The leaves in the forests along the east coast of Canada radiate in splendid shades of red, yellow and orange. In the French-speaking province of Québec, the Indian Summer is showing itself from its best side. Little wonder that Mamadou Diawara feels so well in the face of the colourful spectacle of nature in his new adopted home at Université Laval in Québec. In early September, the professor of ethnology from the Goethe University Frankfurt moved into his new apartment with his wife and three sons. He is full of praise for his new working surroundings: “The people are very friendly and the apartment is close to the university.” The 56-year-old will do research for a whole year at one of Canada’s oldest universities. He will be working in the Faculty of Arts with Professor Justin Bisanswa, who holds the chair of African and Francophone Literature.
Diawara’s research sojourn is being funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, which awarded the ethnologist, who was born in Mali, this year’s John G. Diefenbaker Prize. Humanities scholars and social scientists from Germany can apply for the prize, which is worth 75,000 dollars, on the basis of their research projects. However, the prize winner will not have too much time to experience the natural beauties of Canada. “I would like to extend my contacts with Canadian and American scholars,” says Diawara. So he is destined to be spending a lot of time on airplanes, holding lectures at conferences in universities in Canada and the United States. Already he has fixed dates in Ottawa, Yale, Stanford, Montréal and Sherbrooke.
Diawara’s particular field of research is also important for his North American colleagues. He is studying local media in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Mali, Senegal and the two Congos – and with them the issue of what actually happens when a centuries-old tradition, such as oral history in the form of songs and stories, encounters globalization, that is to say, the Internet, radio, television and international law. What copyright consequences does this have for these texts? And what consequences do these in turn have for the creator? The university professor aims to find answers to these questions, because “the singers and poets have had their own unique way of singing and reciting since the sixth century.” They are archivists of local history. “Often they pass on their knowledge exclusively, and according to certain rules, to select families,” says Diawara, who knows such songs from his childhood.
The ethnologist has focused on themes like these since the start of his academic career, which began after his doctoral studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and before he completed a postdoctoral degree at the University of Bayreuth in 1998, having also done research in the United States and the Netherlands. In 2004 he accepted the appointment in Frankfurt, where he quickly made a name for himself: Diawara is deputy director of Goethe University’s Frobenius Institute, which is Germany’s oldest Africa Institute. He is also a founder member of the prestigious Cluster of Excellence on The Emergence of Normative Orders, which the university founded within the framework of the Federal Government’s Excellence Initiative. The ethnologist also has a mainstay in his homeland of Mali, where he set up the Point Sud research centre in the capital city of Bamako in 1997. Today he still heads up the centre, which focuses on local knowledge. On flying visits there, Diawara records traditional songs, among other things. These excursions have resulted in a comprehensive collection that he aims to evaluate thoroughly during his stay in Québec and publish related articles in scholarly journals. Even nearer and dearer to his heart, however, is the book manuscript he would now finally like to write in order to summarize his research findings to date.
The opportunity to exchange views with his North American colleagues is of great importance to Professor Diawara, given that his book will also deal with the question of how oral traditions were transferred from Africa to North America through music from the 16th century onwards. “The same process took place in North America as the one I am currently observing in Africa.” American and Canadian scientists have already completed research on how the culture of the Indians and of the African slaves became mixed with modern western culture and its norms. “What I find very fascinating is how the songs the slaves sang in the cotton fields or in church at that time have been issued on CD or record and how the question of copyright has been dealt with in such cases,” says Diawara, who is looking forward to contacting legal scholars and ethnologists in North America.
He will also maintain his contact with the university in Frankfurt, however. As he has to supervise his doctoral students at the Institute of Ethnology there, the professor will fly back to Germany at regular intervals. Yet he would not like to lose sight of his greatest wish for the twelve months in Canada: Mamadou Diawara would like to present his completed book manuscript in autumn 2011. “That would be the nicest gift I could make to my sponsors, my family and myself.”////
