baartman, André’s argument could have been well served with an analysis of South African com­ poser Hendrik Hofmeyr’s 20-minute opera Saartjie, which was performed in Cape Town in 2010 as part of a cycle of five operas on historical South African figures, titled Five:20 – Operas made in South Africa. Chapter four extensively follows the roots and several performances of Porgy and Bess across America, but only one reference on page 8 is made to the 2012 production thereof by Cape Town Opera. However, in 1996, Porgy and Bess quite

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literally changed the face of South African opera from white to black, when it was performed in Cape Town. Although by then there had been an operatic choral training programme for black singers (who under apartheid were not allowed access to mainstream opera), this 1996 production of Porgy and Bess was the first time that a full cast of black singers (soloists and chorus as per Gershwin’s stipulation) was seen on a South African opera stage. These omissions are probably the result of the little research that has been done on opera and its performances in post-apartheid South Africa. The commonalities between blackness in opera in America and South Africa is more apparent in André’s chapter on Carmen, in which she writes (besides of other versions such as Carmen Jones and Carmen: A Hip Hopera) about the portrayal of the title character in the opera film U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, which sets the action in a Xhosa community of a Cape Town township. The last (and shortest) chapter fully focuses on Winnie: The Opera, a work about the ‘mother of the nation’ Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of former president Nelson Mandela, and an often controversial figure in the struggle against apartheid. Despite the omissions, which would not necessarily be felt by all readers, André presents a way of thinking about opera today and specifically blackness and gender in opera by opening ‘the possibilities of how opera can have meaning in new spaces for unexpected populations’ (158). These are indeed the new frontiers opera is approaching, shaping our thinking of not only blackness and gender in opera, but the art form’s relevance in contemporary society, whether in the global North or global South. Wayne Muller Publications Editor Stellenbosch University

South Africa

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Naomi André, Donato Somma and Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi, eds, Special Cluster: ‘New Voices in Black South African Opera’, African Studies vol. 75, no. 1 Johannesburg: Taylor & Francis on behalf of the University of Witwatersrand, 2016, 169 pp. ISSN: 0002-0184. Print; ISSN: 1469-2872. Online. Open access online

South African opera scholarship is burgeoning. In recent years, the work of researchers such as Hilde Roos, Juliana M. Pistorius and Lena van der Hoven, among many others, has ensured the field’s prominence within music studies in the country and has carved out a significant space for it within international academe. It is a body of work that has arisen in response to the immense successes of South African opera practitioners both locally and abroad, and the complex questions of identity, political economy and geo-politics that their art engenders. A seminal contribution to this field is the 2016 African Studies Special Cluster, ‘New Voices in Black South African Opera’, con­ vened by Naomi André, Donato Somma and Inno­centia Jabulisile Mhlambi. The cluster focuses largely on Winnie: The Opera, which was premiered in 2011 at the South African State Theatre in Pretoria. With music by Bongani Ndodana-Breen and a libretto by Mfundi Vundla and Warren Wilensky, the opera presents various moments in the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, framed within a portrayal of her testimony at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. It is a potent political piece that has been cast in an artistic medium that bears volatile colonialist and apartheidera connotations. The dramatic – but also historical and social – potential of the opera makes it a com­pelling lens through which to consider some of the field’s most pressing questions. The cluster comprises an intro­ duction and three articles by the convenors. It concludes with an abridged trans­cript of a discussion between Somma and composer Neo Muyanga, who has recently emerged as a significant figure in the country’s opera scene. André’s contribution to the cluster, ‘Winnie, Opera, and Artistic Nationhood’, is concerned with the opera’s broad-ranging entanglements. Her article provides a number of intriguing contextual frames through which to read the work: it is intimately bound up with project of nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa, yet it can also be tied to broader discourses of operatic

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nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe and musical politics in twentieth-century North America. For her, Winnie does not only speak to the redefinition of artistic agencies and national narratives in the post-apartheid era; it also belongs in the broader ‘canonic opera repertory’ (20). Placed within this rich contextual frame, André produces an equally rich analysis of the work. Her reading of Act 1, Scene 2 is particularly compelling in its focus on the hands of Winnie’s torturer, Major Theunis Swanepoel. His hands are not seen by him primarily as instruments of torture, she writes, but as the parts of him that are ‘meant to build, nurture and help things grow’; away from the prison, his hands are for ‘raising children, planting gardens, and fostering a safe community’ (26). This emphasis on the multiplicity of Swanepoel’s hands is an allegory for the opera’s ability to grapple with ‘complicated’ portrayals of good and evil, which, of course, is epitomised in the figure of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela herself (26). Winnie is drawn and redrawn in André’s analysis: she is both mother of the nation and defiant activist; she is the Pondoland maiden on the cusp of marriage and the exile in Brandfort. These rich entanglements are for André the grounds on which the work presents ‘a millennial operatic heroine that is not only modern in Pretoria [as the site of its premiere], but also for the rest of the world’ (28). Where André’s reading draws the opera into a broader con­ textual frame, Somma’s article, ‘“Just Say the Words”: An Opera­ tic Rendering of Winnie’ zooms in minutely on details of musical construction. He is concerned with the ways in which Winnie enables modes of storytelling through generic operatic devices. Some­ what counterintuitively, the aria, as a musical moment outside of narrativic time, is for him a particularly important vehicle in this regard. It provides us with the possibility of putting ‘the accumulated weight of a character’s actions aside momen­ tarily’ (35), and allows us instead an intimate look into their psyche. Somma’s argument for linking the aria to storytelling is made via Foucault’s tension between the psychological focus of the novel and the hero(ine) character of the epic. However, rather than the former negating the latter, as Foucault proposes, Somma hears the presence of both in the ‘discursive space’ of two arias in Winnie (36). Occupying coterminous musical terrain, it is

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exactly the melding of these dialectical forces that makes the opera a compelling and powerful story. Supporting his argument, Somma presents deep, inter­preta­tive analyses of the arias in the above-mentioned tor­ture scene (Act 1, Scene 2) and at the close of the funeral scene in Orlando West (Act 2, Scene 2). These analyses are intriguing in their double typographical presentation. They are first offered as textual extrac­ tions and then presented in normal type. The double presen­tation accentuates the phenomenological nature of the analyses. They come to form performative (discursive) analogues of the very acts of operatic interpretation that the arias are meant to represent. The methodology of interpretation does not only substantiate Somma’s argument for the narrativic function of the arias in Winnie, it also reveals the artistic depth and complexity evoked in the work as a whole. It is in this complex figuration, as Somma writes, that the aria becomes a site for the merging of the ‘psychological individual and the epic heroine’ (43). The third article in the cluster, Mhlambi’s ‘Embodied Discor­ dance: Vernacular Idioms in Winnie: The Opera’ departs from traditional opera scholarship, and draws instead on a complex disciplinary matrix of literary theory, dialectology, eschatology, and anthropology. Unshackled from the potentially restrictive remit of text (score) and intertext (operatic traditions), Mhlambi produces a reading of the opera through the lens of ‘opera indigene’ which re-centres it within a broader geo-politics of knowledge (51). Her analyses focus on the Act 2, Scene 2 aria mentioned before, the uthuthu rite of the Mothers of the Missing chorus, the politics of ilobolo in the Pondoland scenes, and the operatic utilisation of nineteenth-century hymnody. Notions of the vernacular and emic linguistic and social meanings are attended to throughout with a nuanced socio-economic awareness. The focus on these aspects strongly makes the case for the way in which opera has become a resolutely indigenous art form in South Africa. It remains an artform cut through with tensions, but crucially these are the tensions borne by the South African operatic subject. That a singular incarnation of this subject in Winnie can sustain these three substantial analytical readings is testament to importance of the work in the repertoire of South African opera. Yet it also signals the deeply complex historical, political and cultural space

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from which such a subject emerges. The final contri­bution to the cluster, a discussion between Somma and com­poser Neo Muyanga, affirms this. The discussion starts with a brief introduction to Muyanga’s interest in opera, but quickly slips into a meditation on his musical upbringing. We learn that it was not until much later in life that he finds his operatic focus, and that it was an exceedingly complicated and multifaceted road that led him to it. He traces his interest in opera to the protest songs he sang during his school days in Soweto, to his adolescent experiences of choir competitions in Botswana, to his training in Italian madrigals, to his theatre work in the United Kingdom, to his pop and jazz career in the United States and Ethiopia, and finally to his return to South Africa and to the choral voice. But it is also a story, we are told, inseparable from his experience of police brutality, the emergence his pan-African consciousness, and his work as a journalist. What ties all these things together – and what is demon­strated so powerfully in this final contribution – is Muyanga’s pursuit of storytelling. ‘I realise what I’m interested in is storytelling through music’, he writes (92). For him, this interest draws him to the archive, but also to the discussion with South African opera practitioners. Indeed, this dialogism has become for him a way of working, which has resulted in an experimental form of operatic expression. In this sense, what he describes diametrically opposes the institutions and economies, but also the aesthetic form and content, of Ndodana-Breen’s work. The operatic genre, however nebulous that term may be, is upended and the social life of this music is almost entirely reinvented. In terms of opera scholarship, Muyanga’s story reminds us that the discipline will have to grapple with a subject that is both fully formed in what it draws on historically, and simultaneously entirely inchoate in what it posits for the future. In some sense, there is a critique of the cluster that can be read in Muyanga’s story. While he speaks of exploration, of errant lines of flight, encounters and dialogue, which are all highly generative, the thrust of the preceding three articles is far more sedimented. Concerns with genre and canonic operatic traditions and repertoire seem to act as markers of scholarly legitimation, but they also present the danger of prematurely casting discursive boundaries around a necessarily mercurial subject. Indeed, even the focus on

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Winnie as the ‘first full-length original opera by a black South African composer’ (1), a refrain echoed throughout the cluster, runs the risk of propagating unhelpful exclusions: one wonders where the performative agencies of the Eoan Group, a coloured opera company that staged full-length operas during the apartheid years, fit in this narrative, or why Mzilikazi Khumalo’s Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu, premiered in 2002, does not hold the same neoteric status? Of course, these questions do not necessarily detract from the importance of the cluster: it remains a crucial contribution to the field of opera scholarship in the country. These questions do, however, remind us that, much like Muyanga’s winding narrative, there will be no straight lines or simple historical trajectories in this field. William Fourie Researcher at Africa Open Institute Stellenbosch University South Africa and Department of Music Royal Holloway University of London

United Kingdom