Still letting it settle in my body. The craziness of what happened on Sunday.
I was told, 3 hours before my performance at
Sauti za Busara on Sunday, that there had been complaints about
Drum Rider, the poem I performed at the festival's opening ceremony on Friday night. The festival director asked me to consider not doing it again, or cutting the
offending parts. Most especially, not doing it in Swahili. When Sally (my translator) and I, had planned to do exactly that, in response to specific requests from several audience members on Friday.
Drum Rider is the poem I was invited to Sauti za Busara to perform. For the opening ceremony of the festival, to accompany the Zanzibar Premiere of
As Old As My Tongue, the newly released documentary on Zanzibar's musical legend / icon, Bi Kidude. The director of the festival, Yusuf Mahmoud, had read every word of the poem, in both English and Swahili, last summer, when I first put it out.
Who were the complaints from? Six people. Six men, to be specific. From an audience of over 3,000 people on Friday night. An audience which broke into spontaneous applause no less than
five times during my performance. On further probing, I found that the complaint that really counted, the one that generated the call to me, was from Ismail Mohammed. Who happens to be chairman of the festival's board, owner of Mercury's, a restaurant in Zanzibar themed around Freddie Mercury, and pitched at the tourist market.
After 3 hours of tailspin, anger, confusion, mini-meltdown, frantic figuring out how to respond, I was thrown on stage immediately after an hour of bongo flava (local Swahili hip-hop). In front of a crowd who were fired up, on their feet, dancing. With no intro or transition from the MC. We began the set with Sally reading Drum Rider in Swahili. She was interrupted, repeatedly, by booing and yelling from the 200-odd young men right in front of the stage. When I tried to talk them down, I got the same treatment.
Finally, I gave in. Told Sally we were done. Helped her off the stage. Sally has mobility problems, and the steep steps to the stage were hugely difficult for her to negotiate. I walked into the arms of a friend and sobbed.
6 Comments:
Shailja,
I am saddened to read this story and hear that people holding power sabotaged your performance. Especially in such a way that created a breakdown of safety, and space where your important stories and words need to be heard. It is an important experience for you to think through how to deal with this kind of sabotage and confrontation in the future.
I will send an email to the Chiar of the Board..and hhope many others do as well.
Love and support from New York.
Jessica Rucell
I saw, heard and were trance fixed by Bi Kidude's performance at the Women Panorama on the Ziff 2006 festival. The day after I heard your reaction and impression throu your Drum Rider reading at the same place. And I were so relieved that someone could put something of the Bi Kidude impact into words. Now I'm deeply saddened by the latest story from Zanzibar, a place that Bi Kidode shows is a far more complex and allowing than any chairmen wants to imagine. Keep on, please.
Marcus
-Sweden
Yes sad story indeed Shailja! However I hope it did serve as an eye-opener to you on how an artiste should always anticipate the often rather raw manifestation of power against one's art. It was rather naive to fall in the trap of agreeing to take the stage in the middle of a bongo flava musical gig to render a spoken word performance.
Find the spirit to solder on with a promise to return to Zanzibar to perform again one day! Check out ZIFF possibilities.
Aghan Odero
Storyteller.
You will not get any sympathy from any Zanzibari like myself.A kafir like you definitely deserved much worse than what you got for your insults to our religion and way of life. So count yourself lucky that all u got were boos.When u get time, drop a thank you note to the Busara Chairman - he probably saved your ass! Not surprised, you looked kinda retarded anyway.
Peace to the writer who has qualified himself to judge who looks "kinda retarded" and who doesn't (Bw QTJ).
Are you, QTJ, really up to entering into this discussion?
What makes you a Zanzibari, bwana, and does the island only belong to people like you? Anyway, at least you have the courage to come to this website and say something. See how the lady has published it for you, free of charge even though your words are menacing and threatening. I don't remember truly religious people in history behaving like that--baring their teeth in defence of a some stinking meat that they can't hide.
Here's a challenge:
Please tell us what your religion is and what it means to you.
Next, please write down what Shailja said that was insulting to your religion.
3, Please tell us why what she wanted to say was insulting. Can we start there?
4, Would you be willing to discuss scapegoating? I mean, here you are, attacking someone who was in a weaker physical situation than you and the crowd were in (as suggested by your post), instead of attacking wrongdoers who are more powerful than you. Would it concern you that you might be suffering from frustration and are likely only simply taking it out on the easiest target?
5, Has it occurred to you, that Shailja was trying to communicate something of importance especially to you and the women of Zanzibar, which may affect the future, the safety and wellbeing of your island and the planet? Now instead of listening, and asking questions, before you rejected her work, you simply closed your ears, instead. That is what it looks like. Is that what your religion teaches, to close your ears to poetry? But when it comes to things which are not as poetic, like the unmanageable cybercafés in Z and TZ--do you close your eyes and ears there, too? If and when you are disgusted there what do you say to the owner of that cybercafé? Please, open your eyes and look at yourself and your country, first before pointing the finger at someone who came there to invite your friendship. Or you really believe that Z is an island and can do without the rest of the world?
6, Are you so helpless, QTJ, that in order to clean up an island that has had such a 'colourful' history, you will begin by attacking someone who loves the best of what the island can offer, like Bi Kidude, instead of all those bum-baring tourists that your tour-operators take money from to finance their own personal exploits?
Bwana, you are rejecting someone who comes with the truth before actually applying your mind to the questions she is raising. But now it's your turn to put things in writing and I look forward to hearing how you answer the simple questions, above.
As one who has watched and, yes, been shocked by the graphic content of Shailja's perfomances, all I can say is pole sana Shailja, but please do not give up. Your work is a powerful reflection of society and a lot of us wish we had the nerve (and talent) that you do.
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