Five years ago, I sat squeezed on the hard wooden benches of the open-air theater of Ouagadougou’s National Arts Training Institute to watch the premiere of Burkinabe choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s Kirina. The excitement in the packed theater was palpable: here was one of the biggest names in African dance, with many international awards under his belt, presenting a new show, and people buzzed eagerly about the show that spoke about Sundjata Keita and the great Mali Empire. It was after the Battle of Kirina that Sundjata Keita proclaimed the Manden Charter at Kurugan Fuga and founded the Mali Empire, which at its height stretched from Senegal to Burkina Faso.
The ninety minutes that followed were filled with incredible life and energy: nine dancers, six musicians, one slam-artist narrator, and dozens of extras in constant movement to a sublime score composed by Malian singer Rokia Traoré. The storyline was not a straightforward one; those looking to brush up their knowledge of Manden history went away disappointed. Instead, Kirina evoked moments from the epic of Sundjata Keita and the rise and fall of the Mali Empire as a springboard to talk about modern tragedies.
In this interview about how the Manden charter has influenced his life and art, Coulibaly says that through Kirina he wanted to talk to Europe about migration; link some of those anonymous souls who wash up desolately onto shores of the Mediterranean to a past of grandeur. The dancers in Kirina, one critic noted, constantly return to the plié, that movement of rootedness fundamental to African dance. Firmly rooted to the earth, the source, the dancers take the energy and the rhythmic force to spring to new movements. That description can perhaps be transposed onto Coulibaly’s work: from African roots he proposes, through the universality of emotion, new readings to seize the present, and shape the future.
Yarri Kamara:
You are originally from western Burkina Faso, an area under Manden influence. Growing up did you feel the legacy of the Manden Charter in your daily life? Is that why you created the show Kirina? Or were you driven to evoke that historical moment because most Africans today are unaware of it?
Serge Aimé Coulibaly:
Both. I spent all of my childhood immersed in the Manden world. I attended primary school in a small village called Sido, in Burkina Faso’s southwest and very close to the border with Mali. Although it was a Senoufo region, its cultural imprint was Manden. All the music we listened to was Manding music. We grew up impregnated with a strong culture, but without really realizing it. Culture is naturally all around you. You eat it, you soak it up every day. But at school, we were indoctrinated by everything French. They taught us French history. You didn’t hear much about Manden history, but you were immersed in it. Only later in life you realize its impact.
In 2003, I was a dancer in Alain Platel’s C de la B company in Belgium. It was a big company and there were more than forty dancers in the show I was in. I was the only African. And at one point, I was really homesick, I wanted to go back home. And I could only find my home through music, but not just any music: Manding music. For the show, I had to create a solo to a piece by Mozart. I put on the music and it didn’t speak to me at all. I tried everything but nothing came. All the Europeans listened to Mozart and said “Oh yes, this is what I will do.” I saw that and I despaired. I ended up putting on two CDs at the same time: Mozart and Salif Keita. I was able to create on Salif Keita’s songs, and as Mozart was playing at the same time, I noticed the accents that came together. And little by little, when I managed to create my solo, I took out Salif Keita and kept Mozart. There was a strength in my solo that people couldn’t define; it wasn’t Mozart, it was Salif Keita.
As an artist today, I realize that there is still little taught about the Manden world. When you bring up the Manden Charter, people’s reaction is often “No, that’s not true.” It’s as if the world had colluded that a whole region of the world, the place where humanity was born no less, knew nothing. That a whole region was without a strong culture, without knowledge, without traces of things from its past. It’s mind-boggling. For an artist in Africa today, there is a responsibility, whether you take it on or not—and I take it on—to be a spokesperson for a part of Africa that has profound and important things to say, things that the world can learn from. With respect to ourselves, this is also how as Africans we can rediscover ourselves with pride. We can go back to our roots to stand proudly and confront the world.
YK:
What is your favorite article of the Manden Charter and why?
SAC:
Definitely the article that says “every life is a life.” One life is not more respectable than another life, more valuable than another. This is something that is fundamental for the world in which we live today.
When we look at the global movement of our world, we observe that there are hierarchies of life, and we give little consideration to some lives, especially African ones. We accept to watch thousands of young people die in the Mediterranean; it doesn’t move us. On the contrary, we even encourage their deaths in the sea. We have reached a point of insensitivity where even the media no longer reports on such deaths. And even worse, a few years ago, Carola Rackete, a woman in Italy who had saved migrants, was tried and imprisoned for saving human lives. We have reached such a level of insensitivity because we—I am speaking as a Westerner now—don’t consider the other person as a full human being, a human being of the same value as us. If two French people drown in the Mediterranean, we’ll be talking about it for a week, and not only the Western media, but even the African media will pick it up. We would talk about it as if it were more important than the other deaths that occur every day.
When I consider another person as a human being on the same level as myself, the consideration I have for them is not at all the same as for someone I consider as less than me. One is not welcomed the same way if you are a prince or a beggar. This is generating a lot of frustration in our world. There are some who consider that they are entitled to more. And that incites rebellion, and demands, and so on. As a result, we live in a world that is continually destabilized, all because a human life is not always considered a human life.
To take it to another level, some countries have the full right to produce nuclear weapons, to do whatever tests they want. No one says a word. But others are not allowed nuclear weapons, because they are not considered mature enough to keep us safe, whereas we have to accept the first group of countries as mature. The very base of the world’s instability is linked to the non-respect of the principle that all human lives are equal.
YK:
The Manden Charter also instituted sanankunya, that is a joking kinship, a social institution whereby there is a joking relationship between people which helps remind everyone of humility. This joking kinship is still practiced in most West African countries. What does it represent for you as a social institution? Do you think it could contribute to easing tensions in the region, tensions that today are increasingly becoming ethnicized?
SAC:
It is thanks to sanankunya that West African societies have lived in relative peace until today. If I take the case of Burkina Faso, when there is a problem between two ethnic groups and the sanankunya of one or the other arrives, they defuse the situation through humor so easily. When I was a child, there were often problems between farmers and herders, as can be expected, when livestock ate farm produce and so on. We would always call on the other person’s sanankunya to talk to them and calm the crisis. It’s a practice that regulates society in an incredible way. At least, in traditional life. In city life things become more complicated, as societies become more modernized. Even myself, a human being from West Africa but living elsewhere, when I go back to Burkina, I often get irritated when someone in the spirit of sanankunya starts attacking me, making jokes at my expense. I feel like saying why are you saying that? I have to appeal to my traditional side to stay calm and accept the jokes.
As with every practice, there may be excesses or abuses, but all in all sanankunya does much to make it possible for people to live with each other, for society to remain solid. It could even be applied to religion, as religion is another institution that regulates society.
YK:
Article Two of the Charter divides the society into different clans with different roles. There is the nyamakala clan who are to dedicate themselves to telling the truth to the chiefs, that is to say, to speak truth to power. As an artist, you must love that. But the article goes on to say that they have to defend by word the established rules and order throughout the empire. During your artistic career in Africa, which part of this article has been most applied to you? Have you been told more often that you have rocked the boat too much, or have you been accorded artistic freedom to create?
SAC:
I grew up in a very political environment. I was often with older brothers who always talked politics, and I was what was called a “pioneer” under Thomas Sankara’s revolution. I was a teenager when Sankara died and that period really marked me: all those popular revolts that took place in Burkina after his death. In 1989, there were violent demonstrations everywhere. I took part in a lot of those marches.
When I started creating my shows, the political aspect was primordial for me. I also liked to provoke; saying things that could shake up authority was something that excited me enormously. However, it was in 2007 that this desire really took concrete form. I created a show initially called When I was a Revolutionary which I changed to Solitude of a Man of Integrity. I created it for the twentieth anniversary of the death of Thomas Sankara. I was threatened, told not to do it. Several people said to me, “no one talks about Sankara, how can you dare do a show about him?” I had an uncle who worked in parliament at the time. He called on me to bring me to reason. “You can be crushed in this country,” he warned. The only thing I said that shut him up was “In what year did Sankara become president? In what year did he die? I’m right in the thick of that period. If I do not say what I think, I am fleeing from my responsibilities, it means I am not taking my human life nor my profession seriously enough. At my age, Sankara was already a president.”
The national television broadcaster came to film the show and it made the news. But to my great surprise, when I watched the reportage of the show, they talked about everything but Sankara. You couldn’t tell that the show was about Sankara. It was quite strange.
In 2014, there was another show, Sleepless Nights in Ouagadougou, which talked of popular revolt, of youth taking power, with a very outspoken songwriter, Smockey Bambara, on stage with us. We went very far this time, because we actually named the standing president in the show. We had been explicitly told not to go ahead with the show. The risk was so high, that every time I left the house, I would take a different route. My uncle, the same one from before, came to the dress rehearsal. He said “You are betting on the fall of Blaise Compaoré. If he doesn’t leave, then it is going to be you to leave the country.”
When we performed the show, we were actually performing our lives. We didn’t even feel like we were acting. You’re on stage, with all this adrenaline and an electrified audience thinking “these people are crazy, they are going to get us into trouble.” What was magic about the show was that three days after its premiere, the government did fall. It was a wonderful thing. After that we found it difficult to perform the show because the adrenaline was gone. It was as if the juice of the performance was gone.
Being an artist is a mission. I’m on a mission trying to say things in places where not everyone wants me to be, but I have this access to a large number of people. To be able to perform in front of five hundred, or even one thousand people, is an incredible opportunity. As the course of our world is not going very well, and moreover I come from a continent that the rest of the world is ignorant about, it is important to say things. And not only to the government. My mission changed somewhat after Sleepless Nights in Ouagadougou. All my earlier shows were very engaged and linked to Burkina. After Sleepless Nights I had the impression that I had achieved something, even if I know that it was just a happy coincidence, so I shifted direction. Today I am more focused on saying things about the world. This is also what led me to the subject of the Mali Empire. Through the show Kirina, I actually wanted to talk about migration. I wanted to speak about those Africans who wash up on the shores of European beaches, like human wrecks, to speak about where they came from, to let the world know that in the thirteenth century, the Manden was ahead of the world in terms of how to create society. While some of the world was in a state of barbarity, in the Manden, we were organized. Addressing migration was a way of linking these people stranded on Europe’s shores to the great past of this part of West Africa. And also of reminding us of the movement of history: at one moment we were at the zenith, and then we tumbled down. Things can change at any time.
YK:
I had the good fortune of attending the premiere of Sleepless Nights in Ouagadougou before Blaise Compaoré’s fall; it was indeed electrifying. With Kirina, and its evocation of Manden history, you were addressing the whole world. You travel a lot touring the globe with your shows. Is there an unexpected part of this world where you felt that the Manden Charter or more generally the Manding epic held a particular resonance?
SAC:
Let me start by West Africa before moving beyond. There you can feel that people are really immersed in Manden culture. After working on Kirina, I became more attentive to griots when they were singing, listening carefully to those phrases they use to awaken the greatness that lies in each of us. When the griot starts talking about your family name and listing your ancestors, there is this pride that is inexpressible. And you see people ready to give all the money they have to the griot, because they have made us more human than human. And in the words of the griots, or Manden songs in general, you can hear traces of the Kurugan Fuga, the Manden Charter.
As for the Charter’s resonance outside of West Africa, for some reason a place very far from the Manden comes to mind. I worked in a small town in northern Western Australia, called Broome, two and a half hours by plane from Perth, which is the closest city—that’s how remote it is. There was a very large Aboriginal community in Broome, as well as a mixed-race community thanks to Chinese and Japanese people, people from Asia who arrived in the 1920s to work in the pearl industry and who formed couples with Aboriginal women that gave rise to such incredible mixtures. You look at the people in Broome, you wonder where on earth they come from. It is very beautiful. But there are also a lot of Aboriginals who walk downtrodden, relegated to the margins of society, segregated. It felt like apartheid. You look at the Aboriginals and you wonder “Wait, doesn’t all this land actually belong to them?” But there they are, destitute. And the Manden Charter resonates, by absence of application. The charter contains the principle of mutual aid. When you have something, you share it with others, so that everyone can feel at ease in their homeland, and that in turn protects the homeland. In Africa, if somebody is rich, you can be sure that they are taking care of an extraordinary number of people. This is deeply rooted. If I have something, it means that others have a part. But we can also forget this. When I return to Burkina Faso, with my Western mind-frame, and people start sharing out my things, there is an initial resistance. You want to center things around yourself.
In Broome, it was so clear that nothing was shared. And it was violent to observe. Luckily things are changing, I hear that more and more Aboriginals are entering the Australian senate and parliament. If the Manden Charter, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, were truly applied, humanity would live better today. But in the current situation, it is precisely those who try to apply these principles who get attacked.
YK:
Article seventeen of the Manden Charter is very surprising. It says “Lies that have lived for forty years should be considered like truths.” Can you suggest an interpretation of this article for us?
SAC:
I wasn’t familiar with this article beforehand. I think that it comes from a particular context, a particular time. If a lie survived, that was because the lie regulated society, it kept society peaceful. If we want to live together, we somehow have to accept the lie, because confronting it may create more problems than it solves. Forty years, in Sundjata Keita’s time was roughly the human lifespan. If a lie survived a lifetime, it meant that society needed it. Later, generations that follow, in another era, can shake up the lie to expose the truth. New generations will propose something else.
Yarri Kamara is a writer, translator, and policy researcher. Of Sierra Leonean and Ugandan origin, she spent 17 years living in Burkina Faso. Yarri’s essays have appeared in Africa Is A Country, The Republic, Lolwe, Courrier International, and Welt-Sichten. She won a PEN-Heim Translation Grant for her translation of Monique Ilboudo’s novel So Distant From My Life (Tilted Axis Press, 2022). Her research work revolves mainly around cultural industries’ policy with organizations such as UNESCO. She currently lives in Milan. She is co-editor of Sahara: A Thousand Paths Into the Future (Sternberg Press, 2023) and a member of the Artistic Advisory Board of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara.
"C La Vie" opens Culturescapes 2023 Sahara on October 1, 2023. Book your tickets here.
Images: Serge Aimé Coulibaly & Faso Danse Théâtre. Kirina. 2018 © Sophie Garcia
