 It's a very special lecture to celebrate Sua's centenary anniversary and we are happy to be part of it. And I would like to introduce the persons on the podium. I'll leave two of them now and talk about the very last one. Who is chairing the function? So our chair is Professor Mushu Badirin. I'd like to say a few things about Professor Badirin. Professor Badirin is a professor of law at the Sua School of Law and the current chair of the Center of African Studies, University of London. He was head of the Sua School of Law from 2009 until 2012. Until then he was professor of law at Brunel University at Great London and has held academic positions as lecturer, senior lecturer and reader at the University of Nottingham, the University of West England, West of England, Bristol and the University of Southampton. Professor Badirin has also been a visiting professor to the American University of Paris in France and the Islamic Sciences University of Malaysia. Professor Mushu researches, he teaches and publishes in the areas of Islamic law, international law, international and comparative human rights law and law and development in Africa. He has been a consultant on human rights and Islamic law for different government departments and institutions and he was appointed as a member of the UK Foreign Secretary's Human Rights Advisory in April 2013. Professor Badirin has published widely in this area of expertise and has been invited to give papers at many national and international conferences, workshops and seminars. He is the founding co-editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights and is on the pictorial board of different academic journals. Professor Badirin was appointed to serve as the UN independent expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan by the UN Human Rights Council from May 2012 to December 2014. He is a qualified experienced barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the trustee of the international African institutions. Ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome our chairperson, chair chef. I would like to invite the director of the Institute of African Studies, Professor George Chikata, to formally welcome us. Let's welcome him. Students of the University of Ghana, alumna and faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the Centre for African Studies, other schools of the University of London, Professor Moshid Badirin, our chair for this evening's lecture, Dr. Gaskisli Hayford, our speaker for this evening, Mr. Nick Butler, Ms. Anamuti, and our own main beside the stage, co-ordinators of this event, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really honoured to welcome you to this event. It's one of several to mark hundred years of soar. As one of the first institutes of African Studies established in Africa, we are especially pleased to hold this lecture. Particularly because it speaks to the work of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Ghana. Hundred years is worth significance in the life of an educational institution, in that it is long enough for the institution to make and remake itself. And I think so has no difference with this regard. So has, as you know, was founded by the British state to support its political, commercial and military presence in Asia and Africa by training colonial administrators, commercial managers, military intelligence officers, as well as missionaries, doctors, teachers in Asian and African languages, and also in the customs, religions, laws and histories of the people in the places where they were expected to stand as part of the colonial enterprise. From these beginnings, soar has over the years become a world-class institution for training citizens of the world with an interest in studying the languages, cultures and societies of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. As the soar's website points out, combining language, scholarship, disciplinary expertise and regional focus, and with the largest concentration in Europe of academic staff concerned with Africa, Asia and the Middle East, makes soar an indispensable interpreter in a complex world. This can also be seen in the impressive body of scholarship in our meeting for soars, which all of us as academics can attest to, as well as the influence of its alumni around the world. I thought it was remarkable that soar's president is no other than Grisha Marshall, one of Africa's most influential leaders, long respected for her immense contributions to education policy in Africa and to promoting the rights of women and children. I think it signifies how far soar has come. Several Ganyans who have been of great service to our university and our country were trained as soars. They include, to mention only a few, Professor W. C. Echordania, the mentors professor of law at the School of Law, who was awarded his PhD in law in 1961. The late Professor John Evans, Fifia Tamils, law professor at the University of Ghana and former president of the Republic of Ghana, Professor Nia Shikote, former dean of the School of Law, and Miss Samyan Kuma, parliamentary candidate for Jomoro in the forthcoming election, a former chair of the Convention People's Party. The University of Ghana was a college of the University of London until 1961 when it became a fully-fledged university. As part of its accession of independent, the University of Ghana established the Institute of African Studies in 1961, four years before the Centre for African Studies was established at Soar. I like to think that this institute was a model for civilized institutes and centres of African studies around the world, including that of Soar. At its official opening in 1963, when it had been in existence for a few years, Kuma laid out clearly a vision for African studies in African university, vastly different from that which had driven the establishment of African studies centres outside the country. In short, he called for a revolution in African studies. He said, and I quote, one essential function of this institute must surely be to study the history, culture, institutions, languages, and arts of Ghana and North Africa in new African-centered ways, in entire freedom from the propositions and presuppositions of the colonial epoch, and from the distortions of those professors and lecturers who continue to make European studies of Africa the basis of this new assessment. By the work of this institute, we must reassess and assess the glories and achievements of our African party and inspire our generation and succeeding generations with a vision for a better future. But you should not stop here. Your work must also include a study of the origins and cultures of the peoples of Africa present in the Americas and the Caribbean, and you should seek to maintain close relations with these scholars so that there will be post-fetalization between African and those who have their roots It is this vision that continues to animate us here at the Institute of African Studies and it drives our teaching, our learning, our knowledge production and dissemination and all our outreach activities. We hope that it is a vision that will become increasingly shared by all institutions that study Africa, including SOAS. How we can achieve this is to deepen our cooperation and mutual learning. And we hope that this lecture will be the first of many such examples of such mutual cooperation. In that spirit, I would like to wish to us a happy 100th anniversary and wish to us the best for its future. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Chikata for the welcome remarks. I would now like to call upon our chair, Professor Abadirian to make a few remarks and then introduce the speaker. Professor Abadirian. Hello. Well, good evening everyone and thanks for coming. I am in stand on the protocol laid by Professor Chikata Erwin. I must begin my response by thanking the Institute of African Studies here at the University of Ghana, Lagoon. Particularly the director, Professor Duti Chikata and the registrar, ladies and gentlemen, we are here today as a team for hosting us. We are really, really highly honored to be collaborating with you on this. This lecture is one of the special lectures organized by our center of African studies in West of London of which I am the current chair to commemorate the centenary of our university at the School of Oriental and African Studies in West of London. These special series of centenary lectures are all part this evening. It's in recognition of the extraordinary 100 years of SOWAS's history. I say this because I mean, SOWAS can proudly boost a very high profile Ghanaian alumni set as was mentioned by Professor Duti earlier. I mean, the former president of Ghana, which she mentioned and also the daughter of the first president of Ghana like that. Now, SOWAS is quite, it has a lot of alumni all over Africa. I'm just coming from Nigeria where we met many significant and high-profile alumni of SOWAS also. Now, last month, as part of these centenary lectures, we hosted the popular Nigerian playwright, the Nobel Prize winner, in Ghana in London where he gave a lecture in one of our centenary lectures. And we'll be holding another lecture in South Africa in March 2017 at Fort Harri University which incidentally also is celebrating its own 100 years this year. So, I mean, SOWAS is really moving places. We have also held other alumni events in New York and Hong Kong and we'll be holding another alumni event in New York in April 2017. And to my mind, all these activities including today's lecture demonstrates what an important space SOWAS provides for discussion for debate and asking questions that matter. And this is why in our centenary year we have launched the questions worth asking can be so that our students and academics can keep on asking and answering today's most important questions. We ask questions such as what happens after war? Is there a solution to the world's refugee crisis? Should we all speak the same language? What makes a global citizen? Will there ever be a quality university? And in the context of recent events we will perhaps also be asking what happens after Donald Trump has been elected as President of the United States? And we could also ask is Africa really rising? It is true to say that for the past hundred years we have been asking such questions and through this campaign we hope to create opportunities for more students and seek support for scholarships and student experience initiatives. We want also to promote more academic projects and endow posts such as mentioned by Pope Sir George earlier, collaborations with institutions like the Institute and more about this campaign on our website if you look at www.soassoas.org. I encourage you to have a look and be able to really see most of what we are doing. Now in continuity with our tradition of asking questions that matter I'm highly honored to introduce to you the speaker of our Centenary Lecture tonight, that is my colleague Dr. Casey Hayford. Dr. Casey Hayford is himself president of the Centenary Lecture tonight. Having obtained a P.A.P. in African history from soas he is also a soas honorary family. Thus is a leading British curator, cultural historian and broadcaster. He was born into an illustrious family with Ghanaian roots. His father, J. Casey Hayford was a renowned lawyer and politician. Whose novel, Ethiopia Unbound is in early in the 20th century. Thus is an alumnus of soas who have made significant contribution to soas' work and to British society generally. Among some of the contributions he has made in British society is that he was one time executive director of Arts and Strategy for the Arts Council in England. He also led the British Museum's Diversity Strategy and he directed Africa 05 the UK's largest-ever African Arts Festival in which more than 150 venues worked in partnership with the BBC to realize more than 1,000 events celebrating African culture. But perhaps thus is best known as the presenter of the two series of BBC Force Lost Kingdoms of Africa aired in 2010 and 2012 through which he raised important questions. Challenging Hegel's 18th century proposition that Africa has no historical parts in the world and had no movement for development to exhibit. He is currently working on a project with the National Cultural Gallery in England on a history of the movement for the struggle over the abolition of slavery as told through portraits. Tonight Dr. Gus Casey Hayford will be speaking to us on an intriguing topic the place of heritage in forging confident futures go back for that which you have forgotten. This title is based on an old guy named Akan Probar and encapsulates the focus on issues around heritage, history and identity. I believe that we will really enjoy him tonight and it is my great honor to now invite my colleague Dr. Casey Hayford to deliver his lecture. Thank you everyone. It's so good to be here. The plane as it taxis across the runway into the terminal I did think it's been far too long but every time I come to a car I feel like I'm coming back home so it is glorious to be home and thank you so much for the welcome everyone here and thank you to SOAS and thank you to LEGON for all this possible and to everyone who has made me feel so welcome. It's glorious to be here and to be thinking about these topics of heritage which are things that have driven me my entire life and it's someone actually asked me earlier is this the talk about Donald Trump and maybe everything is now about Donald Trump and it is it is a very interesting period to spend some time outside of Britain to be given a moment to reflect on this very very odd existential crisis at the western world and indeed my native UK seem to be going through. I mean Britain witnessed a particularly odd form of national crisis a crisis that's been mirrored by similar house of existential ants from many parts of Europe and the US and there seems to be a collective scream of panic as the accumulation of generations of migration and demographic shifts have left an increasing number of Euro-Americans feeling powerfully threatened and it's forced many to reflect on what they value what they really think about who they are who they think they want their leaders to be their law makers what they want their communities to look like and I think it's in part because they see and they feel the weighting of western metropolitan demography tipping away from white Europeans and they feel slightly threatened the historic status Crow is actually being rocked I see it as something like the final death rattle in the extended death scene of the Enlightenment as the western establishment witnessed a kind of natural conclusion to a process that actually begins here it begins when Elizabethan traders come down the west coast of Africa in search of golden slaves it's a passage of history that began with the British initially reaching out to trade but then to partner and then slowly to control and eventually to ruthlessly colonize and perhaps unconsciously they activated a process of cultural and economic transformation that ironically centuries later would result in sons and daughters vampire feeling that Britain that Europe, that the US might rightfully and naturally be places of refuge and my own parents that they left these shores on the Nelda Dempster 9 ship in the 1950s to make Britain their home and they followed and were followed by many others from newly independent African West African nations and they were migrants who would through their own hard work and perseverance contribute greatly to the reshaping of post war Britain the two perhaps two and a half generations on the very and very complex legacies of this phenomenon have grown to become the major contemporary agenda right and for western media and it's an issue that has left many Europeans feeling deeply unsepled and it struck me, particularly in the last few days that what many Euro-Americans seem possibly most concerned about is what they perceive as being a loss of narrative control, a loss of purchase upon their traditional historic blankers a loss perhaps of a sense of heritage and the erosion of these intangible almost ineffable things has left them reeling, lamenting mourning the passing of something which in a way is deeply not nebulous but at the same time which is very very important for want of a better word they feel a sense of a loss of story story, heritage history matter, they really matter and one of the news stories that I followed over the last year has been the trial in Mali of Ahmad al-Fahki al-Madi he's a member of the Mali based al-Qaida militia and Sadi and he was involved in the 2012 destruction of the 10 mausoleums and religious sites in Timbuktu and these are sites that date back to the 14th century, the golden age of the Mali empire you may have followed it in the news as well and it's wonderful that they've been repaired but to listen to his testimony was chilling, I mean this wasn't vandalism, these weren't thoughtless acts one of the only things that al-Fahki when he was first asked to identify himself in court was that he was a graduate that he was a teacher he wanted the world to know that he was a graduate and a teacher this was deeply considered a waging of war in the most powerful way that could be envisaged the destruction of narrative the destruction of stories the destruction of nine tombs and the central mosque and perhaps as many as 4,000 manuscripts was a considered act they understood the power of narrative to hold communities together and conversely they understood that in destroying stories they hoped to destroy people but just as Anzadeem was driven by a powerful narrative and ideology so was the local population's defence of Timbuktu and its libraries these were communities who had grown up with stories of the Mali Empire lived in the shadow of Timbuktu's libraries and listened to the songs and the stories of origin they weren't about to give up on that history on that heritage without a fight and over months of the Anzadeem invasion Mali Empire they risked their lives to secrete and to smuggle documents to safety and do and they did what they could to protect the historic buildings and to defend the ancient libraries and although they weren't always successful many manuscripts were thankfully saved and now as one of its perpetrators its main perpetrators has been jailed each of the shrines damaged during the uprising has been rebuilt and the 14th century mosque that's the symbolic heart of Timbuktu has been restored and we can reflect upon the deeply positive undercurrent of this story that even in the very bleakest periods of occupation enough of the population of Timbuktu would simply not bow to men like Al-Baqir they wouldn't allow their history to be wiped away and anyone who's visited that part of Mali will understand why stories why narrative why histories are so important this really matters this is part of a recurrent echo across our history of ordinary people making a stand for their story story, heritage history are important this really matters in terms of great pleasure particularly to come here to be given the space to reflect on the power of heritage it's in my mind the topic that underpins so much contemporary regional and political outlooks that drives so much current politics and remains the major catalyst of contemporary culture I've always felt Ghana is a nation that was created by historians romantics and storytellers its name was taken from the great ancient West African Kingdom a great way for Mali and the griots and the libraries its flag was derived from the Pan-African colours that were first used on the medieval castles of Gondori in Ethiopia this is a nation that was founded as a story as much as it was geography building narrative rootedness has always been at the heart of so much of its history and its culture and Ghana's story is fittingly fascinating for a narrative of storytellers the tale of the first Sub-Saharan British colony to gain independence the place that produced the first African novel the African colony that sponsored biplanes that flew over enemy lines in the First World War that challenged colonialism from its very institution and fought it up through the highest British courts the home of the Golden Steel and of Luscious Kentakemen it's a place driven by a need to declare its own story to define its cultural footprint and to celebrate its heritage story, heritage, history, matter but here their importance and resonance has been particularly special I mean according to Greek mythology Prometheus stole fire from the gods and Nancy the comic hero of Ghana and Fable was far, far more audacious he sought the very fabric of conscious being the element that would truly elevate him about other living things this spider wanted the ingredient that was essential to binding people together and defining them the crucial building block of states the thing that if we want to contest the kind that we rally around and Nancy wanted the story this kind of traditional stories were not just the intellectual confectionery of childhood but the integral fabric of traditional law of science of art when paired with real power narrative was the very bedroll of social order the underpilling of our nation's identity and the founding fathers of the Asante state in his new kingdom the Asante he chose to build a sense of unity amongst his people to bind the fledgling state into an unestalable nation to do it through narrative whilst geographic boundaries of the nation would grow and they would change whilst policy and personnel would inevitably shift it was a fundamental underpinning story that was impregnable they knew that to build a sustainable opposition to build identity in the face of political instability and division one must have a shared sense of culture they used stories to give people a sense of place to underwrite laws and offer legitimacy and context and where needed to provide moral guidance to broaden minds to give hope but in my mind perhaps most powerful to draw a coalesced state together delineating who the Asante were and who they were not they configured the state that centuries on continues to be known known for its stories of origin and found ways to institutionalize the celebration of those narratives through the most glorious material culture and they recruited creative specialists from across West Africa and beyond to capture and reflect the state's strength to show its reach and ambition through the most beautiful things building a coherent culture upon the idea of dynamic heritage was important from its conception the Asante used heritage it utilized culture as a catalyst for a kind of perpetual adaptation from the state's very institution it forged a conceptual distance between the head of state and the narrative between which he sat there was a recognition that whilst individuals with a semi-diety like the Asante he could be vulnerable the lessons of history could be a font a bedrock a mechanism for underpinning a state these histories represented a body of principles and precedents that made an agglomeration of varied peoples into a single successful state with its foundation the Asante state instituted a kind of perpetual war upon hearts and minds a campaign waged beyond the battlefield to seduce neighbors and to culturally win over the banquish with disarmingly beautiful things to use and to utilize the most beguiling stories the most captivating and exquisite objects as weaponry in a battle to consolidate the new kingdom it became a culturated it became a way of life it continues to define not just but also everyone, every culture that they touched the idea that beautiful stories the beautiful objects the beautiful tradition should augment the core function to state was absolutely integral I've often thought this incredible emphasis on narrative legacy has driven the Asante's nation difficult beginning and precarious early history it's a state that was almost purely born out of the force of will of its founding figures its founding king Osai Tutu and his intellectual and spiritual guide must have looked back across western civilizations for inspiration they must have looked at the great medieval states like Mali and learned from their stability and longevity they must have observed great traditions of preserving record and how knowledge of heritage could make strong cultures truly great and so they adopted and fostered goldsmithing traditions cross-printing and weaving traditions drum and saw making traditions that each was given a special status and the state didn't exploit these trade skills just for state vanity just for financial gain they sought to invest and imbue these crafts with deep narrative resonance nurturing within and through these artifacts a kind of cultural reservoir of histories to underpin their new nation they were determined to tie people together with a kind of irresistible force to pull their citizens deep into its story through symbols and traditions of the Asante court and the newly established and the newly established body of shared myths of origins and they sought out the most dazzling things to represent this sense of place and the connection to history and when the Asante were actually overrun by the British and prempers at summer it was around the symbols of state that they ran in it was the golden storm that the Asante looked to and even today the Asante remains blessed with some of the most sophisticated creative industries in West Africa their sons and daughters have continued to find success in helping us to think about how we present ourselves to the world I think there are reasons why many of the world's most successful designers, architects lawyers, journalists, novelists politicians are of Garnet and descent it's a particular portfolio a particular constellation of professions that are driven by the same skills that have always been nurtured by a traditional course deeply acculturated skills that have over the course of history promoted the state's might and ambition through words visual arts and buildings heritage matters but there's another kind of Garnet in heritage a historical legacy of the Akan cultural impact that now exists beyond the realm of Akan geography that is part of a very, very rare constellation of cultural practices that have transcended their geographic origins to be adopted by the whole of human current these were cultural traditions and patterns of heritage preservation that have endured even tougher tests than anything I've spoken about up until now the robustness and durability of these traditions manifested in the most hostile brutal cultural theatre ever consumed the transatlantic slavery and this beautiful object that's up on the slide is as I'm sure you know it's an Akan drum and its story is something that needs to be known it's something that in my mind should be on the national curriculum of every school in every nation in various ways drums like this have crossed the Atlantic in the pre-colonial and colonial period and in various ways they survived attempts to silence and suppress drum usage were rarely successful resisting controls that in positions placed upon music only served to make drumming really special it made drumming political it changed, it charred percussion with a particular kind of romantic energy a sandy drumming that survived friendly interventions the Atlantic crossing and the regimes of the plantation colonies changed it it became an oral record of human endurance and a focus of resistance as a cultural field of translation few other areas of creative practice have acquired such political potency in my mind and this drum is one of the oldest surviving African American objects which was collected in the early 1700s in the colony of Virginia now half as I'm sure you know of the United States was acquired around 1735 by an Irish physician called Karen Sloan and he went on to found the British Museum about 250 years ago and he was also a slave owner and to say it sits within the British Museum part of a collection perhaps the greatest cultural instantiation of the Enlightenment ever created if you ever go to London do go and see it and this object sits in the basement Africa suite of galleries part of a collection of more than 8 million objects that combine to tell a very particular story of Britain in relation to the world and this instrument was one of the very first objects identified and absorbed into the collection and even as this drum was being collected and integrated into the British Museum it seems to have acquired a set of contested histories today it's accepted by scholars to be an Asante drum a Garnet object that was transported across the Atlantic from West Africa in the late 17th or early 18th centuries and wandered its way on to that Virginia tobacco plantation where it came into possession of Hans Sloan thus becoming one of the first objects in this collection but there are other versions of its provenance that suggest that it was carved by an enslaved African American and there's even one that says that it was actually a very early replica of a Garnet drum or indeed that it was actually made by a Native American but what can be indisputably said about it is that it's a deeply beautiful and powerful object it's about the size of a human torso and its exterior I don't know if you can see it it's wooden and it's carved with simple decoration of textile like stripes and chevrons and as you probably know in its original context it would have been used within a family of drums as a central focus in formal ceremonies and an expert in drum communication would have used it to wrap an audience in sound and praises and that 1730's identification of this as a Native American object was in complete sympathy with other European Enlightenment thought Africa at that time was seen as having little or no culture part of that process of diminishment of a culture to justify the colonialism that would follow the philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would later conclude that Africa was the land of childhood which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history enveloped in the mantle of night and like many of his contemporaries Hegel conjectured that as Europe emerged into the light of enlightenment the African continent had been left locked in a culture-free state that resembled Europe's dark and distant past and so you can understand the curator coming from this thing and labelling it not an African drum not an African American drum and that American Indian drum held its label as its sole source of identification and that remained unchanged unchallenged until 1906 but the power the power of the Asante narrative is a formidable thing and 1906 is important 1906 is the year that Freud began work that would produce his three essays on the theory of sexuality when Einstein published his first paper on relativity and Henry Ford became convinced of the possibility of a mass market but beyond that there was a number of creative visionaries that began to map out what the cultural ramifications of these changes might be now these new technological advances and innovations would combine to deliver a new set of existential aspirations they were the people who set the tone for the era it was the year that Picasso began work on Demoiselle D'Avenure a painting that was utterly revolutionary it wasn't a further resolution of the aesthetic conundrum of light and hue that had been teasing European artists for centuries an evolutionary step that took us closer to understanding the subtle mechanics of painting canvas Demoiselle D'Avenure was the discovery of a new aesthetic aim an absolute paradigm shift from trying to resolve the physics of the visual to coming to terms with its metaphysics it was in terms of what it represented it was like torn pages from a diary instead of the perfectly-metered poetry that had gone before it wasn't the depiction of other people of pretty people like you see in all of those monos and manes that were only a decade before this was created it was a kind of self-portrait of everyone and to find the spirit of that human commonality Picasso looked to West Africa amongst a variety of a can carvings that he had collected that's where he found this inspiration and Picasso like Freud saw in African intellectual traditions a thrilling set of possibilities and perspectives from which we could all own and during that same year that Picasso began the thinking for his painting Demoiselle D'Avenure the African American musician Scott Juppley composed a quarrel in ragtime and for America at the turn of the century this wasn't a new musical deal it didn't ask for your silence or for your attention it was physical it grabbed you it robbed you of choice and tormented you with the fact and perhaps that's why it became known as ragtime it simply grabbed you until you gave in and like so much 20th century music it was part walks and military marching band in ancestry it suppressed a kind of racy, innovative treble clef and as ragtime became popular Joplin allowed the pianist's right hand more and more freedom playing innovative harmonies mocking the thudding plodding 19th century rhythms of the left hand and that right hand represented African rhythms and he used that to discover a kind of jazz rhythm that was nerve-racking like a new burgeoning radical it was part of the whole new burgeoning radical creativity that seemed to move across the world at that time and it seemed to be speaking about something utterly new and perhaps by coincidence it led heavily on musical techniques well known with West Africa of building complex sound stages of multiple rhythms of building layers of cross beats of relying on techniques techniques of utilising contrasted rhythmic patterns with the same meter and into the gap the void between beats where might have conventionally been a momentary breath Joplin called a kind of dissonance of disobedience sex, love, hate that terrain would be his space of revolt denied the opportunity politically he did it through art in the African void where Hegel and the Enlightenment philosophers saw nothing he posited a new agenda for life Joplin called it a quarrel but it was more than that in totality an acoustic gestalt it would later catalyse the earliest works of people like Louis Armstrong with recordings of things like Strutting with St. Barbecue which he recorded in 1928 and there he used a kind of silence to evoke a soulful energy something that would inspire music over the next 50 years Joplin succeeded in building a new musical dialectic of such complex cross rhythmic texture that the main beat arrangement could barely be separated from the secondary beat pattern it was utterly, utterly revolutionary like Picasso it seemed somehow to encapsulate the moment so when a decade later young men shared cigarettes on the front in the First World War particularly modified West African music that they whistled when on leave in Paris it was the bars that played bebop and jazz that they sought out it had not only laid the seeds of popular music it would also re-inspire a new generation of classical music development this was the reservoir of inspiration that would drive Stravinsky's tonal and rhythmic inspirations and his innovation in the use of silence and he would then catalyze the work that would produce the master messian and perhaps inspired by those ambient changes this is all happening in 1906 to the traditional thinking an ethnographic curator somewhere in the bounds of the British Museum decided to look again at that early American Indian drum and later in 1906 wrote a small addendum to the original catalogue entry questioning the drums recognised progmox suggesting that this beautiful thing might indeed be African or created by someone of African descent and it took 70 years and huge advances in dendrology to confirm that the main body of the drum, of this drum was called the africana native tree of West Africa this is was an African an Akan and a Santé drum and we can now begin to build the hypothesis of how this drum came to be found on a Virginia plantation it's highly probable that the drum came to the Americas aboard a slave ship I'm sure you know in slave peoples were not allowed possessions as a souvenir collected by one of the European ships crew or perhaps it was a possession of a wealthy independent African who was travelling to the Caribbean or to Europe it may have been used as part of the appalling practice of dancing the slaves a horrendous tradition of enforced exercise that would take place on the decks of slave ships I mean all of this is conjecture but we know that this drum was made possible of musical instruments across the Atlantic and perhaps more important so did the techniques for making and for playing the maintenance of drum and musical traditions represents a poignant form of defiance of enslaved peoples across the Americas a conscious investment in cultural continuity in the face of brutality in slave and colonialism the upkeep of African stories the conservation of history and culture and the preservation of material skills and links to Africa became critical and so from Santeria to Candomblé we can see the rich results of the sacrifices made to hold on to West African cultural practices they drafted musical instruments of colonialism they used drums, they used fives and penny whistles at the starting tempo of European music then they subverted it they broke it they twisted it and reconstructed it building new musical landscapes of exchange and hybridization and they made those conventions African they were powerfully galvanized in this as a new kind of unifying force and over time many farm and plantation owners began to grow anxious about this music particularly drumming that might forge a potentially threatening sense of community and they worried that drums might not just be a diversion but they might actually in some way become a trigger of dissent in opposition and then proven correct in 1739 in South Carolina drums were the critical ingredient in enabling the Stoder rebellion from coming within a hair's breath of overthrowing plantation management the majority of the men and women who worked on the land adjacent to the Stoder River were ethnically South West Africa they shared knowledge of similar drum languages in cultural practices and after a sustained period of appalling abuse these communities simply snapped on the 10th of September 1739 they drummed a call to arms and when the drumming ceased and the dust had settled 40 African Americans and 20 Euro Americans had lost their lives this and similar rebellions prompted the colony and many others across the Americas to outlaw drums and drumming Hans Sloan, the founder of the British Museum who owned substantial plantations in Jamaica subsequently laid to road the African men and women who were forced on his plantation land were, from that point on formally banned from using drums and trumpets was thought that they were too much in the inciting of them to rebellion so they were prohibited by the customs of the island this sandy drum had been declared a weapon of war a thing of fear its music, its messages, ammunition scent and rebellion music had become an incendiary thing the impacts of banning and systematically denigrating music were profound drumming was dangerous it was occasionally forced underground becoming tainted and compromised and then only served to charge it with greater importance traditions that had survived the middle passage along with new cultural hybrid conventions were even more vulnerable and they understandably became even more cherished because of it but whilst people were prepared to go to great lengths to protect their heritage brutal administrations were utterly uncompromising in enforcing their drum bands and restricting cultural freedoms music had acquired a latent political manifesto the reaction to Chloe your powers was uncompromising and the denigrations of their histories were so complete for peoples of the Caribbean that by the late 20th century as the British Empire was being dismantled no well prized willing poet Derek Walker on the most insightful Caribbean lines looked longingly for his west African heritage and proclaimed that he couldn't find it in his great poem The Sea's History he mournfully sought out his African past the poem opens with the unforgettable and unnegotiable question where is my tribal memory he then asks where are your monuments where are your battles where are your martyrs and Walcott's response to that request to locate memory to that request to locate tradition and material heritage is painfully exact where is my tribal memory serves in that great vault the sea the sea has locked them up The Sea's History he describes the pain of an absolute loss of his past as a demonstration of the transatlantic slave trade and wrecked cultures traditions and memory leaving a kind of cultural void yet by the time that Picasso and Freud grew infatuated with Africa by the time that Stravinsky fell for the music of our diaspora there had already been important ambience shifts that would be focused by the First World War it was a kind of pan-African dynamism that had been created and over subsequent decades it gave rise to a new burgeoning of creativity what part of what Walcott's genius is is identifying how the archaeology of loss and omission have become a fertile reservoir reservoir of inspiration itself the once silent rage of these discreet cultures had found a unifying vent a mechanism through which to consciously creatively express and disseminate their feelings a pan-African diasporic music that resonated with both historic pain and future possibility was born and it was to inform a particular kind of questioning that define the spirit of so much cultural activity in the 20th century it gave a platform to create a people and intellectuals often separated by vast expenses of geography but usually united by feelings of injustice, by race tied together by shared historical anchors of an identical portfolio of subject matter poverty, human dignity racial pride and social inequality and so often they were also united by the drum they all celebrate that beautiful complex, simple instrument that has been the essential medium in the diasporas maintenance of that critical emotional connection to this part of Africa heritage is important Hegel might have said that Africa was a continent without history without culture but not only was that proved as political nonsense no other peoples have fought more diligently more consistently with greater dignity to maintain their heritage of the face of systematic threat until today the sons and daughters of government rewrite the international cultural map it's time for us all to reinvest in the form to renew our energies in celebrating in researching and protecting our shared Garnet heritage whilst our past has inspired and spiritually replenished us whilst our heritage has been there when we face our most profound challenges we must now reciprocate and come to the aid of history itself long after I'm dead and gone he said the light will continue to burn and be born giving light and guidance to all people but the talks that he held in his hand have been placed there by generations of earlier great west African and the hand thinkers there was something born here something utterly exceptional the cultural ripples of what was established here have percolated out beyond this continent to change the creative world not just delivering great cultural contributions to human home but changing the very ambition of what creative practice could be and I think it's time to reinvest emotionally, politically and financially in our Garnet museums in our libraries in our universities in the region of the material culture used in our traditional customs and practices and as they always have they will in turn, when we need them they will do that crucial thing of looking after us strengthening a new generation through heritage Thank you very much doctor for that insightful lecture so now Professor Aberdering, over to you Well I want to thank for that very inspirational lecture about history and history Thank you very much I have a few questions here I'll ask you later I'll give the chance to the floor if anyone has questions for us and whilst you're thinking of questions I'll just say that I was it's fine to write that paper in part by there's something very interesting happening in Britain at the moment which is a kind of recalibration of our understanding of the place of education and within that we are we are losing a large number of our metropolitan youth I think a lot of people there's been a kind of a sense in which once upon a time that African history was absolutely part of the national curriculum that it was wrapped into so many young people's learning and there has been a kind of retreat over the last five years back into the celebration of European history my journeys here particularly have told me that it's absolutely critical that in Europe that we have an understanding not just of the contribution of Garnayans to world history but also of the way in which repercussions of Britain's contribution to Garnayans history continue to play out and that symbiotic relationship I think is something which is critically understood through history and it should be something which is told to young people they should be given that as part of their formal education because my fear is that the kinds of the kinds of political sorts of dialogue that we've been hearing in many parts of Europe and North America are in part based upon an ignorance of our histories thank you very much Gus my question actually related to that when we talk about education that Africa is really receiving from education in the UK I was looking at it from the perspective of my education in many hopes one of the issues I did is talk so as last month I mean there's a concern as expressed by some Africans within the audience about the fact that I mean African families in the UK for example I'm not actually I mean telling the stories stories of culture or perhaps maybe inspiring their children about the rich African heritage now if we blame the formal education what would be the informal sector of the African families in Europe I mean is there any room for the family to play in continuing with this story and also Gus maybe instilling this history I agree that it needs to be multiple layered and one of the things I try to do throughout my career is to make those histories accessible so one of the reasons I work with the BBC is because it is the network with the widest platform that has the biggest audiences and I was determined to get African history for the first time in what I consider to be from the perspective of African expertise on to British mainstream television and that was a struggle it took I think about three years for us to go from original proposition to the BBC actually accepting that idea but it has changed the way in which they engage on that particular area of their output and there have been subsequent many other kinds of works and so I agree with you it has to be absolutely kind of something which is something which we all support at home but which there are the additional resources so that for those people who don't have the expertise to deliver African history programs at home that there is the support to do it if I go into any traditional library around the world the body of literature on on any area of European history is immense overwhelming and our histories are de facto the very longest that we have the longest narrative that this is where history starts and yet in terms of representation in libraries, in the media that we just at the moment don't feel I just don't think it's there and I will do whatever I can to try to change that and I will do it as an academic as a broadcast, I will do it as a curator and joined by of course everyone in this room I think that we have what is a movement but it's beyond this room it's the expectations of a generation who hopefully don't feel as encumbered by the limitations placed on us by that post-colonial shadow that I hope that they will kind of demand a level of representation that my generation can't be able to achieve and I would love to see that work I was actually, before I came I came a little bit late, I was actually with a renowned author named Haikui Arma and he gave me this book and it's me and Secretary Penn and they call it the Elephant Present and I translated it into Akan, Bahamina, English, French Hauza, Kikwondo, Kiswahili, Dingala Portuguese, Pulau, Wolaf, and Zulam and it's a 4,000 year old story. What do you think about the separation of the Nile Valley from the rest of Africa? We talk about Oriental studies how we can end Oriental to account for that thing. What do you think you mentioned about we have the longest history, we have the longest reclaiming the Nile Valley heritage as part of African heritage and actually learning the language and that's what we teach that here up to a study group. But what are your thoughts on that in terms of putting things right and reconnecting us to our past some of them? I agree and every time I walk through the British Museum and I see the sort of division that is made I mean if you go to the British Museum it tells a particular story of as I imagine it would be the natural thing in Britain or Britain being the centre of a nexus of different civilisations that have fed it and those civilisations seem to sit outside almost of geography so they are Greece and they are Rome and because of that configuration they actually seek Egypt as being kind of one of the multiple civilisations that gives root to what becomes a Euro a Western European culture and it means that it decouples the Egyptian narrative from Africa so Egypt within the British Museum for the most part sits on the ground floor or on the second floor whereas Sub-Saharan Africa for the most part sits in the basement elsewhere telling its own story and that kind of break is exactly what we are talking about which is this idea somehow of Europe being a kind of a kind of centrifugal force that sucks cultural histories into itself and breaks their connection with others whereas all these different cultures were interrelated but absolutely Egypt is an African culture and we should be telling that story with all of its complexity as being one that influences Africa is part of Africa and influences Europe but it's not necessarily directly part of it I agree with you completely Thank you very much for that insightful presentation I personally wish this had been made to a larger audience many at a national level because over and over again we've had to contest the relevance of certain disciplines such as history literature and the arts in general and I think the rhetoric has been that Africa has to prioritize its economic problems and development issues before we consider some of these areas such as telling our story and having our heritage and so on and so forth and so there hasn't been that keen interest in museums literature and so on and so forth to the extent that even in the basic schools there is very little attention devoted to these areas what do you think about how we could juggle the areas that are seen as most important or needing immediate attention such as poverty and hunger and environmental problems when meeting the needs of what you just spoke about preserving our history preserving our heritage promoting the arts promoting our culture and so on I don't think this is either a luxury or something which in any way would be deemed to be a waste of money that what investing in history is something which will pay back in a variety of ways and I'm not just talking about emotionally I'm not just talking about the terms of the education of the young and our next generation or in terms of cultural continuity or social cohesion but for a notion by Garner I was sitting having my breakfast with my colleagues this morning and on the only other table that there was someone was a single woman who was obviously from Britain who had her Garner lonely planets guy and I walked in and I'd seen her reading those initial pages that tell you about history she had come here as a tourist she had come here driven in part by the rich heritage of this country of this region this is something which if you invest in it it will become something which will pay back it's not something which is going to be a luxury upon which you will you'll feel guilty this is something which will replenish and it will become an industry that could employ huge numbers of people if you look at somewhere like Britain which is to some degree trapped in a kind of aspect the whole centre of London you will see that there are very few tall buildings because we have given over the centre of our city to the respect of heritage and that is if you go to those parts around Buckingham Palace you will rarely see anyone other than civil servants or tourists we have understood that our London economy is in large part going to be driven by the great London money that is brought in by tourists and I actually think I made a television program on the story of the asante and my god it is every bit as powerful in terms of tradition, story material culture as the story of the British monarchy there is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be hundreds of thousands of tourists if that is what we wanted coming here to spend their dollars and pounds and in terms of being something which could be seen as being kind of a luxury, I would think that there would be, you know, a few reasons to be thinking about investing more My name is Peter I was actually in source from 2008 to 2010 and I rastered with another very fine presentation and you've actually brought us through the journey of the drama and some people like you talking about things in Africa because of probably the passion and this idea you have for it you presented so well now the point is there are so many such other stories to be told so just like my other you know Kulita said how do we get more of such stories coming up before more of such stories being presented and source is Asia, Africa and the Middle East as a concentration and another question then is are you only based in London or how much engagements do you have with these particular regions because come for 100 years I know you're doing the 100 cities events so now there's a lot of source being had on these 100 cities in the next few years are we going to see more of such engagements between source and these regions Asia, Africa and the Middle East I'll answer briefly before I hand on to my colleague but absolutely I think everything that I hear and I feel about so as at this moment is about how it reaches out in partnership with institutions across this continent and there is the expertise in here I mean my passion I'm sure is shared by many of the other many other people in this room and across this nation and this continent what we need to do is to stand together and if we stand and we shout and we scream together we will be heard and the beauty of it is is that whilst I was making my lost kingdom series that we would go to archeological sites that had never been touched before travel to parts of the Sahara where there were just incredible things with hardly anyone visiting them and it's such an untapped resource and the potential for history on this continent is absolutely enormous it's not an area in which one might need to feel kind of that you know you're going to get crowded out by others but the opportunity for writing dazzling things about the most stunning things is enormous and so I would inspire anyone or ask anyone that if you were interested in anywhere and get involved in in the arts and history that so as there are so many ways in which you can actually begin that journey and there are so many other people who would actually want to share on shoulder some of the way that you might feel in terms of it being kind of quite a lonely or isolated career but the other thing to remember is that the audiences out there as you are so hungry for it that the thing that inspires me more than anything as much as the glorious objects and the amazing stories and narratives is the actual appreciation that I get from people as I travel so it is just a pleasure and privilege but I just think we need to engage more people Thank you guys I mean I can confirm I mean part of the effort towards the next century Suas has completed its century now is to please enhance our engagement with Africa and this is why I mean the Suas is reaching out much more to many African countries particular through the Central African studies so I mentioned to you I mean we don't have a series of trying to reach out to Africa during these past months we will meet South Africa in March and next year in March so I can assure you but I mean one of the steps you are trying to take also is to we know African students there are a lot of African students who are interested in these areas therefore we are trying as much as possible to seek support for scholarships creating student experiences that will actually enhance and enable African students to be able to succeed in this area I can assure you strongly and for you to be able to appreciate this as well we were centered before we are making efforts now I mean as that can confirm to transform our center to an institute of African students and so on so we know that perhaps I mean Africa can make the 21st century and there's a lot that I mean Suas has to reach out to Africa that I mean it comes out all the time we talked about Suas has made a colonial institution we are talking about decolonizing knowledge of Suas for example and it's one of our non-customized decolonizing Suas and knowledge of Suas and it relates much more to Africa so hopefully this is going to be a start of much more engagements I mean in relation to be able to institute here and also other parts of Africa you mentioned in your contribution that I mean many of these type of stories can be told in various ways I mean as Gus mentioned in his inspiring lecture I mean I was just happy to and in fact we have a colleague from Suas here I mean who is doing came here to research and history of food I mean African culture can also be told in food in relation to food and at some times I mean it baffles me you know in relation to our culture our food culture has changed completely I mean many different you know sometimes the food we want to eat is completely different from what I mean we know of as African I mean and there's stories about as well there's everything actually in food as well so I really want to have something to say in relation to the history of food in Africa so you guys anyway what I wanted to say are it is not so much of a question but a comment you talk about how we need to teach be more forthcoming and more persistent in teaching African history but if we want to tell pure African history then we need to break down European history and tell how they got their sources, their philosophy and learned it in Africa we talk about places like Temple too but what we don't talk about is those so-called Greek and Roman philosophers learned that in Kevin and they went down in Temple too and all they came down in Ghana and so it's like we're focusing so much on Africa and which is good but in order to tell our true history and the true path of our history European history needs to be broken down as well because most people don't even know that the south of Europe was conquered and colonized about four to five hundred years before they came back down and conquered and colonized us most people think that they didn't know Europe was we didn't travel to Europe until they came down here and sent us on the slay ship so it's like it's the one side that I'm seeing that's being addressed in order for our history to be told in this full depth European history needs to be broken down and told how their philosophers learned their philosophy in Africa and it came back and reshaped it to fit their people, their needs and the blind Actually my question is about this group that I'm talking about is about the storyography how Some of these stories are told especially to a voice-setting discussions and complications and when it comes The question is how do we try to ensure that we put some of these stories in each proper perspectives? Because, for example, you have done work on the geographical history of FANTIS and in your M.A. as well as in your P.A.T., and you try to explain some of these weaknesses. But in your delivery, somehow, I hear you talking about a scientist who has to ask myself, how? Because I don't know all accounts. So we have to do a lot of work to ensure that when we talk about certain material culture within the account of people, we find out where exactly does this come from. You take some book and you tell you, this is asante asafodraum. And the historiography about asafodraum, when we are interrelated. So some of these things are very important. My question personally to you is how do we do to avoid some of these pitfalls instead of asante-sizing all our account history? My name is Azkama. I think one important way that we can preserve our cultural heritage is through our libraries, museums and archival institutions. But I've realized that in Canada and most developing countries, they are not paying much attention to these information centres. And they are basically concerned about things that can put money in our pockets. So how can we put these important information centres into perspective so that politicians and other people will also be more interested in investing in today's centres? Thank you. Well the first one I absolutely agree with that we do need to challenge European history. But I do think in writing richer, more three-dimensional African histories that we will pretty much naturally begin to challenge very one-dimensional European history. And that is, I think that is a natural thing. And if one wants to write the story of the Amohads or the Amalavids that one will tell the story of Southern Spain in a very, very different way. And I think that will naturally challenge those European narratives and let those things are beginning to happen. In terms of the ascensurization, that is based on the dendro chronology that was done on the drum. It wasn't necessarily based on me wanting to make this into a particularly ascensurized story. And so, you know, that is science. I'm sorry. That is how it's done. And the third one was on the drum. Similar to the question asked there about the fact that the government focuses on material, is that material enough of it, rather than on the issue of the ascensurization of the material? I think the two are pretty much fundamentally interrelated. That one can't have an institution like a museum without actually having the research that actually fuels it. So I think academic institutions and the academics that work within them are absolutely vital to a heritage sector. That you can't have one without the other. And I can't think of any country which has a recent heritage sector that doesn't have fantastic universities. So, my question is in line with the last speaker. It's very important to document our cultural heritage to be documented. But if we don't have access to those materials, they have to be difficult for the generation behind us to get to know what has been written. You said you were on PBC, you know, a series of, you know, programs. And all those programs, I wonder whether they are available on audio, video, so that people have access to them. So my question is, is there any plan for you to have those materials online, on video, on audio? That is my question. Can I just ask that? So, like every program that I've ever done is available freely on YouTube. You can just do it. Please ask how culture incited our way of life, total way of life. How are our children born in Europe or outside? Encourage to learn our culture so that they keep entrained in their roots. Thank you. I agree with what is suggested in the question that in Europe that African history, I think particularly for children of African descent, is not something which is easily accessed and is something that I have fought for and in a couple of months I will be speaking at a conference of British school teachers who are trying to reassess the National Curriculum in England and Wales to try to place African history, key and core as part of that. So it's something that I find all as much as I possibly can and I would love to see. And part and parcel of that is about finding the accessible and reliable resources that can be used. And that is about all of us actually in some way helping to add to the reservoir of published and written knowledge out there. So the teachers can actually feel that they have a body of information on which they can easily determine. I mean, to round up, I'll just give some vote of thanks and then I'll hand you over back to the director to round us up. On the Avenue Centre of African Studies, University of London, on behalf of myself and my colleagues, Nick Butler and Anna, we really found the Institute of African Studies here, the director of the registrar, and we found the audience as well for this very interesting evening at the promotion of African literature and also African history. You know, there's a program which I think resonates. I'm from Nigeria and the program says that, you know, the owner of the load, somebody who wants to carry a very heavy load, it is the owner of the load who will first make effort to carry it before somebody will come and help them carry it. If you have a very heavy load and you want to carry it, if you just time by it, you don't make any effort like I want to carry this, nobody will help you to carry it. So we should make effort. It's our responsibility. We should make effort to promote African culture, African heritage. You know, it's very sad sometimes when we talk to some Nigerians, both in Europe and living at home, when you go to their home and you are speaking to their children in a local language. You don't know who knows the language. Speak to them in English. They don't want you to speak to them in the local language. I believe it happens in Ghana as well. They have all the time, you know. No, no, no, no. Don't speak to me in local dialect. You will spoil this English. I think it's called the time. So it's very essential that we do this. So once again, thank you very much, Mr. Rapunzelis and also all the audience. I'd like to express my gratitude to you for enlightening us this evening. The lecture was very engaging and very fascinating. But most importantly, I think you made one of the most powerful pitches I've had from the study of history. And as an institute that mounts courses in African history, both at the undergraduate level and at the postgraduate level, I hope you have convinced here so that we can see more students coming into our history courses. Because it's really by itself that we really reclaim our histories and we tell our stories ourselves. And I really like your metaphor about the look. That really, it is our business to tell our story. Otherwise, it will never be told the way we wanted it to be told. So thank you very much. I'd like to ask Mavis to do the work of us. Thank you. Okay, we have come to the end of a very successful lecture. Obviously this has been very useful. So on behalf of the director and the SOAS team, I want to say a big thank you to all of you making time to attend this very useful lecture. I would also like to mention, especially my staff, who helped to bring me this possible. The media staff, Fidelia, Selena, and Ko, I want to mention you all. So you can just wave. Okay, applause for all of them. Samuel, Eugene, Emmanuel, thank you all for making this very useful. Thank you once again.