“If you don’t tell your own story, someone else will.” Pierce Freelon—musical artist, spoken word artist, adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina— summed up the importance of Yole!Africa US’s 2013 Celebrating Congo Festival with this statement. Yole!Africa (http://yoleafrica.org/) was founded by the internationally acclaimed Congolese filmmaker and activist Petna Ndaliko in Goma as an outlet for performers and artists within the community looking to catalyze social change within the country through their art. The Celebrating Congo Festival was organized collaboratively by the American branch of this organization, Yole!Africa US (http://yoleafrica.us/), by UNC professor of Music, Dr. Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, and four additional partnering departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Through the festival, consisting of musical performances, speakers, and discussion forums, they have brought together a grand assortment of influential figures from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and have provided them a platform through which they can share a fuller story. The story missing as a result of years of corruption and colonization within the country. The story that continues today. The history of Africa is closely tied to storytelling. The African Griot—the musical performer, and living historian of a community—would spend his nights in a fiery spirit, retelling tales of culture and family and war and peace from the community’s past to circles of listeners. In this way the history of the community was passed on, intertwining culture and history as the position of the Griot passed through the generations. And as the traditions of the Griot passed, so did the stories their ancestors shared with them. For centuries, the Griot’s words were the history book, and this was widely understood. But toward the end of the 19th century, in the area now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, King Leopold II and his Belgian force seized control and changed this. And as colonization overpowered the traditional culture, the story of the Griot was lost, and, subsequently, his words were replaced by those of the western power. And, for the following years, the western world tried to erase Congolese history. The rest of the world looked to Belgium for information, and they understood and believed the Belgian explanations of the area, that its people were incapable, dependent on outside powers to provide for them, unintelligent, inhumane. And many tales—those that would be told by the Griot—were ignored. Slavery. War. Death. Corruption. The majority of the western world has heard little, if any, of the full story of the conflicts taking place within the country. And because of this, a disconnection has formed between stories and truths; a dichotomy melded by years of Belgian words—or lack of words. Yole!Africa and the Celebrating Congo Festival, put forth this weekend on the University of North Carolina campus, have begun to bridge this gap. In one energized auditorium sat radical filmmaker Petna Ndaliko; a pioneering community developer in Samuel Yagase, various musicians, poets. And two different audiences —the informed and the misinformed. And I, as a unique individual with an experienced background in African history but without significant knowledge of the entire Congolese history, sat in the back—in limbo between informed and misinformed — to observe the reactions of the two surrounding audiences. And then the festival began; the storyteller walked onto the stage. In homage to storytelling’s role in Congolese culture and history, the Festival began with a spoken word presentation by The Sacrificial Poets’ CJ Suitt. As Freelon, MC and musical performer for the night, stated in reflection of the Festival, “The oral tradition is as ancient as the human race, and storytelling is still one of the most powerful means of expression. Spoken word is just a new branch of an old tree—allowing us to communicate through words, gestures, performance, emotive expression, call and response.” Spoken word allows for storytelling, musical expression, artistic expression and, therefore, was the perfect opening to an evening dedicated to the beauty of the Congolese and the multiplicity of its stories. Slightly hesitant, silent, piquing the curiosities of all watching, the spoken word poet CJ shuffled his feet and muttered. “I hope you all are excited. I’m nervous.” And then the silence took over. We waited patiently, and we wondered, eventually questioning slightly his abilities as he stood in apparent discomfort. In a sudden, heated passion, he proved us wrong. And the first true story of the night was told. And the misinformed in the audience, those raised in a world deprived of the Congolese voices for these many years, were brought immediately to a new Africa. We were brought to a family of many children. And a sunny, small village where “survival is as predictable as coin flips and wishing wells.” And a son listening to his mother, “seeing slave ships in her shadows.” And an American disease. An American disease infecting and killing slowly an African woman. Patients in hospital beds, physically incapable of telling their story, waiting, like the peanuts in the fields where they work, to be “harvested by the virus.” A growing man watching his cousin dying from HIV/AIDS in NYC, too weak to lift herself from the stone cold bed on which she lie. Tears, tragedy, and helplessness. We gazed dumbfounded as a man on stage poured struggle and pain into a performance of eloquent movement and dance. We heard a story, but we felt a history, and, slowly, we began to understand. Slowly, the voices of millions dead, millions enslaved, millions deprived of opportunity erupted through his echoes in the dark auditorium. And the power of one story told mirrored the impact of millions left untold. As CJ spoke for the whole of his community, his presence began to mirror that of a Griot. And we, the misinformed audience—in a daze of emotional wanderlust—sat before the spoken word artist in a small community. We sat like the eager and moldable youth who, throughout history, have encircled blazing night fires as the Griot shaped their views of the past. And the new Griot, like the storytellers and historians of centuries prior, used his performance to retell terrors from the Congolese past. And in this way, our previous images of the Congo and its history were intertwined with the lasting impact of this story, and somewhere between the contradiction and the confusion lay the truth. Freelon urges us to understand spoken word’s ability to bridge cultural and physical barriers as he narrated the festival throughout the night. “When brothers and sisters engage each other in any type of dialogue, connections are made. Even more so with artistic dialogue and exchange. Spoken word is just another medium, like beat making, film making, dance, and rap, that allows us to see each other with more respect and clarity.” As the Celebrating Congo Festival progressed, the spoken word introduction set an emotional precedent, and Yole!Africa’s platform, the one through which the Congolese could share stories of the truth, grew in strength. And, more importantly, it attained its essential component, the one that could guarantee a successful festival and could cascade eventually into action and impact throughout the western world. A passionate, informed, moldable, audience. While progresses will continue for far too many years in the future before the solution has been reached, a door has opened here in Chapel Hill. And Yole!Africa’s ability (http://yoleafrica.org/) to connect the troubles and conflicts of Congo with the misunderstandings of the western audience was cemented. Here, through the spoken words, the storytelling, of a modern Griot. And in this way, the story of Congo’s full history has begun to travel from local Griots to American populations. And through this festival, storytelling again has taken its role in historical understanding.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
SKIFF USScroll down for more articles! Archives
July 2015
Categories |