Der kenianische Schriftsteller Binyavanga Wainaina erzählt in diesem literarischen Essay, ausgehend von einem Interview mit dem senegalesischen Musiker und Politiker Youssou N’Dour, von Kolonialismus und Schwimmen lernen, von Politik und Poesie, von Musik und essenzialistischen Verständnissen von Kultur und Identität:

“37. ‘The sectors of art and entertainment are not priorities for the African political class… there is a certain freedom, a freedom to create. That’s what happens in music… or Nollywood films. These are people who try to make things happen by their own means. But things work. These things work precisely because they are not the priority of the political elite and the government. Since they don’t care much for art and culture and entertainment, people in those fields have space to initiate different things, their own initiatives. That’s partly why we’re most successful in those areas.’

38. And in your hung-over scrambled brain, you know of thick soups of organic matter that sprouted in a thousand creation stories of people: swamps, eggs, milky-ways, from primemother. Close your eyes when you dive your head in. See Stars. Look at them every Dakar night, tiny splashes of vomited milk all over the black night roof of all the Sahel.

39. Youssou N’Dour is talking.”

Binyavanga Wainaina 2014: It’s only a matter of acceleration now. Chimurenga Chronic. http://chimurengachronic.co.za/binyavanga-youssou/, 21.12.2017.

 

Comments are closed.