1 00:00:08,060 --> 00:00:10,250 Good evening, everyone. 2 00:00:10,250 --> 00:00:19,580 Good evening and welcome to Big Tent Live Event, Live Online event series from the University of Oxford as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, 3 00:00:19,580 --> 00:00:24,860 one of the founding Stones for the future, Stephen Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. 4 00:00:24,860 --> 00:00:32,840 My name is Wes Williams. I'm a professor of French and I'm also the director of Torch, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. 5 00:00:32,840 --> 00:00:41,480 We're continuing to bring this event programme online and hope that you're all safe and well during this extended and difficult time. 6 00:00:41,480 --> 00:00:46,580 Everyone is welcome in our big tent as we explore big ideas here together. 7 00:00:46,580 --> 00:00:53,390 I'd like to remind you that this exploration is also a collective and that you can submit questions and comments for our speakers. 8 00:00:53,390 --> 00:01:00,500 Please type these into the YouTube live chat below and we'll answer as many as possible later in the session. 9 00:01:00,500 --> 00:01:07,010 In our first big live event of this term, we bring you a concatenation of rooma. 10 00:01:07,010 --> 00:01:17,810 In other words, a conversation between writer, filmmaker and art historian Nana Aferdita erm and professor of African history Richard Rathbone. 11 00:01:17,810 --> 00:01:25,670 The discussion tonight will be the first that celebrates the paperback edition of Nonna's celebrated novel, The Godchild. 12 00:01:25,670 --> 00:01:32,180 Nana and Richard will also discuss the interplay of academic life, academic research and fiction, 13 00:01:32,180 --> 00:01:39,650 and how narratives are shaped and reshaped according to the telling and the tellers to chair the discussion this evening. 14 00:01:39,650 --> 00:01:46,370 I'm delighted also to welcome now to the screen Dr Laura from Bakugan. 15 00:01:46,370 --> 00:01:54,440 Laura Laura is the director of the Petrobas Museum and professorial fellow at Lineker College here in the University of Oxford. 16 00:01:54,440 --> 00:02:00,200 Previously, she led the curatorial department of the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures with 17 00:02:00,200 --> 00:02:05,390 senior curator for Middle and South America and was departmental lecturer in Archaeology, 18 00:02:05,390 --> 00:02:10,160 Museum Studies and Indigenous Heritage at Leiden University. 19 00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:14,750 Lawrence Regional Academic Research has focussed on collaborative collection research 20 00:02:14,750 --> 00:02:20,720 with Amazonian indigenous peoples and Maasai communities from Kenya and Tanzania, 21 00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:31,490 Yokota and Maya, oral history, Mistick, indigenous market systems and merchant biographies and Nicaraguan indigenous resistance in colonial times. 22 00:02:31,490 --> 00:02:36,800 In other words, it's hard to find. Think of anyone better to chair tonight's discussion. 23 00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:43,850 Welcome, Lara, and many thanks for joining us tonight. You're part of the international network that we have here, some of us in Oxford. 24 00:02:43,850 --> 00:02:51,440 Others elsewhere in the world. And so without further delay, I'll hand over to you to introduce our speakers and to begin the conversation. 25 00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:56,900 And all being, well, if the Internet holds out, I'll only return right at the end to say goodbye again. 26 00:02:56,900 --> 00:03:01,650 Over to Laura. 27 00:03:01,650 --> 00:03:11,310 Thank you, West, and thank you for having me, and I can think of a of people who would be much better than me to have this conversation, 28 00:03:11,310 --> 00:03:27,690 because I think that the people that we have in the room tonight are such of such eminence and work in areas that I am partly wholly unfamiliar with. 29 00:03:27,690 --> 00:03:39,480 But at the same time, I've been a great admirer of the work that both Nuna and Richard have been able to bring to us. 30 00:03:39,480 --> 00:03:44,730 And I think what I'm going to really sort of limit myself to make sure that we have 31 00:03:44,730 --> 00:03:53,820 the maximum amount of time for the conversation to introducing Na'ama and Richard. 32 00:03:53,820 --> 00:03:58,650 And so then I'll start with NAMA and then Richard and I'll hand over to Richard, actually, 33 00:03:58,650 --> 00:04:08,850 to give a presentation, a short presentation of five minutes about his book and his work. 34 00:04:08,850 --> 00:04:19,200 And then afterwards, Na'ama from Ghana is going to talk about her wonderful book of the child, 35 00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:22,800 the number of Riata, and almost doesn't need an introduction anymore. 36 00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:25,350 She's a writer, a filmmaker, an art historian. 37 00:04:25,350 --> 00:04:35,730 And really, I always wonder how she combines the many, many different aspects of the inspiring and exciting, the innovative work that she combines. 38 00:04:35,730 --> 00:04:43,950 She lives and works in Accra, Ghana, and as a special adviser to the Kenyan government on museums and cultural heritage, 39 00:04:43,950 --> 00:04:47,250 is leading the country's museum restructuring programme. 40 00:04:47,250 --> 00:04:57,030 Now, she's also the founder of the Institute of Arts and Knowledge, and she appeared in almost every newspaper, I think, 41 00:04:57,030 --> 00:05:04,060 worldwide when she pioneered from an African cultural encyclopaedia, 42 00:05:04,060 --> 00:05:11,010 one of the most exciting cultural conceptual rethinking of what museums might look like in the future. 43 00:05:11,010 --> 00:05:15,540 What they can actually be in a more sort of another possible. 44 00:05:15,540 --> 00:05:18,240 Possible is also led by NAMA. 45 00:05:18,240 --> 00:05:30,090 And this is a project called the Mobile Museums Project that to me really sort of illustrates that we can move beyond what is usually conceptualised, 46 00:05:30,090 --> 00:05:33,810 what museums are and what they should be. 47 00:05:33,810 --> 00:05:45,030 Now, her curation of Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale was widely acknowledged as both thrillingly beautiful and shaking up the Biennale. 48 00:05:45,030 --> 00:05:51,810 As usual, Whiteness in 2009, Themes published her first novel, The Child with Bloomsbury. 49 00:05:51,810 --> 00:05:58,620 And for our German speaking audience, a German translation has just come out with penguins. 50 00:05:58,620 --> 00:06:03,180 Now the book touches the heart and mind. At least that's how I experience it. 51 00:06:03,180 --> 00:06:07,920 When I was reading it last summer, the book really touches the heart and the mind equally, 52 00:06:07,920 --> 00:06:13,950 and I cannot recommend reading it more highly, not for someone like myself. 53 00:06:13,950 --> 00:06:22,980 Living in the world of museums. It also offers both beauty and imagination and ask some very important and piercing questions around 54 00:06:22,980 --> 00:06:31,740 ownership and around entitlement and around many different aspects that one can sort of think 55 00:06:31,740 --> 00:06:42,720 around about migration and how one assembles and feels disassembled when living in my in a sort of 56 00:06:42,720 --> 00:06:48,900 state of migration and or coming home a bit similar to the sort of questions it asks about the book, 57 00:06:48,900 --> 00:06:54,660 asks about the assemblages that have been build up in European museums. 58 00:06:54,660 --> 00:06:59,100 But Will, I'm sure we will touch on that later in the conversation. 59 00:06:59,100 --> 00:07:04,830 Now, there's too many accolades, other accolades to mention awards that mama has rightfully won. 60 00:07:04,830 --> 00:07:11,730 But I just want to sort of now first discuss Richard and move on with the conversation, 61 00:07:11,730 --> 00:07:19,380 because otherwise I would take up all all the evening just talking about how much amazing work has been done. 62 00:07:19,380 --> 00:07:26,100 Richard Rathbun began his research career at the School of Oriental and African Studies, 63 00:07:26,100 --> 00:07:33,030 or so US, where he worked under the pioneer historian of Africa, Roland Ollivier. 64 00:07:33,030 --> 00:07:41,700 Richard has served as chairman of the University of London's Centre for African Studies and as the Dean of Postgraduate Studies, 65 00:07:41,700 --> 00:07:46,770 and was promoted to a chair in modern African history in nineteen ninety four. 66 00:07:46,770 --> 00:07:54,510 And then a series of research trips followed and fellowships that led him to Ghana and the University of Cape Town, 67 00:07:54,510 --> 00:08:01,850 Johannesburg, Harvard and Princeton, as well as the DeSoto and Toronto. 68 00:08:01,850 --> 00:08:06,140 Which is current appointments include emeritus professor and professional research 69 00:08:06,140 --> 00:08:13,070 associate at SO and honorary professor in history at Aberystwyth University. 70 00:08:13,070 --> 00:08:23,660 He's also the author of many books, including Murder and Politics in Colonial Ghana and Kromah and the Chiefs, 71 00:08:23,660 --> 00:08:28,520 The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana between nineteen fifty one in nineteen sixty. 72 00:08:28,520 --> 00:08:36,270 And some of those books have really been given amazing accolades and both in the way that they write 73 00:08:36,270 --> 00:08:45,560 them and the sort of boldness and at the same time very thoroughness in which they capture a degree of, 74 00:08:45,560 --> 00:08:50,810 as the Times Literary Supplement set about what the book said that they captured, 75 00:08:50,810 --> 00:08:57,560 as it could be a remarkable degree of the tragic tragedy and confusion of Ghana's transition 76 00:08:57,560 --> 00:09:05,540 from both pioneer of anti colonial modernism to postmodern epic of post-colonial despair. 77 00:09:05,540 --> 00:09:15,260 The Sunday Telegraph talks about how Richard's book allows the reader to enter into the past in a way with history written on a grander scale. 78 00:09:15,260 --> 00:09:22,580 Sometimes just not because it's more restrained. It's very scholarly and often almost elitist in tone. 79 00:09:22,580 --> 00:09:29,870 And the Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics talks about how his book has the pace and 80 00:09:29,870 --> 00:09:37,280 tension of an historical thriller and tells the story of a genuine watershed in British imperial history. 81 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:50,330 So I cannot wait to hear how this conversation is going to take place because there's so much so many different aspects within which the different 82 00:09:50,330 --> 00:10:05,870 books and the different ways of reading elements of history actually enable us to think more deeply in new ways about how history has shaped. 83 00:10:05,870 --> 00:10:11,030 So, Richard, I'm going to hand over to you and amuse myself. 84 00:10:11,030 --> 00:10:13,280 Thank you, Laura. 85 00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:22,670 I got into this particular bit of my research career by being troubled by the domination in histories of 20th century Ghana, which is well done. 86 00:10:22,670 --> 00:10:29,660 Most of my work in Africa, domination of 20th century Ghana and political history by a single narrative. 87 00:10:29,660 --> 00:10:33,170 And that single narrative is, of course, the great epic, 88 00:10:33,170 --> 00:10:45,830 anticolonial struggle conducted by a radical nationalist party who took on a very successfully on a mission to regain sovereignty from colonial rule. 89 00:10:45,830 --> 00:10:53,510 Unfortunately, I spent an awful lot of my life buried in archives, which what historians do and a lot of the documentation, 90 00:10:53,510 --> 00:10:57,860 particularly in the Ghana National Archives, so very much my second home. 91 00:10:57,860 --> 00:11:08,570 What emerged out of that immersion was at least as important as that struggle, the struggle that has the focus, the anticolonial struggle. 92 00:11:08,570 --> 00:11:15,200 And that struggle is a struggle over a radical nationalist party which becomes, after 1951, 93 00:11:15,200 --> 00:11:23,660 a government, a struggle against traditional chiefly government, chiefly authority, chiefly states. 94 00:11:23,660 --> 00:11:25,610 And the dominant narrative, 95 00:11:25,610 --> 00:11:39,350 the winners narrative insisted that chiefly authority was supported and even created by colonial rule and accordingly joined at the hip. 96 00:11:39,350 --> 00:11:49,610 Colonial rule and traditional rule constituted a kind of unholy alliance and osseo regime that deserved to be ousted. 97 00:11:49,610 --> 00:11:56,780 Now, the question that occurred to me, first of all, was that demonisation of traditional rule entirely justified? 98 00:11:56,780 --> 00:11:59,990 And my answer is that reasonably radical person, I think was yes, 99 00:11:59,990 --> 00:12:07,130 in many ways it was traditional authority had indeed been bolstered by colonial policies. 100 00:12:07,130 --> 00:12:10,400 And those colonial policies had in West Africa anyhow, 101 00:12:10,400 --> 00:12:19,730 relied on the devolution of many powers to these kingdoms because it devolved to them control over things like law and order, 102 00:12:19,730 --> 00:12:25,190 dominating over half the binary legal system in those states. 103 00:12:25,190 --> 00:12:32,210 And in some some cases, these states had their own local police forces, their own local prisons. 104 00:12:32,210 --> 00:12:41,720 It is also the colonial state devolved to chieftaincy chiefly through tax collection, sanitation, licencing and moneylenders, letter writers, 105 00:12:41,720 --> 00:12:50,210 etc., etc. because all law and in some cases these powers were exercised in a thoroughly undemocratic and self-serving fashion. 106 00:12:50,210 --> 00:12:56,600 I think we should make no secret of that because I tend to romanticise the state we're going to be talking about. 107 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:01,630 No one is going to be talking about possibly too much. 108 00:13:01,630 --> 00:13:07,360 Into the oppressive quality of chiefly through lies, 109 00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:16,600 the roots of the disenchantment of many of the new generation of literate young people and their attraction to incomers convention, People's Party. 110 00:13:16,600 --> 00:13:23,440 This is the interwar period and the immediate post-war period of the 20th century. 111 00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:28,270 But what we knew about those kingdoms derived from a very fine, 112 00:13:28,270 --> 00:13:36,760 if limited ethnographic corpus and the views of governments, both British and from 1951, gone in. 113 00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:42,670 And I wanted to know a little bit more about traditional chieftaincy and for a variety of reasons, 114 00:13:42,670 --> 00:13:48,850 I started looking at that in my book, which some people call Akim wrongly and none. 115 00:13:48,850 --> 00:13:55,900 And I would call it a work, but not least because for thirty one years, long period of life, a generation, 116 00:13:55,900 --> 00:14:07,630 the tenant of the royal throne and you'll see Nuna actually is in the palace for a time of year where this man settled his stool, sat on his throne. 117 00:14:07,630 --> 00:14:17,490 He was a very obviously very remarkable man called Nana, sir, for you after he'd been appointed by the British in 1927. 118 00:14:17,490 --> 00:14:22,830 He did everything that it was possible to be as an African in the interval period. 119 00:14:22,830 --> 00:14:30,390 He was on the colonial legislature. He was a colonial grandee form and much of the literature. 120 00:14:30,390 --> 00:14:34,530 However, despite all of these achievements and considerable achievements, 121 00:14:34,530 --> 00:14:41,430 much of the literature wrote him off as a collaborator and as a colonial stooge. 122 00:14:41,430 --> 00:14:46,860 With all those labels of collaboration studiousness not justified, 123 00:14:46,860 --> 00:14:51,900 and I think not because the massive amount of the documentation and there is a huge amount of it, 124 00:14:51,900 --> 00:15:00,960 including his own archive in the palace that are sitting in at the moment, argue something very much more interesting than not. 125 00:15:00,960 --> 00:15:10,290 First of all, he was a man who used the weakness of the Colonial State, which actually had no physical presence in Morocco until 1908, 126 00:15:10,290 --> 00:15:17,520 use the weakness of the Colonial State to assist him in rebuilding his kingdom as a modern state. 127 00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:22,770 And when colonial officers arrived, as they did from 1908, he dominated them. 128 00:15:22,770 --> 00:15:27,870 He really did dominate, not dominated them. He had them in his pocket so much. 129 00:15:27,870 --> 00:15:36,360 There was one of the most long running district offices in Ashim of what was actually called Kibbie Chebbi Jones, 130 00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:39,540 it being as it were, taken over by Chebbi, 131 00:15:39,540 --> 00:15:49,260 taken over by the Royal Palace of Religious Vision, I think can be summed up by being a vision of self-sufficiency, 132 00:15:49,260 --> 00:15:59,520 the acquisition of modern skills and especially literacy. Progressive agriculture and above all, the retention of control of resources, for example, 133 00:15:59,520 --> 00:16:09,570 controlling the access to mining concessions in gold and diamond fields in the state like the kingdom. 134 00:16:09,570 --> 00:16:13,650 And equally important, and I think we'll have a lot to say about this, 135 00:16:13,650 --> 00:16:22,380 he really cared about the defence of his ancient culture from which a lot of the sources of Nonna's come come from. 136 00:16:22,380 --> 00:16:28,260 Basically, he got away with all of this because he was so much more clever than the colonial establishment officers. 137 00:16:28,260 --> 00:16:38,910 He was fluent in QWhy, the language of the Afghan people. And Ajimobi Walker is an Afghan state fluent in history and in English. 138 00:16:38,910 --> 00:16:48,090 And the correspondence between him and the mountains of it, the correspondence between him and colonial authority always shows him to be the stylist. 139 00:16:48,090 --> 00:16:52,560 He's the grammarian. He's the master of the case. Laws, intricacies. 140 00:16:52,560 --> 00:16:56,770 He's the subtle debater. And they look so let me put it in comparison. 141 00:16:56,770 --> 00:17:03,550 And he runs rings around them. And consequently, the colonial authorities were intimidated, I think, to a certain extent, 142 00:17:03,550 --> 00:17:12,520 by they defer to his knowledge of traditional law and that knowledge of traditional law was bolstered by the 143 00:17:12,520 --> 00:17:20,470 two massive tomes on traditional Afghan law and customs written by his no less extraordinary Half-Brother, 144 00:17:20,470 --> 00:17:27,670 the pioneer nationalist lawyer, the playwright, the journalist, J.B. Danquah, his half brother, 145 00:17:27,670 --> 00:17:34,870 as I said, so afraid his political clout ensured that his opinions became excuse me, rulings. 146 00:17:34,870 --> 00:17:40,060 He's not alone in that kind of figure in a colonial state are a couple of others I can think of. 147 00:17:40,060 --> 00:17:51,220 The great lawless action in Fiji left his imprint on the Colonial State in that kind of way, as the did in Uganda, both all of whom were, I think, 148 00:17:51,220 --> 00:18:02,730 able to perform with such manifest authority that their understandings, their portrayals of the nature world, they are the ones that dominated. 149 00:18:02,730 --> 00:18:12,660 Now, after years in the company of four yassa in written form, of course, he died five died before I was able to keep his company. 150 00:18:12,660 --> 00:18:18,180 I've always seen him as a conservative nationalist and I think he was a nationalist. 151 00:18:18,180 --> 00:18:25,020 He was dedicated to what he called progress. He was dedicated to development as well as the defence of his culture. 152 00:18:25,020 --> 00:18:31,820 And while he was manifestly a conservative with a small C., he was also attractively progressive. 153 00:18:31,820 --> 00:18:37,520 He built a school near Chebbi, the academic work of state college, so that young people, 154 00:18:37,520 --> 00:18:46,250 young people would not have to study at Borders or strangers in the big schools in Accra or Cape Coast. 155 00:18:46,250 --> 00:18:53,600 He was remarkable in the antiwar period for being an enthusiast for the education of women amongst whom were his daughter, 156 00:18:53,600 --> 00:19:00,290 who was to become Ghana's first woman, doctor and incidentally, the aunt to Ghana's current president. 157 00:19:00,290 --> 00:19:08,570 He was additionally behind the so-called Kouakou hold up a strike of coca farmers withholding the coke that coca 158 00:19:08,570 --> 00:19:19,190 they produced to receive a fairer price on the world market and to try to strangle the brokers out of business. 159 00:19:19,190 --> 00:19:25,410 And he even tried to negotiate deals which would have cut out the middleman, cut out the country brokers. 160 00:19:25,410 --> 00:19:32,160 Now, all of this was a balancing act and one which required very hard work through all archives, 161 00:19:32,160 --> 00:19:36,390 really reveal a man to have been extremely industrious, 162 00:19:36,390 --> 00:19:43,980 a monarch whose commitment to detail always reminded me when I was going through his in his correspondence, 163 00:19:43,980 --> 00:19:51,990 reminded me of the second or Louis the 14th people who worked way after closing time again and again and again, 164 00:19:51,990 --> 00:19:58,020 and being progressive, especially progressive, while being at the same time notably repressive. 165 00:19:58,020 --> 00:20:09,380 That's a juggling act. And this great juggler died in 1944, and that's with the removal of a key stone in a great Gothic cathedral. 166 00:20:09,380 --> 00:20:20,280 The roof fell in. The story that brings down on myself together is what what goes on in the 40 days of mourning after his death, 167 00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:30,150 some members of the royal family were accused of being complicit in the ritual murder and chebbi the capital city of of work. 168 00:20:30,150 --> 00:20:34,830 Once the signature of the admiring gaze of the world, I think, 169 00:20:34,830 --> 00:20:41,880 lost the support of the colonial government while attracting the heightened hostility of the radical political party, 170 00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:47,510 which was effectively to govern gone from 1951 to 66. 171 00:20:47,510 --> 00:20:51,330 That case, as I've already said, that brought down on myself and I hope, 172 00:20:51,330 --> 00:21:00,480 productive and enjoyable contact that she brings to the narrative, something that I can't or a lot of things that I can't. 173 00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:11,760 She brings to that narrative insights which I could not and did not want to take account based on the stories that are available in archives, 174 00:21:11,760 --> 00:21:13,380 lots and lots and lots of them. 175 00:21:13,380 --> 00:21:21,720 And for hours and hours and days and days of interviews and information gained from those interviews from only men and women 176 00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:29,460 did not talk to me during the period I spent doing research in the period of time that I spent doing research in Ghana. 177 00:21:29,460 --> 00:21:35,340 She has, as a consequence, as a member of the royal family. She's the granddaughter of Nanosphere. 178 00:21:35,340 --> 00:21:41,490 For Yatta, she has access to what intrigued the language of the icon. 179 00:21:41,490 --> 00:21:49,260 She has access to what are called the things of the house, the family secrets, and in some ways, I suppose the dirty washing as well. 180 00:21:49,260 --> 00:21:55,800 And in a very wonderful book, which I have on my desk, I hope it can be seen on screen. 181 00:21:55,800 --> 00:22:04,950 She excludes things that I could not explore, such as feelings and meanings, what it is like to grow up as a royal child, 182 00:22:04,950 --> 00:22:14,610 which is no longer a child, but certainly royal and growing up as a child of someone who's close kin has been hanged for murder. 183 00:22:14,610 --> 00:22:20,460 Very dramatic thing to have in the history of your family. And for me, 184 00:22:20,460 --> 00:22:32,040 it's a great privilege for me as a historian to be able to read in her work a very fine exploration of thoughts and sensations I could only imagine, 185 00:22:32,040 --> 00:22:37,080 but thoughts and feelings and sensations which she has realised in her book. 186 00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:37,880 And in that sense, 187 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:47,670 I think we I hope that we are kind of complementary contributors to the understanding of a very extraordinary man who would be part of the world, 188 00:22:47,670 --> 00:22:57,560 a very extraordinary culture, a very extraordinary kingdom. That's it. 189 00:22:57,560 --> 00:23:05,780 I finished. That's right. 190 00:23:05,780 --> 00:23:17,080 That is wonderful. So I thank you so much for that context on the one hand, and historical insight, 191 00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:25,870 which I think is and also drawing the line towards us work and how there's different dimensions that the work brings. 192 00:23:25,870 --> 00:23:36,520 One sort of having been really from working through the archives and investigating the archives and interviews with most women. 193 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:48,320 And the other story, which no, I'm happy you've been able to put your video also on and here with us and in a very exceptional setting of the palace, 194 00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:54,550 I'm going to hand over to you for your introduction. Thank you. 195 00:23:54,550 --> 00:24:07,830 Thank you, Laura, and thank you, Richard. You are asking Laura how I managed to get everything done and sometimes the answer is. 196 00:24:07,830 --> 00:24:21,800 Day or two, we were in the middle of filming day, which aired this morning, and I'm still sometimes of multitasking. 197 00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:26,210 So, yeah, I'm in the fear and the pilots actually I have the drums, 198 00:24:26,210 --> 00:24:33,620 I decided to sit in front of the drum house because they have so much to do with the narrative that I wrote, 199 00:24:33,620 --> 00:24:38,240 but also the inspiration of everything, more or less that I do. 200 00:24:38,240 --> 00:24:46,490 You'll see the ones on the wood, actually, the humdrum, the talking drums of Atima Black. 201 00:24:46,490 --> 00:24:59,830 And like I said, one of the big inspirations for my work of the talking drums and the iron the I'm sorry, this is the. 202 00:24:59,830 --> 00:25:10,840 A lot of. Noise in the background, the downstairs uncle and uncle Frase up watching through what they call a trauma, which is a divine drama. 203 00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:16,780 And when I actually did my master's, that was where Professor Rathbone or Richard was. 204 00:25:16,780 --> 00:25:21,550 I was a professor. And when I did my master's in African art history, 205 00:25:21,550 --> 00:25:29,590 I realised that the terms and the concepts of which I was describing my culture were all foreign ones. 206 00:25:29,590 --> 00:25:38,500 And I started looking for a narrative form, concepts, terms in which I could describe my culture on their own terms. 207 00:25:38,500 --> 00:25:43,630 And so I started looking at oral literature, and that's when I came across drawn poetry, 208 00:25:43,630 --> 00:25:48,430 which was this incredibly poetic, philosophical way of telling history. 209 00:25:48,430 --> 00:25:56,290 And not only did I come across the German poetry, but I realised that my own uncle was a master of the drums of divine drama and trauma. 210 00:25:56,290 --> 00:26:04,640 So I kind of became an apprentice to him. I sat at his feet for years documenting the drum poems, you know, 211 00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:11,500 that deeper meaning that different boys had learnt the drum, but only a few of them get passed on the deeper meaning. 212 00:26:11,500 --> 00:26:23,870 The secrets of the drum. And when it came to actually wanting to drum myself, I was told that I'm Falciani because I was a woman, 213 00:26:23,870 --> 00:26:27,110 I wasn't allowed to serve these drums behind me at the time. 214 00:26:27,110 --> 00:26:31,040 I'm actually, unfortunately not allowed to touch, which is a shame. 215 00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:44,750 But it also actually drove me into the question of how do I become a historian of, you know, using the forms of the iron on my own terms, 216 00:26:44,750 --> 00:26:51,500 you know, because there are certain restrictions, spiritual, traditional, that stopped me from becoming one in a traditional sense. 217 00:26:51,500 --> 00:26:55,370 And that's when I switched to writing and filmmaking. 218 00:26:55,370 --> 00:27:05,490 But I always inspired by the form of the iron, which underscores everything, which underscores everything that I do. 219 00:27:05,490 --> 00:27:14,030 So even in the book itself, the rhythms of the iron, the cyclical nature of it, the elliptical nature of it, 220 00:27:14,030 --> 00:27:18,440 the abstract nature of it was really, really, really a driving force behind it. 221 00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:27,170 And then not only and also my great grandfather to my grandfather's father was also a crematorium. 222 00:27:27,170 --> 00:27:37,190 And thus maybe Richard can speak about it a little bit. That was a great kind of schism between him and the reigning king when my great grandfather 223 00:27:37,190 --> 00:27:46,100 became a Christian and was driven from the kingdom and and and was basically I think you, 224 00:27:46,100 --> 00:27:53,570 Richard, you likened it to the story of Jesus, where he was driven from the kingdom and had to kind of bring up his family elsewhere. 225 00:27:53,570 --> 00:28:00,350 Then obviously his sons, both his sons, had a kind of reconnection with the kingdom in a very deep way. 226 00:28:00,350 --> 00:28:07,430 Another kind of source, obviously, of of of of of the kind of story that I've told is Richard's own writing, 227 00:28:07,430 --> 00:28:14,450 both in combat and the chiefs, and that the one that set here in that time of Black I the book was, 228 00:28:14,450 --> 00:28:22,160 I think three times as long when I first wrote it, because it had a lot of historical background, again, drawn a lot on Richard's writing. 229 00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:30,170 And so it's really a real privilege to be sitting not here while sitting digitally 230 00:28:30,170 --> 00:28:34,220 or metaphysically in some way here with him and to be able to talk about it. 231 00:28:34,220 --> 00:28:41,330 I'm going to read just a little tiny bit of the beginning of the book just to kind of set the tone in a fictional way. 232 00:28:41,330 --> 00:28:47,630 And then I think it would be great if we could actually have a discussion about some of the themes. 233 00:28:47,630 --> 00:28:51,170 I cannot remember how I first knew my life was not my own. 234 00:28:51,170 --> 00:28:58,940 It came to me not at once, not in words or visions, not in capitals or in imperatives or assertions, 235 00:28:58,940 --> 00:29:07,340 but as a perennial wordless whisper, a stream whose beginnings were beyond science and whose ends I somehow seemed to carry. 236 00:29:07,340 --> 00:29:11,060 I looked over at him. He was the one they would have chosen for me. 237 00:29:11,060 --> 00:29:14,300 And yet I had arrived here by my own volition. 238 00:29:14,300 --> 00:29:24,320 I had watched him all these years on both sides from close quarters, as if at a poker table to smirky to male, to shrouded in codes. 239 00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:33,110 I had neither the ability and willingness to understand. I had sort of the generation of above me is still to be tainted by colonial malaise 240 00:29:33,110 --> 00:29:39,050 of my generation as a bridge of our daughters and sons of the ones to be truly, 241 00:29:39,050 --> 00:29:48,860 hopefully free. And yet quietly, imperceptibly, I been witness to a transformation from a narrative too large, 242 00:29:48,860 --> 00:29:53,180 too unwieldy, to unconcerned with the small in the human, 243 00:29:53,180 --> 00:29:59,000 to couched in arrogance and entitlement to one of hardwork, nobility, loyalty, 244 00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:05,390 fidelity through the clarity there, the clarity, the vision, the truth of it was not yet apparent. 245 00:30:05,390 --> 00:30:09,650 It seemed a certain grace had set in and that it was all of us. 246 00:30:09,650 --> 00:30:14,780 There was tiredness, exhaustion, disillusion, cynicism, mistrust on all fronts. 247 00:30:14,780 --> 00:30:20,780 But strangely, it also felt like something new was beginning, not for one side or the other, 248 00:30:20,780 --> 00:30:29,540 but for us as human beings bearing a geographical space, creating a common story. 249 00:30:29,540 --> 00:30:35,450 All that was missing was the joy, the lightness and innocence of my mother, her brothers of Kodjoe. 250 00:30:35,450 --> 00:30:43,580 And yet they had not survived. I looked at him now as he walked towards me at all of them, they who had finally won. 251 00:30:43,580 --> 00:30:47,210 But I was more my mother's daughter, Kodjo sister, than theirs. 252 00:30:47,210 --> 00:30:56,510 Could I look back to that first splintering, that first awakening, and then could I win as they had and still as they had not to remain open? 253 00:30:56,510 --> 00:31:05,930 Could I as my mother and Joe had not survived? And so, yeah, that's a little bit of the introduction to the book and quite a few of the themes of it, 254 00:31:05,930 --> 00:31:13,670 of freedom and obligation and, you know, the kind of maleness of power and of trying to fit in. 255 00:31:13,670 --> 00:31:28,660 And yet a lot of a lot of those themes. But I would love to have a conversation with Richards and with Laura about about some of those now. 256 00:31:28,660 --> 00:31:41,420 Richard, I don't know if there's there's anything you want to pick up on or we'll say, well, maybe I can ask you some questions, Olara. 257 00:31:41,420 --> 00:31:45,050 I think Larry's in charge of this movie. 258 00:31:45,050 --> 00:31:53,030 Yeah, I think Norma has given you a number of questions and it would be really wonderful to hear what your thoughts are. 259 00:31:53,030 --> 00:32:02,060 So would you be able to sort of give some reflections around the elements that might have sort of brought both of you, 260 00:32:02,060 --> 00:32:16,010 sort of her getting to know the history of her grandfather through some of your your own work and at the 261 00:32:16,010 --> 00:32:22,850 same time sort of some of the questions that she also posed about sort of the piece that was written, 262 00:32:22,850 --> 00:32:36,170 which really has sort of made, ah, some of my reflections in the book, How Power is Assigned. 263 00:32:36,170 --> 00:32:45,530 I suppose the question that I felt all the way through reading this book is what does it feel like to be royal? 264 00:32:45,530 --> 00:32:56,090 I have no experience of it at all. I'm a rank commoner, but there is something very special about being royal and it's about oppression. 265 00:32:56,090 --> 00:33:00,440 I think it weighs heavily on the shoulders. 266 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:08,540 It's a tough thing to be their expectations all the time of it and their expectations not just of being royal, 267 00:33:08,540 --> 00:33:12,380 but in what royalty has done to the STEM family, 268 00:33:12,380 --> 00:33:22,880 the House and the Senate clan that you're a member of a very high achieving, very successful, very powerful people. 269 00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:28,430 And I have no experience of that personally. And it comes out very much in the book. 270 00:33:28,430 --> 00:33:35,150 Certainly that sense of being held under in a way, as well as being pushed up, 271 00:33:35,150 --> 00:33:38,930 it seems a very binary experience and a very frightening one in some ways. 272 00:33:38,930 --> 00:33:49,300 And I think the fear comes out of the book as well. I mean, is that a bad reading of a child? 273 00:33:49,300 --> 00:33:53,830 No, I think it's a really, really, really accurate one, and interestingly, 274 00:33:53,830 --> 00:34:01,030 I think the first person he's really picked up on it so strongly and I think probably that's because of your research. 275 00:34:01,030 --> 00:34:08,920 You know, I also, you know, at the beginning, I think I wasn't so explicit may be in that in the fact that it was you know, 276 00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:12,700 there was elements of of of of kind of self in it. 277 00:34:12,700 --> 00:34:18,310 But I think that, you know, this idea or this dichotomy of of of obligation. 278 00:34:18,310 --> 00:34:26,510 And, you know, we we obviously, you know, in our culture, the ancestors' kind of such a place, 279 00:34:26,510 --> 00:34:30,670 such an important role in our lives, this idea of continuity. 280 00:34:30,670 --> 00:34:34,120 And you know, that they're always there with us. 281 00:34:34,120 --> 00:34:43,230 And, you know, my I in the book has this sense that from the very beginning. 282 00:34:43,230 --> 00:34:58,340 Oh. And she she has this obligation to have these voices that are always and that she kind of has to function of can she can she not be? 283 00:34:58,340 --> 00:35:00,320 And it's a bigger question of history as well. 284 00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:09,470 You know, can one free oneself from the burden, from the obligation of history, you know, both visually and collectively as well. 285 00:35:09,470 --> 00:35:19,070 And this is a question that I ask myself a lot, you know, both as an individual, but also as a as a as a cultural historian. 286 00:35:19,070 --> 00:35:25,660 So I think it was it's a very, very, very apt reading. 287 00:35:25,660 --> 00:35:35,090 I'd like to ask you if you allow me the time, Laura, to talk to us, really, what what of the the things of the house did you learn? 288 00:35:35,090 --> 00:35:37,420 I'm not asking for specific data, 289 00:35:37,420 --> 00:35:50,710 but how far how far could you get in terms of those close kept secrets that are were anyhow historically part of what the ruling council of the state, 290 00:35:50,710 --> 00:35:54,790 the Australian Council had, what they understood them to be, 291 00:35:54,790 --> 00:36:00,730 which weren't for other people to digest or know about, and things that I could never find out about. 292 00:36:00,730 --> 00:36:09,150 And I'd also access to places I could never go to, which you can and I can't. 293 00:36:09,150 --> 00:36:15,930 It's a very it's a very big chunk of experience and understanding caught up in all of that, 294 00:36:15,930 --> 00:36:25,640 what places looked like, what they feel like, and what are the moments in which people say sush? 295 00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:31,010 I think I think that again and start to kind of it's quite a deep connexion in a way, 296 00:36:31,010 --> 00:36:40,580 because I think knowledge and secrecy and power are so closely interwoven, like not just in this case, but generally in all. 297 00:36:40,580 --> 00:36:51,680 For example, the indigenous knowledge systems that I've been looking at is the idea that knowledge is such power that you don't hand it over easily. 298 00:36:51,680 --> 00:37:00,320 You only give it to those who are spiritually who are, you know, who he was very, very, very serious about it. 299 00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:06,530 And I've shown that seriousness through years and years and years and years of commitment. 300 00:37:06,530 --> 00:37:17,480 You don't just hand knowledge over. And I think one of those things, one of the consequences of that godding of knowledge was that, you know, 301 00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:24,410 a lot of the time when researchers or anthropologists came in and there was the seeming 302 00:37:24,410 --> 00:37:30,860 death of knowledge because people just wouldn't talk or they would mislead with knowledge. 303 00:37:30,860 --> 00:37:36,500 And I think that's it's a really interesting, not just in the specific case, 304 00:37:36,500 --> 00:37:44,510 but just generally the the notion of knowledge and of passing on knowledge is such it's just. 305 00:37:44,510 --> 00:37:50,480 So different to anything that I learnt in my Western education, where knowledge is such an explicit thing, 306 00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:54,360 it's like any knowledge, anything that you learn is good and it's linear. 307 00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:58,640 And the more that's said in the more that's visible, the better here. 308 00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:02,900 It's really about secrecy. It's about guarding even the Iame. 309 00:38:02,900 --> 00:38:08,960 The drug policy has so many gaps within it so that even the poems are being passed on as history. 310 00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:13,400 But yet you have to know all of these backgrounds in order to piece together that history. 311 00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:20,510 And so to answer your question about how you know, how much I personally could access it, it's been a long, ongoing journey. 312 00:38:20,510 --> 00:38:25,160 I mean, I had a very, very, very close relationship with my uncle, which led me, you know, 313 00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:30,920 into certain areas of knowledge that, you know, he told me, for example, that I could never share. 314 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:35,780 And I was like, but I have a history, you know, that's. But, you know, I want to share. 315 00:38:35,780 --> 00:38:44,540 I want to. And in a way, that's kind of the freedom of. Fiction as well, is that, yes, you know, that's not the. 316 00:38:44,540 --> 00:38:49,400 The kind of hard facts that you can play with the idea of truth, 317 00:38:49,400 --> 00:38:58,730 and I find and that's also why I ended the one that said the appendix, which is very, very, very heavily inspired. 318 00:38:58,730 --> 00:39:02,120 I love that somebody described you because a thriller, because I found that as well. 319 00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:07,040 And that's why I kind of had a parallel to the way that you told the story as well, 320 00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:13,760 right down to like when they put the black square down, you know, and kind of like the judgement was told. 321 00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:19,460 I just I find it so captivating and. 322 00:39:19,460 --> 00:39:27,110 You know, in that in that appendix, I try to really explore the idea of what is truth because, you know, in and I think, you know, 323 00:39:27,110 --> 00:39:32,900 to go back to the title of this talk of a contact nation of rumour, 324 00:39:32,900 --> 00:39:40,940 the idea of what truth was, and especially as you tell it in your book, was so fluid. 325 00:39:40,940 --> 00:39:45,920 It was kind of told. It was retold. Tradition was retold. 326 00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:51,930 And I thought this idea of truth not being fixed, this. 327 00:39:51,930 --> 00:39:58,680 Siderov even in the drum, Pertwee, for example, the eye of the drum perm could be the present king, 328 00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:04,590 the alginate, but it could also be 12 kings before. 329 00:40:04,590 --> 00:40:11,880 But it's still spoken of as the same person you. 330 00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:20,430 Subject timidities into changeable and so what happens to a story when there is no fixed subject, 331 00:40:20,430 --> 00:40:25,950 when there is no fixed truth but everything is possible fluid? 332 00:40:25,950 --> 00:40:32,610 What happens to that still to this day so fascinating is how do you how a story is 333 00:40:32,610 --> 00:40:38,780 told where things are interchangeable as they are when you were telling them on the. 334 00:40:38,780 --> 00:40:48,230 She's for another, as the drummer has his own way. You know, what does that say about story telling or story telling us, you know, 335 00:40:48,230 --> 00:40:54,010 as people know it in the Western world and I still haven't gotten to the end of it. 336 00:40:54,010 --> 00:41:04,420 Could feel like I'm done in the middle of the exploration, you know, as it pertains narrative, but also the idea of fluidity and yeah, 337 00:41:04,420 --> 00:41:14,800 like I said, I find it very, very interesting in your book how you underscored that the idea that this idea, 338 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:24,700 that truth was something that was being made and remade, this idea, that tradition was something that was most being, 339 00:41:24,700 --> 00:41:31,600 you know, like sometimes very, very seemed very old, but sometimes it seems like it was almost being invented on the spot. 340 00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:39,580 And, yeah, you know, that might be seen in some instances as negative, but there's also a certain openness to that. 341 00:41:39,580 --> 00:41:46,150 I think it's also symbolised to a certain extent, but in a way, the things that are physical and so on. 342 00:41:46,150 --> 00:41:50,980 I mean, the Fratta is a very traditional chiefs in many senses are king. 343 00:41:50,980 --> 00:41:57,950 I call him throughout because, you know, I mean, he rejects Presbyterianism, although he's a child of romance. 344 00:41:57,950 --> 00:42:04,210 His father, as you say, was a drummer who becomes a Presbyterian minister. 345 00:42:04,210 --> 00:42:11,380 His mother was also a Presbyterian. He rejects Presbyterianism on becoming Argentinean, becoming king. 346 00:42:11,380 --> 00:42:19,840 And although the the ministers of the Presbyterian Church are allowed into the palace to pray, he never goes to a service again. 347 00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:23,590 And during the obsequies, when he's dead, 348 00:42:23,590 --> 00:42:35,230 you can hear the service in the church in chivvy in the Hanafi where there are other ceremonies going on and the other bits of symbolism about change, 349 00:42:35,230 --> 00:42:41,860 but also alteration. And I find him fascinating in terms of how flashy he is at times. 350 00:42:41,860 --> 00:42:51,070 I mean, this is a man who has hand rolled cigarettes manufactured in Burlington Arcade for him with his initials on which he gives to visitors. 351 00:42:51,070 --> 00:43:00,130 He loves big American cars, the last of which I had traced back a Chevrolet with whitewall tires, which is absolutely splendid. 352 00:43:00,130 --> 00:43:07,750 And the fact that when the telegraph is built, which is actually a space ridging idea, spreading the device, 353 00:43:07,750 --> 00:43:15,260 in many senses the line of the telegraph goes right over the mausoleum of the most of all the dead or Argentina. 354 00:43:15,260 --> 00:43:19,360 I mean, the symbolism of that is very, very marked. 355 00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:28,720 And it's part yards away, feet away, metres away from a tennis court that he had built with a tennis court built in the palace grounds, 356 00:43:28,720 --> 00:43:35,920 which is sadly overgrown when I last saw it. And I love all those disjunctions that go on between, as you said, 357 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:42,430 the the falsity is obviously the full story of the notion of tradition, but also the ferocity of the notion of modernity. 358 00:43:42,430 --> 00:43:46,180 It's the mills that's exciting and the process that leads to the mills. 359 00:43:46,180 --> 00:43:58,000 That's exciting. Don't know whether that makes any sense. Yes, it absolutely does. 360 00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:07,380 I was wondering that I could weave in one or two questions from the public because none of this information is. 361 00:44:07,380 --> 00:44:15,220 Absolutely, and they actually. Hello. 362 00:44:15,220 --> 00:44:21,910 Yes, we can hear you again. Well, actually. 363 00:44:21,910 --> 00:44:31,740 All right, yeah, yeah, so the question from the public is that there was a question that was asking whether Anoma whether you could speak 364 00:44:31,740 --> 00:44:39,030 a little bit more about the kinds of narrative tapes your experiences with drums and drumming have created. 365 00:44:39,030 --> 00:44:53,080 This is from my own little who asked this question. I mean, I think it's it's it's evident in the book, it's also evident in my films as well. 366 00:44:53,080 --> 00:45:02,140 I mean, that the drama itself, the drama language itself is is made of fixed poems. 367 00:45:02,140 --> 00:45:10,400 There's also room for improvisation. But it's not the telling of the. 368 00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:18,190 Of history is not. As we know it, in a linear. 369 00:45:18,190 --> 00:45:27,490 And, you know, it started in sixty and then went forward and these wars happened and, you know, 370 00:45:27,490 --> 00:45:31,270 it kind of jumps howls of those appellations with that ruler and then it jumped to the 371 00:45:31,270 --> 00:45:36,430 president with the same appellations and then interjects with kind of an interlude. 372 00:45:36,430 --> 00:45:43,990 And it's just I mean, for somebody who comes from a very formalistic point of view, it could seem very chaotic. 373 00:45:43,990 --> 00:45:47,140 You have several drum orchestras happening at the same time. 374 00:45:47,140 --> 00:45:51,850 And then suddenly the drummer starts speaking to the dancer in front of him and interjects. 375 00:45:51,850 --> 00:45:55,900 It's just it's very fluid. 376 00:45:55,900 --> 00:46:07,420 It's very intuitive. And it requires such a huge amount of mastery of form for you to be able to talk so that people 377 00:46:07,420 --> 00:46:13,720 can listen and understand and then kind of move between rhythms and hold your audience and, 378 00:46:13,720 --> 00:46:18,850 you know, not just be makes sense in a in a in a conceptual way, 379 00:46:18,850 --> 00:46:28,070 but also be rhythmic enough so that those who don't understand the language can also enjoy the music of it. 380 00:46:28,070 --> 00:46:32,120 Could one say that in the book, that's exactly what you do, right? 381 00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:43,190 So you there is that sort of I mean, it's just it's an extraordinarily. 382 00:46:43,190 --> 00:46:47,830 It's. Hello. 383 00:46:47,830 --> 00:46:57,490 Yeah, there's moments that we're probably not that we're losing each other, or at least my my Internet connexion might not be very stable, 384 00:46:57,490 --> 00:47:03,820 but I was just wondering that in your book, that is also very much that rhythm and that sort of change of rhythm. 385 00:47:03,820 --> 00:47:13,360 Very much so. Happens in the book. And you were saying earlier that your book was three times as long reach the other 386 00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:18,320 parts that you sort of very consciously started to change the rhythm also of the book, 387 00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:29,380 because that space is something that one feels in the book. Also that there is sort of difference in rhythms. 388 00:47:29,380 --> 00:47:38,680 Yeah, I mean, it was it's an experiment in that way, you know, the idea of kind of translating something from one form into another. 389 00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:43,540 And, you know, I I didn't know to what extent. I don't know to what extent it would succeed. 390 00:47:43,540 --> 00:47:52,390 It was just an attempt to you know, I think if it was or speaks about language so much, you know, 391 00:47:52,390 --> 00:47:59,680 and about this idea of going into the postcolonial by reclaiming writing in our languages. 392 00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:06,040 And for me, I'd say the reclamation took another form in that I can't deny my Western education. 393 00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:10,390 I can't deny kind of my fluency in certain Western languages. 394 00:48:10,390 --> 00:48:20,170 But I can try and inhabit them with something that's really, you know, so deep and rooted to me and that's so ancestral within me. 395 00:48:20,170 --> 00:48:27,790 And so we kind of inhabit it, a language that, you know, to a certain extent was imposed on me or my forefathers and mothers, 396 00:48:27,790 --> 00:48:36,280 but still take ownership of it by expanding it through these forms and then see what happens. 397 00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:46,110 I think in one of the indigenous knowledge systems that I am looking at, one of the ones it said something like language. 398 00:48:46,110 --> 00:48:47,860 I can't remember the quote exactly now, 399 00:48:47,860 --> 00:48:56,000 but it said something so beautiful about language bringing you back to the harbour of self or the hub of the soul. 400 00:48:56,000 --> 00:49:01,270 It was very, very I comes in from the way it was very, very beautifully put. 401 00:49:01,270 --> 00:49:08,890 And I think that, you know, that this idea, or at least I felt that idea sometimes growing up, 402 00:49:08,890 --> 00:49:14,380 that language for me, something and I think I gave my about a little bit as well, 403 00:49:14,380 --> 00:49:25,840 that kind of absence that she felt in terms of language, of knowing, of knowing this and knowing self and how do you get back to that? 404 00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:35,860 And I think to a certain extent, with the form of the drum poetry, it's my kind of way of trying to reconnect with something that I feel. 405 00:49:35,860 --> 00:49:44,680 For example, you know, when Richard speaks about my grandfather and he's kind of trying to really bring the kind of ancestral, 406 00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:54,820 the traditional with him into modernity, it's kind of, I guess, a way of of connecting with that. 407 00:49:54,820 --> 00:50:03,250 Another question from the audience, which is really to you said of the books that tell you the book that you have been referring 408 00:50:03,250 --> 00:50:11,880 to is mostly the book that you that is an Ohio University Press and James Curry press book. 409 00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:16,280 No, we're talking about Yale University Press murder and politics, 410 00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:30,610 but that's somebody who's more or less the only says asked whether you could repeat the books that have been referred to mostly. 411 00:50:30,610 --> 00:50:40,850 And could you talk a little bit more about what the book touches on which one is the one that you've been mostly referring to? 412 00:50:40,850 --> 00:50:48,310 Well, it was it's basically a sort of potted history of actually my book where there 413 00:50:48,310 --> 00:50:52,930 wasn't really anything very much substantial written about how she mccorkell, which is what I was talking about, 414 00:50:52,930 --> 00:51:03,000 because he had ignored these kingdoms of being in the historiography because they weren't part of the genealogical story of liberation. 415 00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:13,450 So that the first third, I suppose if the book is about Frater and also about the kingdom itself in a sometimes rather travel book kind of way, 416 00:51:13,450 --> 00:51:20,470 I'm afraid I I loved I loved it. The Biram Valley, which is which of its is a very beautiful part of the world. 417 00:51:20,470 --> 00:51:25,570 And it colonised me very much as a site of great natural beauty and peace. 418 00:51:25,570 --> 00:51:29,470 And I was very happy there. But then it ends. 419 00:51:29,470 --> 00:51:37,540 It's sort of the middle. It is is this ICRA that occurs with the murder and it then becomes about the murder, 420 00:51:37,540 --> 00:51:49,000 which is also about the end of chiefly rule to a large extent, that the slow ending of chiefly rule in in in Ghana. 421 00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:56,420 And it ends with a rather limp attempt to talking about what I think chieftaincy might or might not be about, 422 00:51:56,420 --> 00:52:03,370 which the moment I start writing that I wish I hadn't started, but it had to be finished. 423 00:52:03,370 --> 00:52:12,130 So it really is the story up to about independence in 1957, the second book, The Crimson the Chiefs, 424 00:52:12,130 --> 00:52:17,860 is about the hounding of our traditional rulers by the Conventional Peoples Party. 425 00:52:17,860 --> 00:52:24,670 A bit of the convention People's Party rule from 51 in effect to internal affairs until 66. 426 00:52:24,670 --> 00:52:34,240 The coup, which takes out a lot of chieftaincy, reduces the power of chieftaincy to virtually nothing. 427 00:52:34,240 --> 00:52:46,060 And one of the abiding images of it is known as Uncle J.B. Danquah, probably the greatest intellectual that God has ever produced and its own very, 428 00:52:46,060 --> 00:52:54,460 very brilliant scholar who was a presidential candidate in 1960, unsuccessfully so, but was a leader of the opposition. 429 00:52:54,460 --> 00:52:59,170 And he's imprisoned under the Preventive Detention Act, is a desperately sick man, 430 00:52:59,170 --> 00:53:07,630 and he dies in a pool of his own vomit in a swamp jail, although he had called for medical help and has been denied. 431 00:53:07,630 --> 00:53:13,930 So, I mean, that was Morgan Freeman. The Chiefs was about the ending of chiefly privilege, if you like, 432 00:53:13,930 --> 00:53:20,070 and if you rule in Ghana so that they're related but different, I hope they're different. 433 00:53:20,070 --> 00:53:29,790 I shall be selling a. Now, is that the uncle you were also referring to earlier? 434 00:53:29,790 --> 00:53:38,980 No, no, it's actually my great, great uncle, yeah, look. 435 00:53:38,980 --> 00:53:48,470 Both suffer. Yeah, it's you use that word. 436 00:53:48,470 --> 00:53:57,510 But. Privilege, which should and like probably all my life, 437 00:53:57,510 --> 00:54:04,450 it was something that I touched on a lot in the book, this idea of privilege, I think is is one. 438 00:54:04,450 --> 00:54:10,870 Yeah, that that concerns all of my work. Who has the power to speak, who has the power to tell stories. 439 00:54:10,870 --> 00:54:15,190 And even though I speak of the divine drama, I don't do much. 440 00:54:15,190 --> 00:54:23,860 It's still something that's still rooted in unequal power. Even here, you know, it's comes its power as told through the lens of a royal family. 441 00:54:23,860 --> 00:54:28,810 You know what? Of all the hundreds and thousands of people who don't have that lens, you know, 442 00:54:28,810 --> 00:54:38,500 and who how do you give access to people and the power to people to tell stories in the same way those who've been, 443 00:54:38,500 --> 00:54:43,000 you know, had the power to tell stories, you know, have. 444 00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:49,780 And I think that's something that that concerns me so much, is this idea of privilege and power. 445 00:54:49,780 --> 00:54:55,090 And obviously, like, you know, it's a huge responsibility and leadership is so hard. 446 00:54:55,090 --> 00:55:02,830 But at the same time, you know, how do we get to a space where that privilege is passed on to as many people as possible? 447 00:55:02,830 --> 00:55:07,450 And it's a real dichotomy that I have with the notion that you touched on at the beginning 448 00:55:07,450 --> 00:55:14,560 which of what royalty is because I'm the one and having royal kingdoms within Ghana or, 449 00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:23,590 you know, having kingdoms that predated the idea of Ghana has allowed us to hold on to so much of our culture, which has been exported. 450 00:55:23,590 --> 00:55:26,980 You know, the county that I'm wearing right now has become like a symbol of, 451 00:55:26,980 --> 00:55:32,800 you know, of blackness, of African-American and sort of diaspora of connexion. 452 00:55:32,800 --> 00:55:36,850 You know, we have our gold. We have, you know, the Ashanti Gold Waite's. 453 00:55:36,850 --> 00:55:39,040 We have lection Gold Waite's rather. 454 00:55:39,040 --> 00:55:48,400 There's so much that's been passed on, including the iron because of the notion of royalty, because it's a concentration of power, 455 00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:55,540 but it's also a space in which learning culture, et cetera, was concentrated on the one on one hand. 456 00:55:55,540 --> 00:55:58,390 So it's allowed a lot of history, a lot of our culture, 457 00:55:58,390 --> 00:56:05,050 a lot of our sense of identity and a lot of our sense of self to prevail despite and through colonialism. 458 00:56:05,050 --> 00:56:20,380 And yet there's still the kind of discomfort of it being a very tiny bracket of the population and the kind of injustice and unfairness of that. 459 00:56:20,380 --> 00:56:28,600 And and how do you begin to deconstruct that? And and that's only within our small, you know, privilege also. 460 00:56:28,600 --> 00:56:35,740 Then obviously, when it comes to race and class, et cetera, outside of a small country, becomes even more complex. 461 00:56:35,740 --> 00:56:43,060 But I think that dichotomy is something that I find incredibly challenging. 462 00:56:43,060 --> 00:56:49,540 I don't know what what you think of it. I think a generation needs to be fed into that, too. 463 00:56:49,540 --> 00:56:55,780 I mean, there is no more insulting put down about things that you can and can't do and the insult which you've never had to suffer, 464 00:56:55,780 --> 00:56:59,350 which is that you're a small boy, namely, shut up. 465 00:56:59,350 --> 00:57:04,840 You have no right to talk about this because you're not old enough and mature enough to have any kind of opinion. 466 00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,780 It's devastating when it happens and I've seen it happen. 467 00:57:07,780 --> 00:57:16,660 It's like a slap in the face and it's very powerful to the exclusion of of of the young as well as women and their commoners. 468 00:57:16,660 --> 00:57:26,680 And to some extent and something we don't talk enough about how people are slave dissent in the kingdom to. 469 00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:44,050 Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, yeah, this idea of how do you give more voice to people, how do you privilege more stories, I yeah, 470 00:57:44,050 --> 00:57:55,490 it's something I mean, I think through the work that I'm trying to do with museums is something that you have is an ongoing question of. 471 00:57:55,490 --> 00:57:59,210 Yeah, how how do you make you know, I think that the idea, 472 00:57:59,210 --> 00:58:05,270 the notion of royalty in itself is not necessarily harmful because it's it's about a kind of, 473 00:58:05,270 --> 00:58:11,420 I guess, a divine sense of self or like a divine sense of rootedness and belongingness. 474 00:58:11,420 --> 00:58:17,540 But, you know, everyone should have that, you know, so we should all be royals like everyone. 475 00:58:17,540 --> 00:58:23,540 Everyone should have that as their birthright, not just a few. 476 00:58:23,540 --> 00:58:37,720 A beautiful note to end on it, and I'm going to if unless there's any sort of urgent questions that either of you would like to discuss still, 477 00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:44,740 I was going to invite West to come back in and I just lost that thought on the one hand, 478 00:58:44,740 --> 00:58:50,350 that divine sort of feeling of belonging and at the same time making sure that 479 00:58:50,350 --> 00:58:55,390 that is actually shared with everyone so that everyone can feel that way, 480 00:58:55,390 --> 00:58:59,830 that there's still quite a bit of work to be done in all the different places. 481 00:58:59,830 --> 00:59:09,130 I think that we are all located. But the work that you're doing with the mobile museum and the restructuring of the whole 482 00:59:09,130 --> 00:59:17,920 museum world is such hopeful work that it really leaves us with a lot to to look forward to. 483 00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:24,100 So thank you to both of you for what was a wonderful conversation that was too short, 484 00:59:24,100 --> 00:59:32,860 but absolutely brilliant mounds of elements that were being discussed and touched on and with. 485 00:59:32,860 --> 00:59:36,130 I'm going to hand over back to you. Thank you. 486 00:59:36,130 --> 00:59:41,290 That was indeed a wonderful discussion. And I love the ending where we got to where everyone should be royal. 487 00:59:41,290 --> 00:59:44,290 It kind of reminds me of the notion of the priesthood, of all believers. 488 00:59:44,290 --> 00:59:52,240 In a way, there's a kind of a commonality across there, but something very special in there at the same time. 489 00:59:52,240 --> 01:00:00,100 So thank you to our wonderful speakers, Nina and Richard, and also to Laura for sharing so brilliantly in what was a pretty tough Internet world. 490 01:00:00,100 --> 01:00:05,440 In some ways people were coming in and out, but I think we stayed with it. 491 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:12,700 And thank you so much for navigating the storms of that particular bit of our discussion. 492 01:00:12,700 --> 01:00:17,590 Thank you. Also for the viewers at home and to all your comments and questions. 493 01:00:17,590 --> 01:00:23,110 And before I do a little sort of sign-off about next week or the next time. 494 01:00:23,110 --> 01:00:29,500 Once again, thank you so much to Nana, Lara and Richard. 495 01:00:29,500 --> 01:00:40,510 Thank you. OK, thank you. Our Big Live Event series will continue here again in a couple of weeks time with a bumper section of theatre. 496 01:00:40,510 --> 01:00:48,640 First on Wednesday, the 12th at seven thirty pm we will have around Myshkin in conversation with Katie Mitchell. 497 01:00:48,640 --> 01:00:52,330 And then on Thursday the 13th at 5:00 p.m., 498 01:00:52,330 --> 01:01:00,440 we'll be coming to you live from an Oxford venue and joined by the award winning playwright and actress Leslie Chakrabarty. 499 01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:08,930 I hope that you'll be able to join us then again, but for now, many thanks again to all our speakers for being here. 500 01:01:08,930 --> 01:01:12,680 Thanks for you, to you for turning up and goodbye for now. 501 01:01:12,680 --> 01:01:50,067 Thank you.