1 00:01:53,830 --> 00:02:00,370 Good evening, all. And welcome to Big Tent. Live events, part of the humanities cultural programme itself. 2 00:02:00,370 --> 00:02:06,130 One of the founding stones of the new Steven A. Schwarzman centre for the Yoni's is here in Oxford. 3 00:02:06,130 --> 00:02:11,110 I'm Wes Williams. I'm professor of French Literature. And I'm also the director of Torch. 4 00:02:11,110 --> 00:02:16,780 And it's my enormous pleasure to say that we're coming to you live from the Ultimate Picture Palace, 5 00:02:16,780 --> 00:02:21,220 the excellent independent cinema on the Cowley Road here in Oxford. 6 00:02:21,220 --> 00:02:27,110 I'm also delighted to welcome the treasure or the first member of the discussion for tonight's discussion. 7 00:02:27,110 --> 00:02:31,540 Alec Obama is a writer, historian and the critic. 8 00:02:31,540 --> 00:02:34,690 She's professor of world literature at the University of Oxford, 9 00:02:34,690 --> 00:02:40,300 a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 10 00:02:40,300 --> 00:02:45,940 And she was also a former member for a former director of Torch. 11 00:02:45,940 --> 00:02:53,140 Her most recent books are Post-colonial Politics 2008 and just last year to the Volcano. 12 00:02:53,140 --> 00:03:00,790 She's currently on a British Academy senior research fellowship working on a project entitled Southern Imagining. 13 00:03:00,790 --> 00:03:05,820 We're here to discuss the themes, the questions, the issues arising from the book. 14 00:03:05,820 --> 00:03:11,110 Four opinion with the author himself, Johnny Pitch, and in conversation, 15 00:03:11,110 --> 00:03:18,400 both Ellika and Shimako to go to associate professor of African politics here at the university. 16 00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:25,030 I'll hand over to Ellika now and let her introduce the other speakers in the conversation. 17 00:03:25,030 --> 00:03:29,830 Over to you, Elica. Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Wes. 18 00:03:29,830 --> 00:03:35,290 And thank you to everyone at home or at work or wherever you are for joining us. 19 00:03:35,290 --> 00:03:40,340 We're all social distancing while safely live streaming this event at the UPC. 20 00:03:40,340 --> 00:03:46,210 And we hope that you are all safe and well and surviving wherever you are in the world. 21 00:03:46,210 --> 00:03:54,670 Tonight is a really exciting opportunity to be with both Johnny and Cemre Kai and to discuss Johnny's amazing and award winning book, 22 00:03:54,670 --> 00:03:59,860 FFP and Notes from Black Europe. As you heard, I'm Atika Burma. 23 00:03:59,860 --> 00:04:09,760 I'm your chair, and I'm also the investigator on the Righteous Make World's Web site project, which is bringing you this event along with Torch. 24 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:17,260 And the recording will here off to be available through Torch and through the Writers Make World's Web site. 25 00:04:17,260 --> 00:04:19,900 In a moment, I'm going to introduce my fellow panellists. 26 00:04:19,900 --> 00:04:28,780 But before I do so, I want you to give a very quick tour through the next hour so that you will know what to expect after these introductions. 27 00:04:28,780 --> 00:04:32,800 Johnny will. And we're very happy that he agreed to this. It's great. 28 00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:39,640 He will read an excerpt from the book to give a flavour of its narrative of its rhythms. 29 00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:44,920 And this reading will be accompanied by photographs from the text. 30 00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:53,080 The book is illustrated throughout with Johnny's own photographs. And we wanted to give everyone a sense of the images and the text working together. 31 00:04:53,080 --> 00:04:57,310 We're really grateful to Johnny for having prepared this slideshow for us. 32 00:04:57,310 --> 00:05:00,580 After that, we'll turn to the conversation with Samukai and I. 33 00:05:00,580 --> 00:05:11,230 And then after about twenty five minutes of conversation, more or less, we will open for questions from you, the audience out there. 34 00:05:11,230 --> 00:05:15,490 So do send your questions in as as as they come up. 35 00:05:15,490 --> 00:05:23,230 As they bubble up. So it's now my pleasure to introduce first Johnny Pitts. 36 00:05:23,230 --> 00:05:29,090 Johnny is a writer, photographer and broadcast journalist and the author of Afra Pian. 37 00:05:29,090 --> 00:05:34,360 It's a beautifully written Debu work, which explores African and European identity. 38 00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:38,410 It's received numerous awards, including the Decibel Penguin Prise, 39 00:05:38,410 --> 00:05:47,560 the Jilek Prise and also the 2000 2020 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. 40 00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:56,950 There is actually an exhibition of some of the photographs in Affer PIN, which is currently in Amsterdam, one of the cities that features in the book. 41 00:05:56,950 --> 00:06:06,040 And Afra Pian is also being translated into a range of major European languages, including French and Spanish. 42 00:06:06,040 --> 00:06:17,200 Johnny Presents on BBC Radio four is Open Book Programme, and he also contributes words and images to outlets like The Guardian and the New Statesman. 43 00:06:17,200 --> 00:06:22,690 Turning now to my colleague, CIMIC Chegutu. 44 00:06:22,690 --> 00:06:28,250 As you heard, he is an associate professor of African politics and a fellow of St Antony's College. 45 00:06:28,250 --> 00:06:33,370 Samukai I is interested in the social politics of inequality in Africa, 46 00:06:33,370 --> 00:06:39,530 and his first book, The Political Life of an Epidemic, came out this year, 2020. 47 00:06:39,530 --> 00:06:47,950 And as you can tell from the word epidemic, it was a timely publication in this strange year that we've spent. 48 00:06:47,950 --> 00:06:52,680 Prior to joining the Academy CIMIC, I was a medical doctor in the UK. 49 00:06:52,680 --> 00:06:56,000 His national health service, the NHS, 50 00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:06,530 and his new projects are about Africa's place in the global politics of outbreak response and a book about nation, exile and belonging. 51 00:07:06,530 --> 00:07:11,990 So, Gianni Samukai, thank you so much for joining us this evening. 52 00:07:11,990 --> 00:07:15,840 And and for this conversation, I'm really looking forward to it. 53 00:07:15,840 --> 00:07:24,620 First of all, as a kind of warm up, I'd like to invite Gianni, please, to read from Afra Pian along with the images. 54 00:07:24,620 --> 00:07:31,280 Thanks, Gianni. Thank you. It's a great pleasure and honour to be here. 55 00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:40,220 Initially I saw Afro Pian as something of a utopian alternative to the doom and gloom that surrounded the black image in Europe in recent years. 56 00:07:40,220 --> 00:07:47,270 And an optimistic group forward. I wanted to work on a project that connected and presented Afro Europeans as lead 57 00:07:47,270 --> 00:07:52,280 actors in our own story and with all this glorious Afro Pian imagery in mind. 58 00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:57,530 I imagine this would result in some kind of coffee table photo book with snippets 59 00:07:57,530 --> 00:08:03,380 of feel good text to accompany a series of trendy photographic portraits. 60 00:08:03,380 --> 00:08:07,130 There would be images of the success stories of black Europe, 61 00:08:07,130 --> 00:08:16,330 young men and women who street style effortlessly and elegantly articulated and empowered black European mood. 62 00:08:16,330 --> 00:08:24,080 It was a visit to the jungle in colour in 2016, the encouragement to reconsider this approach over some fragrant milky Arabic tea. 63 00:08:24,080 --> 00:08:29,260 Hisham, a young man from Sudan who run one of many small, remarkably organised cafes, 64 00:08:29,260 --> 00:08:33,200 has been living in the jungle for 10 months, told me how he'd lost everything. 65 00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:39,310 He had no surviving family members, had painful memories of the past and tremulous visions of the future. 66 00:08:39,310 --> 00:08:43,520 And we're stuck in this limbo land between Africa and Europe home. 67 00:08:43,520 --> 00:08:52,320 A little of which had miraculously fashioned in his cushion covered cafe and then anonymity as I left his creaking plywood premises. 68 00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:56,360 He suggested that I write about his story about life in the jungle, a request. 69 00:08:56,360 --> 00:09:00,710 I was nervous about. This man was intelligent, articulate and literate. 70 00:09:00,710 --> 00:09:04,190 Wouldn't it be better that he write about the jungle himself? 71 00:09:04,190 --> 00:09:09,290 Maybe I could help attract attention to his writing or publish his story on the website I run. 72 00:09:09,290 --> 00:09:13,850 But what did I personally know about seeing friends massacred, fleeing war, 73 00:09:13,850 --> 00:09:18,920 hiding from a life in shipping containers or on Ill-Equipped boats in order to arrive penniless? 74 00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:27,890 A bunch of cold wind swept shacks in the hinterlands of northern France, apart from what he was telling me after exchanging contact details. 75 00:09:27,890 --> 00:09:31,730 I left the jungle on my bicycle and slowly realised that I was being watched and 76 00:09:31,730 --> 00:09:35,720 followed through the blustery streets of Calais by the French military police, 77 00:09:35,720 --> 00:09:38,060 the John Donnally. 78 00:09:38,060 --> 00:09:45,470 Attempting to enter the white gates of the port to catch my ferry back to the UK, I was stopped before I could even get to passport control. 79 00:09:45,470 --> 00:09:53,030 Searched asked for my I.D., where I was going, where I'd come from, how long I'd been away and why. 80 00:09:53,030 --> 00:09:58,640 Finally, after more questioning and looks of suspicion, I was allowed to enter an official compound. 81 00:09:58,640 --> 00:10:03,890 I'd seen other brown skinned men of my age look longingly at from a distance. 82 00:10:03,890 --> 00:10:08,330 I was in. They were out on like the people I met in the jungle. 83 00:10:08,330 --> 00:10:17,150 I wasn't so much living in limbo. I was living with Liminality. I was in because I had I.D. I had I.D. because I was born and raised in England. 84 00:10:17,150 --> 00:10:21,260 Had a history connected to Europe. Knew how things run. 85 00:10:21,260 --> 00:10:30,170 And yet within this piece of geography, this idea of Europe, I was frequently reminded that I wasn't all the way in one Remembrance Day a day. 86 00:10:30,170 --> 00:10:36,080 I've come to dread for the way spikes and ugly nationalism, which I sometimes find myself on the receiving end of. 87 00:10:36,080 --> 00:10:40,040 I was hit with the old chestnut and told Go back to where you came from. 88 00:10:40,040 --> 00:10:47,300 By a middle aged man red faced with rage and racism, my skin colour disguised various facts, 89 00:10:47,300 --> 00:10:54,620 such as my grandfather having fought for Britain behind enemy lines in the Second World War and winning a medal for doing so. 90 00:10:54,620 --> 00:11:01,580 My skin had disguised my European. This European was still being used as a synonym for why, 91 00:11:01,580 --> 00:11:10,220 if Afro Pian was something that could attempt to address this issue, I needed to find what lay behind or beyond its brand. 92 00:11:10,220 --> 00:11:14,350 Thanks so much, Tony. And that does really give us a lovely flavour. 93 00:11:14,350 --> 00:11:21,590 I think of the book and that kind of teetering between limbo and liminality that you trace. 94 00:11:21,590 --> 00:11:26,870 And it actually bleeds rather effectively into into my kind of ice breaker question. 95 00:11:26,870 --> 00:11:35,150 My if my open a question, as we've been hearing ever pian traces your journeys through some of the major cities of 96 00:11:35,150 --> 00:11:39,500 Europe and your encounter with black communities and their histories in those cities, 97 00:11:39,500 --> 00:11:43,400 often buried histories, invisible histories, obscure histories. 98 00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:55,580 It's a deeply personal journey, but it also deeply minds collective black history and then draws those threads of personal and political together. 99 00:11:55,580 --> 00:12:00,290 Could you just tell us a bit about your own journey in writing the book? 100 00:12:00,290 --> 00:12:08,510 I mean, you talk about that in the book. You know, you take your Eurail pass, you you go to these different cities and you stay in hostels. 101 00:12:08,510 --> 00:12:14,240 But maybe it just give us a sense of how that narrative came together and how you 102 00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:20,990 then saw that that story related to this much bigger story about African Europe. 103 00:12:20,990 --> 00:12:25,400 Well, this journey happened, you know, mostly in 2011. 104 00:12:25,400 --> 00:12:33,080 You know, it's quite a while ago that took the journey. And before Brexit was on the table. 105 00:12:33,080 --> 00:12:45,200 But I started to notice disjuncture between everything that I felt held me together as it was especially pronounced after the 2008 financial crisis. 106 00:12:45,200 --> 00:12:48,980 I think whenever there are economic problems, you start to notice a rise in racism. 107 00:12:48,980 --> 00:12:56,300 People are looking for scapegoats, you know, anywhere but the financial institutions. 108 00:12:56,300 --> 00:13:04,780 But even before that, I think really this book emerges out of the rubble of New Labour. 109 00:13:04,780 --> 00:13:13,520 And I think that there were certain there was a kind of the near of inclusion under Tony Blair's reign that I think I bought into in the early days, 110 00:13:13,520 --> 00:13:23,360 at least certainly before the Iraq war. And I think we all were quite optimistic as young people saw that entering the world, 111 00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:32,100 leaving school and entering into Tony Blair's Britain, that Cool Britannia moment, Britain felt Forward-Looking and multicultural. 112 00:13:32,100 --> 00:13:37,110 And US gradually saw that dissolve under Tony Blair's leadership, actually. 113 00:13:37,110 --> 00:13:47,570 And and as as this country start creaking, I started to notice language being used by people I would once called friends, 114 00:13:47,570 --> 00:13:54,050 especially my my white working class friends I grew up with. And just in general, I start to know goodwill. 115 00:13:54,050 --> 00:14:01,520 I start to notice goodwill crumbling a little bit. So in some ways, maybe this is a dramatic way to say it. 116 00:14:01,520 --> 00:14:07,670 But I think this journey was a journey of of of survival. 117 00:14:07,670 --> 00:14:17,370 It was feeling like this island I'm living on no longer quite resembled home anymore. 118 00:14:17,370 --> 00:14:28,880 And how could I piece the jigsaw of identity together in a way that would not just make sense for me, but make sense for four other black Europeans. 119 00:14:28,880 --> 00:14:33,090 And then also in a in a certain way, make sense to some of my white friends as well. 120 00:14:33,090 --> 00:14:37,400 This this book is about trying to build bridges and trying to tell stories. 121 00:14:37,400 --> 00:14:45,530 In a nuanced way that will hopefully, after people have read it and change their opinions. 122 00:14:45,530 --> 00:14:56,120 So so I think, yeah, there are a bunch of things that that really contribute to me feeling like I had to just leave this country. 123 00:14:56,120 --> 00:15:01,490 And I wanted to go towards Europe because I found, you know, working as a music journalist. 124 00:15:01,490 --> 00:15:10,160 I was astonished by the obsession, this of Anglophone obsession with America and the states and everybody looking to the states for answers. 125 00:15:10,160 --> 00:15:15,170 Whereas I felt there were other countries dealing with the legacy of colonialism that 126 00:15:15,170 --> 00:15:23,210 might teach black people in Britain how to how to deal with this rise in nationalism. 127 00:15:23,210 --> 00:15:31,080 And also, you know, try and create some kind of narrative of solidarity amongst black communities living in Europe. 128 00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:42,090 On that note of kind of sewing together and music, I'm looking at you some because I know heard you came to ask some questions in that regard. 129 00:15:42,090 --> 00:15:46,950 Absolutely. But I just wanted to begin firstly by congratulating you, Johnny, 130 00:15:46,950 --> 00:15:59,070 on what really is a wonderful book and a book that made for an elegant and poignant companion during locked out to 131 00:15:59,070 --> 00:16:09,630 be able to have imaginative horizons of going on a on a travel on a journey with you while stuck in my living room. 132 00:16:09,630 --> 00:16:23,040 You begin the book by talking about Aphro P.M. as a compelling and powerful word, one that might allow you to feel whole and unhyphenated at you. 133 00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:31,110 Just a moment ago, you were describing this sense and this tension between limbo and liminality, both terms. 134 00:16:31,110 --> 00:16:37,680 Connoting a sense of not quite being there yet, not quite arriving, not yet being whole. 135 00:16:37,680 --> 00:16:42,870 And as I started to read your book with this point of departure, you know, early on in your journey, 136 00:16:42,870 --> 00:16:50,730 as you talk about arriving in Paris, you confront, as you describe it, a kind of disquieting expanse of loneliness and uncertainty. 137 00:16:50,730 --> 00:17:02,290 And this phrase, you know, hit me in the chest as I felt it mirrored my own sense of arriving in Europe as a black teenager coming from Africa. 138 00:17:02,290 --> 00:17:08,400 And as you go on your journey, encountering different iterations of what it means to be black in Europe, 139 00:17:08,400 --> 00:17:15,480 you start to fill this empty expanse with the vastness of this category of Afro Pian, 140 00:17:15,480 --> 00:17:23,790 which is at once very enriching, but really invites me to ask you, where do you land? 141 00:17:23,790 --> 00:17:31,030 At the end of it. How do you wrestle with your own sense of what it means to be a black man in Europe today? 142 00:17:31,030 --> 00:17:34,840 Oh, well, that's that's a great question. Thank you, sir. Okay. 143 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:41,670 I think Christopher Hitchens, of all people, once said that the end of every book is a departure. 144 00:17:41,670 --> 00:17:44,850 And so for me and I'm not sure I really landed anywhere. 145 00:17:44,850 --> 00:17:53,010 And in the end, I realised that Afro Pian was was less a destination and more of a departure point. 146 00:17:53,010 --> 00:18:02,370 It was it was not a place that I kind of almost began this journey feeling overconfident about what it meant to be black, 147 00:18:02,370 --> 00:18:07,500 what Europe was and what Afro Pian could be. 148 00:18:07,500 --> 00:18:14,610 And that very quickly began to fall apart. I've got to stop saying this because it's not very good selling point from a book. 149 00:18:14,610 --> 00:18:25,530 I often describe my book as a happy failure. And what I mean by that, I suppose, is the you know, the destination wasn't Afro Peire or Afro Pian. 150 00:18:25,530 --> 00:18:33,420 It was more that Afro pin was a kind of portal into into a different way of experience in Europe, 151 00:18:33,420 --> 00:18:41,290 one that contradicted the kind of homogenised travel narratives that you might read from people like, 152 00:18:41,290 --> 00:18:45,880 you know, Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson or John Morris. 153 00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:55,800 John Morris for me is actually quite interesting because she wrote a trilogy called Pax Britannica, which is all about the British Empire. 154 00:18:55,800 --> 00:19:04,980 And as I was reading, it's such an apologist account of empire. But as I was reading it, the one thing I couldn't deny was that it was compelling. 155 00:19:04,980 --> 00:19:11,850 It was an astonishing way to think about or to experience empire. 156 00:19:11,850 --> 00:19:17,580 And I thought, well, if this is an apologist account, one that sort of depicts the empire as it may, 157 00:19:17,580 --> 00:19:22,440 maybe a little bit problematic, but really just a jaunty old uncle trying to do its best. 158 00:19:22,440 --> 00:19:29,580 I thought maybe I could write the shadow side of that narrative, but in equally as compelling a way, you know, 159 00:19:29,580 --> 00:19:36,030 try to try to really enjoy the beauty of language and the beauty of narrative and try to pull people along 160 00:19:36,030 --> 00:19:43,950 with me where even if they didn't agree with what I was saying or or or or completely hated the idea of Afro, 161 00:19:43,950 --> 00:19:48,410 Pian couldn't not keep turning over and and join in. 162 00:19:48,410 --> 00:19:57,600 You know, I want to join in with this journey. So yeah. Afro Pian lessons a place of arrival more as a place of departure. 163 00:19:57,600 --> 00:20:01,860 Yeah. I mean so that comes across very convincingly in the book. 164 00:20:01,860 --> 00:20:05,960 And something that struck me, you know, I have often thought, 165 00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:14,460 well at least I fought for many years after arriving in the UK that Europe with the UK would always be a point of transit before returning to Africa. 166 00:20:14,460 --> 00:20:20,160 It wasn't somewhere that I could ever belong and legitimately claim a black identity. 167 00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:26,370 And I've been revisiting and reworking that idea in the last few years as I begin to build my home here. 168 00:20:26,370 --> 00:20:29,540 And reading your foray into black Europe, I. 169 00:20:29,540 --> 00:20:36,680 Spans this multiplicity around the meanings of blackness and blackness in Europe in a way that I found both recognisable, 170 00:20:36,680 --> 00:20:41,180 but also that, you know, pulled way beyond my own experience of black identity in Europe. 171 00:20:41,180 --> 00:20:46,340 And that was really enriching and encouraging. That's what that's really great to hear, 172 00:20:46,340 --> 00:20:56,780 because I think one thing that I wanted the book to achieve was for four members of the black 173 00:20:56,780 --> 00:21:03,500 community living in Europe who may be alone to just offer a kind of sense of foundation, 174 00:21:03,500 --> 00:21:08,360 you know, to say that there are others. And this is what they're dealing with. 175 00:21:08,360 --> 00:21:16,580 And, you know, I keep thinking about our our relationship to blackness and how we from very different parts of the world, 176 00:21:16,580 --> 00:21:24,920 but we're held together by this sort of notion of blackness. And so I wanted to try and be imaginative and create a word. 177 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:29,250 You know, it's fluid. It's not monolithic. It's not you know, it is. 178 00:21:29,250 --> 00:21:34,820 But it resonates with you. Then I'm happy. It won't resonate with anybody. 179 00:21:34,820 --> 00:21:39,080 I think there are people in this country, maybe especially with with, let's say, 180 00:21:39,080 --> 00:21:43,670 Jamaican heritage, who my you know, their their sense of identity isn't such a conundrum. 181 00:21:43,670 --> 00:21:47,180 They might feel very attached to the notion of what it means to be from Jamaica. 182 00:21:47,180 --> 00:21:53,510 For me, I wanted to create as a space that that so can sort of slightly wider narrative. 183 00:21:53,510 --> 00:22:00,530 And the other thing we share in common is our mutual love of hip hop, which I greatly appreciated. 184 00:22:00,530 --> 00:22:04,520 The reference is scattered throughout the book. 185 00:22:04,520 --> 00:22:08,180 I mean, you know, very early on, I think it's just an on page six. 186 00:22:08,180 --> 00:22:15,020 You quote the mighty Mos Def, who was a really apt quotation because it ties into what you're just talking about now, 187 00:22:15,020 --> 00:22:24,800 about how in the US, as most deftest commenting, our blackness is often treated in these high and low superlatives. 188 00:22:24,800 --> 00:22:31,850 You know, we are kings or we are paupers. We are queens or we are something quite derogatory. 189 00:22:31,850 --> 00:22:37,280 And as I was thinking about hip hop and the role that hip hop has played in my life, 190 00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:42,020 it's been this tremendous source of communing with black thinkers, 191 00:22:42,020 --> 00:22:47,870 black storytelling and black modes of self-expression, especially when I'm in white spaces. 192 00:22:47,870 --> 00:22:52,940 And now, you know, teaching at Oxford for all that there is to commend this institution. 193 00:22:52,940 --> 00:22:57,720 It's not a place in which hip hop culture particularly thrives. 194 00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:06,560 So it made me think a bit about the kind of intellectual journey that you've been on, how you weave together popular culture, 195 00:23:06,560 --> 00:23:14,180 but you also weave together literature and aspects of social theory neatly tucked away behind the narrative. 196 00:23:14,180 --> 00:23:17,780 And so maybe you could tell us a bit more about how you came to have such an 197 00:23:17,780 --> 00:23:23,780 expansive intellectual repertoire for being able to write a book like this. 198 00:23:23,780 --> 00:23:27,430 I mean, there's an awful lot of learning that's gone into writing this. 199 00:23:27,430 --> 00:23:32,270 Just how did you do it? Thank you. 200 00:23:32,270 --> 00:23:40,800 Ha! I guess I began. 201 00:23:40,800 --> 00:23:47,220 I didn't really begin here. But let's start here. I keep thinking of some of the Harlem Renaissance writers and what was beautiful 202 00:23:47,220 --> 00:23:52,860 about the Harlem Renaissance was how it was a complete scene that was scored. 203 00:23:52,860 --> 00:23:59,130 There was a music. There was a polished political backbone. There was there was art. 204 00:23:59,130 --> 00:24:03,100 There was dance, you know. So it's a complete movement. 205 00:24:03,100 --> 00:24:14,280 And, um. And I think of writers like Langston Hughes, you know, embedded in their words, in their poetry is the sense of jazz. 206 00:24:14,280 --> 00:24:17,820 For me, I'm very much a part of the hip hop generation. 207 00:24:17,820 --> 00:24:25,920 And so it just seemed very obvious to me that that my work should I don't know how much actually comes across, 208 00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:33,960 but even even in the sentence structure, the way I mean, I sometimes use alliterate a little bit too much. 209 00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:38,640 But the sense of of of musicality in my rights, a hope. 210 00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:44,190 Well, it really does come from the sense of from what the Hip-Hop artists were doing. 211 00:24:44,190 --> 00:24:49,830 But even before that, I think one one line that made me want to be a writer. 212 00:24:49,830 --> 00:24:53,250 I mean, one album, really, it was an album by Blackstar. 213 00:24:53,250 --> 00:24:58,530 Most Def and Talib Kweli, which I caught from in the book, which is just an astonishing I mean, it's quite interesting. 214 00:24:58,530 --> 00:25:05,310 I think The Talib Kweli, his brother, teaches law or is a graduate of law at Stanford. 215 00:25:05,310 --> 00:25:09,210 And I think in Talib Kweli we have like a street lawyer. He's sick. 216 00:25:09,210 --> 00:25:14,210 He's got that kind of attention to detail that perhaps his brother took in a different direction. 217 00:25:14,210 --> 00:25:15,630 And then. And you have most death. 218 00:25:15,630 --> 00:25:23,580 And in the album, you know, you have a song like Thieves in the Night, which is about Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. 219 00:25:23,580 --> 00:25:32,670 What an amazing way to introduce young. Talib Kweli has this quote where he says, I speak at schools a lot because they say I'm intelligent. 220 00:25:32,670 --> 00:25:42,050 No, it's some dope. If I was, what could be irrelevant? And I just think that's what hip hop did its best, because it can also go the other way, too. 221 00:25:42,050 --> 00:25:47,160 It can encourage a kind of ignorance, but it's best hip hop can open up the worlds of literature, 222 00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:51,150 can open up the world of politics to people who might not otherwise be engaged in the 223 00:25:51,150 --> 00:25:56,580 same way that the Black Panthers tried to do that with somebody like Emory Douglas, 224 00:25:56,580 --> 00:26:06,930 who would depict in visual forms third world world politics to people who might not, although wise, engage with it. 225 00:26:06,930 --> 00:26:12,420 But yeah, there was one line again to go back to Talib Kweli that he says on the album, which is a look in the skies for God. 226 00:26:12,420 --> 00:26:18,830 What you see besides the smog of broken dreams flying away on the wings of the obscene. 227 00:26:18,830 --> 00:26:23,340 And I think this this book is just me trying to do that over and over. 228 00:26:23,340 --> 00:26:27,750 That one line is trying to invoke that in my sentences. 229 00:26:27,750 --> 00:26:33,860 So it's absolutely hip hop was crucial to my life growing up when school was failing me. 230 00:26:33,860 --> 00:26:44,280 Hip hop was there taking me by the hand seen saying you could be a man of letters in a way that my teachers, you know, never did. 231 00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,300 I remember in to go on a little bit, but I remember like being upset. 232 00:26:48,300 --> 00:26:56,610 I've always been obsessed with words from a young age, but I remember how my primary school was put in to the lowest set, 233 00:26:56,610 --> 00:26:59,820 even though up my white friend was put into the highest set. 234 00:26:59,820 --> 00:27:07,620 And we both knew that I was the the writer, you know, or the one that was the reader, the the one that was interested in words. 235 00:27:07,620 --> 00:27:11,780 And I remember getting told off at once. I remember the teachers. 236 00:27:11,780 --> 00:27:15,570 She was talking about oxygen. Something no air. No, she talked about air. 237 00:27:15,570 --> 00:27:20,280 I remember saying, oh, miss is is a ubiquitous I just learnt about this word ubiquitous. 238 00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:26,010 And I went to try out as seven or eight year old and she told me to stop showing off for. 239 00:27:26,010 --> 00:27:32,820 And there was that constant sort of sense of of of of, you know, don't get above your station. 240 00:27:32,820 --> 00:27:40,340 You know, James Baldwin talks about this, you know, talks about how, you know, as soon as he was born, the world seemed to take well, look him. 241 00:27:40,340 --> 00:27:47,070 And once upon a broomstick in his hand. And he had to say, I know what you're seeing and I know what you're thinking, but I'm not that person. 242 00:27:47,070 --> 00:27:52,680 For me, hip hop was a place that said, you know, you're not that person. 243 00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:55,090 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 244 00:27:55,090 --> 00:28:03,310 Can I just come in there on mentioning one of my favourite writers, Toni Morrison, and what you've been saying about words and word craft, Johnny, 245 00:28:03,310 --> 00:28:11,910 and also narrative and people joining you on your journey, readers joining you on your journey is something I often explore with students. 246 00:28:11,910 --> 00:28:20,280 This idea of narrative as I'm writing writing story or writing narrative as a mode of self understanding. 247 00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:25,560 And that thought came to me again and again and reading this book, because, you know, 248 00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:32,530 your journey of your journey through Europe is also a journey of self discovery at first 249 00:28:32,530 --> 00:28:37,930 and the kind of the first half you are kind of wondering and seeking and then the. 250 00:28:37,930 --> 00:28:48,310 Pace really accelerates as you discover MRSA discovered these rich black histories on the Mediterranean and in Lisbon. 251 00:28:48,310 --> 00:28:52,960 And it's really buzzy and music comes back in the end. 252 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:56,680 The words have this really musical feel to them. 253 00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:07,510 So could you just talk a little bit about narrative and self understanding and that process of of writing as as as as as as. 254 00:29:07,510 --> 00:29:14,810 I mean, sorry to sound naff, but as as kind of discovery, as self discovery and discovery of your community and your context. 255 00:29:14,810 --> 00:29:22,250 Yeah, I think it was I think was Toni Morrison actually, who said I stood at the periphery and claimed a centre. 256 00:29:22,250 --> 00:29:31,950 And and I think the more I travelled on my journey, it was a very tentative start to the journey and I wasn't sure about what I would find. 257 00:29:31,950 --> 00:29:36,700 Somehow you mentioned that that disquiet and expands that lay before me. 258 00:29:36,700 --> 00:29:40,780 And though I mentioned before the Afro Pian wasn't really a place of arrival, 259 00:29:40,780 --> 00:29:51,490 I start to get more confident in my sense of of of where I could find blackness in Europe and and the actually. 260 00:29:51,490 --> 00:29:57,070 The periphery. Yeah. Yeah. Having confidence in claim in the periphery. 261 00:29:57,070 --> 00:30:03,010 A centre, you know. And so by, by the end of the journey I've gone through all these places. 262 00:30:03,010 --> 00:30:10,180 I begin somewhere like Clichy sous Bois which does not feel at all like home, and I feel very much like a foreigner. 263 00:30:10,180 --> 00:30:15,640 But by the end I start to be able to piece together commonalities. 264 00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:28,180 And I think that's one of the virtues of of writing a book, you know, throw from a book of many different points of disjunction, you know, like a map. 265 00:30:28,180 --> 00:30:33,970 You know, Tunisians who had an issue with Somalians I met and Golan's want a problem with cup of Indians, you know. 266 00:30:33,970 --> 00:30:42,970 But if these communities when necessarily always talking to each other in reality through constructs in this book, 267 00:30:42,970 --> 00:30:50,320 I can make them talk to each other through through this through this journey and experience the commonalities. 268 00:30:50,320 --> 00:30:56,980 And so, yeah, I think that in terms of it being a journey discovery, which, you know, 269 00:30:56,980 --> 00:31:09,520 it really was I think it was just empowering to to come face to face with many areas across Europe that were just like the one I grew up in, 270 00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:14,080 you know, and that and an almost like I got the sense of something trans local. 271 00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:21,160 By the end of it, you know, I grew up in Firth Park Multicultural area on the outskirts of Sheffield with these sort of, 272 00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:29,110 you know, convenience stores that sold ingredients that could be put in Ghana and stews. 273 00:31:29,110 --> 00:31:39,560 You know that the kind of geography of my area, I kind of found that all over Europe and that felt very empowering. 274 00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:48,190 One of the encounters that you go into in quite a bit of detail that is written and conveyed with in a riveting manner, 275 00:31:48,190 --> 00:31:51,700 in part because of the urgency of the circumstances that unfolded. 276 00:31:51,700 --> 00:32:04,240 Was your experience with Antifa in Germany and being engaged in protest and thinking seriously about a kind of radical left wing politics, 277 00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:11,380 but also trying to wrestle with the place of black identity on the left? 278 00:32:11,380 --> 00:32:18,970 Now, this is an especially charged political question that we find ourselves wrestling with in 2020, 279 00:32:18,970 --> 00:32:27,850 where to the extent that we take a lead, for instance, from the US, blackness has solidified in many ways as a political identity. 280 00:32:27,850 --> 00:32:32,470 Yet we find in Europe a little bit more disparate or dispersed. 281 00:32:32,470 --> 00:32:38,830 We also find a beleaguered left in many parts of many parts of the Western world trying 282 00:32:38,830 --> 00:32:47,170 to accommodate its commitments to old trade union movement and to the working class, 283 00:32:47,170 --> 00:32:54,010 while at the same time trying to honour the challenges posed in multicultural society and about identity. 284 00:32:54,010 --> 00:32:58,750 So I wonder, just from your experience, you know, in travel and in writing, 285 00:32:58,750 --> 00:33:03,460 how you thought about some of these issues and how you thought about this this politics, 286 00:33:03,460 --> 00:33:10,690 both of identity and of more traditional kind of left wing politics sort of unfolding on the European continent? 287 00:33:10,690 --> 00:33:17,330 Yeah, that's a really good question. 288 00:33:17,330 --> 00:33:30,580 There's a really great conversation between Paul Gilroy and Gary Young where they were talking about political moments that they could. 289 00:33:30,580 --> 00:33:43,090 Anchor themselves to, you know, an eye for Paul Gilroy, it was the Cold War and it was the threat of of nuclear destruction. 290 00:33:43,090 --> 00:33:49,630 And he was and that that mobilised him. You know, he was scared about that and politicised him. 291 00:33:49,630 --> 00:33:56,440 And he wanted to try and work things out. And with Gary Young, he was saying that it was more. 292 00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:04,060 Well, what was going on in South Africa in the 80s and then also the miners strike. 293 00:34:04,060 --> 00:34:12,070 You know, by the time my generation comes around, which were kind of a similar age, as am I. 294 00:34:12,070 --> 00:34:19,480 I feel like the left had been swallowed up a little bit by by the of New Labour. 295 00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:24,160 And I remember to go back to Pogo. He writes he wrote something that was really interesting. 296 00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:30,520 He was talking about how he's old in the mid 90s. He left to go on teaching in the United States. 297 00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:38,670 And when he returned, his old comrades on the left and now suddenly management consultants. 298 00:34:38,670 --> 00:34:43,570 And I just think that the interesting idea of people on the left being management consultants, 299 00:34:43,570 --> 00:34:46,690 you know, and that's kind of what happened with New Labour. 300 00:34:46,690 --> 00:34:54,490 And I think my generation I mean, I'm speaking specifically, I think you probably had a different experience being from Zimbabwe. 301 00:34:54,490 --> 00:34:57,850 But for my generation in Britain, I think we were kind of apolitical. 302 00:34:57,850 --> 00:35:03,160 You know, there was that notion that Francis Fukuyama put to the world about the end of history, 303 00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:11,590 the fall of communism, no alternative vision for the future other than neo liberal capitalism, you know. 304 00:35:11,590 --> 00:35:16,750 And so in my as I came of age, 305 00:35:16,750 --> 00:35:26,230 words like ghetto fabulous were being used was a popular place in London called for Vellis Chic or an awful name for four for a club. 306 00:35:26,230 --> 00:35:31,490 And people were playing at being left. 307 00:35:31,490 --> 00:35:34,070 You know, what did been left wing really mean? 308 00:35:34,070 --> 00:35:42,990 You know, maybe wearing a Che Guevara shirt or, you know, got commodified and there was really there was really no way to be left wing. 309 00:35:42,990 --> 00:35:52,720 And it's interesting for me now to sort of see some of the issues that have emerged during and after Brexit, the financial crisis. 310 00:35:52,720 --> 00:35:56,860 Donald Trump, George Floyd. Black Lives Matter. 311 00:35:56,860 --> 00:36:02,740 You know, there are things that young people can connect to. 312 00:36:02,740 --> 00:36:07,870 It's very obvious that that things aren't right. 313 00:36:07,870 --> 00:36:14,500 I don't know if you remember this, but during the sort of heyday of the noughties to try and call somebody racist, 314 00:36:14,500 --> 00:36:20,050 people would just I mean, there was that notion of always playing the race card. You couldn't call anybody racist full of no money. 315 00:36:20,050 --> 00:36:24,640 They just weren't having it. And you were thought to be some kind of extremist. 316 00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:34,660 Now, I think as the system sort of is unfurled and revealed itself through through through these really charged moments, 317 00:36:34,660 --> 00:36:41,410 it no longer seems an overreaction to say that there is a huge amount of systemic racism in this country. 318 00:36:41,410 --> 00:36:52,660 And so I'm so I'm seeing young people politically engaged in a way that my generation wasn't really on. 319 00:36:52,660 --> 00:36:58,040 And I don't know if that really answers your question, but for me, it's quite it's quite exciting time. 320 00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:03,640 That maybe is comparable with with with the 1980s where where I'm seeing people 321 00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:08,470 organise around these these specific movements in order to create some kind of. 322 00:37:08,470 --> 00:37:14,650 To think, I mean, you know, in America, you know, the word socialism is being used. 323 00:37:14,650 --> 00:37:17,680 That's amazing. For all the things that are going wrong in the world, 324 00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:24,700 that kind of socialism is kind of entering the mainstream is kind of incredible that people even talking about it is incredible. 325 00:37:24,700 --> 00:37:29,170 So that gives me you know, that gives a little bit of room for hope, I think. 326 00:37:29,170 --> 00:37:34,600 I think you're right. And I would say that one of the beautiful things recapturing your book is that in documenting the 327 00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:41,260 diversity of lives of the Africans and other black people that you encounter on your journey, 328 00:37:41,260 --> 00:37:45,400 you know, the when you situate that within a wider political frame, 329 00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:52,540 it becomes very clear that there are these powerful links between history and histories of imperialism, 330 00:37:52,540 --> 00:37:58,780 between various forms of class based on labour exploitation. And, of course, between racial identity. 331 00:37:58,780 --> 00:38:05,650 So I think that this serves, again, as a powerful feeder into a more engaged and progressive politics for a younger generation. 332 00:38:05,650 --> 00:38:14,290 Yeah. I mean, as well as it was for me was it was you know, I'm not a historian, but it was a really interesting way in for me. 333 00:38:14,290 --> 00:38:21,040 To think about history, because I was trying to provide a very contemporary portrait of Europe and of blackness, 334 00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:27,640 and of course I was be naive because to provide a contemporary portrait, you have to you know, 335 00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:34,860 every individual story from the people that I met would you could place that in history. 336 00:38:34,860 --> 00:38:38,620 It didn't just emerge from nowhere. It came with the baggage of history. 337 00:38:38,620 --> 00:38:43,760 And so, you know, the book really could have been initially maybe a third of the size. 338 00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:48,520 Then each story, each individual lost everything that I seen on the ground. 339 00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:52,390 I started to see the shadows and the energies behind it. 340 00:38:52,390 --> 00:39:02,740 And for me, it was a way to make history breathe. I caught a scholar, Michelle Wright, who says, you know, history is not behind us. 341 00:39:02,740 --> 00:39:07,300 It's all around those in changed form, which I think is really interesting. 342 00:39:07,300 --> 00:39:13,660 It ties him, though. Physicists say when they talk, they talk about time as as kind of well, 343 00:39:13,660 --> 00:39:19,120 people don't really actually know what time is, but how it's just different configurations of the same ingredients. 344 00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:27,680 And I think that's a really interesting way to look at history and the history of blackness when trying to portray something that's contemporary. 345 00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:35,830 Absolutely. Trying to draw out that emphasis on what is around us, the history that's around us. 346 00:39:35,830 --> 00:39:42,370 I'd also like to think about the audience all around us listening and enjoying. 347 00:39:42,370 --> 00:39:49,900 And I've got a bunch of questions that are kind of, you know, coming through here on on on my phone. 348 00:39:49,900 --> 00:39:56,770 So is it. Is it okay? John, it's so the way we kind of open arms to questions from the audience. 349 00:39:56,770 --> 00:40:06,140 So so there's one which has a kind of like a bridge question here that that I've picked to just to start us off on this phase. 350 00:40:06,140 --> 00:40:15,490 It's from someone called Chris. And and they say the way you captured, must say, was one of the most striking and beautiful things I've read. 351 00:40:15,490 --> 00:40:20,650 No one has captured the city, the soul of the city, better than that. 352 00:40:20,650 --> 00:40:25,150 Can you tell us a bit about what Marseilles means to you? 353 00:40:25,150 --> 00:40:30,790 Oh, yeah. I'm so glad somebody asked the question about Marseilles. I get really romantic about my in the book. 354 00:40:30,790 --> 00:40:34,050 I probably allow myself to be a little bit too romantic about my. 355 00:40:34,050 --> 00:40:45,040 It is a city with a lot of issues, a lot of corruption, human trafficking, drug trafficking, very pronounced right wing presence as well. 356 00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:51,960 Some that I found quite interesting, though, is that the locals of a spokesman for the National Front in Marseilles, 357 00:40:51,960 --> 00:41:03,980 I don't if it's a little scene, but was it was a black guy. And so I'll say, you know. 358 00:41:03,980 --> 00:41:09,820 I mentioned I'm from a place called First Park in Sheffield, which is very multicultural. 359 00:41:09,820 --> 00:41:16,400 A huge Yemeni community, big Jamaican community, Somali community, white working class community. 360 00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:23,840 When I visited Marseilles, it struck me as an I jokingly refer to it as such, sometimes as first park on the sea. 361 00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:29,150 You know, it's a it's a city where despite all the inequality that is there, 362 00:41:29,150 --> 00:41:35,570 it's a city where working class culture is lived in the centre of the city. 363 00:41:35,570 --> 00:41:42,920 It's so much a part of the city's mythology. In a way that you can't safer cities. 364 00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:45,380 Any other city in France. But really across Europe, 365 00:41:45,380 --> 00:41:56,090 there's nowhere like Marseilles where you're confronted with with multiculturalism and with working working class multiculturalism. 366 00:41:56,090 --> 00:42:01,130 There's nowhere, I don't think, in and you're maybe even including London, 367 00:42:01,130 --> 00:42:06,290 where you can find a working class life lived in the centre of the city in such a way. 368 00:42:06,290 --> 00:42:16,940 So I felt immediately at home there. It's really one of this that is kind of a birthplace of friendship. 369 00:42:16,940 --> 00:42:25,370 Pop, one of the biggest friendship groups. I am from Marseilles and encoded in arms. 370 00:42:25,370 --> 00:42:33,680 Music is a lot of Egyptian mythology. And initially, when I hear that music, I heard that music before going to Marseilles. 371 00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:42,560 I thought they were trying to do what the Wu Tang Clan did, which was kind of like a ticker, a culture like like they use Chinese culture. 372 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:47,120 I just claim as their own, as a way of escaping the reality in front of them. 373 00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:53,750 Whereas in actually what I am were doing were were honouring the culture that was right on the doorstep, 374 00:42:53,750 --> 00:42:59,390 which was a Mediterranean culture, which was a North African culture. 375 00:42:59,390 --> 00:43:07,670 And actually, I think of Paul Gilroy's concepts of the black Atlantic and often say this. 376 00:43:07,670 --> 00:43:15,620 If you were to take Paris and Cairo, you're never gonna confuse those two cities with each other. 377 00:43:15,620 --> 00:43:19,940 You know, you'll never say, oh, that looks like Paris when it's Cairo and vice versa. 378 00:43:19,940 --> 00:43:26,210 But if you take the cities from France and Egypt that are on the Mediterranean coast from those two countries, 379 00:43:26,210 --> 00:43:29,930 Alexandria and Marseilles, there's the shared culture. 380 00:43:29,930 --> 00:43:42,140 So it's a way of thinking about an identity that can be rooted in a place, but it can also be fluid and look beyond nationalism. 381 00:43:42,140 --> 00:43:49,810 So that's what Marseilles is for me. It's a black Atlantic City. It's a it's a city that is is connected to Africa. 382 00:43:49,810 --> 00:44:01,790 The same in Marseilles that it turns its back on France to stare out lovingly, you know, the Mediterranean, the Maghreb on on the nation. 383 00:44:01,790 --> 00:44:08,270 Here's a here's a perhaps more more difficult question. 384 00:44:08,270 --> 00:44:18,200 Challenging question from Katherine. Your honesty about shifts in the idea of affer pian is really compelling. 385 00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,150 How do you feel about it now? 386 00:44:20,150 --> 00:44:33,950 Looking back and dare I say this word, the B word, has Brexit shifted your sense of the availability of F.P. an identity to us at all or not? 387 00:44:33,950 --> 00:44:41,030 It hasn't, actually. If anything, it's made me want to double down on the notion of Aphro Pian because as you know, 388 00:44:41,030 --> 00:44:47,600 these individual European countries kind of start to think in a more insular, nationalistic way. 389 00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:57,680 For me, it's more important ever that the black communities that maybe feel marooned in each country build something larger than that nation. 390 00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:03,530 So for me, it's as important as ever to think about about about Europe and about what it means to be black and European 391 00:45:03,530 --> 00:45:11,240 and to try and build kind of networks of solidarity in the face of this rise of Right-Wing Racism. 392 00:45:11,240 --> 00:45:20,750 In terms of the word Afro, Pian again, it was something that I just I just wanted to sort of move through, 393 00:45:20,750 --> 00:45:26,810 you know, and it was like I say, I said before it really wasn't a destination. 394 00:45:26,810 --> 00:45:30,180 I don't walk around, say, you know, I'm Afro P and I'm enough ropin. 395 00:45:30,180 --> 00:45:38,060 It was more just like a almost a you ristic, you know, a way, a way of stepping into a world that could, 396 00:45:38,060 --> 00:45:47,090 you know, evoke my by explaining my experience of sort of plurality, you know, so. 397 00:45:47,090 --> 00:45:53,720 So for me Afro pain is just a useful term. And also like a term that is built on like a built an online community around. 398 00:45:53,720 --> 00:45:56,740 I mean, what's great? There are so many gaps, though. 399 00:45:56,740 --> 00:46:03,260 The worst thing anybody could do with Afro Pian is look at it as some definitive account of the history of black Europe. 400 00:46:03,260 --> 00:46:10,900 It's not that it's a personal account that hopefully arrives at something that is universal. 401 00:46:10,900 --> 00:46:17,830 But what's been amazing about it is that people have noticed gaps in the work. 402 00:46:17,830 --> 00:46:22,730 People said you didn't go to anywhere near enough of Eastern European countries. 403 00:46:22,730 --> 00:46:26,690 You know, there are huge countries in the south of Europe. 404 00:46:26,690 --> 00:46:30,890 I mean, you know, Spain just breezed through Spain, Greece to Italy, 405 00:46:30,890 --> 00:46:34,880 which is two places which are particularly interesting when you're looking at what's happening 406 00:46:34,880 --> 00:46:41,360 with with with refugees trying to escape Libya and Sudan and going to these countries. 407 00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:50,360 And what's been amazing is that like this book emerges from this online community, which is after opinion, Common initially was a Facebook page. 408 00:46:50,360 --> 00:46:57,000 And people would guide me, you know, from the community to say, oh, if you're going to Lisbon, you need to meet my friend here who will take you here. 409 00:46:57,000 --> 00:47:01,280 And then what I want the book to do now is to go back into that community. 410 00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:04,580 And so there are people who are now writing from the past. 411 00:47:04,580 --> 00:47:09,200 But, you know, we had somebody who was writing about growing up black in Slovakia. 412 00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:16,130 You know, we had somebody who wrote about growing up gay mixed race in the Isle of Wight. 413 00:47:16,130 --> 00:47:20,500 We're starting to see people get in touch. Who said you didn't write about this place? 414 00:47:20,500 --> 00:47:25,110 But I. I'm from here. Can I contribute? And that's what Aphro pian should should be. 415 00:47:25,110 --> 00:47:32,120 It should be the book especially should be just a tool to encourage people to share their stories. 416 00:47:32,120 --> 00:47:45,500 That's a really positive charge in that I've I've picked this question because it takes us back to the photographs with which we began. 417 00:47:45,500 --> 00:47:53,080 It comes from Phil. How did you choose the photographs you've chosen to include in the book? 418 00:47:53,080 --> 00:48:00,710 I'm really curious about this, too. Presumably, the ones that made it in are parts of a much broader project, much broader whole. 419 00:48:00,710 --> 00:48:04,820 Do you have any particular organising principles or elements that you were 420 00:48:04,820 --> 00:48:09,850 looking for when you were choosing their photographs for the different pages? 421 00:48:09,850 --> 00:48:17,480 That's a great question. I use the photographs strategically throughout the book to give people a break. 422 00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:26,390 You know, it's like I always appreciate when authors write shorter chapters or just give, just give, give you the chance to sort of ponder something. 423 00:48:26,390 --> 00:48:29,060 And so for me, it's like I always try to place the images throughout. 424 00:48:29,060 --> 00:48:35,570 So when when it's going you when you've read something that might be heavy or or or tricky or even you disagree with, 425 00:48:35,570 --> 00:48:44,280 you can just take time out with a photograph. And it kind of allows me to quietly trying to dictate kind of mood as well. 426 00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:50,790 But much like I started out wanting to tell success stories of black Europe at the beginning of the book, 427 00:48:50,790 --> 00:48:56,240 and then it became more complicated and hopefully more nuanced that that happened with the images as well. 428 00:48:56,240 --> 00:49:04,100 Initially, I was taking photographs with a very shallow depth of field portraits, almost like there's a book called The Sartorialist, 429 00:49:04,100 --> 00:49:12,680 which is sort of these beautiful photographs of people with great street style and the sort of they look amazing and almost like them. 430 00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:20,120 There's a strong tradition in African photography of of people were in their Sunday best, you know, of people posing. 431 00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:28,370 So I started out in that tradition as I was going along. And I started to do this as I was travelling. 432 00:49:28,370 --> 00:49:37,990 But actually, really after after the troubles were over and I had this collection of photographs that I was looking at and trying to edit. 433 00:49:37,990 --> 00:49:45,080 I don't want to reject that a little bit. And there was less interested in posturing. 434 00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:47,060 More interested in posterity. 435 00:49:47,060 --> 00:49:55,640 You know, I wanted to show what an everyday black life look like now, you know, and and what I found was that it was a lot of other time. 436 00:49:55,640 --> 00:50:05,530 It was the mistakes. The photographs that weren't decisive, you know, on Cartier-Bresson talks about the decisive moment. 437 00:50:05,530 --> 00:50:09,640 And I was trying to capture the decisive moment, almost like a hunter. 438 00:50:09,640 --> 00:50:14,620 And those images, I had to reject that kind of way of shooting that emerges from colonialism. 439 00:50:14,620 --> 00:50:19,780 He developed the idea of hunting wild game in French Africa, you know. 440 00:50:19,780 --> 00:50:27,010 You know, he developed that whole idea when when it was out in the Ivory Coast, I believe. 441 00:50:27,010 --> 00:50:30,730 So I start to reject that and look at the images on the periphery of the collection of 442 00:50:30,730 --> 00:50:34,690 mistakes and images that I didn't I didn't get any sense that they were good photographs. 443 00:50:34,690 --> 00:50:41,770 And suddenly, because I spent a lot, you know, years with this collection, they start to have meaning for me. 444 00:50:41,770 --> 00:50:46,330 I started to talk about an everydayness that was so important for my book. 445 00:50:46,330 --> 00:50:57,160 And I should say that if anyone's in Amsterdam, they should go and try and see the show full gallery, because it is is a really great representation. 446 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:05,470 We call it a brick elhaj of blackness. Instead of showing individual images, we put all the images of together in this kind of mosaic. 447 00:51:05,470 --> 00:51:08,590 And so you look at it from a distance and it's kind of this huge mosaic. 448 00:51:08,590 --> 00:51:12,730 But when you tune in, you see all these different fragments of blackness you seen. 449 00:51:12,730 --> 00:51:17,590 You see sometimes the success stories you see in everydayness. You see sometimes people struggling. 450 00:51:17,590 --> 00:51:24,370 And that for me to get that kind of broad notion of what it means to be black in the images was really important. 451 00:51:24,370 --> 00:51:26,350 So it's I'm really proud of that exhibition. 452 00:51:26,350 --> 00:51:32,260 I feel like it's a much truer actually representation of the photographs than you can even find in my book, 453 00:51:32,260 --> 00:51:37,090 in the photographs, out of that sense of music that you that you talk about in the book. 454 00:51:37,090 --> 00:51:42,100 You know, it's words and images that come together in a mosaic mosaic of A4. 455 00:51:42,100 --> 00:51:53,830 Pian. I mean, think, you know, there's a question here that relates directly to that metaphor you just used about hunting and colonial hunting. 456 00:51:53,830 --> 00:52:02,260 And it's it's from Lucier and it is this is the question. 457 00:52:02,260 --> 00:52:09,820 You talk about museums in the book, especially in Belgium, the really bizarre museum atmosphere. 458 00:52:09,820 --> 00:52:19,810 And how could museums develop displays that are not about colonial triumphalism that avoid that? 459 00:52:19,810 --> 00:52:26,150 How indeed can they better reflect a free European? 460 00:52:26,150 --> 00:52:29,590 That's not a question that I feel equipped to answer, really. You know the truth. 461 00:52:29,590 --> 00:52:34,060 Very fraught moment. Yeah, I you know, I don't know. 462 00:52:34,060 --> 00:52:46,210 One thing I will say is that I remember seeing an artist, Cherie Sumba, who's a Congolese artist, was invited to create some. 463 00:52:46,210 --> 00:52:52,750 Are that critiqued the museum. And so for me, I think it's about inviting in. 464 00:52:52,750 --> 00:53:00,010 I don't know how I feel about to. And you know that the way they've changed it because it was a museum of a museum, you know, 465 00:53:00,010 --> 00:53:09,460 it was dark and there was no way you could enter that museum and actually come out with a good idea or come out, 466 00:53:09,460 --> 00:53:15,400 come out with the idea that the Congo Free State was something that was benevolent enough. 467 00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:22,390 There's no way. It's very dark, even though it's trying to show this this triumphant notion that there that the 468 00:53:22,390 --> 00:53:27,160 King Leopold and the Belgians were in the Congo to try and civilise the savages. 469 00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:30,740 You know, when you go there, it's written all over, all over that museum. 470 00:53:30,740 --> 00:53:34,060 But it was a it was it was a dark venture. 471 00:53:34,060 --> 00:53:47,440 And what I think sometimes should happen is that artists and curators who are representative of the of the people who were subjugated by such places, 472 00:53:47,440 --> 00:53:55,300 I think they should be invited into reimagine and reinterpret these spaces rather than just glossing over the spaces in general. 473 00:53:55,300 --> 00:54:00,460 But but there are there are people who who are better position to answer that question than I am. 474 00:54:00,460 --> 00:54:01,150 You know, 475 00:54:01,150 --> 00:54:09,520 because I have the whole ethos of my book really is to look at black Europe from the street level and to to not to not think of it in institutions, 476 00:54:09,520 --> 00:54:15,150 but more look at it as a lived experience out on the streets. 477 00:54:15,150 --> 00:54:24,550 There've been some very interesting, for example, indigenous Australian artists who've engaged with the Pitt Rivers collection here here in Oxford, 478 00:54:24,550 --> 00:54:29,680 which is one example of what you were telling you about. If anybody's you to the person who ask that question. 479 00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:36,100 So I forgot the name, but you should cheque out a movement that's upon by somebody called on you. 480 00:54:36,100 --> 00:54:44,360 Catchy one, Wambo. And he's got a movement called Return of the Icons, which is all about returning objects to Africa. 481 00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:52,740 And he's a brilliant person, actually. He he created a series which can try and get those produced by Pebble Mill in 1992 called Black on Europe, 482 00:54:52,740 --> 00:55:03,030 which is an amazing six part series, looking at the black lives, just as you know, right around the moment of the EEC, you know. 483 00:55:03,030 --> 00:55:08,670 And so, yeah, look up on you, cut you Anbu and return of the icons. 484 00:55:08,670 --> 00:55:17,910 You'll find some some some better answers there than I can give. We're moving close to the end now, sadly. 485 00:55:17,910 --> 00:55:24,930 But I do have. May we have time for one, maybe two questions. 486 00:55:24,930 --> 00:55:31,470 So here's a question from Christopher. Thank you so much for your time, your comments. 487 00:55:31,470 --> 00:55:38,610 How has affer PIN shaped your understanding of multiculturalism today? 488 00:55:38,610 --> 00:55:45,780 And during Blairism? It's quite a complicated question. So take it as you as you will. 489 00:55:45,780 --> 00:55:54,140 Yeah, I'll leave it at that. How how has ever pian shaped your understanding of multiculturalism today and Blairism? 490 00:55:54,140 --> 00:56:00,870 I think what happened with New Labour is the kind of corporate multiculturalism emerged where 491 00:56:00,870 --> 00:56:06,510 you had I mean politicians in general seem to stop talking about their big dreams for society, 492 00:56:06,510 --> 00:56:12,180 more about what was good for business. And so you start see, I've been thinking about this a lot. 493 00:56:12,180 --> 00:56:27,360 You know, you might have somebody from Delhi with me up with somebody from Lagos in a business lounge at Narita Airport and and think, oh, 494 00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:32,790 multiculturalism in a bottle is there's a kind of elite ism attached to the idea of multiculturalism, 495 00:56:32,790 --> 00:56:39,200 where where it's all about the about global capital, you know. 496 00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:42,510 And what happened with something quite interesting with New Labour is that, 497 00:56:42,510 --> 00:56:46,530 on the one hand, seem to sort of promote a kind of notion of multicultural Britain. 498 00:56:46,530 --> 00:56:51,870 And on the other hand, you know, the MP for my local constituency where group, which was bright side, 499 00:56:51,870 --> 00:56:58,710 was David Blunkett, who famously went on record to say that Britain was being swamped by asylum seekers, you know. 500 00:56:58,710 --> 00:57:06,540 So for me. Well, what I'm interested in is trying to put together a kind of multikulti culturally in 2.0, 501 00:57:06,540 --> 00:57:12,150 which tries to attach it to working class culture again and and tries to ask, 502 00:57:12,150 --> 00:57:18,060 you know, white working class people to broaden their sense of what it means to be working 503 00:57:18,060 --> 00:57:23,600 class for a start and to look at how some Solidarity's might be forged there. 504 00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:30,000 That could. But it's amazing to me how so many Working-Class people I know from Sheffield White with us, you see Boris Johnson as an ally. 505 00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:34,960 And it's the same in the States that they see somebody like Donald Trump as an ally. 506 00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:41,550 You know, Abbott is fun on a night out kind of thing. And for me, I think what I wanted to do. 507 00:57:41,550 --> 00:57:46,390 I want to I want to insert multiculturalism back into that identity of the working class 508 00:57:46,390 --> 00:57:51,600 that actually these people are the enemies of the working class rather than people who. 509 00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:53,940 Who are your friends? They're not you. Donald Trump's not your friend. 510 00:57:53,940 --> 00:57:59,750 If you pull on class, there is actually a question that relates to the previous one. 511 00:57:59,750 --> 00:58:06,640 And then I'm just going to turn to to try to squeeze in before we close. 512 00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:16,470 Sarah asks that affer opinion is a is a word to create a black European identity. 513 00:58:16,470 --> 00:58:22,970 But do you think that the word means the unification of very different classes of black people living in Europe? 514 00:58:22,970 --> 00:58:29,190 And, you know, is it is it a kind of like an umbrella term in a way. 515 00:58:29,190 --> 00:58:33,680 But bringing different class fractions, different classes together? 516 00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:43,140 I think she's I I'm interpreting here, but, you know, she's worrying about those different classes coming together under that one heading. 517 00:58:43,140 --> 00:58:52,870 Yeah. I mean, I hope so. You know, this is not a term I think there's there's a place for. 518 00:58:52,870 --> 00:59:01,540 Various configurations of blackness. You know, I don't want to critique even something like Afropolitan ism, you know, 519 00:59:01,540 --> 00:59:07,300 pull for me Afro Pian can't be about sort of the success stories of people who 520 00:59:07,300 --> 00:59:13,720 can afford to move to big cities and and working in the media industry or, 521 00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:18,820 you know, it has to involve working class people. 522 00:59:18,820 --> 00:59:22,900 And so that's I think that was the beginning of my journey really is, you know, 523 00:59:22,900 --> 00:59:33,070 the word emerged from when when David Byrne signed Zap Mama and together they coined this term Afro peon and emerged from music and. 524 00:59:33,070 --> 00:59:36,580 But what I realised is that what was happening with Afro Pian within the realm 525 00:59:36,580 --> 00:59:42,880 of music is they always involved stylists and and and fashion photographers. 526 00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:50,890 And for me, I mean, not only did not include my own story, that notion of this really successful lateral pian identity, 527 00:59:50,890 --> 00:59:59,440 but it had you know, it had to take into account black men and women who work as cleaners, 528 00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:08,620 security guards, street sweepers, as you know, as as mothers, as far as you know, 529 01:00:08,620 --> 01:00:14,830 had to go beyond this sort of notion of this almost quite so capitalist notion of the success story. 530 01:00:14,830 --> 01:00:23,040 So I hope that Afro Pian is something that the working class people feel, you know, resonates with their experience. 531 01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:27,940 It was certainly built from those ingredients because with where I grew up. 532 01:00:27,940 --> 01:00:34,180 Thanks, Jenny. With regret. It's been fantastic. 533 01:00:34,180 --> 01:00:42,760 We're going to have to move to close. I'm just going to say a few closing words and then. 534 01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:51,880 And then thank you very much. This brings us to the end of another fantastic evening here at the UPDF Ultimate Picture Palace. 535 01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:56,400 Part of the big tent live events. And thanks so much for hosting us. 536 01:00:56,400 --> 01:01:04,180 A huge thank you to Johnny Pitts and to Samukai Chegutu for your inspiring conversation. 537 01:01:04,180 --> 01:01:11,140 Thoughts. And for everything that you have told us about FFP and Johnny, I mean, you took us on it. 538 01:01:11,140 --> 01:01:12,520 I think across this past hour, 539 01:01:12,520 --> 01:01:19,000 you've taken us on a journey through the book and you've taken us as surrogates on your journey through through black Europe. 540 01:01:19,000 --> 01:01:27,340 And that's been a great privilege and a great pleasure. I can really recommend this book to everyone who hasn't yet discovered it. 541 01:01:27,340 --> 01:01:33,310 I'd like to thank everyone out there, to all the viewers at home for watching for your amazing comments and questions. 542 01:01:33,310 --> 01:01:38,230 Really sorry that they were literally just kind of pouring into my phone a moment ago. 543 01:01:38,230 --> 01:01:45,070 So I'm really sorry if we didn't manage to get round to picking all the questions. 544 01:01:45,070 --> 01:01:53,770 There were loads. And then I just like to invite everyone to join us for the next big tent live event. 545 01:01:53,770 --> 01:01:55,890 On Thursday, the 5th of November. 546 01:01:55,890 --> 01:02:02,980 And remember, remember the 5th of November at five p.m., live from another Oxford venue, which will be the Hollowell, 547 01:02:02,980 --> 01:02:13,750 a music room when we'll be hosting a live performance from opera soprano Dean Benjamin and pianist Nicole Panitz. 548 01:02:13,750 --> 01:02:20,200 And I also, for those of you perhaps missed some of this or want to see it again. 549 01:02:20,200 --> 01:02:25,690 The recording will be up on Writers Make Worlds. Thanks so much, Sunny. 550 01:02:25,690 --> 01:02:29,170 Thanks, Samukai. And thank you, everyone, for joining us. 551 01:02:29,170 --> 01:02:55,059 And hope to see you again soon. Bye.