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Academic Ananya Jahanara Kabir and author Ari Gautier are stunning, ignited minds who’re researching our “disappearing and disappeared pasts”. Their digital outreach Le Thinnai Kreyol “enables encounters between artistes, intellectuals and entrepreneurs of disappeared or disappearing pasts, to build solidarities through sharing creativity and cultural heritage”.
The cultural cross-connect due to the Middle East’s lengthy encounter with colonial Europe has deeply influenced our language, meals habits and way of life. English and several other Western European languages have seamlessly included Arabic phrases of their on a regular basis vocabulary. For occasion, textile cloth names, akin to cotton, damask, gauze, macramé, mohair, muslin and taffeta, all hint their origins to Arabic. Similarly, delicacies phrases, akin to baba ghanoush, couscous, falafel, fattoush, halva, kibbeh, kebab, shawarma discover a delight of place in Western European languages, due to Arabic through Turkish.
Kabir, professor of English Literature at King’s College in London, has executed intensive analysis on creolised cultures — multicultural communities that got here to the fore following the intermingling of native individuals and Europeans in the course of the colonial period.
Gautier, who lives in Oslo, Norway, is a Franco-Tamilian creator from the previous French colony of Pondicherry in south India. His novels Carnet Secret de Lakshmi (2017) and Le Thinnai (2018) are a celebration of the dynamic encounter of numerous cultures — the germane thought behind Le Thinnai Kreyol.
“Le Thinnai Kreyol takes its name from ‘thinnai’, a verandah-like structure in Pondicherry homes where people hang out informally and exchange news and stories, and ‘kreyol’ is resistance through innovation and adaptability. While Ananya has been working with ideas of creolisation for a long time, ‘thinnai’ is the subject (and title) of my second novel. The trigger was certainly the pandemic. The idea of creating a virtual thinnai came after a friend of mine wanted to present readings of my texts during the first month of the pandemic. She dropped that idea, but it sat in my head: I wanted an international reach for my ideas by opening the thinnai of my book to the world,” says Gautier.
The initiative got here into being on May 26, 2020 on Facebook amid the raging coronavirus outbreak. “We are a multilingual cultural platform. So far, we’ve hosted two full seasons of curated events (‘katcheris’) on alternate Fridays through Facebook live, and improvised conversation sessions (‘addas’) between ourselves every other Sunday. Our third curated season commences today. Since our inception, we have been invited to speak at events worldwide,” says Kabir. “Since we could not travel to meet each other, we decided to combine virtually Ari’s vision with my ‘Creole India’ project, and call the co-founded platform Le Thinnai Kreyol. We restore awareness of India’s creolised histories, which are eclipsed by various nativist, purist, and majoritarian agendas.”
Gautier was born in Madagascar, and moved to Pondicherry as a baby. He left for France on the age of 16 and returned to South Asia years later. He’s been residing in Norway since 2005. Kabir was born in Kolkata, and spent her childhood in Nagpur and Hyderabad. She moved to her hometown to pursue undergraduate research from Presidency College earlier than leaving for the UK.
Gautier and Kabir didn’t know one another earlier than 2019 and neither have they met but in individual. “Our collaboration is a marvel of connection,” says Kabir. “Coming from differently marginalised backgrounds in contemporary India, we understand each other well. We connect through childhoods spent lost in books (in Ari’s case, French ones, in mine, English), and parallel relationships with Tamil (for Ari) and Bangla (for me).”
Creolised tradition is on present within the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) area. “Ananya and I are opening a new chapter where the Maapillas from Kerala and the Marakkayars from Tamil Nadu, historically Arab-influenced communities, are going to be more visible,” says Gautier. “It is a huge task of historical research, but we really want to do justice to the Arab contribution to creolisation in the Indian peninsula. We also have a new interest to connect the pearl fisheries of the Gulf of Mannar with those of those of Arabian Gulf.”
“Look no further than Rai singers from North Africa, who exemplify the decolonising potential of creolisation as it gives rise to performative resistance,” says Kabir. “Francophony, modern technology, different layers of Arab culture, and the multicultural space of black Paris mingle in Rai music in ways that are deeply creolising.”
She recounts how her first encounter with up to date Mena tradition was Algerian singer Cheb Khaled’s tune Didi. “I was watching this song in India on the new MTV channels. I was about to start my M.Phil at Oxford and all I could think of was going to Paris and dancing like the people in the video,” she reminisces.
Didi was an enormous hit in India as a result of individuals understood that phrase because the Indian didi (older sister) in a number of tongues. “Later in my life, I became a very big fan of the late Rachid Taha. His music is a powerful illustration of creolisation of Algerian Rai as it comes in contact with punk and other socio-economically marginalised genres. But his most poetic songs always contain stories of anterior creolisations, like his rendition of Mataouel Delil (the night is always long) by Oran exponent Ahmed Wahby, which concerns the janissary legacy in North Africa. The rendering of the classic Algerian song Abdel Kader by Khaled, Rachid Taha and another of my favourite artists, Faudel, enacts decolonisation of memory through performative resistance. Abdel Kader was an Algerian freedom fighter, leading the resistance against French colonisation. Interestingly, while I know of Abdel Kader through the dance floor, Ari remembers posters of Kader adorning many a Pondicherry thinnai,” she provides.
Kabir and Gautier are within the means of organising an internet journal, Thinnai Revi (revi is a creole type of the French ‘revue’), which is more likely to be launched by subsequent month (February).
joydeep@khaleejtimes.com
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