Mittwoch, 21. März 2012


Bakatue from outside

The first time I have seen the festival of Bakatue in Elmina, I was a young girl, interested in african art, specially in performaces. The festival reminded me of the Carneval in my hometown Lucern. The colourful dresses and the rhythmical music. But very soon my eyes catched the traditional Ghanaian  side and I got curious of what stands behind.

Back home I read a lot about festivals and performances in ethnological books during my studies. So I knew that there is more than colourful dresses and music. To say even, I knew that this was what we see from outside…you can say the result of the celebrations around. I was curious around what do they celebrate?

So I was standing on the side of a street in Elmina and observed the preprations of the chiefs tob e carried and their people to walk through the town to the seaside parc. In the middle of many youngsters a row of elderly men in traditionel dresses was forming up. All of them held a long wooden stick with all sorts of symbols on. The symbols were carved animals or people acting in a story, playing games or simply eating food. After asking I got to know, those clan figures are very important  to be shown on those kind of festivals. This made me think again a lot about our swiss carneval traditions. But what is behind  or before this walking to the parc? And what  is behind those clan symbols and and the importance to show it and what is behind this festival Bakatue as a whole? I took a lot of pictures form each single person holding a stick. Without asking the people from Elmina, I could only see the colourful outside and hear the impressive music.

We  followed then the moving crowed to the parc and got somewhere among the children a place to sit on the gras. Artists performed drumming and dancing shows whith short dramas included, other artists performed a circus show, walked on long sticks and dressed maskes. Traditional and political people held speaches in Akan and Englisch.

The seaside parc is  impressiv by itself. Just next to the parc is the famous slave trade castle of Elmina. Just to watch it, I got goos skin. To think of what happened here some hundreds of years ago was very dramatic and terrifiying. I always think one can feel the history on a place. To stand there I really felt the enormous moving power on that place.

Back in my mind to the festival I realised, how mixed with tradition and modern items this festival is shown.

Back home, watching those pictures I decided to know more about and to go there again to ask more about the background of Bakatue.
So I started my research about Festivals, about performances inside and outside and its meaning today.

What I learned in thoses days was to know of the two ways you can understand something: from outside to the inside or from inside to outside. It depends from where you are.

From Nadja Donkor-Kaufmann

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