"Intermedial Indian Ocean" - a day of music, dance, poetry and more at Reichshof Bayreuth
Abstract
- Abstract
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On 13 November 2021, Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler and Prof. Dr. Clarissa Vierke invited the interested public to an exciting and eventful day dedicated to the Indian Ocean. Music, films, dances, photographs and poetry transported the audience to the East African region, whose artistic and medial forms of expression are often shaped by the beautiful landscape and maritime lifestyle in which they were created.
In the evening the event even saw the world premiere of filmmaker Harrikrisna Anenden's "Draupadi's veil".
This recording shows part of the event. The performances of musician Tao Ravao, dancer Luis Sala and a poetry performance of Abdilatif Abdalla and Clarissa Vierke.
Origins & context
- Title
- "Intermedial Indian Ocean" - a day of music, dance, poetry and more at Reichshof Bayreuth
- Language
- English
- Date
- December 8, 2021
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- since yesterday or the day before yesterday we have had the idea of using texts and dance and poetry so you are very much part of an experiment today and i just want to say a bit i want to tell you a bit about the poetry um it's actually abdellatif abdullah and me and 11 other people whom you can see on the second slide yeah many other people we've been working on translating swahili poetry for the last six years and so we are a group of east african scholars others are based in in europe and the us and we have most of this poetry is actually from the beginning of the 19th century so it's among the earliest poetry we actually have from the east african coast it's attributed to a very important political figure one of the idi gumi he was a political leader on the island of lamu almost the border to somalia so it's an island in kenya now really at the margin of the nation state very close to to somalia and at his time he was not only well he was an elected political leader very powerful on the battlefield as a military leader as well because he defeated the much more powerful um well city state the neighboring city state of pata and before he did that um they actually exchanged lots of poetry in the field because that's quite common of the 18th and 19th century all political figures all important political leaders were also important poets in the swahili context or the other way around you could not become a political leader you could not become elected if you were not also a very prominent poet so later on then people decided because he's still very much part of people's memory people also remember lines attributed to him but already in the 19th century there was the idea these these songs the kind of poems they are going to get lost so people started to write them down and they used arabic script because that was the normal script before the colonial powers the british and the german actually introduced roman script so we have lots of different manuscripts from east africa as well as from mostly berlin hamburg and london and um and so and and now to face the challenges of the language which is very difficult not only because it's poetry it plays a lot with illusions you'll see that it's a very boastful language it's a language of poetic dueling and it it really so to say kind of teases the opponent a lot um i think you'll you'll hear that you hear the tone and so the illusions are very difficult to grasp and as well the language is not the language that is being spoken in kenya um nowadays it's an it's a very archaic kind of language and that's the reason why we are doing this as a group because um one can only so to say work through this as a joint effort now through all this i'm not going to make this long i could talk about this for three hours but i won't um so the poems and actually they were very much part of dance competitions and we can't really grasp very well how and how people performed these poems how they were integrated because simply we don't have any historical records we still have dances nowadays but of course they are the dancers the contemporary dances and not the dances which were danced at the beginning of the 19th century and there is lots of reference to musical instruments and all the time our group we've been discussing we should put this poetry we should make it come alive again so putting dance and musical instruments to it and now it was actually utter who had the idea why don't you try to so to talk to each other without even knowing our internal group internal discussions of how to kind of make the poetry sound again and this is definitely not you're definitely not going to hear how the poetry sounded at the beginning of the 19th century but you're going to hear so to say a very multi-layered hopefully interpretation of and probably continuation of this of the poems and now i think i'll i'll stop here and probably the next slide is the then can show us can you just put to the next slide yeah so this is one of the manuscripts that we have in the background so this is what we have we've been working on and we continue to work on all right so now tao i think i want to call you on stage do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] couldn't happen [Applause] [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] hello [Music] a very bottle [Music] oh [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] wow [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] baby don't you hear me call me name louise louise [Music] louise louie [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] huh [Music] [Music] louise louise [Music] don't you see me baby don't you see me southern blue holy louise louise [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] loudly ask for a company men in rhythmically clapping your hands let them reverberate in the hall like the sound of a hammer so that it calls the wise ones and the roosters should not sideline themselves they should open their hearts we should assemble and talk to pembe [Music] [Music] m strike the horn well and beat the gong loudly when the elegant ladies raise their voices you should clap even louder so the noble ones should sing today and young ones dance when you next ask about it it should end at its place yes [Music] me [Music] there should not be suspicions nor thoughts opposing me no tricks no lies i cannot lie to you if you agree with my opinion don't say i do not follow you if you are dimwitted you will regret it later [Music] a [Music] [Music] loudly break the silence the sound of the buffalo horn goes out you should gather by the beat [Music] the poets who want to perform should come forward who are behind i should watch them when they dance [Music] [Music] has a purpose as well as expectations to bring an end to lamenting and complaining and to unravel your sayings show me evidence of that which is being done and will be accomplished the questions are being answered that is the joy of a conversation [Music] [Music] [Music] talk as i do with well-chosen words you the experts who are assembled here to handle wisely my words and complaints by speaking openly if you want to be corrected poetically you who are part of it perform them wow well [Music] so [Music] a [Music] [Music] give me the golden gong my friends and beats and applause [Music] its sound should intensify so that it summons those who are afar i have two flowers dolphs are settling there and i'm telling you to choose one should come forward and see [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign they belong to the same lineage they are equal in beauty and status on the paternal side people are counselors and on the maternal side there are senior advisors the dove's reputation i've already told you about it it's up to you to choose to select the one who is better [Music] [Music] in what i say i will distinguish them by their appearances one is slim she does not have much bulk and the second one i'm telling you she's unusually plump she does not wander around but she strolls close by [Music] [Music] [Music] my dear sir i've seen your letter and i as i understood its meaning i burst out laughing tying yourselves together will cause trouble for you he who lights firewood that won't burn remains in darkness again [Music] m a line on the prowl does not show its claws it hides them in the sand invisible to its prey you better make sure you ignorant one pay attention we do not fear snakes made out of palm leaf strips so do not threaten us [Music] [Music] we don't fear [Music] don't scare us we are not frightened of your clamor from time immemorial we have been accomplished fighters we will turn you into ashes of firewood as we did in the past and on the decisive day we will meet on the battlefield [Music] [Applause] give another round of applause to abdullatif abdullah who is one of the biggest kenyan poets he has a beautiful collection in translation coming out of his own poetry which he wrote in prison the first political prisoner of independent kenya but he is also such a treasure and he knows so much about his old language so thank you so we can give a nice sound of applause for my two stars over here [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do you [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] you