THEATRE WORLD MOURNS THE PASSING OF ACCLAIMED ACTOR
(GIN) – African master of the spoken word, renowned actor and musician Sotigui Kouyaté, passed away Apr. 17 in Paris, France, reportedly of pulmonary disease.
Born in 1936 in Mali, he was an oral historian or “griot”, whose knowledge was authoritative among the Mandinka people.
He explained his heritage in an interview: “…I’m a storyteller, a griot. Rightly or wrongly, they call us masters of the spoken word. Our duty is to encourage the West to appreciate Africa more. It’s also true that many Africans don’t really know their own continent. And if you forget your culture, you lose sight of yourself. It is said that “the day you no longer know where you’re going, just remember where you came from.” Our strength lies in our culture. Everything I do as a storyteller, a griot, stems from this …”
A longtime collaborator of British film and theatre director Peter Brook, Kouyate wrote and staged a number of plays himself. For his role in the movie “London River”, he won Best Actor title at the Berlin Film Festival and the French government's highest cultural honor at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, when he was made an officer of arts and letters.
In an unrelated development, legendary Nigerian bandleader, King Sunny Adé, was forced to call off his North American tour, scheduled to start in Canada and come to the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan in May after two percussionists in his 17 piece band died in a car accident.
Attempts to get American visas for replacement members of the band proved unsuccessful.
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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS
SELF DETERMINATION AND
NATIONAL UNITY
A Challenge for Africa
Edited by Francis M. Deng
Most African countries suffer from crises of national identity that are rooted in the formation of pluralistic states, characterized by gross inequities among the component groups. Oftentimes, the state gets captured by dominant groups that then define the national identity framework on their terms to give themselves the preeminent status as the favored citizens who enjoy all the rights and dignity of citizenship.
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NEW SUDAN IN THE MAKING?Essays on a Nation in Painful Search of Itself
Edited by Francis M. Deng
“New Sudan” is a concept for radically reforming Sudan’s governance system by addressing the national identity crisis that has been responsible for the wars, the instability and the failure of the national building project that have afflicted the country since independence. The gist of the crisis is that the dominant Arab group, which is in fact an African Arab hybrid and a minority, perceives the country in its image as an Arab-Islamic nation. This inevitably discriminates against the non-Arab and non-Moslem
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1 comments:
wow!See what beautiful human being GOD had created. God bless his soul! I always said oral history is as good, if not better than written history.
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