Mix Tape Memories: Movement and Difference in Life Writing (Palgrave Studies in Life Writing) [1st ed. 2023] 3031404629, 9783031404627

Table of contents :
Contents
About the Author
Figures/Images Overview
Prologue—Play
Side A and B Tracks Overview
Side A
A1 Lewis
A2 Izzy
A3 Eugene
A4 Victor
A5 Svend Åge
A6 Pi
A8 Thomas
A7 Phil
Side B
B1 History reimagined
B2 Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom
B3 Listening as Action
B4 Small Press Passions
B5 Black and White
B6 Musical Living Archives
Acknowledgements
List of Images
Side A
A1 The Reading Room of the Black Power Movement
Introduction: The Black Power Mix Tape
Black Isn’t Power, Knowledge Is
Grandniece Vaunda Compiling Family History on Uncle Lewis
Fellows with Ph.D.s ‘Too Tame to Tell About the Shame’
Walking and Talking on a Crooked Line
The Book Itch
A2 The Folk Singers Cave. First We Take Manhattan, then Stockholm
Izzy’s Columns and His Daughter’s Memoir
Visited by People Wanting a Story About Dylan
Past and Present Pamphlet-Tapestries
A3 Reclusive Openness: A Black American Classical Pianist in Europe
From St. Louis, USA, to Dragør, Denmark
A Black Classical Pianist in Europe in the 1950s
Hidden Histories and Music Surfacing
Suitcases as Personal Archives
Blue Overalls, Poetry, German Grammar, Leather Cases and a Pipe Instrument
From Now On, Your Name is Hans. You Are One of Us
Reclusion and Openness
A4 The Human Exhibit and Teacher–Musician
From the Human Zoo to the Teacher’s College
Return of the Repressed: 170 Years of Danish Slavery
The Danish Slave Owners
Inventory Spaces Beyond Given Identity
The White Choir
Individuals Acclimatising to New Territories
A5 Maps and Territory. The Child’s Mappings and the Adult’s ‘Walkabout’
The Wounded German on the Doorstep
Night Watch and Distributor of Illegal Leaflets
The Painter and the Architect
A6 Memory as Resource. The October 1943 Boat Escape to Sweden
A7 Facing the Pasts: War Diaries 1944–1945, Therapy Writing 1995 and the Trip to Belsen
A8 Letters from Palestine and Africa
Archaeologist in Jericho
Writing Culture
The Crumbling of the Crown Colony
New Challenges: Letters from Africa
Wandering Scholar
Side B
B1 History Reimagined in German Comics
Comics as Popular Archive and Historical Imagination
Life Writing/Drawing by German Comic Artists: Mawil and Flix
Mawil: Boys in the Hood Playing Table Tennis in East Berlin, November 1989
Flix: There Was Something in Berlin
Two Visual Approaches to Autobiographical History
The Comics:
B2 Wahat Al-Salam—Neve Shalom: A Jewish–Arab Village
To Try Peacefully
Israel-Palestine: Living Together Separately
Givat Haviva, Beit Hagefen and Wahat Al-Salam—Neve Shalom
Bob and the Pioneers
Youth Negotiating Conflict and Life—2001
Negotiating Conflict and Life—Recent Years
Continued Educational Work in a Difficult Context
Coexistence My Ass
One or Several Languages in the Notebook?
B3 Listening as Action: Alternative Education in Tanzania and Mozambique
Vignette 1: Youth and Radio
Vignette 2: Challenges to Schooling
Vignette 3: Educational Rites de Passage
Vignette 4: Youth and Radio—Listening Posts
What Kind of Publics Are Created?
B4 Small Press Passions: Zines and Scenes of Popular Memory
Pamphleteers and the Public Sphere
Fanzines
The Table Tennis Club-Mag and the Student Community Magazine
The Women Making History Movement and Its Newsletters
herri—A New Art and Music Online Zine-Journal in South Africa
Philippine Zine Culture: Adam David and Better Living Through Xeroxography/BLTX
B5 Black and White: Race, Football and Music in the Midlands, UK, Late 1970s
B6 Musical Living Archives
The Veiled Sorrow Songs
Dengue Fever
Sixto Rodriguez
M.I.A./Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam
Temporarily Closing the Archive (Tape End)
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LIFE WRITING SERIES EDITORS: CLARE BRANT · MAX SAUNDERS

Mix Tape Memories Movement and Difference in Life Writing

Anders Høg Hansen

Palgrave Studies in Life Writing

Series Editors Clare Brant, Department of English, King’s College London, London, UK Max Saunders, Interdisciplinary Professor of Modern Literature and Culture, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

This series features books that address key concepts and subjects in life writing, with an emphasis on new and emergent approaches. It offers specialist but accessible studies of contemporary and historical topics, with a focus on connecting life writing to themes with cross-disciplinary appeal. The series aims to be the place to go to for current and fresh research for scholars and students looking for clear and original discussion of specific subjects and forms; it is also a home for experimental approaches that take creative risks with potent materials. The term ‘Life Writing’ is taken broadly so as to reflect its academic, public, digital and international reach, and to continue and promote its democratic tradition. The series seeks contributions that address global contexts beyond traditional territories, and which engage with diversity of race, gender and class. It welcomes volumes on topics of everyday life and culture with which life writing scholarship can engage in transformative and original ways; it also aims to further the political engagement of life writing in relation to human rights, migration, trauma and repression, and the processes and effects of the Anthropocene, including environmental subjects and non-human lives. The series looks for work that challenges and extends how life writing is understood and practised, especially in a world of rapidly changing digital media; that deepens and diversifies knowledge and perspectives on the subject; and which contributes to the intellectual excitement and the world relevance of life writing.

Anders Høg Hansen

Mix Tape Memories Movement and Difference in Life Writing

Anders Høg Hansen Malmö University Malmö, Sweden

ISSN 2730-9185 ISSN 2730-9193 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Life Writing ISBN 978-3-031-40462-7 ISBN 978-3-031-40463-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Photo by author Anders Høg Hansen This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Side A A1 The Reading Room of the Black Power Movement Lewis Michaux and the Harlem Black Literature Bookstore Introduction: The Black Power Mix Tape Black Isn’t Power, Knowledge Is Grandniece Vaunda Compiling Family History on Uncle Lewis Fellows with Ph.D.s ‘Too Tame to Tell About the Shame’ Walking and Talking on a Crooked Line The Book Itch A2 The Folk Singers Cave. First We Take Manhattan, then Stockholm Izzy Young Mediating Folk Music in New York and Stockholm for 6 Decades Izzy’s Columns and His Daughter’s Memoir Visited by People Wanting a Story About Dylan Past and Present Pamphlet-Tapestries A3 Reclusive Openness: A Black American Classical Pianist in Europe Eugene Haynes in USA, France and Denmark—While Befriending Author Karen Blixen From St. Louis, USA, to Dragør, Denmark

3 3 3 4 5 7 10 12 15 15 17 19 21 27 27 27

v

vi

CONTENTS

A Black Classical Pianist in Europe in the 1950s Hidden Histories and Music Surfacing Suitcases as Personal Archives Blue Overalls, Poetry, German Grammar, Leather Cases and a Pipe Instrument From Now On, Your Name is Hans. You Are One of Us Reclusion and Openness

29 30 31

A4 The Human Exhibit and Teacher–Musician Victor Cornelins. From The ‘Danish West Indies’/St. Croix to Nakskov, Denmark From the Human Zoo to the Teacher’s College Return of the Repressed: 170 Years of Danish Slavery The Danish Slave Owners Inventory Spaces Beyond Given Identity The White Choir Individuals Acclimatising to New Territories

39

32 32 34

39 39 40 42 45 47 49

A5 Maps and Territory. The Child’s Mappings and the Adult’s ‘Walkabout’ Svend Åge Hansen’s Drawing, Writing and Travelling The Wounded German on the Doorstep Night Watch and Distributor of Illegal Leaflets The Painter and the Architect

53 53 53 56 57

A6 Memory as Resource. The October 1943 Boat Escape to Sweden Pi Stilvén and Granddaughter Sara Rehnström

67 67

A7 Facing the Pasts: War Diaries 1944–1945, Therapy Writing 1995 and the Trip to Belsen Phil and Michael Raines

75 75

A8 Letters from Palestine and Africa Thomas L. Hodgkin and British Imperialism Archaeologist in Jericho Writing Culture The Crumbling of the Crown Colony New Challenges: Letters from Africa Wandering Scholar

83 83 83 85 87 90 94

CONTENTS

vii

Side B B1 History Reimagined in German Comics Mawil and Flix on Youth and Memory in Germany Comics as Popular Archive and Historical Imagination Life Writing/Drawing by German Comic Artists: Mawil and Flix Mawil: Boys in the Hood Playing Table Tennis in East Berlin, November 1989 Flix: There Was Something in Berlin Two Visual Approaches to Autobiographical History The Comics:

111 111 111 114

B2 Wahat Al-Salam—Neve Shalom: A Jewish–Arab Village Living Alternative Education In Israel-Palestine, Then and Now To Try Peacefully Israel-Palestine: Living Together Separately Givat Haviva, Beit Hagefen and Wahat Al-Salam—Neve Shalom Bob and the Pioneers Youth Negotiating Conflict and Life—2001 Negotiating Conflict and Life—Recent Years Continued Educational Work in a Difficult Context Coexistence My Ass One or Several Languages in the Notebook?

125

B3 Listening as Action: Alternative Education in Tanzania and Mozambique Listening Posts, Aspiring Journalists, Role Models and Educational Rites of Passage Vignette 1: Youth and Radio Vignette 2: Challenges to Schooling Vignette 3: Educational Rites de Passage Vignette 4: Youth and Radio—Listening Posts What Kind of Publics Are Created? B4 Small Press Passions: Zines and Scenes of Popular Memory Women Making History, Sweden. herri, South Africa. BLTX, Philippines Pamphleteers and the Public Sphere Fanzines

115 119 122 123

125 125 128 131 132 135 141 141 142 144 147 147 148 150 156 158 161 165 165 165 167

viii

CONTENTS

The Table Tennis Club-Mag and the Student Community Magazine The Women Making History Movement and Its Newsletters herri—A New Art and Music Online Zine-Journal in South Africa Philippine Zine Culture: Adam David and Better Living Through Xeroxography/BLTX B5 Black and White: Race, Football and Music in the Midlands, UK, Late 1970s The Black and White Testimonial, Laurie Cunningham and the Bodies That Changed British Football

168 170 175 178 181 181

B6 Musical Living Archives Sorrow Songs, Dengue Fever, Sixto Rodriguez and Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam The Veiled Sorrow Songs Dengue Fever Sixto Rodriguez M.I.A./Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam

197

Temporarily Closing the Archive (Tape End)

223

Bibliography

227

Index

245

197 197 201 205 211

About the Author

Anders Høg Hansen engaged in magazine production, table tennis, and poetry, while studying at Roskilde University, Denmark, before working for an NGO in Copenhagen facilitating educational projects. Then he moved to England to pursue an M.A. in Cultural Studies: History and Theory, at the University of East London. After completion, he continued with Ph.D. studies at Nottingham Trent University’s Department of English and Media (Theory, Culture & Society Centre). During his years in England, he also worked as a research assistant at the University of East London, organising an article archive for the Centre for New Ethnicities Research, and at the Dept. of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. Time was also spent following the tracks of East London or Nottingham musicians’ gigs. For many years, he has now worked as a senior lecturer and researcher at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University, Sweden, primarily working with hybrid education and engaging with students from all over the world. He lives in Denmark, where he also grew up.

ix

Figures/Images Overview

Image front: A selection of my old cassettes. This image shows mostly mix tapes received by others. My eldest daughter wrote the book title on a turned around inlay card for three selected old tapes: a new layer on top of the old tunes. Images placed between Side A and Side B: Image A1: Lewis Michaux in his bookstore in New York Image A2: Izzy Young and Philomène Grandin in a Stockholm Park, sometime during the 1990s (Unknown photographer. Rightsholder: Philomène Grandin) Image A3: Eugene Haynes at the piano sometime during the early Image A4: Victor Cornelins conducting at teacher’s college in Denmark during the late 1910s Image A5a: Dad at Sami Goathi and his drawing of walking routes in Lapland Image A5b: One of Mum’s paintings. Scenery in Norway, early 1960s. Image A6a: Pi Stilvén and Sara Rehnström at Pi’s home in 2008 Image A6b: Pi and fiancé Saša in 1939 Image A7: Michael Raines diary (WWII) Image A8: Thomas Hodgkin sometime around 1940

xi

xii

FIGURES/IMAGES OVERVIEW

Image B1: Mawil Kinderland poster. The two key characters taking a rest on a table tennis table with the Berlin wall in the background (Rightsholder Mawil). Image B2: A photo of the House of Silence at Wahat al-Salam— Neve Shalom, taken around 1999 (by author) Image B4: A collage of zines/newsletters. Izzy’s Folklore Centrum discussed in Chapter A1 complemented with various mags discussed in Chapter B4 on Small Press Passions. These are selections of zines over the years where I have been involved in writing or/and production: ‘Det Sædvanlige Fis’ (‘The Usual Stuff’); a table tennis mag; a newsletter on migration-related workshops in Malmö (Women Making History movement); a booklet on enjoying nature near the city, produced for an NGO; a poetry mag/journal with some of my poems; a birthday pamphlet for a friend, and a newsletter produced collectively for a group of 15–20 people during men’s world cup in football, Summer 2021.

Prologue---Play

“You get exposed to everything, I’m like a walking mixtape”, M.I.A., 2005

This book is a mix tape ‘playing’ stories of mostly unknown figures, depicting their curious journeys through a life affected by migration or movement, and a search for home. I am mainly working with individuals and groups whose passions or artistry have carried the subjects through ‘uncharted’ or unhomely territories, uncovered here in a series of ‘tracks’ which engage with individual self-representation as well as the mediation of subjects’ lives and their roles in community memories and histories. The notion of mix tapes , which has resurfaced in DJ and music jargon in the twenty-first century, originated in the cassette era of the 1970s to the1990s. A time when music enthusiasts, or just about anyone with some interest in music, compiled songs on a cassette tape for one’s own pleasure—or handed it over to another as a gift or a dedication. The receiver could be a significant other, or even a stranger. The traditional mix tape’s sources were the radio, vinyl records, other cassettes, reel-to-reel, or home recording—and was made by the amateur and may, as such, differ from the dance mix or a DJ’s music set list or performance (although with an association to early hip hop DJ culture and live recording). 1 Mix 1 The term has been associated with early hip hop DJs, such as Grandmaster Flash and

others, and their recorded live shows then multiplied and were traded/distributed. It was

xiii

xiv

PROLOGUE—PLAY

tapes were uneven and exhibited the obscure alongside well-known tunes of the time.2 They emerged with the advent of home-recording technologies, giving ordinary people opportunities to make compilations to communicate their feelings. The presence of this type of medium marked a moment—from the late 60s and onwards—where listeners could attain and arrange control over what they heard and in what order (Viegener in Carpenter 2010). This collection, as a homespun cultural artefact, a hotchpotch, is as the common mix tape drawing largely from other people’s tunes and material, with some similarity to the notion of anthology, which is etymologically Greek for a ‘collection of blossoms’ and it also has a history of usage as a collection of literary works chosen by an editor or compiler. The notion of mix tape is rarely used for official mass-distributed collections. Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music from 1952 was an artefact which offered a merging of the spirit of mixing tape and anthology. Although an official record company release and thus a mass-distributed collection, it was a personal compilation made from Smith’s own collection of 78-records, the name for any vinyl record made between about 1898 and the late 1950s and playing at a speed around 78 rpm. Smith basically chose the tunes, often from rare material, and arranged his own ‘homespun’ ‘mix tape’, and as Melanie Lovatt noted in her comparison of Smith’s anthology with mix tape culture,3 his anthology had a stronger relationship to later mix tape culture than to a commercially released album. One can argue that we may link Smith’s anthology not just with mix taping but also with the notion of archives. In Jacques Derrida’s (1995) discussion of the archive, borrowing from Greek antiquity, he approaches the archival item as something that, through the hands and judgement of archons (guardians or magistrates),

often songs seen as a bit too risky to put on the radio, Rob Love, a rap promoter said. In Billboard (2003, 17, 68). 2 The term-pair is resurfacing and being appropriated in the era of the internet through streaming and underground music mixes. Some artists have also taken up the actual medium of cassette-promotion again due to the expense of CDs. 3 The cassette was however not invented until 11 years later, in 1963, at Philips in the Netherlands.

PROLOGUE—PLAY

xv

has been selected or brought in4 to ‘rest’ in its arkheion, originally a privileged house or residence of the archons. Placed and ordered in relation to other documents, it would dwell, ideally permanently (Derrida, 1995, 9–10). While ‘dwelling’ may be the suitable word for the shelf life of a document in the archive, mix tapes, and hopefully this mix tape/book too, are at least made to ‘play up’ the items. However, while archival items may for long be untouched in a classified position, they may also be pulled out for debate and reinterpretation and related to a range of material curated by archons. A single page or item brought up and rethought may impact our understanding of an event and affect how we think about, for example, related museum exhibitions, memorials, or teaching materials. The meaning of materials or items, or even their very presence or existence, may be challenged. ‘Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial’, as Dylan sang (‘Visions of Johanna’, 1966). In parallel with the classic archive that Derrida engaged with in 1994, we may argue that archives, to a stronger extent, have evolved and intersect everywhere, notably through the internet. Ordinary people archive in real time, and archives are individualised, as Nambrol argues (in a discussion of Derrida’s text, 2018). I would here add, or counter Nambrol, that our online archival work is still guarded. We put our lives in online places where a select few have their algorithmic eyes on everything. One may question how we may archive innovatively and escape the exploitation of our data. We are then back to forms of participatory culture, of mix taping, and of self-selecting and creating an order of tales and dwellings made from dispersed tunes and lives. This collection is an attempt to establish some relation between dispersed tunes and items, a sort of ‘blossom’ one could hope for (to return to the meaning of anthology). It may not be regarded as a counterarchive. It complements the existing

4 As Peter van der Mejden explains Derrida’s commencement (beginning) in Archive Fever. “Things are pulled into the archive from a projected originary point”. However, archives through its law or commandment also projects outwards “cast the net of archival law over everything out there” (2013, 95). The latter is slightly different from the outward moment of ‘playing up’ items, I characterise. However, the casting of archival law over human activity, the surveillance and storage of online activity, can be said to have intensified from the late 2000s and onwards. Derrida’s argument on the archive as commandment is as valid as ever.

xvi

PROLOGUE—PLAY

but allows for plenty of leaps to find a shared space for diverse material—some of it newly produced, other items, or material borrowed from existing archives and libraries (online or physical). So, what has come to dwell in this collection? Or what do I aim to play up?: The collection has 14 tracks: Side A has an emphasis on the mediation of 8 individual journeys, each given a chapter. I will be engaging with journeys across the USA (Lewis), from USA to Sweden (Izzy), and USA to Europe (Eugene), from the Caribbean to Denmark (Victor) and finally 4 tracks mainly concerning journeys within Europe (Svend Åge, Pi, Phil, and Thomas), though the latter implied travels to Palestine and then Africa. A change of ‘tape side’ may offer an opportunity to change mood or direction. Side B with 6 chapters/tracks has a stronger focus on communal histories and is thematically addressing alternative educational and artistic spaces and forms of expression or media: Firstly, German comic books as modes of working with history and memory. The second and third track both concern alternative educational spaces, first in Israel, and then in Eastern/Southern Africa. Then I move on to zines/newsletters or ‘small press passions’. The two last tracks concern first football and then music. More details on the different tracks follow in a separate section (Side A and B Tracks Overview) after the Prologue. Thus, this mix tape is a deliberate blend of historical and contemporary material. From Europe, the USA, Africa and Asia. Material that developed as independent pieces over many years while common themes began to emerge, motivating me to bring it together in one ‘mix tape’. As an archive is a puzzle, so is a life. With different existing biographical and artistic sources—as well as my own data created from probing, observation, and interviews with key characters and descendants—I have pieced together the portrayals or constructed the tracks. The technology is different from original mix tapes, but a spirit, and the term, remains. 5 Mix taping can be said to have gone through phases where new media technology emerged to adapt the practice: Cassette mix tapes became CD mixes and later iPod—and then streaming—playlists,

5 Danish public service radio has a program called ‘Mixtape’ (2023) beginning with the sound of a tape click, ‘play’.

PROLOGUE—PLAY

xvii

‘endless digital jukeboxes.’6 Using new technology we continue to recirculate rhymes and melodies of certain times and significant scenes ‘of crime’.7 In the meantime, during the 2010s, the original media technology, the cassette tapes, returned for many early career artists not being able to afford pressing LPs (another technology which in the twenty-first century also have seen a re-emergence). The 16 ‘tracks’ are here brought into heterogeneous unity, though to a strong extent, they share five traits. The collection engages with archives with a hagiographic quality; stories celebrating the lives of individuals, some alive, some dead, some famous, some not. This, with the intention to safeguard their identities (Cohen 2018, 59). A few of the subjects are from within family or friendship circles, while most I have never met, thus including subjects near and far away. As a second trait most of the chapters engage with subjects’ interest in forms of expression, art or craftmanship that has been a driving force in their lives—and in many instances stimulated remarkable work life achievements. Thirdly, a diversity of material/modes of expression were in play in many of the tracks, either from the subject directly or from family members’ memory work and mediation. This diversity has also led me to explore how memory is played out or shaped in performative and creative remembrance genres, as different forms of life writing, across a variety of media. Key sources span oral and written conversations/interviews, focus groups and personal documents and materials such as letters and diaries, photographs, objects and therapy writing. Public forms of mediation, such as columns, newsletters/ zines, autobiographies and memoir, comics, music and radio production, are also engaged with as means of learning, identity and memory work. Fourthly, the stories throughout often involve forms of release or redemptive modes of telling and living where the subjects themselves or 6 From the 2022 Netflix miniseries and biopic ‘The Playlist’, on the history of Spotify. There is a scene in the second episode when the actor playing then Sony Sweden director, Per Sundin utters, in frustration, on the advent of Spotify and its threat to record companies. He is standing in front of his own coin-operated record carrousel at home. We are sometime in the 00s. He is trying to understand what this new ‘play machine’ Spotify may be able to do and realises: ‘a bloody endless jukebox, that is what it is.’ 7 My own practice of mix-taping did not differ much from mainstream practice. Some

tapes I made for myself but often to be played when meeting friends. I also occasionally handed a tape over as a gift to a friend, stranger, or potential lover—and was also lucky to receive many. In a brief phase I also made tape recordings of my own very rudimentary guitar playing. Not for distribution.

xviii

PROLOGUE—PLAY

their interpreters demonstrate how they came to words with difference or carved out their own space of belonging while making their way through unhomely waters or uncharted territories. However, these processes also involve struggles, or battles through undesignated territory. A water of potential dangers; ‘here be monsters’.8 Here stretched to imply territories that in different ways implied conflict and personal change, and which proved to be territories, not the place or map it looked like to be. So, the subjects of this collection had to make new (mental) maps of navigation.9 This fourth common feature also pays emphasis to the subject’s abilities to act in a changing and unknown world and inspire others. This collection, by this, took shape as a form of life writing and memory work beyond trauma. A fifth sharing trait, close to the former issue around creating a space for belonging, concerns the nature of the subject’s navigation between the private and public, an ambiguity of positioning where some of the subjects protect their privacy or inhabit a reclusive stance—but also adopt an open stance towards life; a reclusive openness, as I have named it, which expresses an ambiguity, but not necessarily incoherence (concept developed in Høg Hansen 2020). The five traits are sought to be captured in the monograph’s title which emphasises movement and difference in terms of both voluntary and forced changes of location, but also inner changes and dynamics. Journeys towards realising dreams and ideas in craft and artistry played a strong role in this movement—as well as a search for home. As such, the collection’s tracks aim to capture common tensions of life writing; intentions to portray the (e)motion of being in place, but also continuously becoming something else in the world. This came to include a series of stories about subjects moving/changing to somewhere/someone else in

8 Stuck on a rock on a lake looking for a dangerous sea creature called ‘Big Blue’, the two detectives of the 1990s TV Series The X Files, Scully and Mulder, are having a conversation after their boat has sunk. Scully reminds Mulder that cartographers used to place a note next to what was marked as undesignated territories. The note saying, ‘here be monsters.’ Season 3, Episode 22, ‘Quagmire’. Derived also from the medieval hic sunt dracones, territories where images of dragons, sea monsters were placed on maps to mark places with potential dangers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_be_dragons. 9 In parts inspired by the work of the research network Living Maps https://living maps.squarespace.com/our-history—and some early readings and conversation with Phil Cohen, University of East London (today Emeritus, but an initiator of the Living Maps network.

PROLOGUE—PLAY

xix

the aftermath of colonialism, slavery or war (Lewis, Eugene, Victor, Pi, Thomas, Laurie, Maya). The figurative analogy of mix taping also provides a means to address long-term memories. Reminiscence as an activity of the present does to some extent rely on what can be regarded as ‘re-playable’. This is based on a traditional ‘container’ view of memory: bringing up old content or images, sounds and smells and reliving them in one’s mind or in conversation with others, or in writing or other artistic work. This analogy and view on memory is not without problems. Whether intentionally or accidentally recalled, memories are taking shape in a changed afterlife, coloured by the present, which challenges this container theory or ‘rewind and play again’-mode. We may also say that an old mix tape or playlist, listened to again many years later, will sound different to older ears and souls. It will be coloured by new songs, contexts and experiences that affect how we meet the old tunes. Thus, in addition to memory work as containing, I am adding another important mode of memory work, which should be self-evident, recognising memory as a flexible and changing ‘faculty’ of the present. Thus, we continually process or change our understandings of the past. Memory can by this be understood as re-work. Although this author is not the primary and personal rememberer of stories to follow (but an interpreter of material) the book also engages with re-working, through the available sources. The subjects, and their interpreters, are here constructing versions of self/subject that incorporate modes of mixing or reuse—like a hip hop artist’s sample or returning loop from an old tune inserted into a new arrangement and storyline. In fact, it is difficult to do anything but a sample of past times ramble when memory dims. This inevitable compiling or mediation is laboured to re-present the past(s) in the present. Some long-term memories tend to get fuzzy, complicating their recall (the trouble with containing, as previously noted), while others remain vivid and clear, rich in retelling and important for our present play/identity (recognising at least some ability to contain). Memories are reinvigorated in conversations and through our engagement with objects and media products, like a film or sound recording, a letter, old photos, we help to keep them alive. Or they keep us alive—maybe sometimes in pain. Mix tapes have resurfaced in public discourse and cultural production in the recent decade. A series of novels, books and films may signal a sort

xx

PROLOGUE—PLAY

of nostalgia or retromania towards the cassette mix tape era?10 With one foot ‘dancing’ in the past, I however try to put one foot into the future without falling. Before this, an archival overview. The 16 tracks.

10 See for example the novel Mix Tape, by Jane Sanderson, from 2020, Valerie Weiss’ feature film comedy Mixtape from 2021, Greg Björkman’s Press Play (2022) or for a recent academic monograph, Jennie Burns Mixtape Nostalgia, from 2021. An earlier often quoted account by a musician is Thurston Moore’s Mix tape. The art of cassette culture, from 2004. Also, memoirs have been written using mix tapes as an organising principle, such as author and columnist Rob Sheffield’s Love is a Mix Tape from 2007.

Side A and B Tracks Overview

Side A A1 Lewis The first track departs from documentary footage, interviews, transcripts, a documentary novel and other sources on Lewis H. Michaux, who ran the world’s most comprehensive bookstore for black literature (fiction and non-fiction) in Harlem, New York City, for over four decades, The African National Memorial Bookstore. Interviews with a family member and mediator and her published biographical material are brought in as a key interpretative voice or intergenerational imagination of Michaux’s life. Lewis was a source and node for contemporary American Black Power, youth education, and Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, locally and around the world, and is written into that story as an important figure. A2 Izzy Izzy Young was the proprietor of Stockholm’s Folklore Centrum from 1972 to 2018 and previously a columnist for the American SingOut folk music magazine from 1959 to 1974. Between 1957 and 1972, he owned the New York Folklore Centre, where many of the prominent folk musicians of the time hung out. He arranged Bob Dylan’s first gig and was instrumental in securing him a record contract at Columbia Records. His New York Folklore Centre became a node for folk music conversations xxi

xxii

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

and performances, and his shelves became a cherished music literature archive, first in New York and then for a longer period in Stockholm (where he immigrated and established a new folk centre). The track is based on conversations in his Stockholm store and research in his archives in January 2011, and subsequent reading of his Stockholm magazine columns, then continued in social media Facebook posts, and finally, but not least, his daughter, Philomène Grandin’s 2021 biography of the journey; her life with Izzy until he passed away at 90 in 2019. A3 Eugene This track addresses the life and writings of African American classical pianist Eugene Haynes, notably his friendship with the Danish writer Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, as documented in a book of letters and diaries, To Soar with Angels. The European Travels: Remembrances of Isak Dinesen, from 2000 At the time of this publication, Haynes was over 70. The book covers the period 1952–1962, when Haynes, as a young man, lived and gave concerts around Europe and occasionally stayed in Denmark, where he befriended the writer Karen Blixen and her secretary, Clara Selborn. Haynes died in 2007, at 80 years old. The year after Haynes passed, Selborn, Blixen’s secretary, passed. In Selborn’s house, in the village of Dragør, near Copenhagen, where Haynes had stayed during many summer and winter visits, a suitcase with Haynes’ belongings is found. It is given to the local museum, and they make a temporary exhibition in 2012 and produce a range of short films. The case concentrates on the reopening of Haynes’ life in the form of his later writings, short films and the found suitcase. A4 Victor In 1905, while the Virgin Islands were still a Danish possession and colony (sold to the US in 1917), public figures in Denmark were searching for colonial subjects for a human exhibition at the Tivoli in Copenhagen. A boy and a girl from the island of St. Croix were in haste shipped to Denmark to take part in the exhibition, the half-siblings Victor Cornelins and Alberta Roberts. They were eventually to stay in the country, although this was not planned. The girl died just before turning 16, suffering from tuberculosis, while the boy was allowed to continue his education in Denmark. He embarked on a successful career as a music

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

xxiii

teacher, schoolteacher, and vice inspector. Late in life, he wrote his autobiography (1977), as well as initiating a ‘white choir’ of nurses in southern Denmark while recovering from cancer in a hospital. The nurses’ choir initiative exists to this day. A5 Svend Åge During wartime in southern Jutland, Denmark, in Spring 1945, the 11year-old boy Svend Åge Hansen meets German soldiers at his doorstep. The soldiers are anxious about the situation at home in Germany. The boy draws maps for German soldiers showing the advancement of Russian as well as Allied troops in Europe during the war. This was done by listening to the BBC on the radio and marking troops’ positions on top of transparent paper with a school Atlas underneath. The case is in part based on written World War II ‘email-memoir notes’ by my father, Svend Åge, born in 1933. After his death, other writings and photos from his travels were found in my childhood home. He had given a binder with no name on its back and a title inside on the front page: ‘To the one looking at my shelves’. While allowing for the digression from maps to the territory of writing (and travelling), this track mainly elaborates on the tension between the child’s depictions and adult reality and on the territory of wandering. This digression involves the secret binder’s content and reflections on forms of nature-, travel-, and life-writing produced on the move, positioning oneself in new and different environments. A6 Pi Pi Stilvén was a survivor of the secret October 1943 transportation of Jews from Denmark to Sweden. Her granddaughter, Sara Rehnström (a former student of mine), once arranged for us to meet her grandmother, Pi, in her home in Höganäs, Sweden. The conversations with Pi exhibited her episodic memory and traced her course from former Czechoslovakia to Denmark in the late 1930s, up to the 1943 escape when Nazi occupiers chased Jews in Denmark with the aim to deport them to concentration camps (a phase initiated after the Danish so-called collaboration policy with the occupying Nazi regime collapsed). Pi’s life in Sweden from 1943 and onwards was also discussed in the talk, as was Sara’s life and how her relationship with her grandma had affected her.

xxiv

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

A7 Phil While cleaning up in his parents’ attic, an Englishman, Phil Raines, stumbles upon his father’s war diaries from his military service on the continent during the war years in the 1940s. In addition, he finds notes from his father’s war therapy, written 50 years later in the mid-1990s. His father was among a group of allied soldiers entering the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen in the spring of 1945 and subsequently guarding imprisoned Nazi soldiers. Conversations with the son who looked in the attic, Phil, during the 2000s, when we used to hang out, inform this case. It also includes a trip with Phil to Bergen Belsen in 2007. Phil talks about growing up with his father, Michael Raines, and how his stories have affected his life. A8 Thomas In 1932, Oxford graduate Thomas L. Hodgkin leaves for Palestine with the prospect of an apprenticeship in the provisional British government of Palestine. Within a year, after travelling the region, he takes up the position in what at the time was a British mandate. The Middle East had been divided by victorious powers France and Britain after the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the Great War. Thomas wrote over 100 letters home to family and friends over the next 4 years, spontaneously and continuously capturing a region and a person undergoing change. A history and biography of the now After his three years in Palestine during the 1930s, Thomas 10 years later in life developed an extensive interest in Africa, in particular Ghana, where he travelled and worked during the 1940s and 1950s. This period also produced letters and diaries, and two collections of letters and diaries were published in 1986 and 2000. In 2007, a biography of Thomas’ life came out.Thomas was an entertaining writer and radical thinker, growing increasingly pessimistic over imperialism from the 1930s on. He befriended Ghana’s Nkrumah in 1951, as Michaux did in New York in another case. His granddaughter, Kate Hodgkin, taught my M.A. in East London in the late 1990s. Together, the first 8 tracks on Side A engage with material or representations of individual journeys into new territory and how the subjects struggle and engage with a change of scenes and roles. Some of the tracks engage with intergenerational responses to family documents or accounts as well as the mediation of family members’ journeys or lives, as in the memoir work of Izzy’s daughter Philomène and the illustrated

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

xxv

books of Vaunda, Lewis’ grandniece. It also engages with private ‘stumbling stones’: diaries and notes from the attic and binders with life writing found on the shelf (Phil’s father’s material and the binder my own father left). Side B makes a leap to let forms of expression and alternative forms of informal learning take centre stage. It also differs slightly from Side A by having a stronger focus on communities and group engagement with media and art. However, it also opens the door for engagement with key individuals and artists. Side B B1 History reimagined Side B tracks focus on alternative educational and artistic spaces and forms of expression. I begin with an inquiry into German comic artists’ engagement with German history and memory. In recent decades, a rising number of longer comics authored by Germans have provided remarkable engagement with this topic. Comics has, since Art Spiegelman’s classic Maus established comics as an art form that, in its own ways, engages with history and autobiography and as an art form that uniquely probes intertwined forms of image and text. This chapter will focus on a couple of German albums working through and transforming youth memories and East-West relations in the late 1980s. The chosen authors here are Flix and Mawil . Their work introduces imaginary German memory and ways of depicting the crossing of reformative years for Germany as well as their own childhood and adult transition. B2 Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom In the late 1970s, a tent camp evolved into one of the first Jewish-Arab villages in Israel-Palestine, Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom 1 (the “Oasis of Peace”), bordering the 1967 Green Line. The village developed its own bilingual school and alternative educational projects, which gave the village and its work an international reputation. Just outside the school doors, people lived the conflict, yet in a collaborative community. It became an exception within the state of Israel and the territories of 1 Am using this order of words, small letter for ‘al’ followed by hyphen (‘—’) before ‘Salam’. This appears to be the most common form for small and capitalised letters used on the village website. The acronym for the village is often seen separated by a hyphen in text (‘was-ns’) which I have also used here, instead of dash (‘/’).

xxvi

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

Palestine defined by separation and an example of another model, but a model impossible to multiply or maybe just an exceptional ‘utopia’? The case draws upon material from different stages of the village’s existence, portraying life, conflict and change in the village, then and now, and in forms of encounter work, artistic expression and alternative education in the country. Included in this track are materials from interviews and onsite observation of educational work, as well as newer records of village life and journeys. B3 Listening as Action From alternative education and youth voices in Israel–Palestine (B2) to youth in Eastern and Southern Africa Over half of the population of Tanzania and Mozambique is under 20 years old. Their voices most often remain muted or unheard in public forums. The case draws from a series of encounters and projects in Tanzania and Mozambique, including nucleo de escuta (‘radio listening posts’), which brought in experiences from former participants in the early 2000s, as well as a radio project that addressed children’s problems and rights through grassroots journalism. There is a general underlying focus on alternative forms of learning and interaction coping with challenges to schooling and typical predicaments for youth, such as dropout due to early pregnancy and marriages, deaths, expenses of schooling, initiation rites, or needs for child labour at home or in the community. B4 Small Press Passions Continuing the take on public pockets or ‘sphericules’ of first IsraeliPalestinian and then African initiatives, this track moves on to other kinds of public passion and engagement, yet still spaces of expression that differ from mainstream forms. The chapter begins in the seventeenth century, introducing some of the European origins of ‘bottom-up’ small press passions—pamphlets that captured expressive, popular forms of memory and movement in what came to be understood as the beginning of ‘the public sphere’. In the twentieth century, deriving from the era of pamphlets, the media of concern was what is known as zines or fanzines and their siblings, such as newsletters, booklets, club and society magazines, and small journals and leaflets. The examples concentrate on its modern forms, including adaptations of zines in online forms from the late 1970s until today. The key zines brought up are the Women Making History movement of Malmö, Southern Sweden,

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

xxvii

collecting migrant stories and workshops in a series of newsletters (as well as blog and book production) documenting a series of events, co-design and co-writing efforts of a movement active primarily between 2012 and 2018. I participated as a researcher and co-writer. I also include my own earlier experiences in small press production before ending with two cases moving beyond the European context: a recent online art and music zinejournal called herri from South Africa and the zine movement BLTX (Better Living Through Xeroxography) in the Philippines. The pioneers of these initiatives, Aryan Kaganof, herri, and Adam David, BLTX , gave lectures at Malmö University in 2021 on this. The chapter incorporates references to important historical zine cultures, such as punk zines from the UK in the mid- to late 1970s, the latter connecting to the content of the next track, B5, Black and White. B5 Black and White In recent years, several monographs, documentaries and biographies have emerged that engage with race, music and social upheaval in the Midlands of the UK in the late 1970s and relate that past to present conditions and changes in post-Brexit Britain amid a new crisis (2022–2023). This chapter concentrates on footballing events and players, while parts of the discussion integrate music into the ‘mix’, capturing the linkages between new ska revival spaces, reggae, skinheads, The National Front, and tension on the football terraces and pitches. Music journalist Paul Rees book The Three Degrees (2015), on three significant black players and TV presenter Adrian Chiles TV documentary Whites vs. Black: How Football Changed a Nation (2016) are two recent portrayals of events, focusing primarily on the football club West Bromwich in Birmingham. Recently, in 2017, the first biography of a significant player, Laurie Cunningham, came out. She was a ballet dancer, a soul boy and at his best, a worldclass footballer. One event, a testimony at West Bromwich, sported not only the players nicknamed ‘the three degrees’ (named after an American soul trio), but also a peculiar explicit set-up of teams: one of white and one of black players, as a testimonial celebrating the long service of (white) West Brom player Len Cantello, documented in the Adrian Chiles documentary mentioned above. At the time, cultural theorist Paul Gilroy was a Ph.D. student at the nearby Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (University of Birmingham). He was at the testimonial game, and his reflections introduce the chapter. This is alongside visual and textual accounts on social conditions and change, football, music and

xxviii

SIDE A AND B TRACKS OVERVIEW

race, including material with writer and photographer Jon Savage, DJ and director Don Letts (who ‘mix and dub/reverb’ the key threads), and musician and memoir writer Tracey Thorn. Some of this material comes from Göran Olsson’s recent archival dig and the 2019 documentary London 79, which has added contemporary voices reflecting on the past-present continuum. Olsson also did Black Power Mix Tape, which is engaged in the A1 track. B6 Musical Living Archives This final track, ending with musical stories, brings in examples of popular music drawing heavily on sources from continents different from the places of their creation or performance, as well as music and performers who gained audiences far from the rooms and stages of the artist’s music making. It is a tracing of travelling and appropriated tunes and the recreation of music in new contexts and with new audiences. Starring Sorrow Songs, Sixto Rodriguez, Dengue Fever, and M.I.A. As indicated in the prologue, Side B focus on craft and media (comic books, educational encounters, radio, zines and newsletters, sports/ football, and music) which have provided strong communal, shared or social memories 2 and forms of empowerment of smaller collectives. The collection is closed with a short epilogue. Not a lengthy threadconnecting conclusion. As such, it may differ from traditional academic or fictional accounts attempting to tie up loose ends and demonstrate a result or moral of the tale or research. While reflections based on the tracks are made, and a spirit is communicated, the ends stay loose. The tape stops. You will move on to other odds and ends, tapes and books. And maybe return to this one day and rewind.

2 Edward Casey distinguishes between different perimeters of memory, not as separate entities, but rather as ways of viewing how memory is influenced to different degrees. Social memory (and shared memory) builds group identity and complements individual memory. The third perimeter, Collective memory, is by Casey defined as a distributed co-remembering. It allows for, as Casey writes, “the massive convergence of those who remember the same thing without knowing each other personally. If individual and social memory are the two inner circles of public memory, collective memory is its outer perimeter” (2004, 25).

Acknowledgements

I am aware that the interviewer’s questioning affects the memory constructions of the interlocutors. It has been my intention to treat all subjects and sources, close to me or far away, with warmth and respect. All have allowed me to use their words. Some names are anonymised, upon request. A special greeting to those I have spoken to, but who are not here anymore: Izzy Young, Pi Stilvén, my father, Svend Åge, and my mother-in-law, Rebecca Mlega. Among the living thank you to Parvin Ardalan and Elizabeth Florez for collaboration and interviews. Izzy’s daughter Philomène Grandin and Lewis Michaux’s grandniece, Vaunda Nelson Micheaux, I was lucky to communicate with over distance. Thomas Hodgkin’s granddaughter, Kate Hodgkin, teacher on my M.A. in East London over 20 years ago, I also communicated with again. Sara Rehnström, a former student of mine in Malmö, facilitated contact to her grandmother Pi and have commented on several occasions. Also thank you to Phil Raines, Aryan Kaganof and Adam David. Thank you to Darmin Mutenda for the Mozambique-related work—and to children and youth and adults related to alternative education cases in Israel-Palestine. Another thank you to teachers back in my days at University of East London and then at Nottingham Trent University. Notably Couze Venn, not with us anymore—and to Phil Cohen. Your various approaches to cultural studies inspired this collection and continue to inspire my everyday life.

xxix

xxx

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At my home university in Malmö: Thank you, firstly, to Oscar Hemer for introducing me to work on the M.A. in Communication for Development, which has been quite a journey and led to much content development of the monograph. This includes the related research work with you and colleagues exploring ‘conviviality’. Also thank you to Malmö university’s Living Archives research team 2013–2018. This phase was inspirational for this collection’s focus on archives. My early B.A. teaching at Malmö was also formative. Then colleague Ylva Gislén allowed me to build a course from scratch once in the 2000s which led me to transform my English cultural studies work into teaching and paved the way for this book.. My collaborations with former colleague Erling Björgvinsson, on public art and living archives, have been valuable. In later years my thoughts go to Jakob F. Dittmar in relation to the German comics track. Good friends have been reading and commenting on bits and pieces before I knew this material was to be brought together as a monograph-collection. I will in particular thank Kim Esmark for decades of encouragement. Thoughts also go to Kristian, Tomas, Bjørn, Morten, Parvin and Aryan for zine inspiration or work inspiring the D.I.Y. of this collection. And to Allan for being an inspirational ‘memory container’. A final and important loving thank you goes to Happy, Karla and Kaia, and to Sister and Mum. And to Dad, ‘up there’.

List of Images

Image A.1 Image A.2

Image A.3 Image A.4 Image A.5

Image A.6

Image A.7 Image A.8 Image B.1

Image B.2

Lewis in his bookstore in New York, 1950s (Photographer unknown) Izzy and Philomène in a Stockholm sometime during the 1990s (Photographer unknown. Rightsholder Philomène Grandin) Eugene at the piano sometime during the early 1950s (Photographer unknown) Victor conducting at teacher’s college in Denmark during the late 1910s a. Dad at Sami Goathi and his drawing of walking routes in Lapland, and b. One of Mum’s paintings. Scenery in Norway, early 1960s a. Pi and Sara at Pi’s home in 2008, and b. Pi and Saša in 1939 (notice Saša’s distinct moustache referred to in an anecdote in the interview with Pi in 2008) (a. Photograph by the author / b. Photographer unknown) Michael Raines diary WWII Thomas Hodgkin sometime around 1940 (Photographer unknown) Mawil Kinderland poster. The two key characters taking a rest on a table tennis table with the Berlin wall in the background (Rightsholder Mawil) A photo of the House of Silence at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, taken around 1999 (Photograph by author)

98

99 100 101

102

103 104 104

105 106

xxxi

xxxii

LIST OF IMAGES

Image B.4

A collage of zines/newsletters engaged with in the book: Izzy’s Folklore Centrum (Chapter A2)—and various mags discussed in Chapter B4 on Small Press Passions, where I have all been involved in writing or/ and production. These include a student magazine, ‘Det Sædvanlige Fis’, or in English ‘The Usual Stuff’, a table tennis mag, a newsletter on migration-related workshops in Malmö (Women Making History movement), a booklet on nature in the city produced for an NGO, a poetry mag/journal and a birthday pamphlet

107

Side A

A1 The Reading Room of the Black Power Movement Lewis Michaux and the Harlem Black Literature Bookstore

Introduction: The Black Power Mix Tape Swedish filmmaker Göran Olsson’s Black Power Mix Tape is the result of a digging in Swedish Television archives. It exposes rarely seen found footage from TV journalists visits to the US in the period 1967 to 1975. Olsson made this into a mix tape documentary with a contemporary score and voice-overs from present-day activists and musicians. The documentary offers intriguing, private and disarming clips of activists of the day like Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis—the latter also an activist of the present day (2022). Although engaging with a familiar or often depicted period in American history, there is a freshness to the portrayal of Carmichael in private situations, and an extensive interview with Davis in prison. The documentary presents a slow depiction of quotidian situations of primarily black lives. The intimate moving visuals from around half a century back are coupled with commenters/voices that remain unseen in the film. The voice-overs are informed by personal recollections and experience, some of them of an older generation—including Angela Davis herself. There is a sense of estrangement or gap between then and now (as Scott notes, 2011), the past and the present only vaguely connected. The estrangement is felt by making the seer wonder if, or how little, things have changed? How did we get from the America of Carmichael to the America of Barack Obama—and then again from Obama to the end of the 2010s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_1

3

4

A. H. HANSEN

and the surge of civil rights and the Black Lives Matter movement around 2020? The documentary provides impressionistic glimpses into an era but never a causal and connected American ‘life story’ up till today. Olsson’s documentary also reveals footage interviews from the early 1970s with a Lewis H. Michaux who ran a black literature bookstore in Harlem (‘black’ is kept in small letters throughout, except when naming movements , or used in headings), from the mid-1930s through four decades up until 1975. Lewis was an important mediator of the power of reading and his store a haven for the Black Power and Civil Rights movements of the post-WWII era, the documentary reveals. It was Olsson’s film that in 2012 first led me to write about Lewis. He was one of the few informants of the film I had not heard of—and I came to think of him as an important and overlooked figure. At first, I produced a brief English language Wikipedia page on Lewis since no page on him existed. This encyclopaedia initiative I repeated with Victor Cornelins and Eugene Haynes, other figures on Side A. Although it can be argued that Lewis played a significant role in creating a ‘reading room’ and space for learning and engagement, he is not a highlighted or internationally known voice of the 1950–1970s generation of the Civil Rights and Black Power era, as Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael, or earlier influential voices and orators as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey— or writers as W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Lewis is a part of this cultural heritage.

Black Isn’t Power, Knowledge Is Despite a banker’s thumbs down and the family’s scepticism initially in the 1930s, the bookstore came about and grew. Lewis over the decades gathered around 200,000 volumes, establishing what would be the largest black literature bookstore in the world. There were allegedly never riots or stealing in the shop.1 It became a protected space in Harlem, where people took care of Lewis, and the store and Lewis returned the care by helping everyone with a dime or some reading space or just shelter when needed. Malcolm X spoke at the front—and spent much time reading in 1 Seventh Avenue where the shop was placed, was not always spared of violence, but the bookshop was not touched (correspondence, Vaunda Nelson’s comments on draft chapter, October 2022).

A1 THE READING ROOM OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

5

the back room and talking with Michaux. Muhammad Ali dropped by, the Ghana president Nkrumah donated loads of coffee (Nelson 2023), W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes visited, youngsters of Harlem found refuge and education. It was almost always open and those who could not buy books sat and read or talked with Lewis, who became a mediator and facilitator of the empowering potential of books, filling a need of the day and time when it was difficult to get books by black people, even in New York. It was staffed by black people, from the late 1950s also by his wife, whom Lewis met late in life. Capturing the spirit of the store and the man, a clip in Olsson’s film finds the then elderly Michaux, around 1974, sitting surrounded by books. With a twinkle in his eye, he says: Black is beautiful, but black isn’t power. Knowledge is power. For you can be black as a crow. You can be white as snow. But if you don’t know, and you ain’t got no dough, you can’t go, and that’s fo’ so’. (from Olsson, 2012)

Grandniece Vaunda Compiling Family History on Uncle Lewis This brief clip with Lewis is a gem. It captures his personality. There is strangely little information and few articles or recordings around. After watching Olsson film, I later discovered that a book on Lewis had come out in the same year, in 2012—the first of its kind. Lewis’ grandniece and children’s author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson2 had written a documentary novel, as she called it, with artwork/illustrations by R. Gregory Christie. The depiction of Lewis’ difficult but successful journey in life is titled No Crystal Stair piecing together the life of her ‘Uncle Lonnie’. After reading the book I later contact Vaunda. In candid email exchanges, she elaborates on the process with the book—and provides materials she also used in her research, such as interview transcripts with Lewis, and articles not accessible online. All this material is from 1970 to 1975. Vaunda writes in our email exchange in 2017:

2 Vaunda Micheaux Nelson uses another spelling of her surname, slightly different from ‘Michaux. There is an added ‘e’.

6

A. H. HANSEN

I was motivated to begin collecting information about him and the bookstore in the late 1980s while I was in library school at the University of Pittsburgh. As more and more people asked if I was related to the Harlem bookseller Lewis Michaux, my curiosity was aroused. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about writing a book. I was compiling family history. It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that the idea of a biography became real. By then, I had learned enough about Lewis to realize that the bookstore was only one element of the story, that the real story was in Lewis’s journey toward salvation. Books saved him, and Lewis saved others by bringing them to books.

Concentrating mainly on Lewis and those around him, from childhood in 1906 to his death in 1976, it bears a resemblance to a biography—but it is made of a collection of voices not transcribed verbatim but pieced together from various sources: I began telling the story of Lewis Michaux through the voices of those who surrounded him – family, friends, associates, and bookstore customers. I was able to acquire audio tapes and transcripts of interviews with Lewis. Reading his words and hearing his voice were invaluable to developing his character in No Crystal Stair. I enjoy the way Lewis sometimes makes a word mean what he chooses – like “professor” and “propaganda”. There are so many memorable quotes from my uncle. This was part of the joy in my journey through this project. But organizing the story, deciding who would speak when, and the content of what they might say to move the story forward resulted in many hours of brain pain.

Eventually, Vaunda finds a way. ‘Only the tools of fiction could make a complete portrait’ (Cover of book, Nelson 2012). The reclusive life of Lewis Michaux could be re-opened and characterised. As an example of Vaunda’s method, she creates the character ‘Snooze’ (a compound of several young visitors) depicting how he became captured with reading after nosing around in the store and exchanging words with the witty Michaux. As with the returning Snooze, each speech extract or voice in the book is assisted by a name, in most cases real people. Lewis’ only son, Lewis Jr, plays an important role. Lewis himself, in addition to extracted quotes from interviews, is one of the dozens of other names/voices she has used. FBI archive notes on the possibly dangerous activist Lewis are reproduced from original documents. There is a strange feeling of intimate testimonies

A1 THE READING ROOM OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

7

from a range of people close to Lewis including the bookstore owner himself. Vaunda describes the work and creation as ‘informed speculation’ (email exchange, 2017) providing the style of personality and writing to all the characters in the documentary novel—a complex process of turning an experience into language. A researcher (interestingly another bibliophile in the family) and relative who moulds together fragments and stories that have been circulating, interviews with witnesses to Michaux’s life. Whether first or second hand, there are, however, always elements of narration to process what Bertolini calls testimony, the historical witness’ truthful account of events (Bertolini 2015, 42). Amongst the material that helped Vaunda to creatively construct a story of Lewis’ life, was interviews with Lewis, which I am now going to dwell on. Various quotes from these are used in the book. Notably, she refers to 6 sources of feature articles or interviews taking place or published between 1970 and 1975.3 The bookshop closed in 1975 and Lewis died in 1976.

Fellows with Ph.D.s ‘Too Tame to Tell About the Shame’ The rhyming rhetoric of the clip with Lewis in Olsson’s Black Power Mixtape clearly comes across in these texts. Lewis is an artist, a Harlemite, a rhyming rhetorician and street-wise rather than an intellectual sticking to the discourse and the right grammar. He plays down his reading and emphasises gaining knowledge through experience and has a way of condensing complicated histories, global and personal, in short, humorous and punchy poetry slam. He often speaks of learning through lived trails and trials, rather than through formal education. As Lewis puts it himself: ‘I didn’t come from Yale’, but ‘out of jail’. His relationship to education as well as Christianity comes across as ambiguous

3 Interview transcripts used for contextual overview as well as quoting: The Civil Rights Doumentation project: A Transcript of a Tape-Recorded Interview, Robert Wright, Interviewer, New York, July 31, 1970. Referred to as ‘Wright, 1970’/Encore, September 1972. A Conversation between Lewis Michaux, Chester Himes, and Nikki Giovanni. Referred to as ‘Encore, 1972’/Third World, 1972. Series Oct 20, Nov 2, Nov 24, Dec 8 and Dec 22 (five parts), Lewis Michaux The World’s Greatest Seller of Black Books. Referred to as ‘Third World, 1972’. All these were copied and mailed to me from the USA by Vaunda.

8

A. H. HANSEN

at best. Prayers have not worked for him, he explains in various anecdotes, yet there is some endorsement of Jesus who was ‘in a temple at 12 years old teaching the wise men, so he hadn’t been to school. So, I must not be a fool’. Lewis himself dropped out of school at a similar age. Indeed, Lewis narrates himself not as the school-fool, but as a wise man through experience, who nevertheless cherishes (informal) education through reading. Formal studies also engage with reading, but there is a loss in the process, Lewis appears to indicate: These ‘fellows with Ph.D.s’, he explains, ‘they’re so trained that they’re too tame to talk about the shame’. In other words, or as an interpretation; They are too keen to fit in, to become white, or a part of an office of some kind. Now you know that America got all kinds of missiles and bombs and guns and can’t be free, because they don’t know the truth. They don’t know that white, the dream of being white supreme had turned to sour cream, and they’re smiling all over the earth. (Wright 1970)

Becoming part of an office, school, or institution, trains/tames you. Lewis also argues that formal education appears to simplify black history being on ‘slavery to freedom’. They are only ‘taught the inferior side of black man’. Lewis’ bookstore, on the other hand, was filled with black literature and storytelling. Cultural production and reflection on much else. So, there is a danger of some schooling (although he also praises education) that one ‘don’t know the dignity of the black man. All he knows is slavery’. One of the most interesting reflections though happens when Lewis departs from his rhymes and becomes a bit more elaborate: I listen to everybody, but I don’t hear everybody. It’s all right to listen, but you don’t hear everybody because if you do, you cease to be yourself and become the fellow you hear. It’s an intelligent thing to do, to entertain the man who’s trying to tell you something, but never lose your individuality.

Vaunda uses this quote on the last page of No Crystal Stair. Lewis continues explaining saying man must ‘stick to his talent’, ‘wait on your seeds’. While Lewis was keen on working slowly to see his business grow, he was not keen on waiting for the Lord’s mercy or sticking to patience taught by his parents. He asked for a bike and his father told him to wait and see what the Lord could give them. He stole a bike instead. He

A1 THE READING ROOM OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

9

thought, ‘you can’t walk straight on a crooked line’.…’You can’t live in a fish factory and don’t stink’. He left home and had a gambling house in his youth but changed direction in New York when the bookstore idea emerged. It became about filling people’s heads and not just their stomachs. ‘If you are white or black and ain’t got nothing in your head, you walk around dead’. He though envied or missed recognition from intellectuals. Lewis was instead saying things like a writer, like Chester Himes, and painters, and artist and poets. He always tried to inspire visitors to read. With Du Bois and intellectuals, it was not needed, they were professionals, maybe to a degree that had moved them from the common man. But all sorts came in the shop, from the ordinary kid, like Snooze, in Vaunda’s book, to the worldfamous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. Lewis asked Sugar Ray if he could ‘take a joke’. Sugar replied, ‘that’s my name—joke. Bring it on’. Lewis made a point on Sugar’s neat, conked down hair: ‘Sugar, what you put on your head will rub off in your bed, but what you put in your head will be with you until you’re dead’ (Encore 1972, 49, Nelson 2023).4 In several of the interviews, the topic turns towards black–white relations in Harlem. Lewis is alarmed over the use of dope, the hard drugs keeping blacks down and with no other job offer than going to Vietnam. Drug abuse among youth was escalating since the late 1960s. Lewis is satirical about Nam. ‘If I was talking to Uncle Sam’. ‘Sam, be damned, you really do think that I’m a lamb. You never look at me until you’re in a jam, now you’re coming up with some story about Vietnam, and I’m all packed for Birmingham’. Until then he continues ‘…baking my yams, boiling my hams, drinking my dram, making love to Diane. Sam, goddamn’ (Wright 1970). Human rights people had asked him about whites and blacks in Harlem, and he decides to put a drug anecdote on them: ‘Well, how are we getting along’. ‘… in Central Park the other day…a beautiful white girl sitting on the bench and the ugliest black man I ever seen is with her, shooting her in the arm with dope’ … ‘So, we are getting together. The church couldn’t get us together, the police couldn’t get us together, but dope is getting us together’ (Encore 1972). In another interview, he blames the Church, as exemplified by one pastor 4 Vaunda Nelson made a plausible edit suggestion, written exchange 1 July 2023, to the original Encore quote, which she thought was a misquote (remembering an oral version of the interview and familiar with his rhyming). It should read ‘in your bed’, not ‘when you bathe’, as in the Encore interview.

10

A. H. HANSEN

but noted as a general trend, for not encouraging youth to read. Lewis explained that the Church wanted the blacks to be quiet with their Bible, not with reading other books that could make them question issues in contemporary society. Lews also makes a remark on sisters going to the church with the bills they cannot pay. But they are met with the message that God is good and asked to say hallelujah. The Church is a sort of dope too, Lewis notes: ‘when she go back home, that dope wears off of her, she look and see the same bills’ (Wright 1970).

Walking and Talking on a Crooked Line Lewis’s bookstore and person were important for many. His redemptive actions were of a clear inspirational quality. Allegedly called ‘The Professor’, although he never formally undertook studies for an academic degree. And he said to them: ‘You’re right. I professed to do something and I did it’, as the first page of Vaunda’s book says. She dedicated it ‘To Uncle Lonnie and his Vision’ (Nelson 2012). There are few documentary/interpretative accounts on Lewis (or the other black American, Eugene Haynes, engaged with in another chapter in this collection). Lewis is almost accidentally brought to a wider public by a Swedish filmmaker and a grand niece’s books. Lewis left little to no writing. His life writing came out in oral quirks and rhymes, but his living archive of bookshelves and the people around him ‘wrote his life’. He was the little man behind it. Reclusive, yet making his literature open to the community and the world. His oral life writing is captured in the interview transcripts and articles exhibiting his walking and talking of crooked line sermons or speeches. Lewis’ life story may be likened to tales of selfmade entrepreneurs, celebrities, athletes—and the unfolding of what be characterised as typical American Dream-tales (McAdams 2006, 38). As McAdams notes it may be generativity (2013, xi) that carries a part of the interest. Something that often contains an aspect of the redemptive tale and plot (Vaunda used the word ‘salvation’). The notion of generativity McAdams borrows from the psychologist Erik Erikson and adapts to his work on the redemptive self . McAdams defines generativity as ‘an adult’s concern for and commitment to promote the welfare and development of future generations’ (xi). It is basically about passing on and investing in something that will outlive the self (45–49). Lewis and Eugene both ended up as teachers, Lewis in his store, Eugene among youth in his hometown. The third American on Side A, the folklore centre owner Izzy

A1 THE READING ROOM OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

11

Young, was also an important informal teacher and mediator—of Swedish folk music. What they generated for their audiences is remarkable. Lewis had a difficult beginning. In his younger years, he had a phase as a gambler and thief. After initiating the bookstore, he reflects on the issue of race and of the importance of knowing one’s past to be able to transform identity (in 1938 in an entry named ‘Lewis’): I am not a so-called Negro. I say so-called because a Negro is a thing, not a person. The word is an invention. A Negro is a thing to be used, abused, accused, and refused. That’s his role in this stroll. Ask me a year ago why the black man can’t succeed, and I would have said because of white suppression. Ask me now and I’d have to say because he doesn’t know himself. If a man doesn’t know where he’s come from, he doesn’t know where he’s going. You gotta know who you are, before you can improve your condition. (2012, 39)

Lewis appears to ask for a search for, and a build-up of, awareness, consciousness and knowledge. Knowledge of one’s history and cultural contributions. An informal learning node of a bookstore is a starting point. His brother, a famous religious preacher (acquainted with US presidents and other prominent people) could also be characterised as providing a redemptive life story, though rather different. His family was cautious about Lewis, not only because of his earlier gambling and stealing but because of his radical politics and his view on religion. He had left his brother Lightfoot’s church business in the 1930s to become a bookseller. In 1941, another entry by ‘Lewis’, the keen student of religion has the following to say: I don’t pray anymore. When I first started out with Lightfoot in the Church, I had but three books. A hymn book, A Bible book and an empty pocketbook waiting on the Lord. I found out by reading other books who the Lord is. That is the landlord. He comes to see me every month. So praying doesn’t get it. Work gets it. (2012, 48)

12

A. H. HANSEN

Lewis was not only part of the Civil Rights and Black Power movement, as a bystander or victim. He was a historical witness and mediator for several decades, a node in its articulation. Despite this position, he left no or little writing or accounts, little personal testimony, we could say. Much of the material in Vaunda’s book appears to be ‘third hand’; she is talking to others who had conversations with Michaux, re-enacting and narrating what he had said and hereby getting close to the intimacy of testimony. We do not know what or which details are put differently, but we trust her in her aim of recreating a truthful character capturing the essence of Lewis. In email exchanges with Vaunda (2017), she summarises some of the feedback she has received on No Crystal Stair which was produced in parallel with a briefer illustrated picture book for kids. Some teens expressed a liking for the format, saying it’s almost like a movie or a play. ‘This is a book in movie format-documentary format’. ‘Instead of just telling everything from a bland third person omniscient, the author wrote from the first-person point of view of maybe thirty different people who were involved in Lewis’ life and bookstore endeavour’. She quotes a few teen readers and continues: ‘His mother and father got a few paragraphs in, his brothers and sisters, his bookstore patrons, his opponents, some newspaper clippings and photographs, and some modern voices all had their time to speak as well’. Some, however, had also noted that there were gaps or jumps in time, that could make it hard to follow.

The Book Itch In the same exchange, there is a long passage on her fascination with Lewis, worth quoting in its entirety: I love exploring character. And what a character Lewis was! I enjoyed getting to know him through research, trying to figure him out. I was intrigued by his struggle, his journey. Lewis’s life is important historically, but it’s also just a great story. Youth is a time of searching, tripping, falling, getting back up, slipping, finding ground, failing, and finally flying. Lewis’s journey embodied all of this, so I suspected it would appeal to teens. And as a bibliophile, I was taken with this life so influenced by reading – by how books saved Lewis and how he went on to save others through his bookstore. I was thrilled to share the story of a man who used books as a compass. For many people education is primarily a means to an end – employment. Not necessarily a bad thing, but Lewis was

A1 THE READING ROOM OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

13

promoting something greater – being an educated person in the world. (email exchange, Vaunda 2017)

In the exchange Vaunda reflects further on Lewis as a possible role model, seeing his life as a ‘reservoir of experience from which to draw as we navigate our lives’. She continues and points to the accomplishment of also Bass Reeves, a black U.S. Marshall, whom she did a children’s picture book biography about a few years earlier: ‘Unveiling these unsung contributors adds new pride in our heritage, not just for blacks but all people. Their stories raise the standard for those (young people in particular) who most need role models’. While Vaunda was researching and finding the form for the material in No Crystal Stair, she however paused that work to try another angle in an illustrated picture book based on talks with Lewis’s son, Lewis Junior: ‘Lewis Jr. told me stories of riding his bike to the store, helping his father, and meeting Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X. These stories were the genesis of the picture book’. ‘I was moved by Lewis Jr.’s story and wanted to explore how his father and the bookstore influenced him in particular. You could say Lewis Jr. stood up and made me pay attention. I couldn’t ignore him, so I put the longer work on pause and wrote The Book Itch, a biography for children and teens. It came out a few years later, in 2015. No Crystal Stair had been in process for around 15 years when it came out in 2012, it fell into place when Vaunda shifted from traditional biography to her documentary fiction format’. After I shifted to the new format, I found real pleasure in the storytelling. It gave me options and flexibility and allowed me to explore Lewis in a deeper way. I came to know the people around him more intimately’. Lewis’ National Memorial African Bookstore, also named by Lewis himself as the House of Common Sense and the Home of Proper Propaganda, provided a stable place with a particular identity and flavour where black figures of the time interacted. In a way it became what we could call ‘the reading room of the Black Power movement’. It was mediated and triggered by the power and the presence of books, a blended clientele of notables and ordinary Harlem ‘shufflers’—but not least by the witty presence of a man promoting readership and talking, and late evening discussions in his cave. At the end of this tale of the collection, I would like to bring in Stefan Hertmans (2017) notes on how the singular migrant or stranger arrives with tales or as a bearer of tales—or trails and tales, as Vaunda Nelson has

14

A. H. HANSEN

noted. Hertmans writes ‘he’, the stranger, often arrives at dusk or unexpected in a needy state (Lewis came to New York on his own, with the strange or unusual project of a bookstore for black literature). Hertmans continues writing about the stranger that the farmers at the community usually flock around—and they end up offering him bread. Hospitality airs an ancient duty, Hertmans says. Lewis, but also the upcoming stories on the migrants of Izzy and then Eugene, had to work before being ‘offered bread’. Hertmans, in the same book, continues pondering what if the visitor is not just one humble and willing stranger entering but instead a ‘horde’ or ‘mass’. The single individual has the dignity of a lion, but the horde is looked at as aggressive insects: And if a few members in the horde behave badly, the whole group/mass will have to take punishment. The visitors and migrants of this collection come from original and obscure trails; in that sense, they could be likened to the lonely person coming at dusk. Others are just one among the horde which never is a horde but as dignified as the individual stranger. Their tales, and their representer’s means of mediation, construct a linkage between personal and societal crossroads, between humour and hardship, and memory and life narrative. I have engaged with individuals that were somehow trying to get on with their private and in some ways reclusive lives, but nevertheless finding themselves amid public turmoil or historically significant events.

A2 The Folk Singers Cave. First We Take Manhattan, then Stockholm Izzy Young Mediating Folk Music in New York and Stockholm for 6 Decades

Up in Harlem was Lewis, down in the Village was Izzy. What kind of institution was this and who was Izzy? He sold books, but he was not a bookseller. He promoted folkies but was not a promoter. He held concerts, in his store, but he was not as such a concert producer. He wrote a leading column for the leading Folk music magazine Sing Out! for 10 years, but he was not a journalist (Barretta 2013, quoting Izzy’s own notebook, 1962, xv). He arranged demos, loved dancing, loved pastry and coffee. But more to the point in terms of his direction in life: From a young age he had bought every book on folk music and kept them in his parents’ basement, until he opened the Folklore Center in 1957. Soon every folkie came there.1 Some were allowed to bring their sleeping bag if they had nowhere else to stay. Izzy’s place—as the one he later opened in Stockholm—was also a kind of living archive. The archive has throughout history been associated with human desires for collecting, preserving, ordering, and describing items of value, or possible value, to continue the reflections on archives that began in the Prologue. It has been viewed as a place of concern and associated with

1 The Clancy Brothers, Tim Buckley, Odetta, The New Lost City Ramblers, Emmylou Harris, Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Happy Traum, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and many, many others.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_2

15

16

A. H. HANSEN

authorities, educated, and appointed specialists’ and institutions to sanction material—which is rendered into order and placed under categories for the furthering of the archive and its public use—as discussed in the Prologue, using Derrida, also to address the role of governance and policing—and surveillance. We may also, following Arjun Appadurai, see the archived as the piling up or an ordering of the accidental.2 In our everyday lives, we aggregate documents and items and store them in our own archives, outside the purview of the state (apropos the individualisation of archives, as noted by Mambrol). For this kind of activity, a common wording is possibly ‘private collection’,3 it may be accidental or with a clearer purpose. I do though find it useful, as with several examples in this collection of tracks, to hang on to the notion of the archive. In Lewis’ and Izzy’s work and passions, for example, there is a strong anticipation—to deliberately pick a word from Appadurai, again from his article ‘Archives and Aspiration’, which leads me into this track. Lewis and Izzy were aspiring to build archives, and they became inspirational and iconic representations of people’s archives. As public figures they also became recognised as civilian archons , who created their own arkheions with a strong degree of political or/and cultural significance. They domesticated and safeguarded and collections that tended to have little voice, space or institutional representation. In the first track, we witnessed an example of the making of, or an example of a commencement of the gathering black literature in one archive, but also a very vocal and public one (through its archon, Lewis and representatives and guests, such as Malcolm X) which ignited a surveilling power, the FBI to keep an eye on the man and his growing and influential bookstore. Our second character, Izzy, did not have the same political significance. His journey and cultural ‘mark’ are however worth trying to retell.

2 On accidental archiving, see discussion of scenes from the movie Harold and Maude in track Chapter B6 Musical Living Archives. 3 We may however also understand an institution’s documentation of everyday practice, ending up with its own archive. The archive becoming something they just have and accumulate, and not something created or collected with a special purpose (Toft, 27, in van der Meijden et al. 2013).

A2 THE FOLK SINGERS CAVE. FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN …

17

Izzy’s Columns and His Daughter’s Memoir Israel Goodman Young, or Izzy as he was called, 1928–2019, was a Bronx Jew, folk music enthusiast, folk dance practitioner, writer and proprietor of a key US folk music centre from 1957—and then from 1973, he relocated and opened a similar institution in Stockholm, Sweden. From the early days in the late 50s and early 60s the big folk singers of the time used to hang out in Izzy’s little Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village, New York City. Izzy had concerts there and he took a young singer who renamed himself Bob Dylan around to record companies before the kid got a deal and also arranged his first gig. However, in the late 1960s, Izzy fell in love with Swedish folk music and in 1973 he moved to Stockholm and opened the Folklore Centrum. Allegedly he was smitten by a performance by the Swedish fiddler duo Björn Ståbi and Ole Hjorth at Newport Folk Festival, 1969 (Frankl 2008). Over the years, Izzy has been documented by various film makers, such as Dan Drasin in the early Sunday, a 17-minute short containing footage from the 9th of April 1961 protest on the banning of music playing in Washington Park in New York, where Izzy played a key role in its organisation. The demonstration was tackled by strong force by the police, but the ban on music was later dropped and the permit reinstated. A young Izzy is seen in debates with the police. In 1989 the first documentary, Talking Folklore Center on the New York Folklore Center appears, directed by Jim Downing. In 2005, Young appeared in Scorsese’s No Direction Home on Bob Dylan. The major sources in this chapter are however a selection of Izzy’s own and late mainly Swedish language columns from his Stockholm fanzine/ newsletter—where some of the printed content is re-reused from his earlier writings in the American folk magazine Sing Out! 4 I have used 10 newsletters from late period 2010 to 2012 (printed newsletters ended in 2013). In 2018 around the time when he turned 90, Izzy has the last concert at the centre, and in November 2018 it was primarily his daughter Philomène Grandin, a radio host and writer, who packed up the place, after 45 years of existence (Philomène kindly read and commented on this chapter). When Izzy initially relocated from Greenwich Village,

4 Scott Barretta compiled all Izzy’s columns from the American folk magazine Sing Out! over 10 years with added intros/chapters by others, including a foreword by Izzy himself. In The Conscience of the Folk Revival, 2012.

18

A. H. HANSEN

New York, to Södermalm in Stockholm, it was with an Italian woman. And a year later their daughter Philomène was born. Izzy passes 90 years old in 2019 and in early 2021 Philomène publishes a memoir of her life with Izzy, Glöm allt, men inte mig (Forget everything, but not me). In addition to the selected zines/newsletters I have used Philomène’s book, and thereby primarily concentrated on Izzy’s own, and his daughter’s material, in this chapter. Izzy’s vast archive of material is distributed mainly into three archives: primarily the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. They received much material already while Izzy was alive. Some material is also at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma—and in Sweden at a Folk library at a Swedish Folk Music Archive, at Höga kusten. The latter library set up by Philomène. Not to forget, stories and photos continue to be shared on the Folklore Centrum FB page (a page dedicated to the memory of Izzy Young). During his time at the Folklore Centrum in Stockholm, Izzy produced the beforementioned newsletters until 2013 (after that the centre’s communication channels are its website and FB page mainly). Plotted down on his typewriter, and with the use of a light table. Although not stencil print (as the newsletters I produced in the table tennis club outside Copenhagen at the time when Izzy introduced his letters/newspaper, see track Chapter B4 on small press passions). Izzy pasted in adverts from folk music events all over Sweden. In between there are Izzy’s notes and remarks, interestingly often a blend of old and new writing. His causery-style column in each newsletter is called MotVikt which may be translated ‘Counterweight’. The past and the present, or Izzy against the tide, the times and his inner voices? A constellation or assemblage of past and present, a patchwork of intricate connections. Images of mini fiddlers in 2010 (a new generation) on one page, extracts from Izzy’s notebook in November 1971, ‘Sweden is an inch from our lives’. Then a Sing Out! column from 1972, an obituary, adverts for waltzing events, a brief note on the prize for a 19-year-old with a picture (all in number 7, 2010). ‘More information on folk music to be found nowhere’ it says on the front (in Swedish). The newsletter is apart from this ‘everything is connected’-approach also a language constellation of Swedish and English. Izzy’s archive resurfaces on every second page or so of his newsletter, but he does not appear to be stuck in the past; old material is commented upon in new columns, past texts are next to new, it is a living heritage

A2 THE FOLK SINGERS CAVE. FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN …

19

which Izzy mediates—in parts through live sessions in his store. Izzy is in between the newsletters busy preparing the next concert. Next to older performers are new and young talents. While the break between then (US) and now (Sweden) is felt, it is not an attempt to try to keep old days or folk music alive. For Izzy it is as kicking as ever—and Izzy is just struggling, in the present, to glue the activity up on the light table for his next zine. And to welcome some of them to play in his room. It is a folk conviviality or constellation where past and present become one, a continuity of folk music, old folkies and new talents. But while the activity is felt, The Folklore Centrum is giving him minimal earnings. There are a few thousand subscribers of the zine who get it by the post for a modest prize. A handful is out each year.

Visited by People Wanting a Story About Dylan Izzy was according to himself quite often—and this is repeated frequently in his writing—visited by people who come in not so interested in Izzy, his magazine, or his huge library, or his concerts, or Swedish folk music, but, well, just eager to get ‘en snuskig historia om Bob Dylan, som inte finns på tryck, tack’ (a dirty story about Bob Dylan, which is not published, thank you), as he with some annoyance quotes a visitor to his store (2010, issue 6, page 20). People always remind me about my past, he wrote, but they do not know anything about my work in America except for that I arranged his first concert 20 years later, he writes in a newsletter (2010, 4, 19). In a 2010 issue of his Folklore Centre magazine Izzy Young pastes in two original 1974 SingOut columns and gives them the title ‘Folklore revisited’ (2010, 7, 17–18). This was a year after he opened his store in Stockholm, but while he was still writing for the leading American folk magazine SingOut! where he had a column from 1959 to 1969. It holds anecdotes after the first year: a fiddle player coming in ‘poo-poohs music from Skåne’ (7,18), preferring music from Dalarna. He shows his knowledge of regions and differences, yet also writes: ‘Maybe it takes a foreigner to put it all together – to stay away from the sectarian hassles’ (7, 18). Izzy Young believed that Swedish folk had much to offer. It was an era where the notion cultural imperialism was used repeatedly. Also, by Izzy Young in his early 1970s writings. Some entered the store and uttered, ‘only Swedish music?’ and he would then ‘go into a spiel about American cultural imperialism’ (7, 18). In a way, he came to wake up Swedish collective memory on folk music.

20

A. H. HANSEN

On the next page of the same magazine, we are back in 2010. The 1974 column was in English. Now he writes in a staggeringly direct Swedish: ‘Folk frågar mig jämt varför jag kom hit, till lilla (skit-)landet Sverige. Och jag svarar att jag kom hit för att jag tycker om Sverige’ (2010, 7, 20) [People ask me often why I came here, to this little (shit-) country Sweden. And I answer that I came here because I like Sweden]. One event among that may have had a strong influence on Izzy’s interest in the folk music of Sweden happens in 1969 when Swedish fiddlers Ole Hjorth and Bjorn Ståbi played at Newport Folk Festival (2010, 7, 17). Izzy has reprinted an essay from Sing Out! in 1972. Izzy describes it as ‘Swedish double-fiddle playing’, not one fiddle accompanying the other, as we know it, but ‘first fiddle presenting melody and second fiddle asserting differences, nuances and struggle. The second fiddle on an equal basis rather than as a sustaining, rhythmic background. The music moved me deeply’. The fiddlers also came to New York to play on the radio and record Folk Fiddling from Sweden for Elektra. 42 years later Ole Hjorth also plays at Folklore Centrum in Stockholm (beginning with Skullbräddleken, the first song of one of their albums, Folk Fiddling from Sweden). In his columns and his talks with me it appears that Izzy has staged himself, or maybe also been placed in a sort of ‘public testimony chair’, as the 1960s witness to the folk revival, and the stories of the legends that rambled and roamed during that era. Notably, he is the witness par excellence to Dylan’s rise and the one who commented on it in SingOut! in the process of Dylan’s coming into fame (for a history of Dylan’s early years, see e.g., Høg Hansen 2012). Some are though not so interested in the place, the books, records or concerts at the Folklore Centrum, or in buying his magazine, but come to play or visit because of what he has come to signify. Visitors come to dig into his first-hand memory. He was the first to arrange a concert for Dylan back in 1961 ‘that one event gives me more leeway in Sweden than anything I did in America’, he writes in SingOut! (vol. 23, March–April 1974, reprinted in Folklore Centrum 7, 2010) when he had relocated to Sweden. His column also contains small anecdotes about other people of that time. In 2010 (6, 21) he writes that Billie Holliday once gave a charity concert in Greenwich Village for the new magazine Village Voice. She had difficulties getting up on the stage, but became young anew when she began singing. After the concert, Billie, her friends, Izzy and ‘all the intellectuals’ (6, 21) from Village Voice went to a flat where they had to climb some stairs. ‘Where is the whiskey?’,

A2 THE FOLK SINGERS CAVE. FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN …

21

Billie asked, quoted by Izzy (6, 21), when they arrived at their destination after the climb. The Village Voice people didn’t know about any whiskey there. ‘No Whiskey, no Billie Holiday’, she then said and went down the stairs again. The Holiday story anecdote, without line break (Izzy is not into pauses or ‘bridges’, his writing is ‘connected ramble’) is followed by a story about Reverend Gary Davis, a black and blind gospel singer who often came to his store. One day he came and put his hand against the wall, found a banjo, took it down and started playing square dance like if he was a Southern white man, Izzy writes. This made me happy, Izzy writes, and continued: ‘When we whites had too much fun, he used to play an old scary hymn, Death don’t have no mercy’ (6, 21, my translation from Swedish).

Past and Present Pamphlet-Tapestries Izzy’s tales, orally and in writing, witness to timelessness as well an ongoing concern with his musical and cultural migration from US to Sweden. A passage that never stops to call for memory work. Several issues of his magazine constructed these juxtapositions or relational mappings or ‘tapestries’ of texts from different times, the past as already inside the present. Remembering firstly Benjamin’s flaneur encountering the past in the different objects and buildings of the cityscape, Izzy provided a comparable tapestry, a walk-through folk music history and present. Benjamin also used the term ‘constellation’, which I here occasionally employ freely. Benjamin reflects on a particular type of historian, which bears some resemblance to Izzy, a historian ‘who grasps the constellation which his own era has formed’. Benjamin goes on to write ‘…with a definite earlier one’. And that the time of the now is shot through (my emphasis) with chips of Messianic time (Benjamin 1950, in Rabinow 1992, 255). In Lewis and Izzy’ work and what was their everyday life and call, one found a tapestry of past and present as noted above or a closeness between a distant past and a present and tomorrow. A constellation of reference points and continuity, celebrated by the next event. The differences between Sweden and the US are articulated repeatedly during my two days of research into his archives many years ago, in 2011. The urgency of his present work with folk music (2011) overshines what could have been a retreat into ‘nostalgia’. The visit gives me the impression that he surely misses his New York days with the folkies and his time as a head columnist for SingOut!, which he also writes in

22

A. H. HANSEN

his newsletter. However, at that time Izzy, just over 80 was still arranging concerts, writing and surviving, immersed in folk music. He continued up until late 2018. Behind his grump and moan, I found a lovely human being very happy to write and speak about the music that has always had his profound interest. The past lived with him for present events and storytelling rather than as archived within. Interestingly, it is the live performances, the coming to life of music in a now which he then expressed as important to him (Interview, January 2011). Izzy’s memory work did not seem to haunt him, although it sometimes led him to shout! For example: He has a go at the great Folk Music researcher Alan Lomax for copyrighting the music that was made to wander and have no owner— or at Martin Scorsese for not having anything to do with the interviews in the film No Direction Home who had Scorsese’s name as director. Among many others interviewed in No Direction Home is Suze Rotolo, an artist strongly involved in various movements of the early 1960s. She is on the cover of Dylan’s Freewheelin’ from 1962. She was dating and living with Dylan at the time. Izzy was a long-time friend of her. When she dies in 2010 only 67 years old, Izzy has a photo of the late Suze and a note of love and a thank you in his newsletter. ‘She was the person I and my daughter Philomène would have preferred most to visit when we soon travel to New York City’ (2011, 2, 22). Izzy went to New York in 2011 to participate in the 50th-year anniversary event for the 9 April Washington Park protest. ‘I will think of her all the time and what she did for folk music, art and for friendship’ (2011, 2, 22). Izzy represented the folklore world through his writing and archives, and as a personalised key to the 1960s mythologies, yet also a key to how a tradition is lived on, adapted and performed up until the late 2010s. His magazine slipped quirky re-mediations. An old poster made as a sort of advert for Dylan’s tune ‘Talkin’ Folklore Centre’ (a song never recorded) is in Folklore Centrum’s 2010 Christmas issue followed by the words ‘Christmas in the Heart’—from Bob Dylan and Izzy Young’. The year before, Dylan had released a cover album of Christmas songs. As Dylan, Izzy continued with love and theft, Talkin’ folklore centres, From New York to Stockholm, up till the age of 90. His only daughter, Philomène Grandin, born a year after her arrival in Sweden in 1974 is an actress, sound books reader and radio program leader. It is clear in Izzy’s writings—and during my visit over a weekend in 2011—that she has a special status. Her 2021 memoir of her life with Izzy confirms the love, but also reveals a struggle with a man who was

A2 THE FOLK SINGERS CAVE. FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN …

23

very much into his own writing and folklore passion, and often with little earnings to sustain their lives. Philomène lived with him for longer periods during her upbringing. She was part of the concerts5 and his work. The last 8 years were particularly demanding due to Izzy’s deteriorating health from around 2015 and onwards. He had dementia. Her memoir is moving back and forth in time in brief episodic chapters reconstruction a variety of situations. I have no problem recognising the man I met back in 2011.6 Philomène’s depiction of Izzy’s memory loss is often done with a dose of humour. In 2017 Izzy recounts a fantastic trip to Copenhagen to see a friend which he had not yet embarked on. ‘I feel like a new-born What a fantastic journey’. He is in Philomène’s place, still in bed after an afternoon nap. ‘But Dad, you have not left yet’. Then Izzy laughs. Philomène had helped him packing and he needed a nap. A bit later, they have coffee and gets ready to go. Izzy continues ‘that train journey was nothing’ (it takes 5 hours to Copenhagen from Stockholm).’Dad you have not left yet.’ Izzy looks up surprised ‘Am I getting mad?’ (Grandin 2021, 158). In 2010 Izzy and Philomène, who went on many trips together, are on their way to Lodz, the industrial town where Izzy’s parents were born and grew up, before they left for New York before the war. They have not been to Poland earlier. Izzy looks for Jewish bakeries to get a challah. His Dad had made this before Jewish ceremonies and holidays (Izzy used to work in his father’s bakery before opening the folklore centre). Izzy listens to talk in the street. He used to manage some Yiddish, but his parents also spoke Polish. Izzy usually speaks English to Philomène, while she answers in Swedish. They continue the journey to Warsaw and for the first time in Philomène’s life, someone spits at them. She does not know why. ‘Is it because Dad is Jewish. Because it shows that he is. That we are?’ It happens outside a museum on the genocide. They are looking at a jam mug exhibited. The content of that mug had saved the life of a family that was hiding and sharing the jam while being smuggled out

5 I do feel sad having never been present at one of the Folklore Centre concerts after visiting Izzy in 2011 although I have viewed the handful of clips available on YouTube. In 2012 I had my first child and in 2014 the second. 2010–2017 was very busy with work travel, which also led to tracks in this collection. So, I kept postponing the 5 hours train ride to Stockholm. In November 2018 the store closed. 6 Philomène’s Swedish language memoir on her life with her father, Izzy, was in 2022 translated to English as ‘Don’t forget me’ and published by Scribner, UK.

24

A. H. HANSEN

of the country. During this trip, Izzy has more frequent moments where he is not present. He sits and stares, and does not know what happened when he ‘returns’. In 2011 Philomène goes to New York without Izzy. She sits in the park where her Dad had arranged the demo in 1961. Hundreds of musicians had gathered with their instruments and others. Izzy thought the police may leave them if they sang children’s songs. It did not help. The police went in hard and took people in their vans. She looks for the place where Folklore Centre was. Izzy does not remember the address anymore, but a guitar store employee directs her. She looks at the façade. It is a sunny day. Her mom and dad met there in 1968. They had some argument first, she tried to get into a concert cheaply, the legend goes. Later they took a promenade across Brooklyn Bridge and talked literature. They began to do radio together. Catherine as her name was soon lived at Izzy’s loft above the store. Nice flat in the Summer, very cold in the Winter. Izzy also used to hide deserters there who did not want to serve in the American war in Vietnam, Philomène writes (2021, 50–51). In the early 1970s, Izzy thought that the folk scene had become too commercial and that the village had turned into a tourist trap. Izzy wanted to go to Sweden (His partner, French Catherine Grandin, helped to make it happen and later became active in the women’s movement in Sweden). While Philomène is at the former folklore centre that sunny day, a place that at that time served falafel, she is reminded by old black and white photos Izzy had shown her. Izzy with the poet Allen Ginsberg, with a bunch of AfricanAmerican musicians, and as a young man around 30 over his typewriter inside the store. Philomène’s book is not only the staging of her memory but also a journey into Izzy’s archives discovering old tape recordings worth retelling. On a coffee-stained roll tape she is able to listen to the sound of a radio program from 1966 with a very young Patti Smith and Izzy. She sings and reads poems. Then a jump to 2011. She and Izzy is at a Patti Smith concert in Stockholm. Patti is full of energy on stage. They spend time with her backstage afterwards. When they are about to leave, Patty cannot find her glasses. They all begin to search. Philomène crawls down under a bed and finds them. Patty lightens up ‘You saved my life,’ she answers them when they are leaving (48). One day when Philomène was about 8, Dad is again out of money, nothing in the pocket or under the mattress. He always tells her that it will be all right. It always does, Philomène adds (69). If we sit at a bench

A2 THE FOLK SINGERS CAVE. FIRST WE TAKE MANHATTAN …

25

in the park, someone we know will possibly pass by, and they may invite us for lunch. It has worked earlier. Izzy has run a national treasure for folk music for almost a decade. He receives plenty of praise, especially after his death, but he never got a penny of support from the state. He was a keen note taker and diarist throughout his life. Much of his writing is archived at the Library of Congress. It was simply shipped there. An Englishman is doing some documentary and contacts Philomène with a pdf copy of some diary extracts. One entry is from 1985. Philomène is around 11: She places herself close to my body, as if it is a resting place, a sofa, just there to be used. That is ok. It is part of our time on the planet. We should not live to become memories, but how can you avoid such thoughts. Now we are at a silent library, and Philomène goes away to read her book while I write. It is part of our big agreement. (164) (T)he citadel of Americana folk music … It was like an ancient chapel, like a shoebox sized institute. The Folklore Center sold and reported on everything that had to do with folk music.—Bob Dylan on Izzy Young’s Folklore Center, in Chronicles Vol. 1, 2004.

A3 Reclusive Openness: A Black American Classical Pianist in Europe Eugene Haynes in USA, France and Denmark—While Befriending Author Karen Blixen

From St. Louis, USA, to Dragør, Denmark Lewis and Izzy each curated a niche. One could say that the AfricanAmerican classical pianist, composer and music pedagogue, Eugene Haynes, did the same. Eugene was born in St. Louis in 1927 and died in 2007. Until 2012 it was very difficult to find much online material about him. A few obituaries and brief presentations. However, the pianist left trails during a series of stays in Denmark in the mid-twentieth century. Half a century later a regional Danish museum produced an exhibition and some short films about him. He used to stay in the fishing village of Dragør outside Copenhagen during the 1950s while touring Europe. As an older man (in 2000) he had also published one book which through diary and letter entries focused particularly on a decadelong friendship and correspondence with the late Danish writer Isak Dinesen (pseudonym), known in Denmark as Karen Blixen. Eugene is also mentioned in several Blixen biographies (e.g., Migel 1967). Contrary to Vaunda’s documentary novel, but with some similarity to Izzy’s columns and diaries, Eugene’s diaries and letters are not produced in the aftermath of events as with autobiographies/biographies. The handwritten or typed diary, or the letter, was in its nineteenth and twentieth-century heydays mostly written in a tongue of reclusiveness to the selected few or/and to the drawer (except for famous peoples’ published letters, many posthumously). One could further argue for a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_3

27

28

A. H. HANSEN

particular Western and ‘white’ genre rising in tandem with the rise of the novel and Western expansion in terms of trade and colonialism. Travel, for those who were able, or forced due to war, produced separation of families, friends and so forth, and the letter could fill the gap and nurture human relationships (Pedersen 1990). In this genre the writer has a reduced ability to narrate long-term causes by the light of hindsight. The retrospect autobiography may allow for a grander overview but also works from the constraints of a dimming memory, one could argue. In any case, the experiencing I is in a different position than the narrating I . Letter-writing may bridge the experiencing and the narrating I. As an older form of blogging, less immediate, but more elaborate, than social media posting, its practice is not initially public. Personal archives of correspondence are created—which later may become public. In the upcoming discussion of Eugene (as in the later track on Thomas) the letters of the subject were published long after they were written. At first, as with many letters, and Eugene’s letters home to family and friends, were documents that helped to maintain closeness in relation and time, despite geographical distance. They were available for a few. Thirty eight years later than the last letter (published in 2000, involving correspondence 1952–1962) they now become historical documents. Today’s social media practices also fuse experience and narration: a thought and a feeling and an update is just at the end of the hand. The very first social media posts can today be read with a historical eye. As Lewis, Izzy, and Eugene, we may say that we all operate from our caves, clicking, while on the bike or train, yet this book so far has engaged with Americans operating from their physical caves: Firstly, Lewis and Izzy in their ‘folklore’ centres. And in this chapter Eugene in a rehearsal village house in Dragør in Denmark—and around Europe and later back in the US. They are histories about men who lived on the threshold between the hidden and the public. The representations of their works and lives can be characterised as creative forms of re-capture where light has been cast on their quiet engagements with art. Reclusive openness —an oxymoron, one might think—however, during this chapter, I attempt to test this notion on the life trajectory of this African-American classical pianist, Eugene, who befriended an even more well-known artist, the Danish writer Karen Blixen (also known under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen). Eugene crossed continents for work and adventure in the midst of the Cold War, and with a base in Denmark, he continued to nurture his friendship with Blixen and her secretary, Clara

A3 RECLUSIVE OPENNESS: A BLACK AMERICAN CLASSICAL …

29

Selborn, from 1952 and over the next ten years until Blixen’s death in 1962. Over many holidays and work trips in Denmark, he used Selborn’s house in the small fishing village of Dragør, located south of Copenhagen (while Selborn stayed with Blixen in Rungstedlund): Here practised piano, studied music, and took walks, when not travelling around Europe to give concerts. Haynes’ life, and the ten years in question for this chapter in particular (1952–1962), was 40 years later reopened for the public upon the publication of his diaries and letters in 2000. In addition to this publication, a suitcase belonging to Haynes containing clothes and other objects was found at Selborn’s house after her death in 2008. The contents of the suitcase were then turned into a temporary exhibition at a local museum, the Dragør Museum, in 2012, along with other objects placed in a model of Selborn’s house (Philipsen 2015).

A Black Classical Pianist in Europe in the 1950s In the 1950s, Haynes was sponsored by the US Information Service program, which aimed at improving America’s image abroad and countering Eastern European political and cultural influence. Given that the Cold War was “cold,” it also became a battle of culture (Phillipsen 2012). Racial segregation and discrimination were sensitive topics in the US, where the civil rights movement, formed half a century before, was about to gain new momentum. The Information Service tried to promote the US as a non-discriminating nation, and with Haynes, they could show that Blacks do have opportunities, even as classical pianists. At the time, the terms black and classical pianist may not have appeared as an oxymoron, or just an unlikely combination, as the pairing of reclusion and openness (which I will return to). Classical music was, at the time, a trade of artistic work almost solely reserved for whites. Black musicians were more commonly known to play soul, jazz, and blues. The Information Service was in a general sense promoting US’s cultural outreach and dominance, but also trying to rework its image—as a culture-rich nation. A US which was more than just Hollywood, cartoons, and Coca-Cola—but also a country fostering classical musicians just as talented as in Europe. A breakthrough was difficult. For his high school classmate, the black jazz musician Miles Davis (!) the situation was different. As Eugene wrote in a letter home while in France:

30

A. H. HANSEN

He (Miles) was entering a world where no one would question his right to function. This is still far from true where black African instrumentalists are concerned (in the States) which is why I spend as much time away from home as possible. (letter to brother, p. 76)

Eugene spent the last two to three decades of his career, from the 1960s onwards, mostly in academia as a music teacher and as an artist in residence at Lincoln University in Missouri. He also worked as a radio presenter (as Izzy). Later years saw him return to his birthplace of East St. Louis where he worked with young people.

Hidden Histories and Music Surfacing As noted, in 2000, the book of letters and diary writings was published. It was called To Soar with Angels. The European Travels – Remembrances of Isak Dinesen—Haynes was over seventy when but the writings in the book are from 1952 to 1962—and thus emphasized the period where he was befriending Blixen. I would have been curious for a longer time span. In 2001, the year after publication, his first CD came out, and his last public concert was in 2005. He died in 2007, at 80 years old. When his old friend Clara Selborn died in 2008 a suitcase belonging to Eugene was found in her house where he had stayed many years ago and given to the local Dragør Museum. The museum displayed a temporary exhibition in 2012 and produced five short films “The Pianist Eugene Haynes in Dragør, Denmark, and the World” (my translation). I was intrigued by Haynes when I first heard about the exhibition, but it was not until 2015 that I managed to visit the museum’s collections and open the suitcase. It is a special moment—inspecting the objects, one by one. With gloves, I remove the thin, protective paper and look through some books, open leather cases, and inspect a pipe instrument. I read an attached newspaper and magazine articles used in the exhibition, and a few days later, talk to the curator, Ingeborg Phillipsen. She explains that they had not found any remaining family members alive, such as brothers or sisters. Haynes was not married and did not have any kids. Ingeborg Phillipsen and the museum had acquired some material from the American archives in addition to the diary and letter collection of this ten-year period abroad. No other longer texts exist on the Internet apart from a few brief obituaries. Since 2015 Philipsen’s Danish narration over the short films is available on the museum website and YouTube.

A3 RECLUSIVE OPENNESS: A BLACK AMERICAN CLASSICAL …

31

Suitcases as Personal Archives Suitcases have, in museum contexts, often been loaded with symbolism; they are the private remains of people who became separated from their most important or needed belongings, often because of war or prosecution. ‘A deep historical metaphor for both willing and unwilling travellers’, as Temi Odumosu reminds me (written feedback on paper, 2015). Famous Holocaust exhibitions have suitcases. The suitcase, the exhibition, and the accompanying short films, as well as the book from 2000, have focused on the one decade of Haynes’ life abroad which coincided with the last ten years of Karen Blixen’s life. The objects tell a story which the letters and diaries expand upon. It did not surprise me that the suitcase contained ordinary every day-use belongings, like shoes and trousers and a few books—as well as keepsake objects like dried flowers in a frame. However, one could wonder why the suitcase remained at Selborn’s place for so many years? A reclusive collection and travellers’ bag in a village far away from the buzz of Paris or Saint Louis. Perhaps he may have pondered a return to Denmark? It was in safe hands with Clara anyway—and maybe those dried flowers and a pipe cleaner were not so important anymore after all? Now, after both Selborn and Haynes are deceased, I participate in this chapter in a new “opening” of the suitcase and his life, which the museum had initiated some years ago. Haynes had voiced himself eloquently, and interestingly, as a musician and writer, the connection to a famed Dane (Karen Blixen), undoubtedly played a role in the museum’s interest. I could relate Haynes to some of my own earlier engagements with relatively unknown biographies and writing, several of them making their way into this collection. Haynes led me to Dragør (on the island of Amager, where I have lived a few times in my life, a sort of home). Initially, I was disappointed in not finding some of his own words in the suitcase, like in diaries and notes; I had been reading and watching how he was represented by others and wanted to read him represent himself . However, the objects also spoke. Immediately after the museum visit, I received the letters and diary book which provided his own narration, nuanced the picture, and confirmed the warmness of his friendship with Blixen. In a diary entry titled “First meeting,” Haynes writes about a walk with Blixen:

32

A. H. HANSEN

Along the way she talked about the many discussions she and Finch-Hatton had had on music. I asked if she had the gramophone, he gave her in Africa. She was happy to show it to me when we returned to the house … As we said goodbye, I made a quip about being a ‘bit of Africa sent out’ to her. (28–29)

Blue Overalls, Poetry, German Grammar, Leather Cases and a Pipe Instrument In the suitcase, one finds his dark blue jeans overalls, shoes, and a hat that, according to a 1957 article written in a popular gossip magazine (Billed Bladet , The Picture Magazine) made him look like the local fishermen—and maybe the bohemians he hung out with as well, I would add. There are books, two refined leather cases, a pipe cleaner, various paper clips and reviews as well as photos and PR material from his tours. The Billed Bladet magazine and article is there too. A black American female tourist is at the front, and there are more rarities inside. The vocabulary is not surprising for the time: Der bor en neger i Dragør, the headline states (“There is a negro living in Dragør”). It was a time where the word black was seen as more offensive than negro—whereas today, it is the other way around. It is the first time I find a copy of Billed Bladet so interesting. I also find it somewhat surprising that the museum used the article title in their exhibition in 2012. The curator, Ingeborg Phillipsen, explained that the choice had been considered carefully; it was a deliberate quoting of Billed Bladet and aimed at throwing the visitor back in time to the thinking and vocabulary of the 1950s (phone interview 2015). Good intentions may be in place of the museum, but what are the consequences of continuing to reuse a derogative label? Did the word have to be in the title? (See e.g., Andreassen on use of words with a problematic history, in Tuxen 2016). In the magazine, the picture of a private, yet popular, man is painted.

From Now On, Your Name is Hans. You Are One of Us ‘From now on, your name is Hans. You are one of us’, the local fishermen assured him (84). He frequents not only Karen Blixen’s home north of Copenhagen in Rungstedlund, but also hangs out with locals like the

A3 RECLUSIVE OPENNESS: A BLACK AMERICAN CLASSICAL …

33

Dragør-based poet, Jørgen Gustava Brandt, who Haynes describes as ‘a real Casanova’ in a letter to his brother (77). Gustava teaches Haynes Danish, a language which he came to speak alongside French. In the suitcase, there is a book on German grammar and an anthology of literature (with one text by Blixen). When it came to music, critic Isador Phillip called Haynes ‘one of the greatest musical talents America has produced’. Seen in that light, it is a pity that the only CD that came out late in his life is not really seen as proving and showing his talent, the curator, Ingeborg Phillipsen, explains (2015), referring to conversations with reviewers and musicians in the same field.1 Thus, we do not have recordings that truly document his musical importance. His summer home in Dragør between 1957 and 1961 was lent to him by Blixen’s secretary, Clara Selborn. Haynes had met other Danes in Paris when he had begun studying with a world-famous musical pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger, in 1951. One of them, the journalist Bent Mohn, a friend of Blixen’s, introduced him to her writings. In 1952, Blixen herself invited Haynes to Rungstedlund in Denmark where she lived most of her life until her death in 1962. Haynes writes in his diary about his first meeting with Blixen: ‘I have seldom been so curious about anyone’. He further writes of Blixen, ‘She was a lady of La Belle Époque, one of the last of the great femmes du monde... Had she said she had dined at the Café Procope with Diderot and the Philosophes (public intellectuals of The Enlightenment, my note), I would have believed her’ (28), perhaps also showing that Eugene had just returned from Paris. He appeared to connect well with cosmopolitan and ‘high art’ Europe and also easily lend himself out to the Danish locals—a world citizen who could thrive among the geese and fishermen of Dragør just as well as in the concert halls of Paris. Before returning to Haynes in more detail, let me light the lampposts I use to guide my further reading of reclusion and openness. These two terms are not meant as a dichotomy or a threshold of conflict, but rather, a mode of living that may reflect harmony. It is a merging of two concepts, or two attitudes, which can be thought to symbolise the life trajectory of a

1 Parts of this text bears resemblance to earlier texts on Eugene: a longer medium.com article, https://medium.com/the-politics-practices-and-poetics-of-openness/reclusive-ope nness-in-the-life-of-eugene-haynes-1927-2007-51dd2da6993e. Also later published by Malmö University, as well as the first Wikipedia-entry on Eugene Haynes, which I wrote in 2015.

34

A. H. HANSEN

public, yet reserved, artist who, interestingly, crossed paths with a woman (Blixen) who could be defined through the same embrace of reclusion and openness.

Reclusion and Openness The Online Etymology trace the word ‘reclusive’ back to the French reclus, meaning a person who hides away from society often with the purpose of religious meditation. The reclusive person seeks a withdrawn life shut off from interaction. Openness is, in philosophy, a state of transparency, with free and unrestricted access to knowledge and information. It may also imply unrestricted means for the use and adaptation of information or data. The era of the Internet and social media have given rise to several related ‘openness’ movements and debates (for example, with open source and open data), but have also reshaped the ways in which we live and understand the public and the private. On one hand, reclusion describes a state of reservation and closeness, a communicative existence that is solitary or at least reserved for a small circle. Reclusion may, taken further, describe information passed on or circulated only among a select few. Archives may also, despite laws on public access, be viewed as reclusive or only cumbersomely accessible for the layman. Archives, despite the twenty-first century’s slow settling and normalisation of the online and clicktivistic world, are still in some people’s imaginations guarded by experts behind walls who request your ID, and maybe payment or institutional affiliation, before you are actually given permission to try and pull out a heavy metal drawer with dusty files or step up a ladder to take down a box with yellowish documents. On the other hand, there is openness as the mantra of the good intentions of an idealised, interconnected Internet world overcoming digital divides in our global public sphere. Archives on the Internet are praised for size and quantity, and despite the emphasis on magnitude, they do not feel as heavy to engage with as the rows of drawers in the metal cabinets of libraries, hospitals, DDR (GDR) and the FBI. The Internet has introduced a proliferation of archival practices and authorities, and many of these take a more horizontal approach which relies on other people’s histories and collections. On Facebook, we share superficial privacy with our hundreds of so-called friends; we write and comment on blogs, Twitter, and in the commentary sections of columns and articles of every kind. Walls are taken down and the comment or Facebook wall is

A3 RECLUSIVE OPENNESS: A BLACK AMERICAN CLASSICAL …

35

erected instead. Images or content can be shared freely and appropriated by fellow friends or all, depending on our settings of the social media archive. As earlier noted, it can be argued that these participatory online archives are still guarded. However, there are clearly positive aspects to this: previously disempowered people, such as the women in many places of the world who ‘do not have to sit at home waiting for the husband to return with the news and newspaper’, as Vicensia Shule, a Tanzanian scholar, expressed it (2015). They are texting and phoning (also abroad), using WhatsApp, and checking blogs and news sites. Eugene was part of a cultivated art circle—not texting, phoning, posting, liking—but in a way doing all that in another way: slow reflection, long sentences, with plenty of historical referencing, during tea or dinner gatherings. However social media with its newer forms of connectivity, has not erased such convivial forms. Openness comes with many faces. The notion of openness has joined a family of popular and almost categorically positively flavoured notions such as ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘transparency’, and ‘innovation’, though we may forget to ask how, with whom, and when (or in which contexts), the practice of openness, as well as reclusion, is desirable. Let me open this through some situations of a private nature covered in Eugene’s book: ‘And now, dear friend, here on Ewald’s hill, I proclaim you my own Prince Rasselas’, Blixen says while taking Haynes’ hand on top of Ewald’s hill during a stroll. Johannes Ewald was one of the first and famed Danish poets who had lived in the same property, known today as Rungstedlund and located north of Copenhagen. Used by emancipated slaves, the name ‘Rasselas’ refers to the prince (son of the King) of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) in Samuel Johnson’s tale, The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale. After quoting Blixen, Haynes adds that he felt it was their own secret moment, not to be shared with others (89). I had mixed feelings about this while reading it. It seems well-intended, as Blixen’s African connections. Blixen the matron? In his diaries, Eugene further quotes Blixen, who told him, ‘You’ll have to be patient while you grow into your grace’ (104). Eugene was a young man of around thirty and working for a breakthrough. By her embracement of him (as a matron?), despite obvious differences, she also grounded them in a shared experience: ‘In some ways we are both outsiders. I in Denmark, you in the land of your birth’. Again, I am not fully comfortable with Blixen placing both of them in the same boat; however, it is clear they were fond of each other. Eugene reflects on his

36

A. H. HANSEN

relationship with her: ‘When Karen Blixen is interested in what you are saying, she can fix you with an almost hypnotic gaze and you are then convinced that you are at that time the most important person she knows, and what you are saying is of great moment. It is her most endearing trait’ (63). Eugene found Denmark open and hospitable, but he also encountered stereotypes and racism. A university professor from America visiting Blixen referred to ‘the accent of our nigras’ while at the table, and Eugene describes the situation and his discomfort in detail. Blixen had not heard the remark but detected something was wrong. When she later asked about what happened, she was ‘enraged’ about the guest’s behaviour after Eugene had explained (201–2). Nevertheless, there were many other much more enriching gatherings and conversations, and Eugene’s delight in these meetings with Blixen shines through. At a dinner in 1961, Blixen suggests a game where each guest is assigned a famous intellectual, writer, or actor/actress. Eugene had given Blixen the witty French philosopher, Voltaire, and a woman with the name Birthe got Casanova. Haynes reveals fragments of the discussion in the diaries: Casanova had insisted on superstition as necessary, whereas Voltaire (The Enlightenment man) had favoured to free men of the ‘monster of superstition’ arguing that liberty and superstition could not go hand in hand (180). In between dinners like these, Eugene is in blue overalls and blue trainers among the geese of Dragør and occasionally hanging out with fishermen at the harbour. Eugene’s writings’, published in 2000, contain only texts from the years 1952–1962; we have no afterword or later reflections. Therefore, it is not an autobiography in the sense that texts are produced in the aftermath of events. It is truly an epistolary and diary genre account which engages with a present, or very recent, past and also for a limited audience—a tongue of reclusiveness spoken only to the drawer or oneself at first (the diary) or one or a few receivers of the letters. In Eugene’s case, all his letters are to family members or friends. Reclusive, yes, but also very open in this case. In the letter and diary genre, the author has the reduced ability to engage with and construct long-term causes from the clearer light of hindsight. Eugene is, in diary-writing, locked in the time of writing, and inevitably engages with history in its making caught in, as well as freed, in the moment, trying to make sense of the now or recent moments. The letter writing genre may be similar to some forms of today’s personal blogging on the Internet; however,

A3 RECLUSIVE OPENNESS: A BLACK AMERICAN CLASSICAL …

37

it is in the situation, not public. Personal archives and connections are created, which may be expanded later by exhibiting or publishing the letters. While experiencing an archival growth of public or semi-public ping-pong correspondence, visually and with words in the social media age, what happens to the deep openness of the material (paper, pen and envelopes) and wordy epistolary and diary genres? Are we seeing a general decrease in the production and documentation of slow, elaborate, and personal writings and correspondences in reclusive circles? Another tune may take up this emotion. Or: discussion continued. For the time and next track’s being, we stay in Denmark. I will engage with an unusual arrival on the Danish shores.

A4 The Human Exhibit and Teacher–Musician Victor Cornelins. From The ‘Danish West Indies’/St. Croix to Nakskov, Denmark

From the Human Zoo to the Teacher’s College In 1905 the 7-year-old boy Victor Cornelins was forcefully shipped away from his home island of St. Croix in the Caribbean. Alongside him, was his 4-year-old half-sister, Alberta Roberts. They were going to be extras in a human exhibition at a colonial festival at the amusement park Tivoli in Copenhagen, Denmark.1 The Danes needed blacks from their colonies to amuse them with—these colonies included three islands in the Caribbean archipelago, St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, at that time bearing the name Danish West Indies. Victor ended up staying in Denmark all his life, while his half-sister Alberta died in Copenhagen of tuberculosis aged only 15, in 1917, just weeks before the 3 islands are sold to the US. The US had developed a strategic interest in the islands during World War I—but notables from the two countries had for long been negotiating a trade (Thorkild Hansen 1967). Interestingly, in 1905, Denmark followed some European trends of the time towards Human Zoos and by this could also articulate their colonial possession while they at the same time contemplated a sale due 1 The Colonial Exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens, which followed a series of similar

exhibitions, arranged by Emma Gad (a writer and active in Women’s organisations and social life), had the goal to introduce Europe to Denmark’s colonies as well as to collect money for an art/crafts society, Dansk kunstflidforening (Loftsdottir 2019).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_4

39

40

A. H. HANSEN

to decreasing incomes from the islands. Slavery had provided rich sugar plantation income and exports for Denmark over a period of just over 170 years, until slavery was abolished in 1848. Jumping around fifteen years ahead of the human exhibition in Tivoli, Victor has managed to stay in the country and has become a successful student at a teacher’s college outside Copenhagen. The caved human exhibit positioning of Victor is here turned around, now he is directing the ‘tune’. An image shows a free-spirited Victor, confidently posing and ‘conducting’ his life, literally, with fellow musicians at the teacher’s college.

Return of the Repressed: 170 Years of Danish Slavery The Danish colonial legacy has by no means had a proliferate public coverage or clearly visible place in the school curricula or in collective memory. When Denmark moved from absolutism to democracy (The Country’s basic law is from 1849), and also towards a more collective and homogenous understanding of the nation during the nineteenth century, the colonial history was side-tracked, Astrid Nonbo Andersen argues in her research (Rasmussen 2017). The kings had used the colonies to position themselves in relation to other kingdoms, but when democracy replaced Absolutism, it made less sense. The era of democracy was also the era of a new or developed national orientation and simplification of who the Danish people were, who was part, and who should play a part in the future. Democracy came the year after the abolition of slavery (in practice former slaves continued as day labourers). Before the ‘people’ were Danes and Norwegians (Norway was part of the Danish Kingdom until 1814, then in union with Sweden before independence in 1905) as well as border country Schleswig–Holstein people, overseas people from Greenland, Iceland and Faraoe Island. A few hundred years earlier three Southern Swedish counties: Skåne, Halland and Blekinge was also a part. Lost wars with Germany in 1848 and 1864 created an inner search and mobilisation (several 100 years of dispute with Sweden had ended 200 years before). The nation-state with its tendency to exclusion, forgetting, simplification of history and myth making gave less attention to The West Indies and the long history of slavery. ‘What was lost abroad should

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

41

be won inside’, became the new motto.2 Slavery took on a secondary role in History making, while over the next seventy years debates continued whether the islands would be of benefit or a loss for Denmark. Slavery had ended formally back in 1848 but just for another trade to continue for 80 years on who should be compensated, and what way forward should be. The focus was mostly on the former slave owners— while the material conditions, as well as job opportunities for the formerly enslaved, did not prosper. Even in 1905, The Danish state could ship children for their entertainment in Copenhagen, while poverty and strong child mortality prevailed on the islands. Finally, in 1917 in the midst of the Great War the islands were sold to the US—for military, strategic purposes. The locals on the three islands were not heard and in general, objected to the sale. In 2017, the 100th anniversary year of the sale of the islands, history returns in a variety of public activities in the small nation of Denmark that had always seen itself as tolerant and liberal: art pieces, historical debates, and new exhibitions and monuments all of a sudden scrutinised the colonial legacy. Victor, born 1898, is a remarkable early/mid-twentieth-century example of a successful descendant of formerly enslaved. Late in life, in 1977, he published his autobiography and in the decades after his death in 1985, he was documented by several writers and a filmmaker (Freiesleben 1998, Frank Larsen 2005). Victor also comes back into the limelight in the ‘2017 surge’: an exhibition about him appears in his small hometown of Nakskov—assisting a sculpture of him established the year before (2016) at the city’s station square, marking the city’s 750 years birthday. This was the Danish town where he worked all his life after the teacher’s college years near Copenhagen, a few hours’ train ride away. As a base for further reflections and argument on Victor’s inventory spaces, I will throughout this chapter concentrate on mainly, two of them engaging specifically with Victor and the family that came before and after him, the third bringing along a wider contextual view. I will begin by 2 H. P. Holst, 1872 ‘for hvert et tab igen erstatning findes; hvad udad tabtes, det må indad vindes. See e.g., https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/H.P._Holst ‘For every loss, replacement can be found, what is lost outside, will be won inside’, my translation. The Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér had already in 1811 in a longer poem with the title ‘Svea’ developed similar national sentiments. This in the context of Sweden’s loss of Finland to Russia in 1809 (See e.g., Esaias Tegnér, ‘Svea’, http://runeberg.org/tegnersskr/2/0212. html).

42

A. H. HANSEN

unfolding some context unfolding Danish colonial history by looking at a key reading on the topic—also interesting as a (hybrid) genre: Thorkild Hansen’s trilogy, published in Denmark, 1965–1970, and translated and published in English in 2002 by Kari Dako as Coast of Slaves, Ships of Slaves, and Islands of Slaves. Hansen had studied literature and worked as a journalist and writer of historical fiction related to Danish imperialism. In this trilogy he merges the genres of historical writing with fictional dramatisation and personal travelogue, the latter constructed through the author’s own journeys and field work at the locations where slavery took place. While it is easy to identify the passages where Hansen draws on his own observations and interviews on the ground, it is more difficult to detect where he adds fiction to the personal portraits and depictions. He died at 62 years old, in 1989, on a journey in the Caribbean. Adding to Hansen’s colonial history, I will engage with Victor’s own self-representation; his late autobiography Fra St. Croix to Nakskov. Thirdly, I engage with Alex Frank Larsen’s research and writing turned into Slavernes Slægt (The Descendants of Slaves), a TV documentary series from 2005, in 2007 adapted as a monograph. Larsen did extensive archival research. Denmark has splendid archives, Larsen noted, but not widespread publishing on the matter of slavery. Larsen had a new angle making this study very different from Hansen’s trilogy: he searched for descendants, first in Denmark, and then in the US Virgin Islands, to make the descendants the centre of his study and concentrate on only a handful of cases/individuals (and their offspring). Larsen and two of Victor’s grandchildren travelled to St. Croix and traced and spoke to over 50 living descendants of Victor’s dad and family. Larsen’s documentary and study is the first major follow-up to Thorkild Hansen’s trilogy: He reread Hansen’s outstanding trilogy while preparing the series, Larsen writes in the preface (2007, 6).

The Danish Slave Owners Thorkild Hansen’s history is not a family history of the enslaved or their descendants, but a history of white Danish slave owners, traders, plantation workers/officials and their relations and negotiations with white stakeholders in the triangular trade; in Europe or Denmark, in West Africa (Guinea, the Gold Coast, today’s Ghana) and in the Danish West Indies,

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

43

later US Virgin Islands.3 It may be not so well known internationally that these three islands were Danish possessions for around 250 years and that around 170 years of slavery provided Denmark riches that are still to be seen in a series of beautiful buildings around Copenhagen. Furthermore, Denmark never considered the independence of the islands, but spend many years negotiating with notably the US on a price for selling, as noted earlier. Hansen’s narrative depicts the misery and loneliness of individual Danish men hungry for a career in the Caribbean, or the coast of Africa, or at home trading with the two former. It also depicts the very different and not comparable torture of the enslaved, but mostly as a group or a mass of faceless victims—as well as the lost potential of these as a group. I will give an example of the latter. Hansen writes that they, in Africa, had developed their own legal system, their own architecture and music. They wrought metals, had a superior art of pottery and textile, owned extensive farming lands, and engaged in goats and sheep husbandry—but they had been excluded from European history. They had not seen the need for a writing system—and in the next lines Hansen’s macabre sense of humour begins to show; they did not know how to distil liquor or to mix coaldust, saltpetre and sulphur for gunpowder (Kako 2019). So, they missed having the right weapons ready when the Europeans came to their coasts. What happened until they were dragged on ships and until they ended their lives in the Sun, is given some detail in Hansen, but not through extensive personal portraits as with the slave owners. Those enslaved who survived and remained—in the strongly industrial and complex process of sugar production—were carrying barrels of sugar on now empty ships, that had just off-loaded fresh slaves. The full barrels were now heading to Denmark. The last 100 years of slavery in Denmark was a project of the state, not just a shady business of an upper class or a few cruel men. It was a system, a bureaucracy. Around 100,000 Africans (the import of slaves from the Gold Coast though ended some time before the formal 3 The name ‘West Indies’ echoes Columbus’ mistake, he thought he had reached India while landing in what is today called the Bahamas. Today more commonly ‘The Caribbean’ is used as name for the archipelago. In 1917 US named their new possession ‘US Virgin Islands’. Totally, there are about 90 Virgin Islands, most of them very small. Amongst the largest islands are the three formerly Danish but now US owned islands, St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, at the center of the archipelago. Others are Spanish Virgin Islands of Puerto Rico, to the West, and British Virgin Islands to the East in the Atlantic. Denmark also had colonies in Trankebar in India.

44

A. H. HANSEN

end of slavery) were enslaved and sugar from the colonies became half of the Danish export. One of the first slave owners, who went back and forth once and then attempted a return, was a Jørgen Iversen (1970, Vol. 3, 15). He lost his best friend and companion on the first journey. Most of the crew and coast-men had lost their lives within a year at the fort, many much quicker. It was common that those arriving Monday had their epitaphs read in Church on Sunday. Diseases on the sea, yellow fewer and much else upon arrival. Iversen was a priest, but also the first buyer of 9 slaves, and later a drunk. The Rom—named Kildevil (Kill Devil) by the slaves—calmed his loneliness after losing most men around him, and as well his wife at home. After recovering back in Denmark and finding a new wife who becomes pregnant, he is nevertheless drawn to returning. On the ship, Margrethe, his new wife, gives birth. But the baby dies on the sea and is put in a coffin to be buried later on the ground. However, mutineers are ending Iversens’ and many other seamens journey. Margrethe is raped, and the coffin with the daughter is thrown overboard. And then also Iversen. He did not get a coffin, Hansen ends (1970, Vol. 3, 37). But there were others to take over. At the end of this era, Victor’s grandfather is a slave, and his father was born one, just before slavery ends, and blacks faced a different kind of suffering as day labourers. Hansen meets a little brother of Victor, Frank, as an old man. Their Dad was 60 when he died in 1906. The brother of this Frank was sent to Denmark, Hansen writes, and he became a schoolteacher in Nakskov. Frank sometimes gets a letter, Hansen writes on the last pages of this trilogy (Vol. 3, 441). Brother Frank is mentioned on the first page of Victor’s autobiography from 1977. Victor and Frank slept on a mat under the big bed where their mum and the smallest sibling slept. Here on the floor Frank and Victor dealt with scorpions and the like. Victor nevertheless calls his autobiography ‘a life’s fairy-tale’. Victor, who became very religious and did missionary work in Denmark, felt that God had planned that the poor boy who played under the palms, should lead him to gains somewhere else. From his early childhood, he remembers, apart from hardships, happy play on the beach and sneaking out in the plantation sugar fields the whites owned. The sugar canes were as ice cream for Danish kids today, he writes. There was not much food at home, a lone mother of three tried to care for them by doing washing for others. When I was big enough to miss a dad, Victor writes, he asked his mum. Dad was dead, she said. But he learned that he had left and had been around, married again and so forth.

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

45

Alberta was a half-sister. As Alex Frank Larsen reveals, there were many descendants. One day his mum had a fine visit, he was told. A white man, Rübner-Petersen, the boss of the School System in the Danish West Indies was there—according to Victor’s autobiography. It was however another white fellow, commissioner Ford, who was there, according to biographer Frank Larsen. Victor was expecting a beating but found that his mother had ‘capitulated and given her memory to, that I, who was just seven, travelled to Denmark to become a teacher’ (my translation from Danish, and emphasis in italics). Interestingly, this is Victor’s memory and conviction, as if the teacher role had been planned at the beginning and it was a West Indies school system leader who came around. Larsen engages with this peculiar misinterpretation in his book, which I will return to. Soon after, one morning, his mum gives him a good wash, and leads Victor to Fredrikstad, the nearby town. There Victor notices a small girl, Alberta, whom he had seen around. They were put on a wagon, Victor just thought he was going to town, Alberta was crying, and Victor felt his mum’s tears on his cheek when she embraced him. In the wagon they were told to lie down, and they fell asleep. That is the last he remembers of St. Croix. Next, when they woke, they are on a ship, in a cabin, with the door locked. He screams after his mum. They were being ‘replanted’; he writes. They arrived much later, in late Summer 1905, in Copenhagen, then a provincial town. They stuck out completely. Everyone stopped, had remarks, and wanted to touch them. They were then led to an exhibition in Tivoli. The purpose was to familiarise the Danish audience with their colonies and foreign possessions, Faraoe islands, Iceland, Greenland and the West Indies, each with a space at the exhibition, Victor writes. White Copenhageners could be put in Icelandic costumes etc., but for the West Indies, the real thing worked better. People didn’t believe we were real, they squeezed our cheeks, pulled our hair. We could not believe this, Victor continues. On St. Croix, white people were used to us, but not here: ‘we were animals escaped from the Zoo’.

Inventory Spaces Beyond Given Identity It is the argument in this chapter that Victor nurtured particular cultural and musical encounters, and as well served as a symbol of ‘the good immigrant’ for the White Danish majority, then and now. The chapter brings along again the notion of reclusive openness used in the previous chapter

46

A. H. HANSEN

about Eugene. I will return and finalize the discussion in a Side B chapter on a British Caribbean Ballet dancing footballer, Laurie. On the one hand, we may imagine reclusivity or with-drawnness to another state of being. And on the other hand, an openness within a space or community where one feels that he/she can perform and be what she wants—like Laurie’s dancefloor, football pitch or Victor’s music classrooms or white choir practices? These may be viewed as inventory spaces, ‘beyond identity’ in Nowicka and Heil’s terminology (2015). Let me move away from the case material for a moment (which I will open in more detail below) to explore some general understandings of the reclusive and its implications for thinking around gaze and race. The first question is whether reclusiveness can be seen as involuntary—and the other term open as a sign of freedom. What if such a condition is turned around for the racialised subject? (Tinsley 2018). When a black person is constantly subjected to and surveiled by a white gaze and surrounded by a white majority that does not live sensing its own colour/race. Reclusiveness and some degree of invisibility could then, by the black, be seen as liberating. And now I am trying to assist and develop reclusive openness by adopting a third term, that of Glissant’s opacity or a right to opacity (Glissant 1997) where a certain ‘stubborn shadow’ (Simek 2015), a fuzziness or a creative repertoire of surprise, masking and non-transparency performs in parts as an attempt to escape a framing gaze. A performance that does not quite make the white/powerful able to understand or read you. The opacity is here in parts a tricky veiling or a disguise of tricks, which the subject uses tactically to escape the gaze and reinvent herself or make him not readable/transparent. This creates a situation where the white cannot read the black, while this ‘you’, the black, were fully able to read the white/the coloniser—the latter reasoning inspired by Bhabha’s discussion of mimicry (Bhabha 1994, 85–92).4 Victor—but maybe to a stronger intent the to-be introduced Laurie, Side B—had such repertoires; abilities to conceal as well as to disrupt, to live within the worlds that others control or define, but also to tweak them, make them one’s own to some extent.

4 I am indebted to several commenter’s for inspiring me to link reclusive openness to opacity and discussing discuss race under this theoretical framework: Meghan Tinsley (correspondence 22 Jan 2018, after a conference presentation in Dec 2017)). Kerry Byström, Oscar Hemer, Per-Markku Ristilammi, and Temi Odumosu provided reflections on Glissant on various occasions.

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

47

Victor was brought to Denmark as a colonial ‘artefact’ for exhibiting purposes, while 30 years later becoming a cherished figure in Nakskov with his love for music and his teaching skills and sociality. Late in life, he was touring the country and then initiating a choir. Victor had married a Swedish white woman, had three kids, and lived in that small town all their life. Rumours from unnamed sources also connect him romantically to a college at his school. It does not figure in any official writing on him. Victor is buried next to his wife, as he wished, near the small town of Nakskov. Victor (as well as Laurie) were two very different characters in various ways resurging or unleashing different aspects of their given, often racialised identities. However, as I will try to show, they had their games against reduction or public attempts to ‘corner them in any essence’ (Glissant 1997, 192). Laurie’s ballet-football, ‘a black Nureyev’, track Chapter B5 (Kavanagh 2017, 79) was just one mode or sign of his displacing of labelling, as well as was Victor’s embrace of Danish songs, enlightenment and civilisation—the values he praises in his autobiography, and which he thought he was sent North to teach.

The White Choir I assisted my introduction to Victor with a note of a photograph of the man in convivial control. Pausing for a pose during a musical situation, with Victor at the centre, conducting. Secondly, I now return to him with another group of music folks: singers from his choir of nurses formed around 60 years later, set up to sing for patients in hospitals. The choir came about when Victor is in bed in the hospital of Nakskov in Southern Denmark some years earlier. Treatment is going well and when he is fresh enough to sit up, his doctor, Jokum his name was, tells him to play a song on his Hohner harmonica. He chooses a Swedish waltz. Soon nurses and other patients join in dancing. When he is fresh enough to stand, he plays regularly for his hospital ward (Cornelins 1977, 138). He survives cancer and sets up the White Choir in Nakskov singing at local events, in churches and in the hospital. Similar choirs are established in the region. The title of the choir may appear ironic, marking colour and Victor’s difference. This second musical event turning the initial image around, the earlier conducted and exhibited object, is now the still racialised subject conducting, first at the teacher’s college, now the choir.

48

A. H. HANSEN

Returning to his autobiography (1977) Victor recalls a particular moment after arrival in Denmark to become extra in the colonial festival in Tivoli. Victor is eventually told to stay put—since he constantly ran over to the Greenland sections, not wanting to stick around in the arranged Caribbean space. Here he is asked to stand and be available for being looked at touched, photographed and so forth. A well-dressed man with a girl in white, Victor’s age, came. The man wants the two kids to hold hands for a photo and pushes his daughter over. The girl was nice, Victor writes, but instead Victor withdraw his hand when hers reached for him, and he spit at her white dress instead. Victor soon gets a beating from the man (Cornelins 1977, 25, Frank Larsen 2005). He feels a bit sorry for the girl, and often think back on the event seeing the girl as innocent, but the father as the annoying one. But Victor felt he somehow had to resist being pushed around. Victor writes in the autobiography that he and Alberta then were caved—maybe caused by the spitting event, but also related to Victor’s running over to the Greenland space: As a kid from the Caribbean, he was fascinated with all the ice and polar animals, he noted (26). The two in the cave, attracted visitors to the West Indies section—and you could lead people to believe that we were dangerous, man-eaters, and so forth, Victor writes (27). When Victor became a teacher he never liked taking school children to the Zoo (27). Many years later a now middle-aged woman shows up at one of Victor’s lecture tours around Denmark. She waits patiently, until people who wants to speak to him have left. She goes up and grabs Victor’s hand. ‘This time I want to shake the hand, I could not hold many years ago’, she said (Cornelins 1977, 26). The two reconcile on warm terms. Thirteen years later after the initial Tivoli event, the islands are sold to the US. It is now less easy to send him back, there are authorities pushing for him to be returned to study and teach on the islands and do schooling in the US, but Victor resists and is eventually allowed to stay in Denmark. He is doing well at Jonstrup teacher college where he often takes up the role of conductor, as noted earlier in the chapter. He becomes a schoolteacher and then deputy inspector at a Nakskov school, where he also teaches music. Long before the earlier noted White Choir, he plays violin in the communal orchestra, and also worked as a conductor for the worker’s choir (Cornelins 1977, 96) and has occasional involvement in other orchestras.

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

49

In 2017 I met one of his former music students, Timme Ørvad, who says that he does not know how Victor got around to teaching and administration too, it was music, which was his passion. ‘My wife played violin with him, and she sang in a girl choir he set up at the school, while for me the guitar fell down in my hands’, Timme explained (interview 2017). Timme and his wife met in Nakskov, as very young, and both were influenced by Victor. They both went to the music conservatory in Copenhagen and became music teachers and composers. The now widowed Timme shows me a variety of records and documents, memorabilia, writing up his life defined by music in his house, North-East of Copenhagen. Music also stayed in Victor’s own family. He gets three kids. The oldest, Margit, embarked at first on a musical career, as one of the very first female jazz musicians in Denmark. She though changed to design, after a brief period as a pianist in a jazz band. She is replaced on piano by Salli Besiakov, a child of Russian immigrants. Margit marries Salli, they have Ben Besiakov who became a famous jazz musician in Denmark (and also internationally). Ben explains that granddad Victor learned to live with his love for Jazz. Victor called it the devils music. But he sees him live too. When Alex Frank Larsen meets Ben on a Copenhagen café to ask him if he wants to travel with him to St. Croix for a documentary on the descendants of Victor, Ben replies ‘are you crazy man, when are we going’. Ben is joined by Cousin Lotte Cornelins, (daughter of Victor’s boy Bengt) in a 2002 journey. In the book, the two grandchildren are photographed with a group of St. Croix relatives of Victor. Ben and Lotte had never travelled there. Victor himself was visiting in 1970 where he also sees his brother Frank and goes to his mother’s grave. Victor dedicated the autobiography to his mother, Sarah Eliza.

Individuals Acclimatising to New Territories A range of figures in this collection shares a focus on what we could call ‘break-away’ paths, individuals who through luck and skill—and some help—were able to renew themselves beyond their given identity into something inventory or even remarkable while acclimatising to their new, uncharted territories. Some key episode incidents (Thomsen using McAdams 2013) in their lives that brings to light particular social field’s convivial forms of conflict, but also newness. Victor’s stories are, in parts, the stories of the self-made, adaptive, newcomer who postcolonial

50

A. H. HANSEN

Denmark conveniently cherishes—and his achievements were certainly remarkable. However, such celebratory discourses, as Lapina notes, might allow inequalities to slip out of the debate (Lapina 2016, 39). We may be aware of the pros and cons of the healing-seeking or reconciliatory nature of such cherishing. We should not forget to ask why they are shaped as they are and for whom are they for? Is Victor redressed as a new Uncle Tom figure? The Danish Nazis protested strongly in 1942 when they realised a black man was teaching in a school. Furthermore, such narratives may perform a particular working-through of difficult lives (Ricoeur using Freud 1999, 5–11) towards an endpoint of ‘success after all the hardships’—a story similar to Lewis and his Harlem bookstore. The exhibition in Nakskov in 2017 is taking us through his life as a visual celebratory memoir, with a strong focus on his public life. It is never debated why we create this particular form of representation. Valluvan writes about how ethnic differences should cease to require scrutiny (Valluvan 2016, 207). She refers to Amin’s work where conviviality is defined as ‘indifference to difference’ (207). Research into conviviality, as for example Gilroy’s work from 2004, discusses modes of interaction and cohabitation replacing or reworking older notions of multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism. Most of the tracks in this collection engages with individuals or groups which I try to grasp as constellations— even within the individual through their multiple identifications—as well as stories of agency rather than stuckness, carrying redemptive plotting and generative life practices (McAdams 2006). Forms of ‘generation’ might also be abused. In the case of Victor, there is the white majority culture’s celebration of the ‘good immigrant’. For the subjects, however, many of the texts produced by themselves, or their nearest, perform life writing as memory work playing the game ‘wilfully’. Victor may more easily fit into the redemptive life story tale, cosy material for a pleasurable or convivial colonial and postcolonial tale. The guy who made it, and who taught us (he was a teacher) and who even whipped us (it may be stretching it, but here we have a man whose ancestors experienced over 179 years of brutal slavery). At the exhibition in Nakskov in August 2017 a film of video letters of his former students reminiscing is shown. A guy remembers he was given 25 beats for some sort of unruly behaviour. At beat number 10 he is hurt, and he pulls his hand aside. Then Victor starts from the beginning, whip 1, and so forth. It is however all told in a light-hearted, good-humoured way. The exhibition, and the

A4 THE HUMAN EXHIBIT AND TEACHER–MUSICIAN

51

video letters, celebrates Victor after all (whipping was common in those days). Frank Larsen (2005) notes that Victor was also given the task of beating unruly boys. Again, there are few available accounts on this, apart from the good-humoured note above. The school was a space of interdependence we could say. Nowicka and Heil note this importance of interdependence alongside the unremarkable, when trying to understand conviviality (2015, 14). Victor was teaching, administrating, singing and giving music student Timme (and his wife) some of the most precious moments of their youth (while maybe slapping some others). Timme emphasised his strong humanitarian values and his musical inspiration, which later brought him and his wife to the music conservatory. The way we shape or renew these key events or episodes is important for future imagination. It is said that our style of speaking about events with children strongly affects the way they remember. I am considering if this is the case for adults too? On the one hand, we need to learn from life stories, and understand them in some way—and they may provide some torch light for the future. On the other hand, we may not comprehend a person or series of events fully or understand motives and actions: Using Glissant’s notes or call for opacity (1997, 193), we do not necessarily have to grasp either Lewis, Izzy, Eugene, or Victor fully to act in solidarity with them. Even those closest to us can go through things we cannot unpack or explain fully. So, we move around, accept the opacity or that something (much?) in life stays recluse, and we let things be understood and to be told in different ways—and try our best to act in solidarity. With this, I move on to a track of a more personal nature. Another man, my own my father. It is in parts engaging with writings found on his shelf sometime after he had passed away (Women in key roles will come in track Chapter A6, and continue in tracks Chapters B2, B3, B4 and the very last part of the final track, Chapter B6).

A5 Maps and Territory. The Child’s Mappings and the Adult’s ‘Walkabout’ Svend Åge Hansen’s Drawing, Writing and Travelling

The Wounded German on the Doorstep The tracks have so far been compiled from afar. Victor, Eugene and Lewis I never met. Izzy I met once. With my own father it is luckily different. But how do one fare to make relatives and friends research objects? With the field of family history such close tracking has become established research practices over the last century, in parts inspired by the methods of oral history focusing on repeated and thorough conversations with ordinary and often unheard people and their articulation of memories and understanding of their own lives in the contexts of broader historical events. I slowly went closer, as chapters or tracks took shape. I did not plan to involve people close to me, but I thought that the material found, including what my father penned down, had qualities as forms of life writing that would fit the collection. While the later track on Phil had a stronger oral history approach (a series of talks over a longer time), this chapter is relying on other sources than oral accounts. The track involves a handful of genres or multi-modal life writing/narrative pieces; one form was email memoir texts received after a conversation over the phone—and secondly a series of forms gathered in one album containing an introductory text, drawings, a printed write-up of travel diaries, postcards and photos and finally handwritten first-draft versions of the travel diary entries.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_5

53

54

A. H. HANSEN

My parents were children during WWII, each living in rural villages in Denmark, Svend Åge in Jutland in the West, and Karen at Lolland in the South-East, both at the other ends of Copenhagen, the capital, where they would meet many years later. When my sister Bodil and I were kids, they now and then shared a few stories related to the war. This chapter, as the forthcoming and remaining stories on Side A are related to memories of war or pre-war times. The next track is on Pi and her memories of the October 1943 transports of Jews to Sweden. These two represent war memories that the subjects, at least at the time of the telling, appeared at ease to talk about. The third chapter relating to WWII, on the Raines family, has texts/accounts that bear stronger signs of emotional turmoil; a former soldier Michael’s therapy writing and his son Phil’s searching talk on the relationship to his father and memories of him never came across as easy to deliver tales. Side A is ended with Thomas Hodgkin’s letters firstly from Palestine, and pre-WWII time in the region and his later letters from Africa. My parents’ families kept quiet during the war and their work and homes were not severely affected. There were no bombings or deaths among relatives or friends—but there were fewer resources, and a variety of insecurities and restrictions. When I over the years collected material and wrote bits every year on what is now ending up in this collection, I had not thought of including any material related to my own Mum or Dad. However, a few stories from the late 2000s—and a folder and other materials found after my father’s death made me think twice. He died in 2012. When I was helping my Mum to move out of our childhood home in 2017, I was rummaging about in boxes and shelves. On a bookshelf, I found a folder with writings, drawings and photos from his summer wanderings in the area of Lappland in the most Northern parts of Sweden, bordering Norway as well as Finland. He took three summer holidays in a row up there, some years before he got married and I and my sister were born. It is not quite clear if he dated my mother at this stage of his life. I think from what they’ve shared they met in the early 1960s attending a course in the Copenhagen area. My mother is still alive at the time of polishing the manuscript (early 2023) but has had dementia for some years, and it will not be fruitful to try and dig for details. I should have asked earlier. She was always good with names and places and family history in general.

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

55

I begin with the WWII-related memories and then move forward to the folder giving an account of his travels to Lappland (commonly anglicised as ‘Lapland’). I had told Dad about the stuff I at that time was doing on October 1943, as well as the Raines case concerning WWII material. When I asked over the phone if we could talk more someday about his memories, he went straight to the computer and soon dropped me an email with a couple of pages of document with three stories. When reading what he sent me, I remember vaguely hearing earlier about the two first of the three brief accounts. At least one new story, which I found very intriguing and clearly related to his later interest in drawing. He had, when he was around 11–12 years of age been listening to the BBC radio to receive news about the war. Then he used lunch pack transparent paper with a school atlas underneath and line-indicated Russian as well as Allied troop positions as reported in the radio broadcasts. Russian ‘frontiers’ were marked in red and Allied in blue. In the village where he lived with his parents and big sister, there was one elderly German reserve soldier, around 60 years of age, who used to come to Dad’s parents’ doorstep to beg for bread and butter now and then—and then he also asked how it was with ‘krieget’ (German, the war). My granddad, Jørgen, thought at some point it was okay that Dad could show the soldier some of his drawings. He looked at the paper a bit and began shaking his head saying, ‘Deutschland kaput’. They were not told anything.… One day I came home, and Mum was hysterical (Grandma), there had been a young soldier asking for me. I became worried, but nothing happened the next few days. Then this young soldier, about 20, came again and he had the former older soldier next to him. The young solider had caught freeze injuries when he was in Russia. They were not coming inside, we met them just on the entry stairs outside. Dad (Grandpa) thought it was okay showing the ‘lunch paper’ to him too. At first, he looked at it with some confusion, but when he understood it, he began to cry and pointed behind the red line and said ‘meine Eltern kaput’. (my parents are finished)

My Dad ended this tale on war memories reflecting upon the young soldier’s departure on foot on their way, on foot, towards Germany (about 150 km away) and his own experience doing his Danish army service stationed around Neuengamme around 1954.

56

A. H. HANSEN

I got a picture taken behind a bush when a group of soldiers were leaving on foot in May 1945. The young soldier was sitting there on a wooden pushcart for children. It made a great impression on me and I was thinking many times if he ever made it home alive. Nine years later as soldier in Germany (1954, Danish army service, helping at Neuengamme) we were a part of the occupying force in the English zone, I sense how the German soldiers must have felt while in Denmark – tolerated just, but not appreciated.

I found this story intriguing; an older child’s position between a wider context or reality coming in over radio waves from the allied ‘centre of the world’, the BBC news, and then on the other side, embodied and specific: a few human examples literally on his doorstep. The child’s map becoming a contact between different parties in the adult’s wars. For Dad, it appeared to be a kind of a game (at least initially until he met the soldier). It was a map, a representation. For the young German lad, the mapping marks over territory meant the possible death of his parents. A meeting between experience from ‘the real territory’—and the ‘mappings’ of a twelve-year-old.

Night Watch and Distributor of Illegal Leaflets There are two other stories in his documents, one about home slaughter of animals and another about his secret distribution of illegal leaflets or magazines. In the short 10-line story he does not really say what was the content of these leaflets. But they were illegal according to his heading and they had to be placed inside other papers or advertising for some particular subscribers, and it was distributed around once a month. He had overheard a conversation between his Dad and another man, where Granddad had complained about having no time to do the distribution (he was a country postman at this time, I think) and then Dad, Svend Åge, had volunteered. I said to them that I could take some leaflets with me on my newspaper route, and they were at first hesitating, especially Mum, but they ended up allowing me to do it. It was not all the subscribers who needed the special ‘addition’. I had a system with newspapers on the left and right of the bike, with the special addition only in the left side bag and I had of course a list of the specific and sure receivers of the addition.

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

57

So, I guess that made my Dad a part of the resistance. We may have touched upon it briefly, but I only know that this special leaflet had information and opinion not to fall into the hands of the Nazi occupiers. Dad’s first story was about scarce resources of food. We are in 1944, home slaughter of animals is illegal and there is a curfew after dark. But he writes that some villagers got hold of something: We got hold of a pig from the bank farm, it was slaughtered in the night in the farmhouse behind a big duvet of hay to take the noise. After the slaughter it had to be transported home. Mum and Dad carried it (they got half of the pig, where the other half went, the story does not tell) in a big zink ball (for clothes wash and bathing small kids I assume). The Germans were on patrol through the night, and this is where I come in. I stand guard at the beginning of the alley up to the farm and when there is a free passage, I make a light blink with a torch light and run further to the corner shop garage near home.

The story continues with further blinks with the torch until his parents are safe home with half a pig. He ends explaining how they put the parted pig in a wooden bowl with water and lots of salt so it would stay well. ‘This was very exciting for a twelve-year-old to be part of—and then you were allowed to be up late’, he wrote in his email document to me.

The Painter and the Architect Svend Åge grew up becoming a woodworker and later a self-taught architect. From my childhood home I remember him building furniture and drawing mostly straight lines when it came to his art or craftmanship. He was working for a radio company and later architect studios from the late 1950s and the next 20 years, drawing cabinets for transistor radios, and later houses. His toolboxes and desk drawer equipment were of high quality. One of the radios he was drawing (Linnet & Laursen) has been in my various kitchens for a few decades, until recently playing every morning (it now needs repair). A selection of the tools, I use now and then, not as skilfully, but it works. Our two kids have the rulers.

58

A. H. HANSEN

Anyway, I don’t have a memory of him talking about the folder1 which I was to find centrally on a shelf next to his easy chair in 2017. I may have flicked through it quickly, but only got to read it properly in 2017 and afterwards. The chair had not been used much since he died in 2012, peacefully resting in another chair. He had been very tired for a month; the doctor gave him paracetamol only a week before. He was not sent to the hospital for further tests. 79 years old. Here in this folder, I found what we could call travel writing, notes, photos, postcards, drawings and journey tables from journeys to Lappland in Northern Sweden. About 15 typed pages—and at the end of the folder is a pile of around 20 handwritten A4 pages, not placed and holed into the folder spine, but packed away at the end, clearly drafts or first versions of the typed material. When reading the hand notes, there are many sections more or less similar to the typed material, but also additional notes, while the typed material also contains some further elaboration. In the folder, notably the hand notes, he appears to have reconstructed almost verbatim a range of situations; what was said, the looks, the silences and thoughts, detail on personalities and presence; ‘immaculately pretty hands’. Two women called ‘the bashful’ appear here and there. There are different sections of notes, some are numbered pages 1–15, others not. Among the handwritten notes are also a draft of a letter to Granddad and Grandma—his parents, Jensine and Jørgen. He explains here that it is not a diary as such with an account of what he did with date and place, but more reflections which he might find more interesting reading again 10– 20 years later. In the letter he notes with some regret that the people up here, the Lapplanders, will soon be industrialised, and that they: ‘…will not be happier making it possible for them to attaining our commodities and comfort, and neither will the country be prettier by becoming coamed’. He is using the term Lappland and Laplanders, only in a few instance Sámi, which has become the dominating self-chosen label. I have kept his wording in quotes, but otherwise use Sámi.

1 While he did not mention the folder and his writing about his Lappland trips, he did talk about those trips using images. At home we on several occasions saw his slides on a projector. My first girlfriend had been up to Lappland too, so when she was over one day, we all watched.

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

59

The first written page of the folder has an underlined heading and has the following lines (all quotes are my translation to English): To the one looking at my shelves. Don’t believe that this is a book about Lappland, it is not even a diary about my trips in Lappland, but just a story meant for myself about those thing I experienced, and which interested me or made me smile. I have written this in thankful memory of the people I met, in waiting rooms, at the tourist station or in a primitive peat hut in the outback, because I was accepted by the Lap people, invited into their homes. You do not know a place without knowing the people. I got to know a wonderful nature, it is difficult for me to find another way to address a thank you to hills and fields, forests, bogs and streams, which left me happy or just made me dwell very quietly.

The folder indicates that this is material from his travels in 1959, 1960 and 1961. The first page has a map with routes marked in three colours one for each year. There is a photo of Svend Åge himself at a peat hut in full Lap clothing, and then a list of equipment for the trip in 1961. It is said that writers need travel, as stimulation, as they need reading audiences (Mewshaw 2005, 3). Tyrants have historically restricted travel to prevent its citizens from getting any new ideas. The term ‘traveller’ may be said to suffer from travail, work, deriving from the Latin, tripalium, a torture instrument. Before the development of tourism, travel was considered as a study with adornment of the mind (Mewshaw using Fussell 2005, 4). I would not call my Dad’s walks torture (although he gives some indications of this himself) but a form of study and adornment of his mind indeed, and spirit—and as well tourism. It is clearly felt that he had worked with wood, beginning with an apprenticeship as a woodworker, before taking the architect route. Here are some extracts put together from the section ‘The forest’ (I have made some cuts marked with ‘/’). You understand that forests have lived in the works of the artists / The different stances on nature and landscape in different times. The forest as threatening, protective, smiling, howling / You blend your emotions with your knowledge, habitual viewpoints are compared with the new experience, you get to think of the commercial side to it too. The nature of

60

A. H. HANSEN

the forest is spirit, but a wood trunk is also cubic meter / The trunk is safe, the moss I sit on is soft, the mosquitos begin to eat before you see them / The raw material of wood deserves humility and respect; we must make ourselves clear the life cycle to know about our deep dependency of wood and forest. The tree and human life are wowed together as a pattern which supports our being / The plow and the cradle, the weapon, the church… our furniture, transport, craft, industry, yes literature and art, all is unthinkable without wood.2

He also comes to characterise the purpose with his own walks: You walk hour after hour, hearing only your iron fitted boots against the stone and the backpack belt’s rhythmic squeaking. It is a misunderstanding to visit the Lapp fields and mountains in a caravan, chatty and stumbling into each other, but it is also practical insanity to walk here alone. These mountains are not a plaything, it is serious. But essentially, I guess, that is why you want to play with it. You want to try the loneliness and physical strain up here due to another tiredness with the over-organised society we live our daily lives in. You feel you are pure being in an over-earthly world of power and beauty, and the experience is big enough for you to seek it again and again as long as you can make it through the thin air. A gate is closing behind you up here. Before you the world rages on. Here time has stopped.

He talks further about the bliss of the tiredness before reaching the cabin in the evening and then when settled down to rest, ‘feel the heat from the small stove, hear the fire make noise under the pot, and concentrate on the pipe (of tobacco) and the hot coffee’. His writing is characterised by an oscillation between such writerly reflections and poetic capture of scenes and situations, on to more mundane descriptions of encounters. His more poetic style is not highly personal or original, but relies on known tropes and phrasing, but eloquently. Several of his station or cabin stops with several people staying 2 These extracts may be inspired by some of his readings. He mentions the botanic Linnaeus elsewhere in the diaries, but no one is referenced in the forest section. Topic and ideas somehow let me to think of Henry David Thoreau, observer, and analyst of nature. He also ‘went to the woods’, though for longer periods.

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

61

over before next day’s walk have some encounters described in a jolly fashion (which leads me to think of Thomas L. Hodgkin’s humour in depicting human encounters elsewhere in this collection): While eating soup someone’ knocking, it was 2 girls, looking confused at me and the number on the door, conversing in Swedish. They did not expect a lad here (using the Swedish word ‘pojke’ in between his Danish), I interfered and said there was a lady here too. It calmed them a bit, but only a bit.

Continued in this manner, at several points during the journey, he makes notice of a young woman in a yellow raincoat. It appeared to Svend Åge that she reminded him of his former teacher: Hi! She made a stop and looked at me curiously and I wondered if I had coamed my hair, I tend to forget those things up here. (She had) cool grey eyes which did not say much about what she was thinking, but they worked around me in a funny way. I suddenly found myself laughing. I should say something in such a situation. I asked her if she was a teacher. Her eyes became wide open in bewilderment. She shaked her head, rain from her hair dropped. In panic I now explained that she looked like my old schoolteacher. Not sure if she appreciated this. She left me with a nod and a glance seeing me as a rather strange person.

So, this strange person, continued his wanderings;) (see also Chapter A8, Thomas). He observes some new walkers with too heavy backpacks, the smaller the backpack the more of a pro is the walker, he muses. He also shares some of his readings of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and zoologist who carried out much of his research on nature ‘with his boots on’: Linnaeus writes somewhere that the Lappland mosquitos is a proof of the lord’s wisdom. Since Adam and Eve was driven away from the Garden of Eden the existence of an earthly paradise would have been against the Godly order. So, God allowed the mosquitos to breed particularly here in Lapland, otherwise paradise would have been right here.

He is full of admiration for the Sámi people and writes with some disappointment about how they are being exploited by mainstream society and sought adopted into modernity while they have and desire their own

62

A. H. HANSEN

distinct ways. He spent the night in various peat huts during his stay and visited several Sámi families (in 2005 we had various phone talks and email exchanges about his trips, since a friend of mine, Bjørn, went to Lappland). A quote may explain the preferred name ‘Sámi’ (or Sápmi in one of their own languages, Northern Sámi): ‘They were given the name “Lap”, meaning “troll”. Once they tried wandering South and settle in a milder climate, but the people living there pushed them away’. One thing that has come to mind over the recent years looking back at the work not just by my Dad, but of several subjects in this collection, and in much intergenerational memory writing, is the use of memory work, as a work of recovery and discovery. For many of the subject’s in this collection, I have encountered stories of a digression or remarkably off-route walkabout .3 Journeys or passions which are highly individual and a sort of sacrifice or attempt to become whole: The lone wanderer Svend Åge leaving Copenhagen every Summer for Lappland, the solo pianist Eugene in his refuge in Dragør. The Oxford boy Thomas at an archaeological site in Jericho. Izzy leaving New York for a Folk music store in Stockholm where he often sits alone waiting for visitors. Victor playing on the beach in St. Croix but shipped to a human exhibition in Copenhagen—and then decades later a teacher in a Danish small town (close to where my Mum grew up). Most of these mentioned above documented their journeys and had others to document them further. Memory work in diary form is seen as a dynamic ongoing enterprise that adjusts, maybe heals—and puts the subject in position in the present and equips, and sometimes strains, the subject in her entré into/discovery of the future. José van Dijck (and many others) have written about the diary as representing the record of an ‘I’ who constructs a view of him/herself in connection to the world at large. ‘Diary writing, as a quotidian cultural practice, involves reflection and expression; it is also a peculiarly hybrid act of communication, always intended for private use, yet often betraying an awareness of its potential to be read by others’ (van Dijck 2007, 116).4 3 A walkabout is in indigenous or Aboriginal Australian cultural practice a rite de passage or journey that young adolescent boys are supposed to undergo. They live and walk in the wilderness for up to 6 months to prepare the transition to manhood. 4 As van Dijck also notes; it may not be a coincidence that typewriters never became popular in connection with diary writing: “unlike handwriting, the noise of fingers

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

63

The tension between memory texts and modes of reformulation researched here may be of particular relevance when talking about a life involving migration, or war, or a life with/alongside family or friends who have been to war or have migrated. The impetus to find a line of development and cohesiveness in the story, the meaning or reason behind events and moves, has become stronger in a globalised era, it has been argued (Rasmussen 2011). The speed of change has increased, we are taken out of identity communities and into others faster than our previous generations, and this accentuates the dynamic aspect of identity, Horsdal argues (Horsdal in Rasmussen 2011). The question is then for me in this research, how/if this is demonstrated in my cases. We are with stronger force finding ourselves, or being forced, to memory work (verb) one/our self at home, in several places at different times? My Dad was at an early age in contact with the ‘enemy’ at his doorstep and placing it all in a bigger picture. In his email to me, the response to my questions about his memories during the occupation, was in different ways relating to his innocence and his position as a child in the community. A child that could be used for something good. It may have been more difficult to have that kind of conversation with the soldier as an adult. Rereading the document today, including the part on his service in Germany in 1954, which he had also talked about. I went to Neuengamme myself around 2006 to see the place where he was stationed. Did these childhood memories lead him to choose Germany? I cannot ask him about this (and many other things) now since he died in 2012. However, many young men doing their army service in those years went to Germany (Elvis did too!). During the war, my to-be mother was at another place in southern Denmark, also with some German presence in her village. She exchanged smiling glances with a German soldier through the window, she recalls fondly. My mother worked as a porcelain painter at Royal Copenhagen for some years in the 1960s and she had drawn and painted mostly nature scenery before. She was a better drawer than my Dad—or he could draw something else, with rulers. They did not have much formal education, e.g., high school or university. No degrees, but a range of apprenticeships and evening courses. A couple of walls were full of books at home. pounding on a machine severed the physical intimacy between body and word” (2007, 119).

64

A. H. HANSEN

As a child, my sister quickly digged that influence. I mostly went to the public library comics section exploring everything Bande dessinée—which my Dad read too. I hear his laughter over Gaston Lagaffe from his chair. In my late teens, books began to appeal much to me too. My parents’ library was in parts inspirational for my interest in poetry and psychology and others. I though generally stayed away from painting or the study of forests and nature—contrary to my Mum and Dad. When I first told them about my poetry interests and my publications in the leading Danish poetry journal Hvedekorn (that was 1992 and 1993, and then in another journal, Melonmarken, 1994), something I was generally secretive about, I remember my Dad as surprisingly supportive. I had not really viewed him as one interested in searching, shaping and writing the subject in his own writing, but that is what he kind of did in Lappland and what I did with my poetry in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I soon quit that sort of writing, and apparently, he quit life writing too. But not the drawing. I became good friends with people who drew well, at that time, in my early 20s, other students doing the frontpage graphic work for a communal magazine at a student campus at Morbærhaven in Albertslund, a bit more on this in the case Chapter B4 on fanzines, where I engage with newsletter and fanzine memories (and comics has my attention in the first track of Side B). Now back to drawing: my parents had some mutual interest here, in drawing, painting but also in exploring nature, which could have played a role when they met. After my Dad’s Lappland travel 1959–1961 they spend Summers in Norway where they painted nature scenery, and later from 1978 and onwards they dragged my sister and me to a nature lot at the island of Læsø for a range of Summers there over the next 7 years. Rather than exploring the nature lot, it was more fun to play football with my Dad up there. He was rather bad at that, only using ‘toe-screamers’, no wrist. I was more into Wimbledon tennis, World Cup football and importantly Live Aid in 1985 on TV—and going to the ice cream shop to check out a girl—rather than exploring that piece of land. Maybe that nature lot became Svend Åge’s mini-Lapp land? While my Dad was drawing at work, the drawing/painting played less of a role for my Mum for the next decades (children, house duties and so forth). Around the time I moved away from home in early 1989, they signed up on a course together to rekindle drawing, and they were doing stuff again for some time. I was happy for that. Around 2020 my Mum gave it a try again, after a long hiatus, sitting at her elderly home, with dementia. Her skills were not quite as they were. But she was happy

A5 MAPS AND TERRITORY. THE CHILD’S MAPPINGS …

65

doing this—and other things. Dementia in the beginning freed her of worrying while she was still able to keep up socially and physically—and to remember important people. But lately it has taken too much (2022/ 2023). She cannot draw anymore or remember she once did.

A6 Memory as Resource. The October 1943 Boat Escape to Sweden Pi Stilvén and Granddaughter Sara Rehnström

Pi Stilvén1 was a Jewish woman born in 1920 in Czechoslovakia. She meets her husband, Saša, in 1938 in Bratislava (present day Slovakia) and they marry next year. Due to the onslaught of the war in 1939 the newlyweds contemplate how to get out of Czecholosovakia and manages to assure a visa to Denmark with help from a wealthy aunt. In August 1939 the couple arrives in Denmark. Over the next years they live on various farms, at first in Jutland (the peninsula where my Dad is from, previous chapter) and then the island of Funen (‘middle Denmark’, with the island Zealand and the capital Copenhagen to the East). On 3 October 1943— one day after a nationwide razzia by the occupying Nazi force in the hunt for Jews on 1–2 October—they are told by their local postman to make their way to Sweden as quick as possible. They leave their home and stay overnight at some friends elsewhere on Funen, before a young resistance man organise train tickets for them to Copenhagen. They are housed secretly at Bispebjerg hospital, close to Copenhagen. It was common to check in Jews as sick at hospitals during those weeks in early October (the month where most of the ca. 10,000 Jews of Denmark were transported secretly to un-occupied Sweden). This before taking them further to one of those boat transports that became frequent over that month. On 11 1 Pi’s maiden name was Karpfen, married Smilovits. She and her husband took a Swedish-sounding surname, Stilvén, when they became Swedish citizens in 1952.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_6

67

68

A. H. HANSEN

October they hide in a forest, since there are Nazis guarding the coast. They are picked up later the same day and taken to the Cliffs of Møn on the Zealand cost. They are taken to a boat and sail to the Southern Swedish town of Trelleborg, where they arrive in the night/morning 13 October 1943. Pi’s granddaughter Sara Rehnström—a former student of mine— helped constructing this timeline (personal email 18 June 2008) a few days after a long interview with Pi at her home in Höganäs in June 2008, with Sara present. Conversations I had with Sara earlier the same year led her to suggest that I could go and talk with her grandmother about her experience during the War and those secret October 1943transports that had come to occupy a central and mythological role in Danish historiography on WWII. Before I focus on Pi (and her granddaughter) and the stories told at her home a summer day quite a while ago, I will introduce some of the historiographical headlines and tension-points, this with the intention of giving the reader outside Denmark some context before concentrating on Pi’s words. In much history and popular writing, the event of October ’43 became cherished as a collective heroic act of Danish resistance and humanity. This event produced a glow that Denmark could use to nurture its national and international interests, as it is noted on the cover of a significant historical account of the event written by Sofie Lene Bak (2001). Denmark had after the Nazi occupation in April 1940, after more physical attempts at resistance were fought down within hours, settled a so-called negotiating policy (forhandlingspolitik) with the Nazis. The country was occupied but it was made clear that Denmark in principle could run the country as a sovereign state with their own legislative, judicial and executive powers, the three arms of government, as usual. However, the occupier could put forward its will if they wanted. Denmark made clear they did not want anti-Jewish laws. The country had just below 10,000 Jews who were seen as well-integrated Danes. A bit more than three years later in late August 1943, the war was at a very different stage. The so-called ‘final solution’ was underway, intensifying extermination of Jews and other ethnic groups through gassing in concentration camps and open-air killings (see e.g., Hillberg, 1961, one of the first comprehensive accounts of the Holocaust). The Nazi’s faced defeats in Russia and Africa, there was increasing sabotage and resistance in Denmark against the occupation. The Nazis tried to introduce emergency laws in Denmark with death penalties for

A6 MEMORY AS RESOURCE. THE OCTOBER 1943 BOAT …

69

resistance and other means of enforcement—and then in late August the negotiation policy broke down. This was the settlement, lasting 1940– 1943, that had assured Jews an equal position before the law in Denmark. Now a new terrain of tactics in Germany and in Denmark and notably in relation to Werner Best, the Nazi civilian administrator of Denmark from 1942 to 1945, began. If we look at what happened on the ground, historians Kreth and Mogensen gives precise examples of forced deportation; 284 Jews were caught on 2 October and taken to the concentration camp Theresienstadt. Later in October and November followed two other forced deportations of altogether 190 Danish Jews caught while preparing to escape to Sweden. However, the remaining ninety-five per cent of the Danish Jews, around 7000 people managed to be shipped secretly to Sweden during October in a series of boat transports happening mostly at night at numerous locations all long the Zealand coast (see map). The transports were followed by intricate planning, in terms of housing, hiding and transport in stages (given rich empirical details in a series of key accounts in Danish historiography, Bertelsen 1952, Bak 2001, Thavlov 2003, Kreth and Mogensen 2017). In the historical account it is discussed how Werner Best and others balanced demands from the Nazi headquarters in Germany and interests in Denmark—an alleged tactic of double play, which may have made escaping easier, meaning removing the Jews from Denmark while Best could avoid too strong a confrontation with the divergent Danish and Nazi interest. As noted by Kreth and Mogensen and others, ‘October ’43’ gained mythological status due to the large proportion of Jews saved, unlike the fate of Jews in most other European countries south of their borders. The Nazis were able to kill up to 6 million of 8 million Jews within reach, while Denmark with help from Sweden (and maybe from some German officials in Denmark?) had rescued over ninety-five per cent of its own Jews. However, one issue has challenged the glow of the event. Most fishermen charged high sums of money for risking the transports. They costed in average of 1000 DKK (amounts to ca 200 USD) in 1943. The payment issues are given rich examples and detail in Thavlov’s writing on Dragør transports (2003). She notes that 1000 DKK then, is ca 17,500 DKK (or ca 3500 USD) in 2003, when her piece was published in Dragør Local Archive. Thavlov notes that many other inland contacts and nodes in the intricate planning were not paid anything, but most of the fishermen— the last and important piece in the chain—took themselves paid (some

70

A. H. HANSEN

not according to Danielsen et al., 2016). The Jews feared for their lives. The fishermen feared what could happen to them if they were caught. In Hjortsø’s book The Expensive Escape (Den Dyre Flugt) a prominent Danish Jew, Bent Melchior, formerly one of those transported, is quoted saying that the prize was not discussed at length then or now, it could be seen as bad taste. Those who transported the Jews had saved their lives. Furthermore, Melchior added that people had pooled for payment of transports and afterwards the Danish state had introduced a law in October 1945 making it possible for Jews to apply for compensation (Hjortsø 2010. Hjortsø noted that it is not clear how many who later had money returned, but over 1000 applications had been handed it). Hjortsø mentions a cartoon from a Danish satire magazine from the 1950s. A Jewish Danish man in Copenhagen is buying a boat ticket to Malmö and is told the prize is five kroner (a little less than a pound). ‘Oh that is cheap, last time I went it cost 3,000 kroner’, he answers (about 350 GBP). When Sara and I went to her grandmother in the Summer of 2008 I did not have any intention to highlight the payment issue. I was interested in getting the stories rolling and see what issues and angles would come up. What would she bring forth? And how? We arranged it to take place in her own home where the eighty-seven-year-old was comfortable and Sara also came along, for comfort—as well as to have her to add and help where needed. Sara noted, that ‘Pi had told this story before’. However, it appeared very fresh and vibrant for me, also in her way of searching for words—and a plot: One overall impression of a day of conversations, at that time she was eighty-seven, was that she narrated an image of herself as one who would be able to find peace and a workable everyday life wherever she had been forced to move to and stay. That I found encouraging. She had a characteristically episodic style of putting herself back onto the stage of situations—often leaving out more general events and public history, which I however kept referring to, like for example, in a Danish context, Bertelsen’s book from 1952 on the October 1943 transport. Her narrative space concentrated on private scenes and family issues, often with an idiosyncratic and humorous take on the past (all translations from Swedish/Danish to English are mine): ‘Oh, take care of my purse’, Pi quotes a woman on the boat that night in October 1943. Pi explains that the woman had diabetes and wanted to stay close to her purse with medicine. ‘It was covered, you know [they

A6 MEMORY AS RESOURCE. THE OCTOBER 1943 BOAT …

71

were in the base of the boat, and they were kept in darkness] and when we entered Swedish water, they took off the cover, and then came the water… over us… it was wonderful’ (with delight). Pi tells how her legs fold to the chest for 8 hours from the Eastern coast of Møn in Denmark crossing the approximate 20 miles to Trelleborg at the South-Western of Sweden 12 October 1943. When they arrived, her husband had looked at a precious hat of his and said, ‘Puke bucket’. It was the hat they threw up in. ‘The puke-hat, Sasha’s only hat. He cleaned it later, but it didn’t work’. Pi was laughing about this memory, a hat going around not for money, for throwing up during the sea ride where many got ill. Pi delivers a narrative account of the events prior to the secret transport to Sweden full of detail. Well placed in the sofa with tea and cakes (and my not completely outdated Sony cassette tape recorder, it was in 2008. The same used in Israel 2001, see Chapter B2) Sara is around from time to time, complementing the conversation with a remark. Before we went to the sofa, we had begun with lunch in the kitchen where I listen to Pi and Sara in caring but confrontational discussion about political and migration issues in Sweden. One technique that I found that Pi used often in her telling was the use of quotes which came across in the talk as re-enactment of a play in real time, with abrupt dialogues followed by action or movement: ‘Are you still here?’, she quotes the postman, imitating his Danish, when he finds them one morning at a friend’s house some days before 13 October. ‘Why should we not be’, her husband replied. ‘But haven’t you heard. You must leave immediately’, the postman then burst out. After some story about how she had difficulties getting money, because people were afraid of giving a loan, she dismissed the loan issue and continued: And I said, well that doesn’t matter and then we biked home and rolled down the curtains and then suddenly we heard someone knocking. It was [an acquaint, not certain of name], who had the directions, and he came with food coupons, because he would not give us, and we had no food and no money. He gave us a bit (You had no savings or? I interrupt) Well, yes, yes, then we called Frans and Klara and they said ‘now you come to us immediately. Don’t stay at home’. Then they came to us at the farm, and we cycled away.

72

A. H. HANSEN

After some stories about curtains down and failed attempts to raise money and asking several people, Pi and her family is warned again ‘You have to get going. It is seen that you are not Danish’. ‘But where to must we get going?’ Pi had asked herself. Then a story follows about her husband borrowing an upper arm cover, so he could be out after curfew and cycle somewhere to collect some money. Then they waited one night. The next evening, they were told to go to the station. Her husband shaved off his moustache (maybe to prevent to be seen as not Danish or as Jewish). At the train station the next day he is approached by a young man asking for light to his cigarette, in Danish. Saša, the husband, responds in Danish. Then the young man replies, ‘What the hell did you do, I got the brief that it should be a guy with moustache’, as told by Pi. On the train they are told to follow a woman with a plastered thumb, white coat and a brown hat. Sasha went looking, saw nobody and the train is packed. Then somewhere he sees a woman that had a white coat, but no plastered thumb. They try getting near her. Somewhere near, seats appear to be free. Saša goes and asks in Danish ‘Sorry, is it free?’ ‘Besetz für dem Deutschen Wehrmacht’ (occupied for the German army), the guy answers. ‘Sorry’, Saša ends—and leaves. It was a close call. He could have been captured there. Later on, the ferry Saša speaks to a friend, Vera, on the toilet ‘Where the hell is that woman with the thumb (plastered)?’ ‘She is in the cafeteria’. They had followed the wrong lady. After coming to Copenhagen, they were brought to a hospital and put into nurse’s rooms, often eight in each room, she explained. Next day they gathered in a gym hall. Ambulances and hearses picked them up. The new hiding place was some factory. Into the night they were picked up again, driven to the boat. Pi’s account or means of engaging in talk with me appeared to have been broken down to small instalments or situated scenes with an ensemble cast of people around her—her helpers and allies. The outer world of the war and the Nazi occupation remained most often rather abstract and not commented upon. Not even when I probed for some more words on the broader context of the war.2 Her stories very much concerned the private living conditions with her husband, work and 2 This oral history-style interview with Pi, were in some ways like the later interview with Elizabeth Florez in relation to the Women Making History movement in the track on zines (Chapter B4), but very different from the interview with Bob at the Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam (Chapter B2), who preferred to speak more generally about the

A6 MEMORY AS RESOURCE. THE OCTOBER 1943 BOAT …

73

people around her. They were not political in character. She had developed her style retelling by keeping to the episodes—and they centred around the people, notably the husband, that were central in her life. At some rare points in the talk, she kind of ‘drove out’ of the situation, compressed time and gave an overview of an era/time or the start of an era—though still with some capturing and particular imagery (‘lamps as the moon’). One of these scenes or parts was on how life in Sweden began. Not immediately at arrival but the first year or so: …and there was a room highest up under the roof and we had lamps like the moon and no water, no toilet, nothing, no furniture, nothing. But we took the room and then Sasha had to enrol at university. I worked for Women’s Support and got a sewing machine in that room and then I sewed clothes for Finnish children.

As I noted earlier, during brunch in the kitchen before moving on to the sofa in the living room, Pi was however more political. She keenly discussed Israel and immigration to Sweden in a manner that revealed that she is also a political person. Those stories appeared not like oral tales straight from ‘the drawer’, so to speak. While it was clear that her stories from the war had been told before, there was a freshness to her retelling. For both Pi, and for Sara, memory came across as a resource, Pi’s memories was curiously picked up by an early maturing Sara and it created a special relationship. On the bus on the way to Pi, Sara had expressed that her Grandma’s story and her Jewish-Swedish identity had played a strong role in Sara’s identity and early adulthood. She was at that time, in 2008, 28 years old. When the day had passed, Pi had opened up with an account of events far away, yet close in memory and feeling. As a newcomer to her tales, I had no sense of repetition. I recall some similar reconstruction at family dinners in the 80s and 90s. My uncle Erik, at that time only in his 50s and 60s, liked to go on with stories, at some length. I sensed that his then grown, but young and future-oriented children (same age as me) were experiencing a sort of repetition, already knowing Dad’s stories? I don’t remember being bored with my parents (or grand parents) talking. village making it more of a history of a place and institution more than a personal oral history.

74

A. H. HANSEN

Only wished I had asked for more, but they are not around. Uncle Erik, on the other hand, 90 as this is written, keeps telling stories and writes articles. And now on to another talker, a friend I hung around with much in the late 90s and throughout the 00s.

A7 Facing the Pasts: War Diaries 1944–1945, Therapy Writing 1995 and the Trip to Belsen Phil and Michael Raines

‘I think I went to Israel when I was young because I believed I could tackle life with my father by going to the place where survivors were’.1 ‘To be around the children my father had helped saving in 1945’. The words come from an old friend I used to see during my time in England in the late 1990s and early 00s—and also for some years onwards after moving back to Denmark in 2004. The words here are from a conversation back in May 2007. We had a series of conversations between 2006 and 2008 where Phil came over to Denmark, at one point to stay in another friend’s summerhouse. We also did a trip to Belsen in Germany together. This gave us some time to talk. Phil was born in 1962. His father, Michael Twycross Raines, had been a British Army soldier during WWII and among other places on the continent been stationed at BergenBelsen camp during the final phase of the war and a year after its end. He had been involved in cleaning up the camp and standing guard over Nazi war prisoners. During our conversation Phil gave his words above with an overbearing gesture, well aware that he was very young, around 20, when he had these motivations and feelings for going to Israel. Still, I think it was an understandable feeling. Israel and the WWII, which had marked his 1 The conversations with Phil were not recorded. Quotes rely on note-taking and memory. The chapter have been shared with Phil for corrections.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_7

75

76

A. H. HANSEN

father heavily, were connected. I met Phil the first time in 1999. I met his mother Betty on several occasions during the next years, but never met his Dad who was in hospital the few times I was around at his parents’ home. After they were both deceased (Dad 2003; Mum 2005) Phil and his siblings began cleaning up in the attic at their childhood home. They found two small pocket diaries (1944 and 1945) as well as an 8 pages typed document which Michael wrote as part of a war therapy in 1995. Early in the 8 pages document Michael wrote: A woman appeared to milk cows in the field. I recall her calling to the cows in Dutch or Belgian [Flemish?] to come and be milked. While this was happening a mass of paratroop aircraft appeared flying towards Arnhem. At the time I wished to cheer but something determined that this should not be so as many of the troops would not survive. While the planes were flying over, words were heard in my brain – ‘in the future you will suffer for all that is happening.’ (1995)

Later during his service, he was stationed around Belsen and did cleaning up and then standing guard over prisoners in the camp: I recall going to a public house in Bergen-Belsen, the village near the concentration camp. One of the soldiers with whom I went asked a German whether they knew about the camp and why nothing was done to protest at its presence; to this was the reply that had protest been made the people of Bergen would have ended up as prisoners. (1995)

During our conversations in the mid-00s Phil explained that sometime during his childhood in the 1970s he and his 2 siblings watched a documentary on TV about the war. His Dad went and turned off the TV. Maybe he did not want the children to see. But they were curious. Most often their Dad was not talkative about his war experience, Phil remembers. Yet he kept newspaper clips and material in his study, Phil said. However, when Phil got a bit older, he could get his Dad to talk more about it the war, if he had some drinks with him. ‘Then he could tell!’. The Dad told on such a drinking occasion that he had guarded a Nazi officer, Kramer, at Bergen Belsen. His Dad had explained that he ‘could understand him’ (Kramer). They exchanged cigarettes. ‘Orders came from Berlin’, Kramer told the young soldier Raines. Phil’s Dad was 20 in 1945. Phil could not at the time of his Dad’s telling—and neither at that particular retelling of the story in June 2007, not stand his Dad’s

A7 FACING THE PASTS: WAR DIARIES 1944–1945, THERAPY …

77

words. It was not what he wanted to hear his Dad to say, he explains. I can understand his disappointment over his father—it could take some time to find a way around that. During the summer of 2007 where I heard this story—and where a lot of things came up—we also went to Bergen Belsen, and Phil gets a bit too much to drink one of the evenings. A reaction to the uneasiness of what he is facing. A daytime walk around the camp and museum works as a trigger of childhood memories and some afterwork of a complicated relationship to that Dad, which he nevertheless respects: ‘he had something for the underdog’, Phil explains on several occasions during 2007. Phil wanted to go to Bergen, but he preferred company. He had postponed it for so long, he said, and wanted to ‘put it to rest’. We make some fun of this type of holiday, we have endeavoured on, through Germany in his van in pouring rain. Without doubt his Dad’s experience and how it was transferred or passed over to him or the family during his upbringing and youth has had an immense weight—pushing him out in the van and also the way to Belsen too. Phil is not just calling, but somehow caught up in an imaginative re-investment, ‘overwhelming inherited memories’ (after Marianne Hirsch 2012, interview, Columbia University Press web). The therapy document from 1995, which shows the disturbing impact of the war, can be seen as a confessional text that focuses on the predicament of the self and unveils it as truthfully as possible (adapted after Radstone 2007, using Hart, 17). A memoir, on the other hand, is developed with a stronger awareness of culture and history. It is a more ‘contextual text’ (Radstone 2007, 17).2 Memoir is still personal history, yet historicised (17). The Dad’s story under the influence of Brandy is something Phil returns to. Phil’s Dad had, in my interpretation, been pondering around his experience of the lack of protest by the Germans around Belsen, and as well some kind of understanding or willingness to listen to Kramer’s explanation. Going back to the brief diary notes during 1944 and 1945 there are few notes or entries towards the end. Notes from the diary in 1945 reads, ‘appalled on the condition’, ‘no flesh on their bodies’, ‘buried in hatches of 200 + 300’, ‘typhus’, ‘I shall never forget’ (31 May 1945). Mostly, Raines had until then reported about daily activity and routine. He also, notably, uses the diary to keep account on when he has sent 2 Susannah Radstone was a teacher during my MA in cultural studies: history and theory at University of East London 1996–1998.

78

A. H. HANSEN

letters home and when he receives letters. The correspondence with his family and the woman Betty (whom he later married) appears very important. ‘Parcel of cigarettes received from Betty, bless her’ (27 Janvier, the diary bought in Belgium or France). ‘Standing patrol. Heavy shelling continues’ (21 Jan). ‘Up at 7.30. General cleaning up etc.’. ‘Cleaned rifle and mags’ (27 Jan). ‘Started to read good book “Blonde Trouble”’ (13 Jan). Betty, his love and future wife, was a brunette, by the way. There is a pattern of response when Raines is hurt in training or during combat. Hospitalisation is portrayed as a relief, as e.g., ‘wounded at 5.30’, ‘know nothing’, ‘peace and quiet is so welcome’, ‘Operated on’, ‘being looked after is so well’ (16 Feb 1945). There are no clear signs of coldness or arguments with his parents in the diaries. Yet a story from Phil puzzles me. Phil explained how his Dad was given far from a warm welcome by his parents when he returned home from service in Europe. This experience (the details of it remain unknown) could only add to his father’s suffering. Contrary to the previous case of Pi and the WWII experiences, the oral ‘texts’ by Phil appeared less polished and rambling tales that had not really found any final form. They initially occurred in everyday conversation; Phil had always been a good storyteller. Only at some point during the 00s I shared the idea with him, that we could go into more detail and that it could be documented and published someday. So, I began to formalize it a bit which also led to the trip to Belsen. The granddaughter of Pi, Sara, had old me about her grandmother, ‘she has told this story before’. Phil’s talk at different occasions was very different from his father’s two different written texts worked with here, the diary (seen as one) and the war therapy document. However, Phil’s narration style was oral, in social situations, and was produced with/to a friend (me). They were characterised by a change between burst, bewilderment and careful reflection. His mental ‘tumbler’ was rolling while he from different angles tried to make sense and cope with what his father lived through and to some extent how it lived or lives in him (Phil). Michael Raines’ diaries were written literally at the time of the events and as telegram style reporting or discrete notes on events. On the one hand they have a very factual and laconic approach, as indicated in the quotes above. In the physical diaries which Michael acquired, fitting for a chest pocket or similar, there is little space for each day in the diary (see picture) which may have forced Michael Raines to be brief and also to focus on what and when, rather than a how and why format—the former

A7 FACING THE PASTS: WAR DIARIES 1944–1945, THERAPY …

79

something we associate with diarium (‘daily allowance’) while an added ‘why and how’ is something we may associate with memoir or biography more strongly concerned with meaning-making and reflection. A diary with only space for discrete entities may also be called a calendar, however while the former may have the purpose of documenting, the latter is for organization and most often points towards the future, as e.g., a list of planned events. The sense of repetition and order we get in the diaries somehow make them appear as cyclical. The war comes to be trivial and repetitive, rather than plotted as development or change. However, the repetition of news about daily routines or notes about letters to be sent or received, or just thoughts in the air about home and the loved one, builds a story about a longing to return. Michael has a strong connection to one particular person, his love, whom he had met only recently before he was called to service in the army. As Phil indicated when we exchanged written letters back in 2017, it seems ages ago when such letters were commonplace. The letter genre may in the first decades of the internet have changed into email ‘letters’. In the 00s and onwards social media posting, and messenger-like services have becoming ubiquitous (at least in the Western world, with less penetration in rural Africa, for example) and lead us into the era of briefer and more instant letters. Letters sent home to family, friends, wife’s and lovers from soldiers in service used to be very common (Michael’s diaries were, as earlier noted, in parts used at keeping account of letters received and sent). If we go 100 years back from this WWII case, there is the American Civil War as a prominent example of letter correspondence. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate in history and they produced a mountain of letters and diaries. We would have a dimmer understanding of the civil war without them. Yet disagreement among historians exist on how to use these sources and what they reveal about the men who fought. An indiscriminate use of letters and diaries may lead to a diminishing of the scholarship (Delahanty 2015, 1). More than a million letters per month were produced, it is estimated (3). Only much later, in the 1980s, ordinary social history publications with the use of letters and diaries became common. Historians point out that soldier’s correspondence was uncensored allowing for frank commentary, mundane ephemera of army life, rather than ideology and politics—few addressed slavery and race, for example (6). Michael’s telegram style letters gave some brief overview

80

A. H. HANSEN

of the routines and events of everyday life as well as keeping notes on letters sent and received, as noted. The war therapy document written 50 years after is radically different in style and narrative format. Obviously, it is a very different text, allowing for one longer retrospective narrative, but the tone is also very different. Michael Raines is a changed man. In talks with Phil, I noticed an urge to stitch together various pieces, related to different accounts/texts, some with disturbing information— for example his father’s understanding of the Nazi officer Kramer. On the one hand I noticed a need and will to work through, yet also to leave behind or forget. Somehow, it appeared that the Raines family had not really shared the stories they needed to share. A Danish writer, Knud Romer, said on the radio while editing this chapter3 : ‘Every person is a novel, talk to your grandparents and parents before it is too late’ (Romer is born in 1960). We may though relate to parents and grandparents differently. Something may take time with parents since there can be a generational battle or conflict. From the teens and onwards we mature to be able to have conversations around most matters, but it is also a stage of moving away and forward, finding one’s own present and future. Somehow ‘the past is not yet’. Only some time into the future, the past becomes heavy in the present hopefully though, the present remains always important and present. With grandparents there may be no generational battle or process of moving away from them. Sara appeared to have a very uncomplicated relationship to her grandmother (Chapter 6). Vaunda, as grandniece was very young after her Uncle Lonnie died (Chapter 1), and her relationship to Lewis may be compared to a grandparent relationship. The writer Stefan Hertmans writes about his granddad handing over notebooks on his service in The Great War (WWI) briefly before he died at 90. He notes that with grandparents we have less talks and traces, we are thrown back on own devices (Hertmans 2016, 16). We rely also to a strong extent on second-hand memory, I could add. Vaunda was relying much on Lewis son and a variety of relatives and interviews for her documentary novel. Sara though had rich conversations with her grandma when she was in her 20s. Many would find great interest in grandparents stories when

3 DR P4 (Danish Radio program 4) 27 July 2021. Knud Romer, guest in the program Radio Rødgrød IF .

A7 FACING THE PASTS: WAR DIARIES 1944–1945, THERAPY …

81

reaching their 30s and 40s, but at that time they are most often not around anymore. Both my grandparents lived through the Great War era as teenagers. The first died when I was infant, the three others when I was 20–25 years of age and unfortunately, I was not yet so interested in digging and asking more into those things when they still were alive. I remember card games with Granddad, Jørgen, mostly, the guy who allowed my Dad at the age of 12, to sit on the doorstep talking to German soldiers. Or my Grandma’s yelling over the news in between serving delicious food and taking care of the flower garden—which I occasionally and unpopularly messed up a bit with football playing). The talks I had with Phil was a study of dynamic rework of the past in various situations, some sober, some half drunk, sometimes calm, other times confused. Before the talks really went underway (early 00s) his parents were still alive. In 2001 we visit his Mum while his Dad is hospitalised. We are on a way to a car-ride holiday to Cornwall with a German friend, Hartmut. A legendary journey 20 years ago at the time of writing. Before our companion on the trip arrived, Phil makes some jokes about Germans. However, Phil also tells me at some other occasion: ‘When I had a German girlfriend once, she was warmly welcomed’. Earlier in the collection I have engaged with forms of artistic and writerly engagement with one’s history and present, as in Izzy’s zines, Eugene’s letters, Vaunda’s documentary novel and illustrated picture book, as well Svend Åge’s diaries from Lappland. I have also brought in memoirs by Victor and by Philomène (Izzy’s daughter). Phil’s oral account and his father’s therapy writing somehow differ from the example above as modes of life writing. They appear to a stronger extent as unmediated or unpolished confessional texts. ‘Remembering ourselves’ can be done differently. Phil’s reminiscence bears no trace of nostalgia, his father’s therapy writing no filter. We may see bits of that in Izzy’s style, a directness (in zines and orally). As his Dad, Phil is though strong on what we could call ‘soul baring disclosures’ (Radstone 2007, 194). We may not learn that much about ‘history’, yet we get closer to the states of mind and how people have been feeling and thinking at a certain time.

A8 Letters from Palestine and Africa Thomas L. Hodgkin and British Imperialism

Archaeologist in Jericho Several tracks of this collection engage with the subject’s use of diaries and letters as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends during travel or work abroad—or as means of producing accounts for oneself and others about life’s journeys and experiences. The pianist Eugene Haynes had an extensive letter correspondence with the writer Karen Blixen and friends at home. Michael Raines produced diaries as part of his service during WWII, until he reached Belsen at the end of the war. Thirdly, I brought in my own father’s less extensive travel writings. The tension or difference between public and contextual memoir and more personal, disclosing confessional texts were brought in briefly in the previous chapter. The confessional was argued to dominate Michael Raines later writings, a document produced as part of a war therapy. This track engaging mainly with the 1930s and a few decades onwards, may be seen as related to a Side B case also engaging with Israel-Palestine.1 A range of these writings, letters in particular, can be said to cope with forms of separation from loved ones and a more habitual environment, 1 A chapter for a forthcoming an anthology, titled Islands of Extreme Exclusion (edited

by Hamre and Villadsen), is not included in this collection. It concerns the prison diaries and letters of two Indian-South African political prisoners during Apartheid, Fatima Meer and Ahmed Kathrada.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_8

83

84

A. H. HANSEN

while others (maybe diaries in particular) serve as means of handling the self, coping with life or producing documents or personal archives, that one may find the use of, or comfort in, to anchor oneself in the present, cope with its flux—either on one’s own or with others. Diaries (and as well letters) are here seen as something that can move beyond the traditional view of diaries, as a form of spontaneous and frank writing effortlessly produced, as Rendall argues (1986). They can be reflective and crafts-based too—and based on literary and artistic articulation. The potential literary genre or style of diaries and the like is though not a key concern of the cases in this collection, rather it is their means of producing a history of the moment and representing memory and experience. For some, writing down the everyday appears to be a central part of their breathing or habitus. Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, 1910–1982, appeared to be a person of this sort, and I begin in 1932, the year when he as a 22-year-old Oxford graduate leaves England for Palestine, then an English mandate between the world wars.2 Thomas is out of a British quaker family, upper middle class and intellectual. He was going to train as an archaeologist in Jericho with a Professor Garstang, but he appears more focused on life above the ground in a series of charmingly wellwritten accounts that depicts his curiosity, humour, thirst and ease for social life as well as knowledge. The young Thomas is at the time on the watch for a possible position in the Palestine Government Service. His first letters home give a good indication of his easy-going character: The life is a thoroughly happy one – enough work to take up the body of the day and more, which at its best is most interesting and occupies all one’s intelligence, at its worst is pretty dull and occupies none of it, but then one can always look at the mountains and think of possible answers to possible questions. (8) And I think I might make an archaeologist, though I don’t think a very good one. (8)

2 The end of the World War I saw the now former Ottoman Empire concede territories of what in the West has been called ‘The Middle East’ to the victorious powers of France and Britain. The Mandate for Palestine concerned the territories of Palestine and Transjordan to be administrated by Britain, while France was given the mandates of Syria and Lebanon. ‘Mandates’ were supposed to work as a temporary form of trusteeship until local inhabitants had organised a government and an independent state could be born. The process proved more difficult in practice.

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

85

I must learn a lot more Arabic so as to read their poetry – I imagine at its best sensuously descriptive like the Song of Solomon – a richly metaphorical language. (12) Very sleepy. This letter must go onto you early this morning – a pleasant crescent moon on the hills with the old one in its arm3 loo- king like a walnut made into a boat with thin sides. (12)

Writing Culture Thomas constructs a young discoverer seduced by the typical impressions of the region, mountains, the crescent moon and Song of Solomon. The puzzle of the place its characterised in brief snapshots/letters. Editor and brother Edward C. Hodgkin has included some contextual notes in various places in the collection, before and in between the letters. Edward C. Hodgkin characterises Thomas as extrovert and up for experiences, but to begin with politics does not take centre stage; he is finding his feet and enjoys sensing culture and everyday life. Human diversity is a colour to his life. He is up for the Rushdian mélange, the hotchpotch that creates newness in his life. The more contrast and mixture, the merrier—as reflected in his portraying of work buddies on the first day as archaeologist: A splendid mixture – a core of very ugly decadent Jerichans, fine handsome one from Nablus, about a quarter Druses (these charming), a few nice soft Egyptians, a lonely tall string-shaped man from Italian Somaliland who lies apart from the others pining for Italian Somaliland and has full lips and a pointed chin like Akhenaten, and most charming of all, an exiled Albanian, who has been exiled from Turkey too for deserting after the war, and exiled from Syria for joining the Druse rising. (10)

The old city of Jerusalem is written more in a romantic and exotic light than a field of religious tension:

3 Thomas’ granddaughter, Kate Hodgkin, reminds me, when reading this chapter that Thomas might have been referring to an old Scottish ballad: ‘Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon, / With the old Moon in her arms; /And I fear, I fear, my Master dear! /We shall have a deadly storm’ (Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence). https://www.poetryfoundation. org/poems/43973/dejection-an-ode.

86

A. H. HANSEN

One’s walking is through the city, along a lane that leads to the Damascus Gate, where there are bearded grandfathers kissing enthusiastically a favourite grandchild, donkeys with four or five caracasses of fat sheep just flayed swinging about in their panniers. (57)

Thomas moves beyond the observer’s gaze in his lively scribbling, joining in with directness, young cunningness and ethnographic feel, he is on the one hand mapping places and people well, but he joins their territories. Uncharted for him but putting in much effort to make it culturally homely. This, before the politics begin to take over. Thomas is finding himself amid the convivial; there is a joy to have over greetings, poetry, food and close to stereotypical, depictions of the erotic: ‘They played pipes and sang sad love-songs and danced (at least the Egyptians did) odd dances which used the bottom in a wonderful way – waggling it grotesquely’ (26). Most of the letters are to the parents which may have made him pause or omit further description? His brother wrote in the introduction, that ‘he fell in love easily and out of love painfully’. I was then expecting more indications on that. He does not go so far here, but he generally comes across as very curious. There are parties in his house in Ein Karem, west of Jerusalem (allegedly the birthplace of John the Baptist). A day after work he invites people, he meets on the streets to a gathering. He though had cancellations coming in, when there were rumours around, that other people were invited that someone was not supposed to socialise with. ‘To hell with them – ley joy be unconfined’ (26), was Thomas’ reaction. Before the more strictly political begin to dominate his stay in Palestine, however, his good humour and sassy depictions of people are still flowing from his pen: One Jew, a lovely white-haired Labour man, a Russian idealist who mumbles and came over with the second group of pioneers in, I think, 1907 or so, is here tonight. He talked interestingly about what nonorthodox Jews nowadays mean by the idea of a Messiah – a sort of ethical message to the world: a bit indefinite and Russian and symbolical and idealist and beautiful and hopeless like the ideas of most Russians. (79)

Thomas portrays a Russian archetype with Jewish ancestry—and the messianic. Not necessarily connected to the return of Messiah, as in orthodox faith, but on other possible levels. Among the orthodox there is a strife or differences in relation to the state of Israel. For some you

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

87

cannot interfere and create a state before Messiah has arrived. And he/ she has not arrived yet.

The Crumbling of the Crown Colony Thomas—writing more than 10 years before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948—becomes a cadet in the British Palestine government, as personal secretary for commissioner Wauchope in 1934. Already during the early stages, he begins to realise and recognise some of the problems that came to define the region, even today. He writes that he is slowly becoming bureaucratised. Initiatives and solutions have to be weighed against more than two parties with very diverse interests. Thomas also contemplates the relationship to the French, who at that time governed, as provisional mandate, what is today’s Lebanon and Syria: I find myself leaving everywhere, in the most exposed positions, letters in bold handwriting saying ‘It ought to be easy enough to do this without the French hearing of it’ and ‘of course it is vital this should be kept secret vis-à-vis the Italian Government’, and ‘I agree on condition it is realized that neither the Grand Mufti nor any of the Saudi pan-Arab party get to know of it, yours sincerely. (69) It is an odd feeling, talking to Frenchmen, for they always seem to make you feel that England is committed to France – that we are both in the same boat, that we govern Palestine as repressively as they govern Syria, and that we shall both be fighting shoulder to shoulder before long – a horrid idea. (83)

In this articulation of a demand for balance and diplomacy, Hodgkin reveals his patriotism and some speculations about the French. He would soon change his views on the British governance of Palestine. These comments are Thomas’ entry points into the political. He explains he wants to make opinions and insight grown through experience, instead of through brought-along theory. Somehow, he comes to justify his own implication: ‘In order to hate imperialism, you have to be part of it’, he quotes Orwell (54). In the second half of letters from 1934 to 1936 the tone is changing. Here is an excerpt from August 1934:

88

A. H. HANSEN

The trouble now is all this illegal Jewish immigration: anything up to about 2,000 come in every month by avoiding frontier controls – there are no coastguards to stop them coming in by sea, and too few police by land – with the result that Arab boy-scouts have formed themselves into an illegal body to prevent illegal immigrants coming in by the sea, with the result that Jews have formed them- selves into another illegal body to prevent Arabs from preventing illegal immigrants. (82)

Using the cultural theorist Homi Bhabha to read this, we may find both a split and a doubleness; Thomas is becoming a part of a foreign, and yes let us say colonial, administrative machinery and the local population, those that had and would arrive to stay, and those with a longer history in the region of Palestine (an Arab majority, but also Jews), adopts practices and strategies to that of colonial tactics, to empower themselves. There is a fight for governance as well as autonomy and power within, among both Arabs and Jews. Thomas’ letters paint a picture of a fuzzy transgression or overlap between the traveller, coloniser and discoverer who is still able to control his own journey, or the course of the discoveries and, implied in this, able to pull aside and take the plane home. However, Thomas the observer is now more implicated as a cadet or personal secretary to the high commissioner Wauchope in the British mandate administration. In November 1935, 35,000 Jews arrive in Palestine and Palestinian leaders demand a democratic government deciding and legislating via majority vote (Arab Palestinians are a majority) and a stop of the sale of land to Jews and Jewish immigration. The British had until then worked to hand over control of the area to local governance in a Legislative Council, but Jewish, Arabs and British cannot agree. Thomas writes: It is the Jews who are particularly against it now [the Legislative Council, ed.]: they want to wait until they are in a majority in this country though not everyone supposes that they ever will be in a majority. But their experience of being a minority under representative government in Europe since the war [The Great War, ed.] has been so unhappy that they are naturally frightened of having the same thing happen to them here. (79) (T)he Arabs have been organizing what are practically private armies, patrols, to watch the coast and catch Jews as they are smuggled in. The Jews have of course replied to that by starting their own patrols. (87)

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

89

The immersion of the privileged Oxford thinker into the colonial dirt is underway. The rising frustration and anger, in addition to the more cheerful cultural portraits make it a varied and learning-oriented letter collection. In Spring 1936, Thomas writes that he finds the Arab demands reasonable (noted in a letter to the successor of Commissioner Wauchope, after his resignation). ‘It will be a great relief to be out of the mockery of having to pretend that I want the Government to win and the Arabs to be beaten, which runs through all my work’ (165), he writes to his parents in May 1936. But he still wants to stay around. He has ‘Albionphobia’ (Albion meaning ‘Great Britain’. He mentions, e.g., Byron and Lawrence, suffering from the same, 166). Thomas resigns a month later, in June, and then in July publishes his views in Labour Monthly, a furious critique of the Mandate government, which he thinks in practice is ‘a Crown Colony’, with ‘no vestige of self-government’ (192). All the important posts are held by the British, not Palestinians, he adds. It is signed ‘British Resident’ (with a footnote saying that the writer has lived in Palestine for some years) with the title The Events in Palestine and included as Appendix II in the book. It is not difficult to see that if the Jews who already control the economic life of Palestine and have a secure footing on the land, once become numerically in a majority, they will become politically dominant. Then goodbye to any hopes of an independent Palestine. (194, from the article in Labour Monthly)

The article comes out when Arabs have gone into a general strike, the British have enforced emergency resolutions with the death penalty for some criminal acts, and Jews come in greater numbers to the region enforced by the rise of Nazism in Europe. The Zionists used the catastrophe in Europe to encourage migration to the biblical homeland, Palestine. Thomas also expressed that they had a moral argument due to their problems in Europe. However, Jewish migration to Palestine had begun decades before the rise of Nazism, notably during what was called the First Aliyah, 1881–1903. Despite ‘Albionphobia’, Thomas came back to England in September 1936. He was in poor health and miserable spirits; his brother writes in a note among the last letters. He was 26, had tried two professions (archaeologist and cadet in mandate government) and ‘failed in both of them’ (181). He begins to teach adult education, which he enjoyed, and marries

90

A. H. HANSEN

the next year, in 1937, the to-be-famous scientist Dorothy Crowfoot. He never went back, except very briefly ‘but what he had learned in Palestine about colonialism, the Arabic language, and Islam was to stand him in good stead when, after the war (WWII, ed.), he became immersed in the history and problems of Africa’ (182).4 The letters from the four years in Palestine, edited and published by his brother in 1986, some years after Thomas death in 1982 at the age of 72, are not just a door opener to Palestine at a crucial and less documented turning point in Palestine history—but a self-portrait of a convivial man in a series of cultural and political clinches and learnings—and at the entry of his awakening as an adult, a historian and a public intellectual.5 Thomas noted at the end that there was something ‘eternal’ about them (the people of Palestine), ‘they’ll stay the same when the soldiers have gone’. Well, the soldiers though never went away. On the contrary, they are on every corner.

New Challenges: Letters from Africa As the child that kicks a ball against a wall during lone evenings, when no neighbourhood kids are around, letter writing may happen as a similar sort of individual engagement with life. The receiver of the letter can be seen as the wall. The ball may be likened to the puzzle of life. By kicking again and again, the child develops skills to manoeuvre, some selfreflectivity—and she also digests and try to understand or make sense, or at least make words, of his experience. Finally, she may also develop a style, as a ‘writer’/‘kicker’. As proposed earlier, the ball kicker/writer in

4 Thomas has often been referred to as a ‘Marxist’ historian, a reductive labelling. He was also a member of the Communist party in his early years, until 1949. 5 I had accidentally found the book of letters from Palestine in a second-hand Charing Cross Rd London bookshop during my MA years in London in 1997 where I had developed interest in Israel-Palestine. As mentioned, the granddaughter of Thomas, Kate Hodgkin, was teaching on my MA in cultural studies: history and theory. Not sure if she mentioned Thomas after I had found the book or before. I began writing about Thomas quickly after finishing the MA, in Danish. Some of it appeared in the Swedish Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap in 2006, with an emphasis on Hodgkin’s letters from Palestine. I had left out his engagement with Africa in that point. I paused Hodgkin there in 2007 and worked on other individuals and journeys. Some 12 years later, I dusted it off after the book idea was formulated around 2017. Thomas’ granddaughter is still very active. I am happy to see her pics on FB ‘Unpacking Her Library’.

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

91

this way also copes with a separation. The ball kicker/writer can get some play done, while there is no one around. Thomas could indeed kick some letters—and came across as receptive and curious. The later letters from the second collection, the letters from Africa, also give clear indications that he was a sought for speaker around the world during his academic career. Palestine in the 1930s was close to a process of ‘re-colonisation’—apropos Thomas’ point on the mandate in practice being a crown colony (or at least strongly affected by the effects of Jewish nationalism, i.e., Zionism. The forthcoming World War II only intensified this. Africa, as a continent was in the aftermath of the changes in Palestine close to a process of de-colonisation, or at least formally. 11 years after his Palestine adventure ended in 1936, in 1947, Hodgkin goes to Africa as part of university extension work. It is documented in Letters from Africa 1947–56. His humour, intellect and cultural appetite are as vibrant as in the Palestine letters. He takes with him a particular interest in Muslim Africa south of the Sahara. He is also befriending Ghana’s Nkrumah (as Lewis in the first chapter) for whom he late become an adviser for. In the early years of the African travel era, which this letter collection covers, Thomas is as in his Palestine letters in an offbeat ‘history of the present’, concerned with places, architecture, people, food, drink and transport. Thomas’ travels develop into a strong interest in Africa—and numerous academic writings6 which eventually saw him recognised internationally and led to offers of assignments and posts in Africa, US and Canada. At the time of his letters from Africa he has married the to-be Nobel prize winner in chemistry (1964), Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, a more well-known public person than Thomas. He keeps her posted while he is away.

6 My writing on Thomas concentrates on his own letters (and to a minor extent Wolfer’s biography), not his academic scholarship. Thomas’ academic scholarship deserves another chapter or book on its own. He pioneered the study of African institutions and the rise of nationalism on the continent and studies of precolonial Nigeria. He paid strong attention to African voices and parts of Africa way beyond British colonial interest. From the mid1950s and onwards he was often invited to lecture around the world. He published Nationalism in Colonial Africa in 1956, Nigerian Perspectives in 1960, African Political Parties in 1961. Between 1962 and 1965 he headed Institute of African Studies at University of Ghana. In later years he changed his attention to Vietnam. His final book was Vietnam: The Revolutionary Path from 1981.

92

A. H. HANSEN

I had read his Palestine letters around the time I visited Israel-Palestine myself for the first time in 1997. And got the second letters collection before I had any plans of visiting Africa, around 2008. It was to come soon, in 2009 I attended a seminar in Dar es Salaam, since a good colleague got ill. Here I met my future wife at that seminar, and that trip triggered a series of research endeavours in Tanzania and Mozambique, which also led to the Listening as Action track in this collection. Thomas was to regret that he in his very young days had claimed that the Gold Coast had no history, indeed he was to become much preoccupied with the combination of early precolonial history of various regions of Africa as well the transition to independence in those late years of colonialism which he was during. His affiliation with Oxford University after the war offered him opportunities to conduct work in Africa, initially to develop adult education. He soon began to conduct historical studies on African nationalism and frequent writings for periodicals and other which led to the publication of a renowned monograph Nationalism in Colonial Africa, from 1956. The new collections of letters from mainly West Africa, from travels 1947 to 1956, was edited by Thomas’ daughter Elizabeth and published in 2000, 14 years later than the Palestine letters, ‘to which this volume is in part a companion’ (Elizabeth Hodgkin, intro, p. 1). Most of the letters here are to his wife, Dorothy, including this one from the first journey to Ghana and Nigeria in 1947: So far I don’t think much of the chaps (British) here – and they show no signs of being interested or prepare to take much trouble”…. “Conversation tends to turn to a large on (a) other officials, (b) cricket, (c) cars. (d) food and drink. (16)

One wonders if the ‘Albionphobia’ that Thomas caught 11 years earlier, is still around. Notably, he is cautious about the doings of expats, colonialists, fellowmen abroad in the era of dying colonialism—and growing African nationalism. His Palestine years imprinted that. Thomas is still a social character and despite his Oxford academic background, one who enjoys, wants and can find joy with common people as well as travel like one (second class, cheaper hotels etc.). Curious, as in Palestine, and avoiding ‘bling’. He writes charmingly about the need of having a watch posted, but also asking to have it knocked about a bit, so it looked used.

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

93

Unfortunately, a tendency that I found already in the Palestine letters, tends to get stronger here making it a less compelling collection; we do simply not get much detail of the many dialogues Thomas had with various people on the street, at colleges and in circles with people of power, or later power. For example, we get no detail of his conversations in 1951 with soon-to-be Ghanese Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah (1952, then president in 1960). Only that he seemed like ‘an altogether admirable person, with very sound ideas’. Instead, lists of occasions and meeting with few remarks on a few things of what was said, or eaten, dominate. This rather than a reconstruction of the dialogues and debates, that Thomas appeared so good at having. That is a pity. Thomas’ granddaughter, Kate (who taught on my MA in cultural studies) agrees that they can be frustrating to read letters at times since we do not get much ‘details of conversations and impressions of people’. However, Kate adds ‘I think this is a general tendency of letter writers; there is only so much you have time and memory to record’ (personal correspondence, Nov 2022). Still, we feel the frustration because Thomas comes across as an interacting spirit, not just a wandering scholar (the title of Wolfer’s biography on Thomas, engaged with later). He may be a thinker and highly educated, but there is no aloofness about him. He was clear about not being the same as the locals (where he went), but he went to be there, with people. His letters, Thomas’ mix tape from his journeys, are though still able to reflect and play the heterogeneity of the world and his personality. In terms of differences from the Palestine to the Africa reports, there is, however, a new matured attention to cityscape and architecture. the scenery of Africa is getting more detail than the Africans he met: We are in Timbuktu, 1952. In the central streets leading to the square are the grander houses where the merchants and men of substance live. These are beautiful – built in what one imagines is the traditional Timbuktu style: four engaged columns, two on either side of a central door, the door itself of wood, covered with iron knockers and bosses, elegantly carved – in the better houses; in what are called the houses of dexieme qualité hammered on ornamented bits of petrol tins take the place of iron, and the bosses are smaller and fewer, with less design. (102)

However, he goes on, a place reminding him of ‘a set for Romeo and Juliet’, (102). And another place reminding him of a friend’s house in

94

A. H. HANSEN

Aleppo back in 1936 at the end of his Palestine years. As in the Palestine letters there are also broad or sweeping—though interesting—generalisations, like this one late in his series of Africa travels, in a long letter to Dorothy (1954, from ‘Belgian Congo’): Africans are deeply religious – far more so than Europeans, and they cannot exist in isolation. But our policy is to deprive them of their religion and break up their traditional communities – the Missions do the one, and the business interests do the other. In its place we offer essentially individualist values and aims. (159–160)

We do, as in Palestine, get plenty of good-humoured characterisation of practice. ‘The pleasant oriental practice of fairly frequent drinks’, in Accra, 1947 (6), ‘everyone stops and talks in the street. And no one seems to be in much of a hurry’, in Asmara, Ethiopia, 1954 (184). In another letter from Ghana in 1950 he talks about teaching: ‘one is never sure how much is getting across, but there is plenty of discussion (sometimes about 20 people talking at once!)’. ‘…everyone touches his hat to you like mid-19 Century England’, in Tamale, Gold Cost/Ghana, 1950. Except for the latter observations on hat-lifting, these observations can though be said to be of little to no surprise. They are almost typical ‘Africanisms’, but good stuff for a letter home in the early years. In summary, Thomas’ second collection of letters is, as the first one, a window into political precarities as well as Thomas’s publics; micro publics, and the broader ones, which he fused with a particular form of conviviality as searcher, traveller, colonial administrator, historian and quirky personality. A white man with a particular class background, but also a fish out of water coming from the establishment. His journeys— he ended with writings on Vietnam in the 1970s—were also journeys of rethinking of various forms of human engagement in societal change, about representation and about crumbling as well as rising political systems. In Africa it was a time of hope and many of the new leaders embodied tradition, Western modern education, and spirited intellects.

Wandering Scholar When it comes to Thomas’ letters one may dare to bring along a range of terms of importance when characterising, defining or critiquing writing of autobiographical nature, such as diaries or letters. In the literature the

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

95

authenticity, immediacy and sincerity of these genres have been discussed. The often minimal gap between time of events and time of writing which could suggest that what goes into the head, goes out on paper. With no to little concern, in short without ‘art’ (discussed by, e.g., Forselius 2005; Rendall 1986, 58). However, the diarist or the letter writer also develops a form, a selectivity and so forth, by kicking that ball/puzzle of life, against the wall, to return to my earlier image. Thomas did not make major changes to his style. Notably, when reading these letters, the editing before publication also involved some degree of selectivity; we are seeing letters/parts that could be said to serve some kind of public interest. We should also not forget who is receiving, and what the receiver already knows, and which do not need mentioning or explaining. For the younger reader growing up with digital and social media and instant WhatsApp phone connection across the world, the letter may appear as a rather archaic form. In Michael Wolfer’s biography Thomas Hodgkin. Wandering scholar, we learn a lot else about Thomas’ life—health problems, marriage and relationship to key people, personally and academically. He had three kids in the interim between his Palestine and first Africa travels. In terms of writing, we learn that Thomas also endeavoured in many other forms of writing apart from a prolific journalistic and academic production, which the letters with editor notes already revealed. He was also a keen writer of poetry and longer stories. In fact, one could have wished that his fictional ‘kicking’ could have been carried more over into the letters. The biography is very detailed and rich as a chronicle of people and events, almost each page engages with several people/names and often also several events or situations. This makes it, as the letters, a great document of who Hodgkin spoke to where and when, and where he travelled or wandered and produced which parts of his work. One could wish for more and longer passages of intimate and detailed construction of situations and personal relations, that is to break up the sometimes quick move forward, in the text, from one event to another. There are tendencies towards some slowing down to give an account of situations in more detail in the Wandering scholar chapter, for example with a passage on horse riding followed by campfire sleeping and the use of Koran verses to keep hyenas away. A footnote in Letters from Africa notes that ‘Thomas was not an enthusiastic gardener or accustomed to physical labour’ (39). I am glad that he left garden work to others. Although his words are enough, I was

96

A. H. HANSEN

longing, after reading the letters and his biography, for photography or drawings included.7 Granddaughter Kate Hodgkin recalls after reading a draft version of this chapter that the comparative literature scholar, Edward Said, who engaged with cultural representations of the East, histories of empire and with studies of Palestine (where he was born) referred to Thomas’ work and in one instance specifically to his letters from Timbuktu. Kate and I have not been able to trace the source. In Kate’s memory, Said was reflecting on how Thomas was ‘describing the old scholars there as like the fellows at the Oxford college All Souls – very interested in their ancestors and what was for dinner – and he suggests that Thomas was an example of how it was possible to grow up in the heart of imperial darkness and come out with an open mind and heart’ (Kate, email correspondence, 16 Nov 2022). These accounts of experiences in Palestine and in Africa in the early and mid-twentieth century are now followed by more contemporary accounts, from Israel-Palestine, and from Tanzania and Mozambique, on side B in this collection. Before this, some closing reflections on side A: It has touched upon creative urges and habits, Izzy’s zines production, rambling prose and folk dancing—and not least his facilitation of folk music in the USA and then Sweden. Eugene’s piano playing. Lewis’ oratorial habits. Svend Åge’s mappings and drawings. Vaunda’s illustrated documentary novel and picture book. Victor’s harmonica playing. Thomas’ writing of letters, academic books—and also his fiction (the latter though not published). What kind of life writings and play, to return to the mix tape analogy, can we call it? Svend Åge appeared to have wanted to create something for the future, artefacts to be saved. He typed up the diary notes, he placed them in an album with drawings and a few photos—and dedicated it all to those who would be nosing around on his shelf, placed centrally next to his easy chair. And he gave the album an introductory note. It is something to be read/played again. He knew that at least his daughter and I would have been very interested in reading. His folder was an emotional record of a certain time using different forms or expression

7 In the 1950s there were more limited options for having photos developed—and it was expensive. Thomas concentrated on the letters and used them to the fullest to have as many words included in the airmail post prize. ‘He writes right up to the margins and corners of every page’, Kate his granddaughter noted to me (personal correspondence, Dec 2022).

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

97

or ‘tunes’; maps, drawings, photos, diary writing (in a way common travel album memorabilia). Interestingly, he was keener on showing photos (Dias slides) and telling stories about the trips—rather than showing us this album with what mainly contained writings—a secret or abandoned craft (he was in his late 20s). A bit like my own abandonment of poetry writing at the same age (and he encouraged this—which surprised me at the time. Thought he would have advised to get a proper job). Well, he could have pulled it out by stretching his hand while talking from the easy chair and clicking on the Dias projector, saying ‘by the way, you can also read my diaries’. His secret mix tape? Phil’s oral ‘diary’ over those year in the late 1990s and 00 s where we met regularly, was like a mix tape out of control, being played and replayed, tape going into what the Germans name bandsalat. And I was the one helping ‘with a pencil rolling the tape back on, into the tape/ Phil’, and trying to get a more cohesive version. Pi had ‘played’ this before, Sara noted. It is my best judgement that new realisations or interpretations of the tunes/events did not happen. It was not a process of discovery as the diary and letter writing of Eugene or Thomas. However, Pi’s life writing in oral form though came out sounding fresh, not as routine, but as play(ful)—which a repeated tale also can be. Like my friend Allan sharing stories from our interrail summer trips. Side B is turning the ear towards spaces of alternative learning and education in the form of comic books in Germany (affiliated with the work by Vaunda), of alternative educational projects, encounter projects in Israel—and radio-related projects in Mozambique and Tanzania. Zine and newsletter culture from three different continents are brought in (affiliated with Izzy’s zines). Footballers carving out uncharted territory also gets a chapter. Finally, there is a return to music and the global travel of sounds at the end of the collection (Images A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4, A.5a. and b, A.6a. and b, A.7, A.8, B.1, B.2, B.4).

98

A. H. HANSEN

Image A.1 Lewis in his bookstore in New York, 1950s (Photographer unknown)

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

99

Image A.2 Izzy and Philomène in a Stockholm sometime during the 1990s (Photographer unknown. Rightsholder Philomène Grandin)

100

A. H. HANSEN

Image A.3 Eugene at the piano sometime during the early 1950s (Photographer unknown)

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

101

Image A.4 Victor conducting at teacher’s college in Denmark during the late 1910s

102

A. H. HANSEN

Image A.5 a. Dad at Sami Goathi and his drawing of walking routes in Lapland, and b. One of Mum’s paintings. Scenery in Norway, early 1960s

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

103

Image A.5 (continued)

(a)

(b)

Image A.6 a. Pi and Sara at Pi’s home in 2008, and b. Pi and Saša in 1939 (notice Saša’s distinct moustache referred to in an anecdote in the interview with Pi in 2008) (a. Photograph by the author / b. Photographer unknown)

104

A. H. HANSEN

Image A.7 Michael Raines diary WWII

Image A.8 Thomas Hodgkin sometime around 1940 (Photographer unknown)

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

105

Image B.1 Mawil Kinderland poster. The two key characters taking a rest on a table tennis table with the Berlin wall in the background (Rightsholder Mawil)

106

A. H. HANSEN

Image B.2 A photo of the House of Silence at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, taken around 1999 (Photograph by author)

A8 LETTERS FROM PALESTINE AND AFRICA

107

Image B.4 A collage of zines/newsletters engaged with in the book: Izzy’s Folklore Centrum (Chapter A2)—and various mags discussed in Chapter B4 on Small Press Passions, where I have all been involved in writing or/and production. These include a student magazine, ‘Det Sædvanlige Fis’, or in English ‘The Usual Stuff’, a table tennis mag, a newsletter on migration-related workshops in Malmö (Women Making History movement), a booklet on nature in the city produced for an NGO, a poetry mag/journal and a birthday pamphlet

Side B

B1 History Reimagined in German Comics Mawil and Flix on Youth and Memory in Germany

Comics as Popular Archive and Historical Imagination Most of the material in this collection is adapted from personal and popular archives, such as diaries, letters, memoirs or newsletters and fanzines, in addition to interviews and exchanges led by me or others, such as family members/descendants. Documentary film making is brought along on both sides of this tape, while recorded music and musical traditions are discussed particularly in the last Chapter B6. While Side A had a key character in focus for each case, this side looks more broadly at art works, groups and communities—although still with a focus on key people or artists. I begin this second half of the mix tape with a medium or art form that can also take shape as a popular archive; the comic book (the more extensive fiction volumes also named graphic novels ). While being an art form that has carried a stigma as a ‘low art’-form during the twentieth century (and perhaps also in the current century) in fields such as history and cultural studies, however, comics and graphic histories are increasingly studied as historically relevant representations of the past (Twark 2016), as well as media useful for teaching history (Delorme 2020). They can also provide imaginative engagements with life writing/drawing, and auto/biography genres—which is one key reason for bringing two selected comic books into this collection. Comics with an innovative engagement with history and memory were, for example, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_9

111

112

A. H. HANSEN

Spiegelman’s Maus, originally serialised in Raw. Later works by, for example, Joe Sacco (e.g., Palestine) and Marjane Satrapi (e.g., the twovolume work Persepolis ) have also fused history and autobiography in intriguing ways (for a historical development of research in comics, see e.g., Strömberg 2022). Furthermore, controversial social, historical and political themes have found representation in comic form—as original stories or adaptations of literary classics. Comic books engagement with history, memory and life writing/ drawing are intriguing. However, as noted by Trevor Getz (2019), historians unfamiliar with comics may though create text-crowded panels because they lack the skills to let the images do the work. On the other hand, not all comic artists may not have developed the tools and techniques to reflect on the past. In relation to his collection and the use of extensive interviews as a means of mediating life and experience (tracks of Izzy, Pi, Phil and others), Buhle (2007) brings in arguments on the relationship between oral history and comics. He argues for similar trajectories in the development of oral history (my italics) and graphic histories from the Depression era (USA) and onwards. The historical saga’s oral history or storytelling is close to graphic history, he writes (Buhle 2007, 315). Slave narratives and Southern folklore-musical recordings emerged alongside the first modern comic books (316). Buhle then brings in the Italian oral historian Alessandro Portelli, who has argued that oral narratives tend towards the collective saga—while also aiming for documentation and telling of the previously invisible or anonymous (317). The comic book has increasingly become a vehicle for historical representation through its ‘double language’ (text and images), ‘the semantic richness of images’. ‘When diversely solicited by words and images, the brain recalls more facts’, Delorme argues.1 The distinct difference to other visual media is that comics can include photographic evidence of people, places and objects, but can represent these in drawings as well. Thus, in composing sources into situations they allow for every possible degree of fictionalisation while simultaneously referring to historic sources and interpreting them at the same time (Dittmar and Høg Hansen 2021). With these affordances the comic book, a vernacular art form, as Buhle names it, has become a vehicle for the non-fictional (and documentary, I 1 Isabelle Delorme, ‘Innovative teaching: the winning bet of teaching history through comics’, https://www.sciencespo.fr/learning-lab/en/innovative-teaching-the-win ning-bet-of-teaching-history-through-comics-2/.

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

113

would add) versions of the big stories as well as personal tales, which marks a turning point, he notes (320). The two comic books of this chapter provide fusions of stories around a big event (the fall of the Berlin wall) and personal tales, partly based on interviewing (Flix) and personal biography (Mawil). They are contributing to the creation of alternative historical archives based on everyday life and art making, outside of the purview of the state and its institutions—a practice also intensified in the era of the internet. As early pamphleteering and later fanzine subcultures were forms of every day art making and public activity ‘from below’, as argued in case 4B, the comic book and the zine also have a special kinship in terms of being a mixed medium format, combining the visual and the textual and being subculture tools and an early generation of participatory culture. In that sense they also both share kinship with the rise of mix tape culture of the 1970s and 1980s. Moving back to the archive note, the Indian anthropologist Arjun Appadurai mentions oral archives as repositories of intentional remembering for most of human history (Appadurai 2003, 16)—apropos Buhle’s point on the relationship between oral history and popular archives raised above. Whether in comic corm or other the documentation may be seen as an intervention and as a popular archive (maybe as in zines, see Chapter B4), not just as an item or trace in a container or folder. It is the product of the anticipation of collective memory. Thus, the archive is itself an aspiration, as Appadurai explains (2003). There is in Germany a wider and strong tradition of vergangeheitsbewältigung in the arts and in memorial culture (since the 1980s, in particular). However, in the twenty-first century also comics/graphic histories related to the country’s past as well as the authors personal experiences have proliferated (see e.g., Kraenzle and Ludewig 2020, for extensive overviews and analysis of selected works). This few years ago led a colleague, Jakob F. Dittmar, and I, to investigate a selection of works, by writers such as Birgit Weyhe, Nora Krug, Mawil, Flix and a handful of others.2 In the 2 selected comics for this chapter, Flix and Mawil in very

2 Jakob F. Dittmar authored Comic-Analyse in German (Dittmar 2008) and have since published a range of articles on comics, autobiography, and stereotypes. We did ‘Pasts renewed in German graphic storytelling’ for Transitions, a comics conference in 2021 (Paper at present unpublished but snippets of paper points are reproduced in graphic form in ‘proceedings’ 2021). Dittmar has taught a variety of courses on comics, including

114

A. H. HANSEN

different ways engages with the period around the fall of the Berlin Wall and German ‘reunification’. This era also represents something particular for my generation. Back then, maybe naively, seen as a very promising turning point where a new Europe and era of more peaceful globalisation was dawning—and an era where walling, protectionism and strong nationalism was on decline. How the world turned around or became different than expected, is out of the scope of this chapter. The focus is on how artists convey personal and partly hidden histories in documentary and literary comic form. The selected comics, one from the East and one from the West, took radically different approaches to life writing/drawing, youth memories and comics arts.

Life Writing/Drawing by German Comic Artists: Mawil and Flix Kinderland by Mawil (real name Markus Witzel), is a coming-of-age portrayal typical for the Bildungsroman, while Da war mal by Flix (Felix Görman) is a collection of graphic ‘exposures’ of interviews, each only a few pages long, inspired by oral history’s recapture of ‘the-subject-inhistory’-focus, but depicted in very short form. Both books are published in 2014 and they represent how German artists in the twenty-first century in very different ways shape personal histories around the fall of the wall era. Markus (Mawil)) was born in East Berlin, and Felix (Flix) in Münster, West Germany. Both born in 1976 and thereby around thirteen years of age when the wall fell. The character of several of Flix’ and Mawil’s albums—are often strongly informed by their own life, family or friends, making sense of childhood memories in the late 1980s. Flix has incorporated comic history too, by inserting the famed Spirou in a story taking place in East Berlin and GDR in the 1980s, Spirou in Berlin (2018). Mawil has, in addition to the later Kinderland, drawn from his own youth in another sense in the stories Die Band (2004) and Wir können ja Freunde Bleiben (2005). One trait which Dittmar and I found as a distinct ‘tool’ for engaging with the past in both works—and which may in parts be explained by the affordances of the hybrid art form of comics/graphics comics—is Journalistic and Documentary Comics at Malmö University, where I also join in for a few sessions. We share a cultural studies approach. Bande desinée dominated my childhood (there is a note on Gaston Lagaffe, in the case on Svend Åge).

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

115

the use of objects, such as everyday stuff/things that are put into relation with pasts. Both artists here present a visual archive (Kraenzle and Ludewig 2020) of objects that on the one hand are common elements of visual narrative, but here with contexts and stories around and by that becoming historically intriguing and to be read with a specific meaning. Mawil and Flix play with mundane objects with functions in everyday life in the twilight or decline of GDR. They are representations that refer to real objects and their specific historic contexts as well as representations within a particular comics narration. Flix uses objects to symbolise more abstract entities, partly in a pars pro toto-approach, e.g., a paper file represents the files of the Stasi and the entire system of surveillance simultaneously, a red carnation as a customary celebratory flower represents state socialism at the same time. Mawil shows individual objects to illustrate details of East German everyday life and the youth culture of the time. While these are symbolic, he does not use this symbolism to develop the narrative.

Mawil: Boys in the Hood Playing Table Tennis in East Berlin, November 19893 Mawil’s Kinderland (the title can be translated as: Land of Children as well as Land for Children referring to the typical name of play areas for children in shopping centres) is a graphic narrative of a pre/early teen boyhood friendship intertwined with a passion for table tennis in 1989s East Berlin, abruptly disturbed by the historic opening of the Berlin Wall. The protagonist, Mirco, forms a friendship around table tennis with a new boy at school which also helps Mirco to escape bullying, to grow and to find an identity in between being in the state-controlled youth organisation, Junge Pionier, and being a practising member of the Catholic church. Mirco is in between boyhood and manhood, symbolised by an Olsen gang-poster on the door, and a teddy bear in bed, while waking up with an erection. With his new friend, the rebellious—in official terminology ‘anti-social element’—Torsten, he initiates and plans a table tennis 3 While most of the material for this chapter, notably the early parts on comics as popular archive, are written for this collection, the discussion of Kinderland and Da war mal was appropriates material from Dittmar and Høg Hansen, 2021, where the part on Mawil was primarily drafted by Anders and the part on Flix mainly by Jakob. Thank you to Jakob (Dittmar) for letting me adapt this material.

116

A. H. HANSEN

tournament. However, Mirco’s participation is though made impossible by parental home grounding for faking parent signatures on schoolwork under Torsten’s influence. He ends up letting Torsten down, as well: On the day of the grounding, scratchy news on the radio announce that the Wall is coming down. Mirco continues to beg for and only has eyes for the tournament, his own ‘historical event’ instead of the other one, but the parents lift the grounding and drag the whole family to see the events at the Wall in situ. Mirco is gutted and cannot even see or understand what is going on. The comic visualises how the adult universe of grand political change is non-transparent and non-manoeuvrable for little Mirco. Adults are crowded up around the small child, almost only the sky is visible. Mirco can only in a few glimpses see that the wall is opened. The book shows the ironic spin-offs from the adult political reality: Mirko gains a sudden shopping opportunity in West Berlin that gets him a ‘state of the art’ (Western) table tennis racket for a tournament that has been cancelled due to the very same opening of the Wall. Mirco is the fictional player fleshed out with the help of biographical and autobiographical memories. The name hints at a close relation between the figure and the author: Markus Witzel—Mirco Watzke. Indeed, Mawil has pointed out in several conversations that the story is not autobiographical, but rather tinted by his own experiences and memory. This difference is important to note as it reflects the difference between autobiographical writing and fictional accounts that try to illustrate well researched factual historic conditions and thus deepen readers’ understanding of history. The book is notable for its depiction of sounds and cityscapes, of everyday objects, for oscillating between snapshots and action-packed table tennis scenes. It is also spectacular for its children’s perspective on the day of the fall of the Wall: streets jammed with euphoric adults who lead responses and actions, physically overshadowing and literally blocking the view of the children: a possible clash between Mirco’s kinderland history and German ‘History’. Moreover, the difference between the two realities stands out graphically through a realist depiction of the adult history versus spellbinding and in parts surreal accounts of subcultural table tennis life. It is worth remembering that at the time the adults did not understand nor see the metaphorical horizon either. It would get visible only later. The children are involuntarily caught up in the adult event and herded in by the adults, as they were in their GDR-lives.

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

117

Mirco, although a teen, is depicted as very small to show that he is easily pushed around, kind of reluctantly doing what he is supposed to do, while not being able to follow adult viewpoints or be part of the adult’s political sphere. The only manoeuvrable but complex political turf is the children’s own play, where Mirco is neither a big or strong child, nor a leader. He enters the world of table tennis like a ‘little boy’, getting into the game slowly; in the beginning he uses a ‘Pinky Detective’ book as racket, illustrating the passing into the game and hinting at the scarcity of certain items in Eastern Germany. The state opened some doors Westward to become more attractive to its new generation. Youth sing along to their favourite ‘People are People’ by English Depeche Mode.4 Kinderland offers a characterisation of everyday working-class life next to the propaganda-elements integrated into most environments, including the schools. For the knowing reader, the comic shows the last days of a failed state and its ideology: people are busy organising their own supplies while at work, teachers and parents are struggling, and Eastern Germans are generally eager to go West. The comic provides a condensed but realistic historical account of GDRs children. They are eager to try and pursue their own ways and not able to understand the adults fully. At the same time, it is about the inability of the adults to fully understand the children’s passions. Next to the realist depiction of everyday life and spaces Mawil employs table tennis duels to dramatise confrontations between different groups of pupils. Mawil inserts detailed references to East German realities, one example being that satellites are Russian. Modes of exaggeration, caricature, childlike quirk and comedy characterises the table tennis described in the comic. Further, timing and speed come forward as features of the sport alongside physicality, which is not commonly associated with table tennis. Crucial also, is the fact that the sport is lending itself to collective as well as one-to-one modes of performance (in the comic depicted through the modes of roundtable as well as one-on-one matches). Returning to the table tennis duels introduced above, they also mark a deliberate departure from Mawil’s social-realistic graphic depiction of city spaces, factories, homes, interiors and cars. The drawing of table tennis 4 In 1987, Amiga, the East German national record label, published Depeche Mode’s Greatest Hits-album. In 1988, they performed a concert for the East German youth organisation FDJ. I watched them play in the Copenhagen area several times in the late 1980s.

118

A. H. HANSEN

games borrows from surrealism, rich in detail, drama and distortion—a sort of parallel universe where the fantastic is possible. A cosy basement activity is given a wild punk zine treatment or like M.I.A. running analogue sounds through her Roland (Chapter 14) ending up with an annoying, tinnitus-provoking noisescape (Chapter 14). Table tennis is also played outside despite the weather5 despite rain and wind, which would be rather difficult. Here, Kinderland repeats and plays with an action trope, particularly typical for German ‘Heimat’-films: When things get serious, the weather will turn bad. When things proceed beyond challenging, the weather turns dangerously bad to bring out the qualities of their heroes. In the comic, it is pouring down, there are mud flaps and puddles around the tables, where a game more physical and dirtier than football, unfolds. This is their battle for uncharted territory. Bullies threaten to take over the table, and even little Mirco must stand up and defend his time at the table, his time of play. The children’s contested gathering area—their only public space, so to speak—is out in the courtyard around the table tennis table, not indoors, at school or at home. Table tennis was a strong sport in the GDR—and in Germany in general, as it is today. In Mawil’s action-packed, conflictual and spellbinding table tennis world/cosmos you are ‘shot at’6 ; the drawings liken the hard ball strike with a straight shot bullet coming, which adds a surreal tone to the table tennis scenes that contrasts with its city space realism. Several kinds of common insider tricks are demonstrated: making covert serves (hand signalling under the table what kind of spin you intend to put in the serve) or squeaking the ball or trying to stress the opponent by taptapping the ball on the table. Tall ball-in-air serves (more common among experienced players) are also shown. The game itself and the friendships around it can take a sudden turn. As they do on the day when the Wall came down and our heroes’ childhood ends.

5 Many Scandinavian schools have table tennis tables outside in the yard, in the open. With winds, rain and scratches on the surface, it is difficult to play properly on such surfaces. This may sound like a footnote of a table tennis snob?, who once taught it. But people do play. In Kinderland they sure do. 6 Table tennis balls were smaller and lighter in 1989. Even the slightly heavier and bigger ball introduced globally in 2000 (a 40 mm ball replacing 38 mm balls) to make the sport more TV-friendly would be impossible to manoeuvre in wind or rain.

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

119

During 26–30 May 2021 I engaged in several email exchanges with Markus Witzel (i.e., Mawil), on Kinderland. Markus explained, My original idea was to do a simple ping pong-saga, some loser kid on the school become the heroes because of their ping-pong-skills. At the same time, my publisher asked me for a comic about GDR, which was a too serios topic for me and then it was Flix’ idea to combine both into one story: -) When I talk about the whole GDR just from a kids’ view, it is easier to deal with all the dirty adult stuff like the wall and Stasi etc.

Note, that the ‘Flix’ he refers to (suggesting integrating politics) is the author of Da War Mal Was, also engaged within this chapter. Markus reflects in our exchange on boyhood versus adolescence, on older youths’ experiences in the GDR, on the role of table tennis, and on how to make space for history and politics in the comic (quotation marks used to indicate I have selected from a longer extract): I was lucky that I just spent my childhood in the GDR, so my childhood was in an old fashioned protected small world… When I became a teenager and needed more freedom the wall fell, but all older generations who had spent more than their youth there had much more critical memories and I also had to show them at least a little bit… Tischtennis (table tennis, ed.) was just a simple way to offer some cheap activity possibilities on the playgrounds because they already had this huge concrete production for the plattenbau-houses… feels like we only had two sports back then. Football for the tough kids and tischtennis for the nerds. I wanted to change this.

Flix: There Was Something in Berlin Flix Da war mal was. Erinnerungen an hier und drüben (‘There was something. Memories of here and over there’) consists of memories of the Berlin Wall and the border between the two German states. It concentrates on the selectivity in remembering, on the conflict between forgetting and remembering and, and it even documents and reflects on some of the myths about Eastern Germany and its borders. The comic book is an anthology of memories by a diverse group of characters, each one’s memories told in one dedicated chapter. They are not explicitly interlinked, but the book puts them next to each other and helps the reader to find shared thoughts, ideas and motifs, but also contradictory

120

A. H. HANSEN

narratives and interpretations of what it was like back then. The stories focus on the subjectivity and the partly fictional constructions and the mythmaking that happens on revisits to the past. They illustrate how memories fade and change and how the past is retold differently as life after the narrated events themselves is changing the narrators’ understanding of these past events. Their current situation and reflections tint not only the memories, but also the perspective on how one thought about things back then. A condition of hindsight life writing. The Berlin Wall stopped being an impenetrable border in 1989, and the two German states were joined in 1991. Flix drew the first episode or story of Da war mal was in 2006 for a Berlin newspaper, not knowing that this was the start for a collection of more and more memories. As he opened up the project and book with a retelling of his own fantasies about the East, the subsequent narratives all stayed in the rather loose age-bracket of his generation. It is striking to read these memories written roughly fifteen to twenty-five years after the events (beginning in 2006 and all collected and published in 2014). How would these stories be told now when a decade more has passed? Each story is retold in the text of Da war mal was while the images of the related chapter tell the story devoid of details and sophisticated backgrounds. The minimal backgrounds help Flix to isolate objects, make them stand out. He often illustrates references with the use of typical objects of symbolic value, for instance, the red carnation as the symbolic flower used at official celebrations is shown to represent celebrations of the GDR in general. A typical church building is shown instead of one specific church building, etc. In this way, reading and understanding the generalising references is made easy for a wider audience while the constructedness of these re-tellings is signalled to the readers at the same time. A skilled comic artist at work with what is made to look simple. Flix introduces a first-person narrator who begins the book with his own memories of his childhood ignorance. The childhood-phase is established as a period of fantasies and plans on how to trick adults. The narrative connotes the adult understanding of the narrator looking back at his childhood, slightly amused and maybe mildly bewildered, by what he sees. This approach to life writing and reinterpretation in hindsight points to past mythmaking and sets the tone for the anthology by reflecting on his ignorance back then. All chapters of the book add to this aspect: Gaps and omissions in the stories enhance and contextualise these narrations, and hints and aside-comments of the adult narrators ask and allow

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

121

the reader to understand and reflect on likely consequences of actions or living conditions back then. The narrative framing of each chapter allows for an understanding of the narrators’ evaluations of those past times and incidents: Some are knowingly ironic about their past selves, but some show a total lack of reflection on conditions back then or rather a complete absence of reflections on their memories. In these hints and in the overall picture from all the narratives, the flexibility, the contractedness of memory and its dependence on information are marked and raised as crucial—without explicit comment on the matter. Especially by retelling memories of people who were children or youth at the time but adults when they told their stories for the book, Flix manages to illustrate aspects of selective memory affected by past and present social situations and the upheaval of growing up in a quickly changing society. Another aspect of the life writing/drawing is captured in Flix’ use of the affordances of comics. On the one hand Flix condenses words from interviews in the speech/text bubbles making the characters narrate in words (although edited/shortened by Flix). However, Flix then remains the narrator of visual sequences, adding his style and interpretation to the verbal narration. All the narratives have been shaped to fit the format, the brief exposures, opening with the introduction of each individual narrator and the topic of the episode. Each short episode closes that narrative frame at the end again. Memory-storytelling is given a structure in its recall, so each story communicates its focus, develops its point and concludes accordingly. In this composition, Flix most often stand outside the characters text/speech, becoming an implicit interviewer. Only in one instalment he breaks that routine to shoot down one particularly mystifying fictionalising of living in the GDR by putting a direct question to the narrator into the comic. By revealing the age of the narrator in 1989 to be three years, he explains the particular fictionality of these memories. Da war mal was restricts itself to interviews with and sharing of stories with those who were children, juveniles or young adults at the end of the GDR. The selection of this age group seems to have come about accidentally during the process. Flix paid attention to his peers and did not include the parent-generation, even though his mother had herself escaped from the GDR as a child. Instead. He recorded and represented the memories of people whose psychological development was in its formative years precisely during and shortly after the end of the GDR. From a longer historical perspective, Da war mal was probed into the biographical memory of a first generation. It illustrates how diverse and

122

A. H. HANSEN

uncodified living memories can be. The partial vagueness of the narratives is striking and different from institutionalised memories of later, when this diversity is redacted and distilled into a more organised cultural memory. What readers without any knowledge about the Berlin Wall and the GDR are going to read into the material remains to be seen: German children today are not well-informed about this time in history. At the time of writing, thirty years after the end of the GDR, people with biographic first-hand-memories are by now the second generation and their memories are partly in conflict with or competition against those of older witnesses who form a parallel first generation, with its own specific narratives and memories.

Two Visual Approaches to Autobiographical History The coming-of-age story by Mawil is told in a visually suggestive and poetic style, taking readers into a detailed reconstruction of a past East Berlin. The consequences of state control over everyday life are partly used as a backdrop, and partly to drive the story development. As the plot for the story is well established, no previous knowledge about this particular time in history is needed. Rather, East German realities are causal within the narrative and become accessible for readers with or without detailed previous knowledge. On the other hand, the reduced visual style of Flix’ comic leads the reader safely through the individual narrations, that can work as introductions to the context for people with no or very limited knowledge about German separation and how it is remembered by Germans. At the same time, the references in the images and texts prompt readers to add from their own knowledge and memories, showing the depth of seemingly simple stories. Both volumes renewed my engagement with a history close to home and with my own memories of the era (of playing table tennis and listening to Depeche Mode, an odd combination?). The pictorial detail and humour and the stories of smaller and larger events, connected me to Germany, restored at least some sense of optimism, but also confirmed me in the feeling that my own stories of my own youth are not necessarily entirely accurate. But we need myths to live by, in parts.

B1 HISTORY REIMAGINED IN GERMAN COMICS

The Comics: Flix (2009) Da war mal was: Erinnerungen an hier und drüben. Carlsen. Mawil (2014) Kinderland. Reprodukt.

123

B2 Wahat Al-Salam—Neve Shalom: A Jewish–Arab Village Living Alternative Education In Israel-Palestine, Then and Now

To Try Peacefully Thomas Hodgkin’s Letters from Palestine touched upon the complicated pre-history of what became the state of Israel in 1948. Thomas wrote from the inside, but as an outsider, smitten by the diversity and potential of the region. I read his letters in 1997. Around the same time, I read another book on a personal relationship with Palestine, the exiled Palestinian Edward Said’s The Politics of Dispossession. This was Said’s working through his own journey. Born in Jerusalem in 1935 to Palestinian parents, Said later went to Egypt back to Palestine and then eventually to Massachusetts in the US. He settled in the US and acquired American citizenship. While I was curious towards the kibbutz movement in my late teens, it was another kind of ‘pocket’ within the society of Israel-Palestine that caught my attention (while reading Said, Hodgkin and others). It was a place that looked like few others, a sort of unique living constellation, that appeared to ‘house’ or assemble dozens of fish out of the water in the same ‘bowl’ on a dry hilltop in the middle of nowhere: I begin this track back in the 1970s, when an Englishman went to Israel, found love and settled in the only mixed Jewish–Arab village in Israel. The village is called Wahat al-Salam in Arabic, Neve Shalom in Hebrew—officially translated in English to ‘Oasis of Peace’, drawn from Isaiah, 32:18 ‘My people shall dwell in an oasis of peace’. The village had slowly emerged in the early 1970s, first as a tent camp, on rocks, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_10

125

126

A. H. HANSEN

with no electricity, on the hills of Latrun, bordering the West Bank. A no man’s land literally on the armistice line of 1948, but under Israeli jurisdiction, and located between major cities. Fifty something families living on a hilltop the name Oasis of Peace may appear puzzling? As noted above it is a biblical quote. It signals an intention to try peacefully, as one of its residents explained to be me, more than twenty years ago. It was in the 1990s when I first heard of the village and its educational institutions—and then went there a few times during 1999 and 2000. At the time, the mentioned Englishman was working with web issues and village information. We sat in his ‘schack’ and talked, then went strolling the village, stopped by and said hallo in the kindergarten and school. I also visited a family and did interviews with educators. Back then I had begun to dig into research on the place, and more broadly on alternative education and peace movements in Israel, which I began to build on, and add to over the next years.1 Just around that time, a young Palestinian Arab, a graduate of social work from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who had found her Arab husband at the same university, also went to live in the village. Her husband was working at the institution called The School for Peace in the village. Her grandparents were from a village up north. They were expelled during the war in 1948—an event leading to a radical change in demography, Jews becoming a clear majority and Palestinian Arabs, a minority, in what that year became a Jewish state.2 The demographic changes were underway earlier, as engaged within Thomas’ letters, case Chapter A8). Some stayed in the region, and started anew somewhere else, some went to Syria, again some family members later ended in near Malmö, in Sweden—where I 1 In addition to historical and sociological material, I was reading research on alternative education and peace movements and communities in Israel, such as Hall-Cathala (1990), Zak (1992), Feuerverger (1998), Bar (1998), Abu-Nimer (1999), Rustin and Clarke (1999), Weiner (1999), Maoz (2000), Feuerverger (2001), Halabi and Phillips (2001) and Sagy (2002). This then went into my Pah.D. thesis in 2003 and a few publications in 2006. 2 Jews numbered ca 630,000 in 1947. In 1950 it was doubled to 1,203,000. NonJews numbered around one million (Christian, Druze and Muslims—the latter group the largest) within that area that became the Jewish state in 1948. After the establishment of the state and the 1948–1949 war, the Arab (Non-Jewish) population were down to around 160,000. Arabs living within the so-called armistice line (The Green Line) with Israeli citizenship have in recent decades fluctuated around 20 percent of the population, se e.g., Central Bureau of Statistics www.cbs.gov.il or www.briannica.com/place/Israel or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel.

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

127

meet her in 2018. She was on a work and family visit. She still lives in Oasis of Peace and is the director of the communication and development department in the village. This chapter is a return to and recapture of some of the early material from my research in the region, as well as an integration of a more recent reflections and material, aiming to combine scenes/observation from youth encounter educational work in Israel—and more formal interviews with residents involved in communication work in the village, then and now (Sources are anonymised). Between the mid-1970s and the1990s the village evolved from a tent camp to an established village with half a hundred families and its own institutions—and an international reputation. An educational centre, The School for Peace, opened in 1979. A House of Silence (Beit Ha-Doumia) for prayer and contemplation—for Muslims, Christians and Jews or any person needing tranquillity—was established in 1983. A primary school opened in 1984, at first only with village children of different ages. From a practical point of view, they needed other children. However, also from the point of view of the village’s goals and purpose, it was also important to bring pupils, students and people to the village to learn together. The purpose would not be assimilation, but to learn about different narratives and heritages (see e.g., Nathan 2007 for a summary). The man who initially set up the camp ‘ascended’ from different sources of religion, one can say. ‘Father’ Bruno Hussar, a Dominican monk of Jewish extraction born in Egypt (converting to Christianity while studying in France) came to try to establish a place where Jews and Arabs could live together. His religious passion may also explain the name ‘Oasis of Peace’? It began in 1969 where Hussar spoke to people at the nearby Latrun Monastery about the possibility to set up a peace community on their land. A year later, with permission from the government and the Monastery, Hussar and a few others began to set up a camp at the crusader fortress in the Latrun hills, somewhere midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It would take about five years, and also some incoming support from a German friendship association, for the camp to develop into a village with people who stayed and lived there. The first child (of a woman who was there to coordinate the School for Peace) was born there in 1979, and a nursery with the first five babies/small children in the village opens the year after. An Arab and Jew collaborated to turn a room into a nursery so those families who resided did not have to send their babies away for day care while they were out for work. This

128

A. H. HANSEN

was the seeds of what would become the primary school in 1983, when the growing number of children (some people brought their small children along when they moved to the village) were all school age. Oasis of Peace established the first bilingual kindergarten, and then school, in the country. The villagers knew they could not create peace, but they could run a model on equality from within, and educate around that vision, and with time also bring outsiders in. The village (or particular programs or institutions) wins various prizes over the next decades. Its school attracts limited funding from the state but manages with growing support from elsewhere. A range of friendship associations in other countries provides infrastructure for donations. There are many attempts around agriculture, such as olive fields, to minimise dependency. Few are successful. However, the village’s hostel is still running. The population of the village has grown slowly but steadily. Around fifty families in 2000 and seventy families in 2019. A few hundred children begin in the primary school every year. Over 65,000 have participated in School for Peace educational programs over the years. The founder Bruno Hussar (born 1911) died in 1996. In 2020 co-founder Anne Le Meigen (born 1915), a French national who lived in Israel-Palestine most of her life, died. They are buried next to each other in the village.

Israel-Palestine: Living Together Separately3 One can say that Oasis of Peace has always tried to address the strong tension between (and in some spaces outright war) between, broadly put, two peoples, Jews and Arabs—in a highly unequal conflict in the region of Israel-Palestine—from the Mediterranean in the West to the Jordan river in the East. The village is unique, an oddity in a region that has a handful so-called mixed cities. Within the Green Line (1967 division), Arabs and Jews live in proximity, but still in distinct areas or neighbourhoods—with school systems clearly segregated except for a handful of exceptions. The 3 In Hebrew the word for coexistence is du-kiyyum which is described as ‘existence side by side of two opposing political regimes or two competing regimes’ (Dichter, On Coexistence and Talk, Partnership and Dialogue, 5. Article not dated). This translation seems to be closer to the concept of parallel-existence. But these two different notions are often confused in (common-sense) English as well. In Chambers English dictionary to co-exist is ‘to exist at the same time or together’. This means it implies a sharing or an overlap, a togetherness. Parallel-existence, which could well describe Jewish–Palestinian life in Israel, is a sort of living together separately.

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

129

mixed cities are Acre, Jaffa-Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Nazareth-Nazareth Illit, Ramla and Beer Sheva. In the West Bank, a range of Jewish villages or settlements between Arab villages has been established by the Jewish state over the last fifty years, breaking down the Arab cohesiveness of the West Bank. I return to this splitting of territory with an example from one of the youth encounters later in this chapter. Returning to the mixed cities with the State of Israel (within the 1967 Green Line), most of these places I walked during visits 1997–2001, when I was researching the village and various alternative educational projects in other places in Israel. A multitude of concepts and experiences of belonging and identity exists in the region, including Gaza and the West Bank—and a large majority of families share a history of uprooting and migration, Jewish as well as Arab (Høg Hansen 2003, and 2006). My interest was somehow stimulated by readings by Edward Said (as mentioned)—and an even older idea of joining a Kibbutz which never happened. I had gone to university in the early 90s and was happy doing the zine stuff and other, case Chapter A4, and instead took Danish folk high school courses and added a Summer trip to Greece for Action Aid Denmark to help establishing a rural school. Anyway, now in the mid/late 1990, I had returned to university to do an MA in cultural studies after working for a few years for a Copenhagen NGO doing various informal educational projects and campaigns for the public and for schools. My interest in alternative education somehow prevailed. I wanted to explore how/to which extent the problems, cultures and histories were engaged in alternative educational projects for youth, looking at the spaces and attempts to cross-over a normality of division in Israel.4 Some of the knowledge was gained by walking and watching: There are zones dominated strictly by Jews and then one walks for a few minutes, and it changes into something else. On the beach in Tel Aviv at the Mediterranean it is felt when the modern city slowly becomes the more traditional Jaffa with a largely Palestinian Arab population. While mixed cities may allow for some more crossed paths (marketplaces, university or adult education, workplaces, they are not more equal than anywhere else in the region. For Oasis of Peace to be different, it is not enough to bring people together

4 My project back then engaged primarily with the relationship between the mixture of Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) and the Arab Palestinians with Israeli citizenship—Muslim, Christian and Druze, all within the Green Line.

130

A. H. HANSEN

and believe that one can reduce prejudice and develop positive conceptions (the contact hypothesis approach5 ). It must be ‘premised on equal status… and the intent of working towards common goals’, as Bruno Hussar phrased it (Nathan 2007, 273). The idea of creating a new village from scratch, a strongly intentional community (apropos Hussar’s emphasis on equal status and common goals), with joint control and collaboration for an equal number of Jews and Arabs, was unique—and the format has never been repeated and it is also difficult seeing it happen tomorrow.6 I approached the space with puzzlement, an alternative story of living the conflict, together, yet still separately. The families, except for a few, do not appear to be Jewish-Arab but either Arab or Jew (some though neither). They are trying to live and engage with the issues peacefully and under some attempt at equalised relations. It is no hiding place. On the contrary many villagers are engaged in public sphere activity, as political and social activists, engaged in gender, social and human rights work, training, university lecturing and so forth. For instance, a young Jewish woman of Iranian Jewish descent became a stand-up comedian after growing sour with UN work (I will return to her later in this chapter). The villagers are not detached from the context. It is always a struggle. There have been attacks, deaths threats, some outsiders have put on fires to harm the village. Two of its residents were in 2017 named among the fifty most influential activists in the country, Amit Kitain and Samah Salaime (Yedioth Ahronoth, 2017, reported at https://www.wasns.org/activists-eng).

5 Contact hypothesis theory builds upon the conviction, simply put, that face to face human experiences can improve relations between conflicting communities. It has its origin in the US in the 1950s by Roger Allport, 1954 (for an extensive review on research on the hypothesis, see e.g., Hewstone and Swart 2011). It was applied in Israel by, for example, Yehuda Amir from the 1960s and onwards. Shuli Dichter and Jalala Hassan, formerly working for the educational centre Givat Haviva wrote that the approach was ultimately challenged by a two-year long civics issues project Children Teaching Children (at Givat Haviva) in the 1990s. 6 From around 2003 the Israeli state began to establish a so-called security fence/ separation barrier roughly along the 1948 armistice lines, also named the Green Line (marking the pre-1967 state of Israel territory). Obviously, it grabbed Palestinian land and houses. Demolished to incorporate Jewish settlements. Oasis of Peace is 15 minutes away from the fence/wall.

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

131

Givat Haviva, Beit Hagefen and Wahat Al-Salam---Neve Shalom In the late 1990s I was also interested in other spaces that shared some of the same educational philosophies (though not developing into residential communities), such as the cultural centre Beit Hagefen in the mixed city of Haifa by the Mediterranean coast, which also has a university with many Arab students. Notably, I focused on Givat Haviva in the middle of the country—an arts, language and educational centre that had existed since 1949 (formed a year after the formation of the State of Israel) and which also brought students and teachers and others together in alternative education conducting some of the same work as School for Peace did at the Oasis of Peace.7 I continue this chapter with an early interview, year 2000, followed by my account of the dynamics at a youth encounter a year later, in 2001. The chapter ends with quotes and experiences by younger residents from the village within the last decade or so, based on online material and documentaries. For many years I had left the research on alternative education for Jews and Palestinians in Israel, mostly trying to avoid the news and academic articles. Visual storytelling in series and films from the region I have however not been able to resist, it usually brings back the smells, the ‘thickness’ of the cultures. The academic work less so. I might even return to the work and the stony land when ‘things have changed’, I told myself. Have things changed? Certainly yes, but simply put, one might say that the serious situation has remained in a similar form of deadlock—or gotten worse for the various groups with differences in severity and safety?

7 Oasis of Peace’s The School for Peace and Givat Haviva’s The Jewish–Arab Center for Peace both arranged high school youth encounter projects named Face to Face. The projects which exists to this day in what appears to be the same core format (but with activities and techniques reshaped) are briefly described here in these two links, first at Givat Havia youth encounters, Face to Face: https://www.givathaviva.org/index.php?dir= site&page=gallery&op=category&cs=3015. And then at Oasis of Peace, School for Peace, under ‘Programs for Teenagers’: https://sfpeace.org/about/activities/

132

A. H. HANSEN

Bob and the Pioneers After strolling the village on my own in 1999, I spoke to the Englishman ‘Bob’ twice in 2000, in January and October.8 He had met a Jewish Israeli in the 1970s and intentionally moved to a place a bit alternative, as he explained. By the late 1990s those young couples who were the first to go and live there were now around middle age and many of them now had teenage children. Bob had an interesting perspective and role. He was a different creed of the village, neither Jew nor Arab, and also its information officer in the late 1990s—and still lives there today. I never asked him, unfortunately, how he got his position as an information officer. Was it his outsider identity? A possible ability to see things from a distance? Bob proved to be good at telling things a bit from a distance, clearly good at providing overviews. Consequently, our talk became not so much concerned with memory, but about the repertoire of existing tales about the village, its small educational institutions and its development as a residential place and some kind of ‘coexistence’ experiment, which is not necessarily a model for the rest of the country, as he said, and not a place that lives up to its name as an ‘oasis’ (neve/wahat) either. It is a place where coexistence is worked at/with, and where issues relating to the conflict at and outside Neve Shalom is part of the educational curriculum, he explained formally. The pupils attending the school or the high school, the university student visitors—or other citizens attending seminars or workshops—can then have a look out the window and see there is in fact someone living differently than most of Israel-Palestine. The majority-minority problems outside the village, and the construction of Israel as a Jewish state, led the village founders and those who followed them to maintain one core principle (an issue also reflected in the upcoming account of a youth encounter experience). This principle is that the village continually strives for an equal number of Jews and Arabs residents—and this principle is also brought into most encounter projects. Furthermore, the purpose has never been to develop homogeneity, on the contrary to maintain diversity but on an equal footing. When the first families settled in the village around 1978 there were four Jewish families and two Muslim and one Christian, thereby establishing diversity. However, the goal was not yet achieved. In 1988, equality was 8 We agreed back then on anonymous naming for future public use. Several of the quotes are already part of published articles (e.g., Høg Hansen 2006).

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

133

obtained, and the village has maintained it ever since. When the village got municipal status other projects or village settlements attempted to buy themself in on adjacent land, within the municipality to create a new residential neighbourhood. But the Oasis of Peace board and villagers fought against it, it would disrupt the equilibrium with a largely Jewish community rubbing up against their community (See also Nathan 2007). Thus, the village fought to maintain its autonomy and specific constellation of a Jewish and Arab-Palestinian equilibrium. However, the unrests within the surrounding societies (use of the plural is deliberate), persisted. My visits to the village took place just before and during what became known as the second intifada. The second interview with Bob (October 2000) is happening when such a period of increased unrest had just begun—with incidents in various Israeli cities which also had also affected the village. Looking tranquil and peaceful on a hilltop near a monastery, the village was fraught with internal personal conflicts and a resident had received death threats over the phone. I had dinner with a family that was strongly affected by the deterioration of the situation. They also advised me not to walk the hills of Latrun, since there were shootings and fights in many places. However, its bilingual institutions and activities kept functioning—although some of the seminars and youth workshops were on hold. How the village interplay with the surrounding society is a theme touched upon several times during the two interviews. What happens on this hilltop is affected by the societal developments. The ‘Oasis’ is a resistant product of Israel and its history and as an intentional community and alternative educational movement9 it is continuously in tense relation with mainstream Israel. Bob tried, not without trouble, to formulate his different identifications in his narrations during the interviews. The Englishman, the Israeli, the ‘Oasis of Peace’-villager, the Christian married to a Jew. He is reluctant to take a specific position against something. We took a walk in the bilingual kindergarten. It was not always easy for me to see who were Arab and who were Jew. ‘Sometimes I can’t even see 9 The educational projects research was investigated as forms of conflict mediation, alternative education and peace movement work where I drew upon methods and means of communication and pedagogy as well as contemporary ethnography (sources in earlier note)—as well as theories around identity, change, action and space/location; Freire (1970), Bhabha (1992) and Ricoeur (1983). This feeded into Høg Hansen (2003), a Ph.D. thesis—and then a few during 2006. It began with an MA thesis in late 1997 which compared political declarations, yet also incorporating on-site experiences.

134

A. H. HANSEN

the difference’, Bob grinned. The answer of the outsider, although he has been there for decades? He talks about Bruno Hussar, the founder of the village. ‘He persuaded the monastery to lend him some land’. ‘We were lucky to get land from the monastery. The sponsors are not the political parties. The school, established in 1984, worked for 9 years without any kind of recognition. The Education Ministry could have closed it down. It was not run legally’. Later they receive a minor support from the State. At the beginning of the interview Bob ponders about the difficulties of explaining the development of the village. He begins in a searching manner: I wonder if whether, eh, even we are aware... to the degree to which it its working or what I will be telling you is really happening because it requires very careful observation, I think, to discover, it is very subtle, difficult.

So, it may be challenging just to find out what people are really saying, but certainly also what they actually do or practice besides their tales. Practice does not always follow preach or vice versa. Interviewers and oral historians interest in individual reconstruction of social tensions are thereby facing fundamental problems trying maybe to engage people in fixing a puzzle or to picture something that will not make sense—or which they have difficulties narrating. This does not make the method flawed, it is part of its predicament and study: how personal memory both ‘tap’ and re-express complex social experiences. Although two interviews and walks with Bob is only close to what I would call oral history (it is more of a brief institutional history), it was interviews that paid attention to the informant’s slow narration, drawing upon personal and institutional pasts and his memories of those. It was a constructed, situated and contextualised process where some degree of ‘shared authority’ inflicts on the ‘text’. If I had continued a year later, Bob’s (and my inquiry into) the ‘puzzle’ may have looked different? After the talks with Bob and villagers, I was soon to focus more on youth and adult facilitators in specific projects.

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

135

Youth Negotiating Conflict and Life---2001 I try in this section to capture some characteristic scenes and dynamics of 3 days encounter programs for high school youth running both at the village’ School for Peace and at Givat Haviva. The programs were established in the early 1980s and continue to run to this day. The purpose of the encounters, in both institutions, broadly put, was to deepen, over a few intense days, participants familiarity with oneself, one’s group and the other side—and to bring the participants towards open and nondiscriminatory positions. Furthermore, the purpose was also to experience cooperation and produce new ideas with the other side. During these encounters high school youth from schools around the country spend a couple of three days at the setting (i.e., outside their home environments and schools) where they are exposed to various educational activities facilitated by an Arab and Hebrew speaking educator—often people with substantial training in conflict facilitation and social psychology or therapy. They most often begin the session in Arabic, to reverse the normality and power of Israeli society where Hebrew is dominant. In principle, the students are of an equal number of Arabs and Jews, the activities pay attention to interpersonal as well as intergroup elements and employs various techniques to address issues around identity, culture, faith, community, land, civics10 and history. Typically, at the time (2001), near the end of the encounter, participants from each national group would produce maps containing signs and things of value, but also produce a ‘third map’ in collaboration. The encounters also involved letter writing as well as a political simulation game challenging the youth to discuss and imagine new ways of dealing with civic and national issues. 10 Within the critical discourse in Israel as a democracy, it has been debated whether Israel should be conceptualised as an ethnic democracy or an ethnocracy as represented by Smooha (1990) versus Yiftachel, Ghanem and Rouhana. The ethnos refers to a selective association by origin while demos indicate ‘people’, an inclusive association by residence or citizenship (Yiftachel et al. 1998, 264). Smooha argues that minorities are allowed to conduct a democratic struggle within an ethnic nation, as the Jewish Israeli state, i.e., Israel is an ethnic democracy. The system was reinforced, within a liberal system, by the fact that the Arabs were neither obliged to identify with the state’s Jewish-national goals nor conscripted to the Army. The basic Zionist aim has materialised in state-supporting practices as the hatikvah as the national anthem, the Star of David as the flag and the Law of Return, but also in a range of remembrance activities and an educational system, a segregated system, but controlled by the Jewish Ministry of Education.

136

A. H. HANSEN

The text below is adapted from detailed field notes at Givat Haviva in 2001 with added reflections noted down briefly afterwards, the same or next day. A fuller account of all activity over two encounters, which I observed (in addition to conducting interviews in breaks and before the encounters) was part of my unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Høg Hansen 2003). Thus, these observations and this material are over 20 years old. Re-reading this in tandem with updating myself on the organisation’s web, online material and articles, the problems do not appear distant, but prevalent. As a former Oasis of Peace resident put it; ‘In the time after the Oslo declaration (the peace agreement of 1993) we could have turned it around, today it is much more difficult’ (Noam Shuster 2021). Those teens of 2001 could today have children aged 17 who will relive these conflicts and sometimes make successful attempts at collaboration and learning. I was allowed to sit in on several encounters since, as the facilitators argued, I would not disturb the dynamics due to my limited Arabic and Hebrew language skills (I had learned some Arabic, including writing, and some basic Hebrew, but not enough to follow conversation). Therefore, it became a sort of ethnography that followed the non- spoken/ non-linguistic, while I received English language summaries (of what was spoken about) from the facilitators during the breaks. Below, I aim first to demonstrate some of the youth responses, tactics and dynamics. Thereafter, I move more than a decade forward with notes from a new head of communication at Oasis of Peace. We are early during the first day of an encounter: a new activity is introduced where there are two circles, an inner and an outer one. The youth in the inner circle had to face the outer circle. The circles moved around in opposite ways, and people were shifting around. They had talks face to face on boy relations, girl relations, boy-girl relations and family. All were amazingly active and joyful. The youngsters all had sparkles in their eyes. Rasan (a facilitator, anonymised) came over: ‘a very active group’, he said.11 The facilitators were not able to translate in each group. It looked like chat and play, not discussion or argument.

11 Upon agreement back then names of facilitators and participants in the encounters discussed and quoted were anonymised for future public use. Several quotes appeared in publications during the 2000s (e.g., Høg Hansen, the Ph.D. dissertation, 2003 and in an article in Social Identities, 2006).

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

137

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict politicises culture, but these youngsters may also, now and then, have had enough of that reality. It appears that the encounters were also used as a break from work/school. Later some of them began comparing mobile phones (2001, basic Nokias and the like). There was a final talk in the wide circle—and a drop in energy level after an hour. Girls played with their hair, giggling. Generally, the girls are more dominating12 and they are also outnumbering the boys. Their body language, especially among the Jews, is well developed and more expressive than among northern Europeans. The girls are not afraid to refer to their feelings and experiences by pointing fingers, or bending their wrist and hands towards their chest. They were a lovely bunch these sixteenseventeen years olds. In all of them I sensed an odd dance between child and adult, two voices, sometimes they were singing together in disharmony, while at other times one of the voices took over. The ‘adult’ wants to speak, but the child has been in business for longer. There is a twofold internal, Bakhtinian, dialogue: in one sense the child–adult negotiation. In another sense there is the peer-pressure against a stepping-out, the individual taking another stance, initiating on the border of, or outside expectation and socialisation. But then again, particular agencies, such as ‘drop outs’ (hippies) or ‘uncalled’ (bikers) (Willis 1978, 7) need a structure or sub-structure to support it (Lovell 2003). Related to this is the Freireian process of making the group ‘knowing’, the conscientização,13 referring to an empowerment and ‘becoming aware’ of the group. Each group, and even each individual, here struggle with their different positions and ways of coping. Each individual learns something new about themselves and the others, notably the other national group. Just before the break the youth were talking about stereotypes. The Jewish girls expressed positive surprise about the Arabs; saying ‘oh, you do not wear headgear, you’ve got boyfriends’. The Arab girls had said something about having boyfriends in their twenties. Rachel, a facilitator, quoted the Jewish girls, ‘You are all fixed up’ [addressing the Arab girls], The Jews did not seem aware of how Arabs in Israel lives. After lunch 12 A class discussion in Northern Mozambique, track Chapter B3, revealed the same dynamic. These were, however, singular incidents and may not reflect the dynamics when working with a larger sample. 13 The term conscientização refers to a learning, or a process of developing a critical consciousness where the subject learns to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to act against oppressive elements of reality (Freire 1970, preface).

138

A. H. HANSEN

they continued with a drawing exercise in which each group is supposed to produce images of the other, and another drawing where they try to represent the particular group/other present at the encounter—the general picture of the other may differ from the ones in flesh in front of them? The paper remains blank in the Jewish group, whereas the Arabs each worked energetically on separate pieces of paper while also talking to each other. I asked Rachel why that is. She said that the Jews are having a really good discussion and are trying to decide collectively. While they drew, and I nosily left my chair in the corner and looked over their shoulders, I could observe other things as well: The Jews were generally more individualistic, expressive in their different styles, both boys and girls. Among the different drawings on the floor I noticed portraits of the Jewish religious other (men in black), many kids, the Star of David, a Hanukkah menorah, veiled Arab women, and Jewish women with a string of pearls waving a scarf. Jews decided to put their separate pieces of paper into one drawing. On the one hand, the drawings reveal that each part rely on stereotypes, but the encounter, on the other hand, presents ‘fresh impressions’, inviting both parties to negotiate old and new material: the expected or frozen image of the other is defrosted through her/his very appearance in person. In the following discussion, the first signs of tension were shown. A dominating tall and beautiful Jewish girl asked for ivrit, the Hebrew name for Modern Hebrew. In English translation, just ‘Hebrew’. The Jews asked again for ivrit. They suddenly became more aggressive, and they did not understand the Arab response, which was not harsh, but showing puzzlement. Games and activity stops. The facilitator let this train run, the group is really working: ‘ivrit’, ‘aravit’ and ‘anglit’ (Hebrew, Arabic, English). The three guys in the Jewish group are silent for most of the time. Some Arabs show disinterest or retire into quietude. Rasan unsuccessfully tries to stop the discussion. The whole thing kicked off, when one of the Arab girls began to speak Arabic and Rasan then translated. Some of the Jews wanted Hebrew only! ‘This is a Jewish country’. ‘This is Eretz Israeel’ [the land of Israel]. It is the language of Zionism, borrowing from the bible, the Promised Land, in order to realise a political, national project. The words, ‘Eretz Israel’, occasionally shouted, also make up the first two words of the body text in the Declaration of the State of Israel. ‘You have to speak this language, and you have just shown that you do it fine, what is the point with Arabic?’ some in the Jewish group pointed out. When Arabic is spoken for more than ten seconds, the

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

139

Jews became impatiently insecure, and began to disturb the dialogue and speak internally—applying interruptive dugri style (Zupnik 2000, 85). The Arabs looked puzzled by the harsh request to speak Hebrew. They did not get angry, they just pull out and stayed silent. The situation is complex, because it appeared to be a chosen silence—a non-interruptive musayra style (Zupnik 2000, 85)—and a means of handling the situation, a ‘tactic’ in de Certeau’s sense (1984, 37), since they were trying to gain some power in a situation where they are in a minority and have been put up against a wall by the Jewish Israeli demand for Hebrew. This confirms points made by facilitators in interviews about the existence of power games inside the encounter. The Jews’ surprise, discomfort and anger of hearing Arabic in Israel shows how much Zionism has been incorporated and naturalised, and how much the national approach is rooted. The issue of post-Zionism and the colonial settler state might be relevant to the facilitators, but for the Jewish youngsters such ideas are not a part of their world view. It is very hard for the facilitators, in such a short time, to create a breakthrough, to disrupt or deconstruct the one-dimensional language. When there was a break, I asked the two facilitators straight away why they did not intervene more. They reply, in chorus, that they will not teach, only facilitate. Rachel said afterwards that the Jewish group did not allow the Arabs to ‘speak a word of Arabic’. ‘This is a Jewish country, you have to speak Hebrew’, she quoted a Jewish participant. Rachel was excited, saying that ‘it is the best session I have ever had, they are dealing with the real issues, and they are not even aware’. Rachel was indicating that the students were not yet conscious or reflective about the impact of the experience. This means that, even though confusion and confrontation are created between both parties, a learning process that will continue at home had just started. That is a good thing. Education is a process, quoting Shuli Dichter, at that time a codirector of a Jewish-Arab advocacy organisation, Sikkuy, and coordinator of a 2 year long civic education project called Children Teaching Children at Givat Haviva. The mainstream Israeli educational system provides a Zionist process. ‘The encounters can not provide a questioning process, but they may trigger it’, Dichter explained when I interviewed him the same year. Encounters which he thought were likely to be damaging, do not provide time or techniques for re-configuring processes in the Ricoeurian sense, I would add, and maybe they are not providing time enough for other speech genres, a new language around the conflict, to develop?

140

A. H. HANSEN

However, the ruptures that the encounters create are a start, and in some ways these brief encounters work as temporary ‘historikerstreits’14 where young people get a chance to go beyond their identities and the histories they grew up with. Not an easy task, however, at a time in their life where identity and their own history are formed. After the coffee break something very interesting happened. The Jews came in first and instead of forming a half circle of Jews, waiting for the Arabs to come in and take the other half, they quickly disseminate themselves covering the whole circle. A seat here and there was free, not a cohesive section as before. The Arabs looked puzzled, where is my seat, where is my(!) group? The Jews are sitting there with quizzical grins. Either the Jewish teens show they are able to imitate macro policies of the Jewish state in this smaller setting by placing themselves in between Arabs and breaking up their attempt at forming a unity or movement. It thus came across as a cunning Jewish plan. They had not been told to change places, a facilitator told me afterwards, when I asked. Rachel, the Jewish facilitator, explained, that the Jews tried to weaken the Arabic ‘bloc’ by separating them. She recognises the plan, sneering: ‘they mirrored Israeli policies’. They were fragmenting the Arabs, also a minority in the encounter, into sub-units, just as the Israelis call them Muslims, Christians and Druze or place strategic roads and settlements in the West Bank, splitting formerly cohesive Palestinian areas into bantustans. The meeting thereby cruelly reflects the macro-politics, unless pedagogies and facilitating means are put in play to go against it. Lower numbers of Arabs make it quite difficult to work against the macrosituation, which all participants clearly carry, in their bodies and minds, into the encounter. The little chair mirrors numerous studies on real-life territorial grabbing and re-signification of (uncharted?) territories, such as Dan Rabinowitz’ (1998) writings on the Judaization of the Galilee, the strategies against the Bedouins of the Negev (Abu Saad, e.g. 2003) and as well the Ashkenazi elite’s policies against the Oriental Jew in the 1950s and 1960s (Yiftachel 1997, Høg Hansen 2003).

14 In Germany in the 1980s a debate about the history of the Holocaust in relation to contemporary German identity and responsibility took place (see e.g., Mayer 1988). The new historians in Israel, such as Benny Morris (1983) and Ilan Pappé (1999), and the post Zionist debate (e.g., Silberstein 1999) were in a similar way Israel’s Historikerstreit, or one of them, twenty years ago. More detail in chapter A3, Høg Hansen (2003).

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

141

Negotiating Conflict and Life---Recent Years Continued Educational Work in a Difficult Context Encounters like these have continued to take place over the last 20 years, at Givat Haviva as well as at the village (Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom). The website of the village reveals that it has been growing and solidifying slowly. A resident (anonymised) notices that there are waiting lists for the school which has not always been so. There have been phases where parents have pulled out children, the resident explains, and it is also generally costly, although tuition has been lowered. There is transport to the village, and the general pros and cons of being a pupil in a bilingual school. Regarding land and housing, they have expanded slowly and cannot make use of more land. In forty years only two families left, the resident noted.15 The resident notes, as a member of the older generation, that it can be difficult to explain to the younger generation how difficult it was and what they fought to establish. For the youth the village is simply there. The mixing is normal, they grew up as a community. Yet, the younger are generally not so active in the institutions, but they do other things not related to the village, but for a more just society. The village has political activists, and one has been in a municipal council for the party Hadash. As it also becomes clear by browsing the website, the village is a political place—but also, importantly, an educational place. The School for Peace (SFP) do training for social workers, journalists, environmentalist, different fields of intervention and volunteers for refugee works. The village has to do outside work, the resident explains. Not to convert Israel-Palestine to an Oasis of Peace, but to use and pass on experiences and knowledge. The new director of School for Peace, Roi Silberberg, noted in a talk in 2020, that in the early days of the School for Peace they thought this model of education would spread. It has not. At present, there is at present no political will. However, they keep working. Silberberg, the resident and others and the village (including several facilitators

15 The resident’s name is known by the author. The summaries are based on an interview with the resident in 2018. While informal oral consent was given at the time, the resident could not be reached in 2023 for written consent for this book. In consequence, the resident is not name and only more general data and summaries on developments in the village have been used here, without going into personal details.

142

A. H. HANSEN

back when I did interviews and observed encounters during the early 2000s) are invited for talks and workshops around the world. When talking to a resident back in 2018, I rephrase a similar question from the early talks with facilitators, pondering if the state of Israel can use the village as an example of ‘doing good’, as a showcase to others of their democracy. In 2018 as earlier the response was that the positive issues, the work for equality in the village, can be turned into more problematic issues. Residents and facilitators generally note that outsider come to learn and see what they can use elsewhere. A large majority of the pupils comes from outside the village. In 2000 only half of the kids were outsiders. Recent research (Nathan 2017) also reveals that there are or have been voices in the community that were critical towards allowing enrolment of children from the outside into the primary school. To the resident, however, the village’s public activity and outreach is important, which also becomes clear going through the village’s website menu. Of more recent initiatives are an art gallery, a youth club and humanitarian aid, and a community centre for events and film screenings called The Pluralistic Spiritual Centre.16 The resident noted that in comparison to earlier the village is doing more public activity and also becoming a hub for peace organisations. When approached with questions on why the village still does not have a secondary school, the answer is that it is a financial problem. Still, a few more bilingual primary school settings have emerged in Israel over the last 10 years. But only a few. It is uphill to build intentional communities based on bilinguality, Jewish-Arab collaboration and shared learning. Coexistence My Ass Noam Shuster-Eliassi grew up in Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom to an Iranian Jewish mother and a Jewish Jerusalem-born father, a child of Romanian Holocaust survivors. For some of her childhood, she was asking ‘Where is Dad?’ (Amber Fares 2021). He was in prison for resisting his Israeli army service. As a young adult Noam went from university studies to joining the peace NGO Interspace, initially a UN organisation but later discontinued. She had this serious job at the UN, as she

16 https://www.wasns.org/ (Visited July 2023).

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

143

says, where she worked on projects to include various other communities in Israeli-Palestine to counter extremism and engage those not always part of peace negotiations. In short, she says, ‘we failed’ (with laughter) ‘and I was fired’. However, after this UN job turned sour, she was in a dark place with creative muscles thirsty (as she puts it, The Stream 2021): she decided to return to previous passions and focus on satire and performing, becoming a stand-up comedian (sic). Her language skills (Arabic, Hebrew and English fluently), Middle Eastern looks and lifelong personal experience of Arab–Jewish co-living at Oasis of Peace provide a backbone, almost literally, for a headstrong, but also warm engagement with the world, and herself, through comedy—where she nurtures her individual voice to speak to more people (Miller 2020). While generally being bypassed by the Jewish Israeli mainstream, Noam has gone viral in the Arab world on several occasions, with a (jesting) wedding offer to a Saudi prince—and satirical take on Israeli-United Arab Emirates business and tourist relations in the song’Dubai’. She has performed for solely Palestinian audiences in East Jerusalem breaking the ice by promising ‘Don’t worry, I will only stay for 7 minutes not 70 years’. She has had talks and shows in Rwanda and the US, her bilingual skills helping her to reach many. A recent short documentary by Lebanese Canadian Amber Kares’ Coexistence my Ass (a shorter version titled Reckoning with Laughter) portrays her rise to fame, invited by Harvard to do her show Coexistence my Ass and be part of talks and projects all over the country. However, her trip abroad to shows in the US, also brought to the surface new reflections. Was her touring an escape from the problems at home? (The Stream 2021). They tour also came to a sudden halt. The pandemic hits, Harvard students are sent home, she gets COVID too, and is moving across a deserted Manhattan, coughing and crying. In Israel she is briefly at home at Oasis of Peace, but gets sicker, goes to hospital and is then placed into quarantine in a hostel, where both Arab and Jews of Israel of all walks of the separate lives of Israel are put together. There they gathered with mild COVID symptoms or recovering COVID parents or children. Sharing common areas, playing table tennis, eating the same food and apparently after some confusing and awkward moments joining a Zumba class and having a party. A quarantine ‘Corona prison hotel’ turned out to be one of the few places in Israel for equality? Everyone was there, young and old, settlers, Bedouins, Christian, Muslim, Ahskenazi and Sephardi Jews (some of these Haredi). The Bedouin girls are babysitting the Haredi’s children. For Noam it became a very special memory,

144

A. H. HANSEN

reported in staggering detail, and with great intellect and emotion, to Rabbi Elhanan Miller (2021) for 61JMedia—and it is partly documented visually in Amber’s documentary. Patient 3555 (Noam) is allowed to have some shows in the lobby of the ‘Corona Hotel’. She initiates some heated discussions to not get ‘too much of this radical compassion’ (as she says, not without irony). However, in her report to Miller, she notes towards the end that when sick people are given the same resources, Bedouin and Haredi etc., and put in the same space, eating the same cake, literally, they in fact take care of each other. However, in her moments alone after the US tour, we also see her bewildered, pondering her journey, in life, and recently, knowing there are mostly hardships, especially for the Palestinians and moments of light—and that stand-up tales and her experiences shared, do more than what her previous work with the UN could do. Nevertheless, she also knows that times have become harder to reach a solution. Coexistence, my ass? One or Several Languages in the Notebook? In a video from 2016, teen and adult residents explain some of the advantages of living close and attending (or having attended) the same school. There is the language, as residents speak both Arabic and Hebrew and they have the knowledge of each culture, heritage and narratives— including all the festivals and food it brings along. There are sensitive issues. While Jews celebrate independence day in 1948, for Arabs it is a day of mourning, the Nakba. An Arab girl puts its eloquently and diplomatically, ‘We are not mourning the fact that the Jewish nation got independence, we are mourning the fact that the Jewish nation got independence in the expense of our own nation’. The interviewer (who appears to be a Jewish peer from the American friendship organisation) says ‘there doesn’t seem to be any solution at the moment’. A boy/young man from the village answers in Hebrew: ‘What is not possible is due to violence and violence is due to us no knowing each other’.17 One may argue that this boy is supportive of the contact hypothesis, and that structural changes are necessary.

17 American Friends of Neve Shalom, 2016. Coexistence is no dream. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=g6MdjnH4Nr8.

B2 WAHAT AL-SALAM—NEVE SHALOM: A JEWISH–ARAB …

145

Oasis of Peace is at least an attempt to try to pose a cosmos of equality. The Arabs, however, will still be destined to try to make it in an unequal society. Primary school does not last forever. In an Italian TV production18 from January 2009. An Arab girl, Ranin (sitting next to then teen Noam Shuster, by the way) says, we maintain our own culture and differences, but we know about the others, do things with them, make friendships and so forth. It is natural for us to know both sides. In school at the village, I was used to take notes in both Arabic and Hebrew. When I changed school to somewhere outside (there is no secondary school at the village) I continued this practice by habit, and people laughed at me.

This notebook anecdote may point to a grander problem. Youth visits the village or similar projects (as e.g., the encounters at Givat Haviva or other rare spaces) and then return to separate realities. Youth here grow up and get things to do elsewhere but they take their views, experiences and habits with them. In a culture of separation, it is nevertheless difficult to conduct a life with more than ‘one language in the notebook’.

18 Arcoiris TV Face to Face, Maria Moncada and Daniela Ritzman, January 2009 https://www.arcoiris.tv/scheda/en/1138/.

B3 Listening as Action: Alternative Education in Tanzania and Mozambique Listening Posts, Aspiring Journalists, Role Models and Educational Rites of Passage

A big thank you to Darmin Mutenda, Sarita Monjane Henriksen and Marisa Sabella for collaboration on the work in Mozambique—and for allowing me to use and adapt material for this chapter. Following practices of alternative education in Israel-Palestine, learning experiences of youth are also to be engaged with in this case. The chapter is structured as a series of ‘takes’ from various data sources in Mozambique and Tanzania encircling youth’s experience with formal and informal learning and media—notably radio projects. This is unfolded or played as four vignettes or episodes recapturing particular moments and themes in the work. The notion of vignette is here used beyond convention. While a literary vignette traditionally may be based on one scene, a moment, a character and some key impressions invoking meaning, the vignettes here are both scenic and topical, drawing from several characters/informants—and often from a few occasions or moments. Each vignette is coupled with background information and reflection, mostly placed in footnotes, to make the main text concentrate on the actual moments/scenes and quotes. After the final vignette, I, however, take a retrospective take on the reconstructed accounts of memories and material and integrate a more theoretically oriented reflection on what kind of publics are created—and her return to the heading of the chapter, Listening as action.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_11

147

148

A. H. HANSEN

My aim is to provide limited and episodic, but still detailed and illustrative, accounts of how youth may find solace as well as ways forward in particular media ‘hubs’, practices or crossings that nurture their needs for sociality, entertainment, listening and learning. The first and fourth vignette are on experience with radio, the latter a particular format called ‘listening posts’ (núcleo de escuta, in Portuguese). The second vignette is on challenges to schooling and the third is on educational rites de passage.

Vignette 1: Youth and Radio With a Mozambican co-researcher, Marisa Sabela, I step into a regional radio station1 in a North-eastern province of Mozambique sometime in 2016. A bunch of teenagers and early twenty-somethings appear casually at work in a lounge room with Portuguese-English dictionaries spread around the table. An adult informant and employee at the radio station explains that they train the children/youth. These youngsters are an example for others, he tells us. The youth engage in research and broadcasting programs on public health issues and theme programs for girls only. There are live debates on air with listeners calling in. He admits that there is a problem with the province station’s signal or reach further up north in the rural areas. They do not have an online radio yet—it is something they want to do in the future. A few days before the visit, teachers and pupils up North had mentioned the importance of radio, while many though said they had problems with the signal. Moving north to a field visit to Tanzania, same year, a large group of teenagers and a few adult facilitators, my research assistant Sarah Singu and I, squeeze into a small classroom/meeting room at a local CSO somewhere in Tanzania. In the corner there is a beautiful motor bike. But it does not play a role in what I am going to say. However, a shiny bike kept in an office may say something about the CSO and group at work? This is a planning meeting takes place on a Friday, the day before

1 Radio has in the century since its popularisation remained an important medium for social, political and development related programming. Pioneering development-related radio initiatives emerged in Latin America and Africa. Radio has been influential in a rhythm of ‘a daily soundscape’ (Moorman 2011) where radio sounds mix in with other sounds, honking horns, cranes working, cries of street vendors. News and music and other elements have kept entertainment and educational programming in close contact, nurturing both easy and partly absent, but also active listening.

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

149

a radio program, where the youth are scheduled to go to a local wellknown commercial radio station to record a youth themes show2 that runs fortnightly. The meeting has 19 participants, an equal mix of girls and boys, early teenage years. Though, a few of them have progressed to become trainers, about 18–20 years of age (and one older adult facilitator is also present, but in no dominating role). They have a lively discussion on possible program topics. What comes up is the following radio program themes e.g., why failing school exams? / How well the community protect children getting deceases/infections during rain period (just now)? / How society looks at children’s clubs / How government leaders implement children’s rights? / Gender discrimination. They vote after brainstorming. They will do something about schooling, exams and punishment tomorrow. Next time they plan to do a theme/program about the protection of children against deceases in the rain period. They move on to select who should talk on the show. At first 5 girls volunteer, then they discuss further so some boys are included. They end up being 3 boys and 5 girls involved. The trainers and the older facilitator are not involved in deciding, they mainly help to steer the discussion and control tempers. The next day the 8 youngsters stumble into a small and elegant radio studio after one of the girls with determination and concentration has finished her handwritten notes on a large A4 note pad. When the young host—mid-20s women wearing some slick rock ’n’ roll t-shirt (something I’d like to wear, if I was younger?) goes through technical details with authority and routine. It is the girl with the note pad that does the talking. We are in a radio studio somewhere in Tanzania—a series of small CSOs working with youth and more well-known international organisations has over the last years teamed up to provide youth training ground and regular radio shows addressing children’s rights from local as well as national perspectives. The teenagers and the CSO are through a key 2 Over half of the population of Tanzania, are below 20 years old, yet their voices most often remain unheard in public fora. They are severely challenged in terms of employment opportunities, and many are victims of violence and sexual exploitation. Conventional broadcast FM radio also remains a very relevant medium of communication specifically within the country context and when addressing themes such as HIV which carry stigma. As a blind medium (Crisell in Chignell 2009, 67) radio offers a degree of anonymity and affords a mode of address that is personal and ‘intimate’ (Crisell 1994, 11 in Chignell 2009, 85). These key affordances suggest that radio is ideally placed to offer a forum for those living with HIV to tell their stories.

150

A. H. HANSEN

development player’s funding scheme able to do research, training and rent studio time for shows that reflect topical issues from children and youth’s daily lives, from local pollution, diseases and education. Some of the children gradually advance to become trainers. The radio project is conducted within CSOs and organisations where many of them are also involved as members or part of other projects. Our initial research (adapted here) involved a range of focus groups with a variety of stakeholders; teachers, facilitators, trainers, participating children/youth, community people and parents. The latter group generally spoke of improved school results, greater interest, more social kids, which were more active in school activities, taking on more leadership roles. Some of the radio work and research could however also collide with school sessions or exams, they note. The CSO staff and parents are worried about financial support, from bus tickets to school fees—and the older youngsters express anxiety if they are able to continue the exciting work and how/if it will benefit them in their further life. The parents encourage and support the best they can. Their children are getting more attitude and confidence, one says. She has refused to get married early, another points out. The radio project children talk more in the community, they dare to engage with neighbours. One parent explains that her boy was in trouble before, a bit of a bad boy. But his behaviour changed. One even left home and went to the CSO. He has now returned to the parents after the project influence. Some are able to save a little bit from transport supply and buy uniforms themselves. They like the radio programs, have a good relation to the partner CSO—but not in particular to the radio stations. Only in cases where they know a presenter personally. They wish for better communication with the radio station staff.

Vignette 2: Challenges to Schooling I am in a classroom in a rural school in North-western Mozambique (2016). With a fellow Mozambican researcher, Darmin Mutenda, leading the sessions in Portuguese and local languages (with some occasional input from me). The event is a discussion with a mix of girls and boys about 15 of them around 13–15 years of age. Only students interested in listening and debating are asked to stay in the classroom after introducing a session which is to be about how they find school life. We introduce a

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

151

series of topics and challenges to school life and means of communication to various groups in the community. The students switch themes quickly when approached with topics and questions for discussion: ‘The boys need to be circumcised’, ‘toilets are bad, ‘the space of the school is not safe’. ‘The boys do drugs’. The girls are particularly vocal in the discussion. Some boys feel targeted and answer back: ‘girls begin dating at early age’. They also complain about ‘absent teachers’ and say that pregnancies happen. Do they know other kids who have dropped out?3 ‘SIM!’ (most of them shouting ‘yes’). Are the toiles safe for girls: ‘NAO!’ (girls shouting ‘no’). Most of this class live far from the school, their parents complain of costs. The school is important ‘to learn to communicate’, although they add that ‘teachers are cruel’. ‘when we don’t know how to read, they make us feel embarrassed’ (In talks with parents, and mentioned by some kids, the cost of uniforms is brought up. Parents in general complain about costs of uniforms, bags, exercise books). When the talk in the class turns to media use, some say they watch TV. At another more remote village school, TV was far less common. Here, they are also able to access to internet, and they mention they listen to radio for stories and music. In some schools music is found nearby: At some places, just next to the school, you find the baraka, the drinking hole. It has no water to sell, only liquor and beer. The pupils aspire to what they see, or what comes from those adults they see in other positions than those struggling on the land. They want to be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or policeman/woman. We also to talk to parents, teachers and community leaders during visits to schools. The community leaders said: ‘We know that children have the right to education’. We do campaign to make children go to church. There are issues around medical assistance, health issues in the family that needs to be addressed, they say. We advise about good behaviour and respect, they point out, as all other community leaders.’Education is necessary for a bright future’, is a repeated formulation. Before we had 3 The majority of pupils never complete the five-year or seven-year cycle of primary education. In 2014 43.9 % of children enrolled completed upper primary schooling, EP2 (MINEDH, Aproveitamento Escolar 2014). Dropout rates can vary significantly between rural and urban areas as well as across grades. In some grades it can be as high as 20 %, particularly at the last years of each cycle. These numbers are even higher in rural areas, and moreover tend to be rising. In Nampula, one of the poorest provinces, the dropout rates for girls in EP2 doubled from 2009 to 2014 (MINEDH, Aproveitamento escolar 2009, 2014).

152

A. H. HANSEN

the privileges, today student life is hard (not sure which past they are referring to, the Machel era was 1975–1990). ‘In my time you did not see children in the streets selling stuff’, one explains. ‘It used to be so that a child first saw money when he/she was 18’, an elder explains. Now it is very different. ‘They see money early; they go and do business or help someone for twenty MT’. Enrolment money is often used for a school guard. If there were school meals, students would come more often. School meals would change everything it seems. Pupils are hungry.4 If they could get food here, it would solve a lot of problems for parents, kids and teachers. Girls who get pregnant tend to drop out.5 Boys drop out because of poverty. They say they go to school and then they leave in their uniform, 4 Students participating in classes without either breakfast nor lunch were reported to be common in all rural schools visited, with principals and teachers strongly suggesting free school meals to be the single most effective measure to motivate students not to drop out. Safety and security are other problems that urgently need to be addressed as a prerequisite for any communication strategy. Schools are not fenced or guarded, and school yards are at times next to heavily trafficked roads. People from outside can intrude and use toilets etc., and several schools have also been the victims of break-ins, burglaries and vandalism. Some schools in urban areas are located near the alcohol-vending so-called barakas, as mentioned. Other schools don’t have toilets for students, or have toilets without doors, that are not safe for girls. 5 Child marriages and teenage pregnancies resulting in female school dropouts. Mozambique has the sixth highest child marriage prevalence rate in the world at 56%. A majority of the families feel that it is ‘inappropriate’ to keep a girl in school once she was married. Girls can stay in school only so long as the husband ‘permits’ it. Female initiation rites, as often practised with the onset of female puberty, provide a cultural legitimation and social pressure to take girls out of school before completion of grade 7 (EP2) or even grade 5 (EP1). This issue is meanwhile characterised by great regional differences. There is a stigma regarding teenage pregnancy, particularly in the expectant mother’s social interactions. Families, cultural leaders, religious leaders, education officials and school staff are often outspoken that pregnant girls could not remain in school. Spatial distance to be covered for school attendance increases risk of sexual abuse and harassment. In specific aggravated with regard to the transfer from EP1 to EsP2schools. Girls drop out, because they cannot live in proximity to EP2-school and away from home, or commute on a daily base. There is a lack of gender-separated sanitary facilities in small schools and protection from harassment by (elder) boys. Health problems affecting children such as malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and malaria, which prevented them from attending school for certain periods, sometimes indefinitely. Also, the health of other family members affects children’s school attendance, with older children often asked to remain at home to care for them, or to perform the tasks the sick members would usually do, such as farming activities and household chores. A substantial number of children are acting as head of families due to HIV/AIDS epidemic. Ongoing costs of keeping children in school are considered too high for many poor families. Such costs included

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

153

do business and return in the uniform when school ends, pretending they have been in class. Many boys sell peanuts. They do manage to solve some of the problems, teachers say; bringing dropouts back to school, making arrangements to let pregnant girls continue, and as well problems of violence can be solved—as in other school around the world, one could say? The school council is struggling. Before one of the council’s, where we spoke to members, had problems with corruption. People stole the enrolment fees, so they needed to change members. Radio programs for and about students would be good, they point out. The teachers mostly appear dedicated and trying their best in difficult circumstances. The problem of unsafe space and the dropout was addressed by some of pupils. The teachers say: we don’t have fence, cars are coming in, the dropout we experience is due to hard life, students are doing part time jobs. They address their own hardships: shortage of books, no scholarship for teachers, little opportunity for training, progression etc. Teachers may have to use their own money to get further training, and then they may still not be able to progress to a better position. The school director points out that work with community leaders is vital. They are involved in creating a sports field at the school area. It is important with games/leisure activities near the classroom. Yes, it is crucial with some other options than the baraka. I make a jump up north to Tanzania. We are also in 2016. A distance phone connection, Denmark-Tanzania. In Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, a former primary school teacher is on the line. Next to me outside Copenhagen, I have the two youngest of her daughters as translators and commenters (both daughters are educated in sociology and familiar with interviewing methodology). The primary school teacher, Rebecca, was my mother-in-law. I was lucky to meet her on many occasions. She taught in a public school at the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, and did a variety of community and church, leading a small NGO. However, in August 2022, 6 years after the interview she died in a bus crash, just 62 years of age. God bless her. Back in 2016 when I was involved in a project related to schooling and communication in Mozambique, I asked her to share her views on dropout and challenges to schooling in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania in basic resources such as pens, pencils, erasers, textbooks and notebooks; the school uniform; and non-voluntary fees levied by schools.

154

A. H. HANSEN

general. She talked easily: Pupils drop out due to diseases as HIV/AIDS and cholera. There may also be family problems after a divorce causing problems that hinder the children going to school. Orphaned children do not get much help, but her own association (which she ran in addition to her teaching job) collected clothes for orphaned children. In her view, but to a lesser extent, also child marriages and early pregnancies would prevent early teenage girls from attending. Poverty is also an issue, but more prominent in the rural areas. This issue is closely related to the children labouring instead of going to school. This may happen overtly or covertly. She tells about a young boy who went away in his uniform pretending to go to school, but instead he went to sell bottles. A mother in the neighbourhood even told her daughter to go out with men to get money. A common practice, according to a daughter of the teacher. When asking what can be done, the teacher suggests that more information on children’s rights should be provided from seminars, information from NGOs, to address the problems. Generally, the local authority does not do much or anything. They want to be paid to do the service, the daughter adds. The teacher also suggests that the parents could be helped with resources, not necessarily money, but tools, a hoe for the farm she mentions, to tackle issues in their everyday life. The teacher does not mention beatings as a problem. The daughters and I indulge in a joke, warmly, no one appears to have been damaged: Rebecca may have been silent on beating/slapping since the daughters, especially the one I am married to, had to take some slaps herself years ago! I also ask how and where girls and boys are getting information about health and sexuality. She says they get it from films and from NGOs, magazines and so forth. The daughter explains that the government/ municipality do not visit schools often to do services or deliver information. ‘They cannot get any bribes there’, she says dryly, so municipal people go elsewhere. Returning to Mozambique (which shares many of the same problems and predicaments as described in Tanzania), a general observation for both provinces our research team visited is that schools seem to have a more central role in the community in rural districts, where there is little access to media and few business opportunities. Teachers in rural districts are met with respect and looked up to as ‘role models’, whereas other role models and temptations are introduced through the media in

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

155

districts closer to the urban centres. Although the school is a more peripheral institution in urban districts, the community and the parents still take the main responsibility and contribute when work needs to be done. School councils tend, on the other hand, to be weaker in urban areas than in the rural districts, the so-called Sedes Distritais. The school councils, composed of parents, community elders (women), religious and political leaders (régulos) and students, are based on voluntary work. They provide help with building and maintaining schools, often with local material, and also support the school staff by visiting parents of dropouts and persuading them to send their children back to school. There is an evident correlation between active school councils and low dropout rates. These positive examples can serve as role models for other districts. Communal spaces for talk, similar to the activities of an organisation called Girl Move,6 demonstrate some potential. Darmin Mutenda, my earlier mentioned Mozambican co-researcher, suggested the idea of listening posts/nucleus for radio listening and production, where a signal can be assured, programs broadcast and debate about what they listen to, can take place. Darmin already shared her experiences in her teens with listening posts, when I mentioned the radio research, I had been involved in, in Tanzania, earlier the same year (2016). A few years later we talked again and decided to contact others in Darmin’s circles that also had been part of listening posts. This, I will return to in the fourth vignette, after the next one on rites de passage.

6 A group of entrepreneurs founded the organisation Girl Move to stimulate and educate a generation of young women leaders, as a staff member/coordinator explained (interview 2016, with Sarita Monjane Henriksen). The organisation operates from a safe space methodology for girls where they can speak freely, protect each other, give advice and network to develop life skills, ideas for income generation and confidence. They focus on the eleven- to fifteen-year-olds, using mentors who has already graduated from college/ university, actin as leaders of the safe spaces and as a sort of role models. Only one per cent of girls In Mozambique go to university, It is important for the teens (and younger) to see, in the flesh and talk to one, who have done this. In addition to older mentors, they work with younger girls, seventeen to twenty years old, within the community, slightly older than the participating eleven- to fifteen-year-olds. These act as go between the mentors in their 20s and the girls.

156

A. H. HANSEN

Vignette 3: Educational Rites de Passage The last part of the interview with the primary school teacher, engaged with in the previous vignette, is concerned with initiation rites. There is jarido for boys, and unyago for girls. In some tribes they circumcise the girls, but this is a bad idea, it can cause over bleeding during delivery. Some girls are at the rites taken to marriage straight. Others not marrying though may end schooling. They think they have been educated enough during the rites, and then quit school. The teacher mentions, on the positive site, that the rites shape behaviour, give the girls self-esteem, and they will know how to take care of a family. However, she also mentions that the girls may think they know everything, and they are sometimes losing respect for elders. In her view the initiation rites should not be practised anymore. The government is also trying to halt them, yet they continue often secretly. I had earlier discussed the pre-marriage kitchen parties with the daughters and the kind of education taking place here. Here it can be said that another, maybe modernised form, of the initiation rite takes place. The kitchen parties are women-only events. I am married to the older daughter and have watched the video from the kitchen party. Those events are often documented at length in videos and images. My thento-be wife is being instructed on a variety of household and intimate matters, in plenum with the MC, a woman older than my wife, talking and performing through a microphone. The atmosphere is convivial. Laughs fly through the air. The kitchen party takes place after an introduction party where the man brings the dowry to the family of the woman he hopes to marry. After the kitchen party, there is also the option of a send-off, a party at the woman’s family where she is ‘send away’ to the wedding/marriage. Finally, there is the wedding. Returning to the primary teacher interview, I ask her if she went through the rites herself. Yes, she says, an elder specialist, a ngunwi, took her through the learning’s, she did though not explain much. I ask the youngest daughter again. She knows her mother did it, because for a while her mother was Muslim, later she became Christian, and she did not want her three daughters to go through it. Although rites have been played down or not seen as so relevant in relation to schooling challenges and drop out in Northern Mozambique—which I am now returning to—there are intriguing insights and arguments in Osório and Macuácua (2014). The research is coming mainly from the North, on the complex

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

157

relation between rites and dropouts, addressed in the previous vignette on schooling. On boyfriends or men buying ‘paratu’ for the family, helping the maturing schoolgirl with uniforms, school bags so the man now can control her schooling. A teacher in Pemba town says that school abandonment is related to the rites. The girl is after the rites seen as one ‘too big to attend school’. ‘incite the girl to marry’, ‘occupy her place in the household’. Less often teachers remark that the rites for boys incite them to start working on the land. Osório and Macuácua say rites and marriages are related, but also in a region with no initiation rites early marriages happen. There is a different reason for early marriage, there is a cultural order and differentiation between rites. Different gains from marriage, cultural recognition and so forth. Many protest against early marriage, but there is also a fatalism, the authors note (2014). Those who do not obey may get expulsed from the family and then have to pursue sex work to survive. I meet the First Lady of the Province of Tete in Northern Mozambique—with three Mozambican researchers (Darmin Mutenda, Sarita Monjane Henriksen, and Marisa Sabela)—in between the visits to Mozambican schools. She explains that the rites change the personality of the youngsters, boys and girls are different afterwards, they have been forced to see and learn things.7 It is too much for a 14-year-old, walk without clothes for a week, having 45-year-old showing you everything, cold baths etc. In November 2016 (the interview took place in September 2016) there is a national campaign on preventing early marriages. Her NGO is involved. The Northern city we are visiting has a high dropout rate. Girls need easy money. They drop out for work, sex work. To be able to get hair and high heels, she says (it is difficult to get exact data/numbers, interestingly the numbers we get from principals are quite low. The dropout rates amount to a handful and the reasons listed are

7 Although the research team (as part of the research projects that implied a range of school visits in the North) have not directly come in contact with initiation rites, this is a cultural practice that is often referred to by our informants, especially in Zambezia (and by the quoted Tanzanian school teacher, Rebecca). We discussed this in the research team of Mocambicans, Danes and a German: rather than dismissing these rites just as harmful practices that influence the content of the initiation, a way forward could be to collaborate with traditional leaders, to enhance sexual education for both boys and girls. It is also important to look into how rites are transformed or appear appropriated in other rites de passage, such as the kitchen parties mentioned.

158

A. H. HANSEN

most often ‘fome’, poverty.8 We address the possible use of role models in adolescent activities. For rural kids it is the people they see around, an uncle, teacher—apropos the youngster’s aspirations mentioned above. For city girls it is different, then it is the celebrities of the internet and TV. ‘To educate a girl is to educate a whole society’, she says. Face to face campaigns is important, she also note. In the past there were more community radios with activities, with teachers and students, she notes. This leads me into the final vignette on a particular format of radio activity: listening posts.

Vignette 4: Youth and Radio---Listening Posts Historically, the radio listening posts (RLPs), as outlined by Peter Mhagama (2013) emerged in Canada during WWII, then spread to India, and later Africa—each region had their model/adaptation. In Tanzania there were audio cassette listening forums in the late 1970s. In this article we refer to núcleo de escuta (Listening Posts) experiences in Mozambique from the early/mid-2000s, by then teenagers, now adults in their 30s at the time of survey interviews during 2019 and 2020. Francisco, 19 at the time, noted that groups met weekly to listen to radio programs with themes of relevance for their lives. The group would form a ‘core’ made up of people from a neighbourhood or region. Themes covered education, environment, health rights, duties of the child, human rights and science and radio soap operas. The collective listening events were followed by group discussions at the post which then produced feedback to the radio program, such as additional topics which also could be brought up in the community or in the schools.9 Deonilde was 15 years 8 Principals report hunger, drought and ‘fome’/economic crisis as the main causes of dropouts—which were evenly distributed from first to seventh grade: Thirty-forty dropouts in schools with 600 students or more. The dropout rates reported here are generally lower than documented in other research material available. 9 In the North of Mozambique, some similarity to listening posts or club stil exist in ‘Radio comunitaria de Monapa’ (community radio) around Nampula. They are funded by the global development organisation IREX and follows a project agenda. See e.g., ire x.org and media strengthening programs. In addition various stations and initiatives now and then use a listening clubs format, such as Theatre for a Change radio drama in 2019, https://www.tfacafrica.com/mozambique/, as well as radio skits on drug abuse at the InterAct radio station in Maputo, debated in listetning posts at schools in the capital, 2020. Andrew Wasike for Anadolu Agency. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/mozamb ique-youth-radio-show-pushes-for-gender-equality/1752590 (Accessed Jan 2022).

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

159

old at the time of her experiences. A key issue for her was protection against domestic violence, as well as games and talk of personal experience in her own neighbourhood. The programs addressed knowledge about nature and reproductive health and fight against discrimination. They created groups to discuss what they heard on the radio, also to find out what other youth thought about what they heard. ‘All that I know about protecting children, respect and solidarity I found there’, she wrote as the last line in her letter feedback on WhatsApp. This combination of first listening in, and then talking, discussing the shows, demonstrates on a basic level the interdependence of listening and talking in collective learning modes; what we here regard as a co-experience element of the capacity to aspire. Flavio was a 16-year-old producer. He writes that he hosted ‘child-to-child radio programs at the time, and listening centers were established to enable educational debates on the topics covered in each program, such as reproductive sexual health, water and sanitation, girls’ education, children’s rights, among others. The posts were made up of a few students and they had the task of sharing the issues with the other schoolmates and community members’. Programmers/ producers spend the week between the programs to gather opinions. On the radio subjects—through oral debates and physical visits, he noted. ‘There were several programs that struck me’, he writes. He notes that the live programs ‘where we had a lot of time and the children participated’, were special. ‘We called in various specialists in various fields and gave presentations, and in the end, we asked questions and the children participated’ (similar to a magazine format in the Tanzania radio project also engaged within this article). And he continues: ‘The programs we did at the studio were marked by the presence of dozens of children who wanted to participate in the program, and we had to make weekly appointments’. They also received letters to be read loud during the programs. National channels created programs with presenters from other provinces on the day of children’s radio broadcast. Some presenters were repeatedly selected as a pivot presenter, including Flavio. Another participant in RLPs, and in our WhatsApp survey, was Gilda— 16 at the time. Gilda is today eager to work with children and embrace social causes. She explains that the shows back then, on Sundays, interacted with kids, singing and dancing, poetry reading, as well as math’s competitions. Activities continued in school on weekdays. She remembers in particular an 8-year-old, live on radio, reading loud. Researcher D(XX) adds that RLPs also worked as a protection chain against early marriage

160

A. H. HANSEN

and preventing pregnant girls from dropping out of school, because of the information they got through the radio and the host that came to serve as role model for them. The posts were also used for community leaders who would learn through the educational programs broadcast by the radio—about child and girls protection. The posts were commonly created in schools and primarily targeted young girls, but also to some extent young boys, for collective listening in the afternoon, often in the school yard under a tree (with weekly sessions). The community radio programs addressed the issues noted by the participants in the miniWhatsApp survey. Often the girls would come back in the afternoon after doing domestic chores. They were assisted by a female teacher and moderator. Interestingly (as also noted by Gilda) the girls would choose a certain activity, such as embroidering or art and crafts production to do while listening and talking, which were later sold in the community, benefiting the family income and maybe covering the costs for girls education. The added arts and crafts activities often became a motivational factor for attending. They would have something to do, and learn from each other also, while attending the programs. They had their favourite programs and the radio host most of the time served as someone to look up to, not far from them in age and neither a distanced celebrity. Audiences were often invited to write letters to the radio hosts to be read loud during the following program—related to the vox populi (voice of the people), a strong characteristic of radio connection and the bond to common wo/ man. The community felt part of the radio when they were able to give space to live or recorded radio programs. They listened to their interviews and saw their problems and ideas shared with others.10 Sessions were

10 Birgitte Jallov, who has over thirty years of experience in communication for development consultancy, and who has experience with radio projects notes in a personal correspondence (28 March 2019) that the Núcleo de Escuta ‘come in many forms and shapes initiated by the community—or most often by some NGO who invites women to sit together and listen to women’s programs, discuss them, maybe record their discussion—for this to feed into the next program. Or focusing on youth and sexual behaviour/ HIV/power, or agriculture, farming techniques’. Jallov adds that when she was in Niger in December 2018 former listening clubs were undergoing a name change to women’s debate clubs to emphasise interaction instead of just a passive listening. In our article, however, ‘listening’ is viewed as an active form of engagement, compared to e.g. (over)hearing or passive listening.

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

161

sometimes recorded for revision learning or distribution. Other communities could listen to experiences from a nearby village, and add their own experiences, which then could be replayed in a new program. The small group of informants for two rounds of surveys in 2019 and 2010, as well as co-researcher Darmin Mutenda’s reflections, points towards a strong potential of radio listening posts as platforms for smallknit collectives of youth convening, listening and participating. The collectivity of the format is intriguing; when we tell stories we are not just giving voice to what is on our minds, we are realising something that others can relate to, a way of creating a viable social world (Jackson 2013, 15) and as well responding to what we have heard, both among peers and in the family, in the school or media. We here see RLPs as an interesting conduit to publicness and public practice: where we listen, and can be listened to, beyond more private spaces. A space of public attention, where the youth are neither ruling nor being ruled (Bickford 1996, 57). In that sense democratic and an unpredictable space; youth do not know how they may be perceived, but still the space, as sphericule or post, is relatively protected and semi-public. Things can be voiced without ending up on the programs. And voice can be developed listening to what others have to say (Bickford 1996, 157, using Hannah Arendt). In this way through RLPs, as well as the previously mentioned young journalists project in Tanzania (and at the two local stations in Northern Mozambique) youth and adults convene for specific educational and entertainment purposes. We see in this a power of collective action that can come from talk with, and maybe also listening to, people who are strangers—and as well some we know—where there is an equality in the listening role.

What Kind of Publics Are Created? A question that has somehow muttered latently under the surface as I went along with this case (and of some relevance to the ‘publics’ of the spaces of Israel-Palestine—and to be continued via the public space of the zine in the forthcoming case) is what kind of publics are created or whether they engage with a coping, or replacement forms, when there is a breakdown of, or non-existence of a public common? The previously mentioned barraca is hardly the desired kind of agora. The radio projects, the better school councils, community leaders and Girl Movestyle initiatives (see earlier note) are providing valuable experience to

162

A. H. HANSEN

be learned from in the rest of the world. Thinking, speaking, listening and acting can be seen as basic components of life in the world, and the precondition for the constitution of publicness. Appearance only has meaning when human beings think, speak and act (and listen) in relation to each other, for each other. Such requirements do not change in a mediated environment. Yet, as Silverstone reflected in 2006, at the brink of the social media era: do increasingly mediated relationships lead to a collective failure to emphasise with the other, instead of a mediapolis of hospitality? Importantly, the radio listening post concept provides not only mediated communication synchronously and asynchronously, but as well in situ or physical group interaction and bonding events: It is as much about sitting together and exchange views, ask questions, in relation to what you listen to—and maybe to make other things (the crafts and entrepreneurial aspect) while listening. Being together in silence, learning and thinking—and sometimes talking—while making stuff. There are layers of thought and action which prepare us to speak publicly, we may say, rather than confining participants to silence or passive listening of complicity (Silverstone 2006).11 The listening posts which mostly in their active period ran on solar battery power are also a convenient space for teaching skills and debating health and transition (education, marriage, childbirth etc.) that support personal and economic resilience and sustainability. The informality of grassroot entrepreneurial activity—as researched by Singu Hansen (2017) for a Tanzanian case of communal capacity nurturing and entrepreneurship, though not involving radio—may be embroidery, sewing technique sessions, growing crops and gardening shared-experiences sessions and learning how to produce reusable pads. These activities will work as a motivation factor for youth to gather every week to listen to the programs and teach each other these skills. The radio hosts visit each núcleo/post with a motivational speaker to record a program to be broadcasted in the following edition where the girls share their ideas about solutions

11 Silverstone continued (in an argument using Hannah Arendt), that the space of appearance is a space of speech and action, which is based on or made possible by ‘thought’. Without thought and a challenge of the taken for granted, we do not get far with speech. It was the absence of thought, a complicity, which Arendt found in the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in her analysis of the trials. It was a ‘banality of evil’ not because it was deliberate or motivated but because it was complicit or thoughtless. Depending on a regime that had cancelled thought or to question things (Silverstone 2006, 39).

B3 LISTENING AS ACTION: ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION …

163

for their community problems. They play games, ask and answer questions and share testimonies of success stories and other stories. They may even become these miniature or micro-publics of convivial cohabitation—yet their attempts of self-making run its thin course within structures, including funding structures, that remain fragile. The children and students’ communicative networks, in radio initiatives like the journalist project in Tanzania and the radio listening posts in Mozambique, are characterised also by complex relations of support in schooling, but also threats. Parents that act supportively can turn around due to poverty and become a non-supportive or resistant group/stakeholder. In terms of media, in the rural areas, legacy media as radio, may be a continued way forward, also helped by basic mobile phones with FM/AM Radio. Researcher Darmin Mutenda noted a need to bring back radio to a stronger role. Admire Mare (2013) notes (in a study of South African pirate radio Voice of the people) that the orality of the medium of radio extends the already predominant oral culture—reworking Myers ‘modern extension of oral tradition’ (which may relate to a study of orality, and mixed media usage as a new form of pavement radio, Ekström, Boothby and Høg Hansen 2012). In fact, the mobile and internet culture and privatisation is also argued to have rekindled a radio culture, including pirate radio (Mare 2013, 30–31, referring to work by Nyamnjoh, Willems and others). Listening is in Mare’s work viewed as a critical learning activity, in addition to the often emphasised political and citizen-building agency of voice or ‘speaking out or speaking back’. Without a listening public there would be no guarantee of a plurality of voices or the exercise of public voices—an argument drawing upon Kate Lacey (2013) and Susan Bickford’s work, 1996. The exploration of various forms of creative entry points to public life is explored further in the next chapter.

B4 Small Press Passions: Zines and Scenes of Popular Memory Women Making History, Sweden. herri, South Africa. BLTX, Philippines

Pamphleteers and the Public Sphere Most of the tracks in this collection begin sometime in the twenty-first century or near the present day, yet this chapter begins somewhere in the seventeenth century by addressing pamphlets , as tracts of topical, political interest written in vernacular and back then one of the most important print media in England, France and elsewhere in Europe. The pamphlet and the practice of debate, plurality and controversy it brought-along marks an important origin of forms of public sphere activity. This track involves three parts each representing recent zine/journal offspring of pamphlet culture, but in very diverse ways, and on three different continents. The example studies are from South Africa, the

‘Zines’ is a shortening of forms, such as magazine or fanzine. The former from Arabic makhazin. Zines are though mostly associated with small press DIY pamphlets and fanzines, relatively cheap fan community productions. The Arabic makhazin means storehouse or depot and travelled to English via the French ‘magasin’. So, a storage space, which makes sense. In Denmark, when books at libraries are not on shelves, but packed away they are in ‘magasin’. If the magazine is a written product, it is a collection of written pieces or articles. See, e.g., Wikipedia entry on Magazine. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_12

165

166

A. H. HANSEN

Philippines, and Sweden: the art-journal/zine herri,1 The BLTX zine movement and Women Making History movement newsletters. Before unpacking the ideas and content behind these forms of popular memory, I will journey back for a brief history of pamphleteering. We may, for example, begin in the late sixteenth century. Luther and his followers used pamphlets to criticize the Catholic Church. The features of the medium, its production and distribution, and its amplitude, surpassed literary saloons and coffee houses which the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas saw as the beginning, and the training ground, of the public sphere. The saloons and coffee houses were places of conversation mostly for white and well-off, and possibly also elderly, men. Early pamphlet literature however differed from coffee house conversation. Pamphlets drew on earlier oral and scribal culture: poetry, song texts, fables, allegories, dialogues, and satire. Pamphleteers — as we can call them—also used visual elements which contributed to bring pamphlets within reach of still larger audiences. So, they were crucial in establishing a proto/first public sphere and the corollary of parliamentary culture (Pascal Verhoest 2019, using a range of historians). Drawing from Chantal Mouffe (2010) passion also became to define political pamphleteering, making important additions to the understanding of the political as a field of cold reasoning. Passion has been a recurring driving force of individual endeavours into public life for a range of the characters in this collection. The cases of Lewis and Izzy portray similar settings or media, the small store established out of stubborn passion for a topic, one a place for books, the other for music. Both places for talk, sociality, and search in the archives. Eugene, a Black American, practicing European classical music in a small house in a Danish village, another reclusive setting. However, his training and passion resulted in concerts at grander concert houses in Europe and the US. A later form of pamphleteering resulted in fanzines which merged not as an attempt to reach stardom or a large audience, but rather as a communal or even introvert passion that nevertheless needed a public outlet. Pamphleteers and zineasts were embracing what also has been called DIY culture. Or with Matthew Worley begins his article on punk, politics and British (fan)zines, quoting Paper Alcohol Collective: ‘music fanzines started out as a way of putting forward the views of music lovers that the big music 1 I am kindly but firmly instructed by herri editor Aryan Kaganof, who read the chapter, that ‘herri’ is not capitalised.

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

167

press didn’t recognise’—‘anybody with something to say or wanting some outlet for their art can start a “fanzine”’ (2015, 76). The beginning can though be traced earlier than the 1970s. As with the listening posts and local radios in the former chapter, we are still in the domain of communal media.

Fanzines Around the time of World War II writings emerged among science fiction nerds which led to the birth of the notion of fanzines. Not understood as a commercially produced magazine for fans, but as often rough and low-cost pieces of folded copies or booklets by and for amateurs, easily produced and distributed. From light tables, mimeographs and stencil duplicators to copy shops, copy machines and then further on to easy online production and printing at the turn of this century. The distance today is narrower between amateur zines and more professional and often online prozines. The mid- and late-twentieth-century fanzines, from scifi, over punk and onwards, can be traced back to the nineteenth-century literary group’s own poetry small press publishing, and even further back to the earlier introduced pamphleteers. Jon Savage described the mid/ late 1970s punk akin to and English tradition of pamphleteering filtered through counter-cultural politics and expression (Savage in Worley 2015, 80). The fanzines were often centred around a community and a collective passion—apropos my earlier notes on passion as part of a political culture (using Chantal Mouffe), and the semi-public spaces of Lewis and Izzy’s stores. There is a relationship to independent publications, comics, literary journals, websites and related types of grassroot cradles of un-institutionalised DIY creativity. Going back to Jon Savage, a hub of fanzine culture in the 1970s and 1980s was the punk scene in London (see, e.g., Worley 2015), but certainly also New York, and many other cities in the West—which sported a partly colourful but also grungy and coarse aesthetic. Somehow the brief era of punk zines affirmed the subculture’s aim of reclaiming youth culture ‘for those who made, listened to, and lived it’ (Worley 2015, 81). As the communal side of zine production has been very important, we may bring on a note by American educator John Dewey who said: ‘communal life constitutes the essence of democracy’ (in Verhoest 49). He was more concerned with the strength of communal bonds and the

168

A. H. HANSEN

threat posed to democracy by social fragmentation. Zine culture flourished again in the 1990s with the riot grrrl movement. Zines have though developed or changed to become more diverse—and evolved with the internet, where anybody could publish anything. Like, for example, Pop culture puke, or the internet community and magazine Broken Pencil on zine culture with an array of cine reviews and awards (https://brokenpen cil.com/about/). Many libraries and universities today have their own zine collections. Zine culture and small press endeavours for associations, movements and clubs have—also for me—been important steps into the formation of social and political awareness through expression in media among peers— in tandem with explorations of group identity and belonging. And as well friendships. I will begin with a brief account of two of my own early ‘zine’experiences before moving on to a more recent involvement and primary example; Women Making History in Malmö. I will then give space to two other examples beyond Scandinavia focusing on a new art zine journal in South Africa and ending with zine culture in the Philippines.

The Table Tennis Club-Mag and the Student Community Magazine My own journey began with a table tennis magazine at first run on a stencil duplicator at a school in the rough part of a suburb of my upbringing. I was involved as a teen with the adults reporting results and events at the club, partly as an attempt to get the younger members involved in what was going on in the club. Among other things, it led to my first attempt at documentary fiction-writing; taking the piss at one of the annoying oldies at the club (that means, at that time, a person over the age of 40). This club magazine was usually made at home at one of the cooler elders, the chairman. We collected the bits and pieces from other contributors—and being a quick typist, I typed stuff which he placed on the light table, and with some scissor-work and gluing, we had a few A4 pages to copy and fold. On some of the occasions, the chairman, Kristian Busk, served whiskey, home-rolled fags, and played classical music on the gramophone. I think it was Beethoven’s piano concert no. 5. A kind of bildung (Part I) one can only appreciate.

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

169

Secondly, a few years later, I joined a youth campus/housing community magazine called Det Sædvanlige Fis, or in English, ‘The usual stuff’,2 where all contributors could come down in a basement without windows, set pages on light tables as they wanted. It could be reviews, poetry, news from the associations in the community, observations at the bar, complaints, meeting minutes, recipes and reports from travel. Pages were simply put together—that means it was very horizontal and ‘patchworky’ looking. Then it was run through the offset print machine, by the printing group—some of these were also the best drawers and writers, thus high status in the community. These included Kim and Morten, who became my friends. There was another guy, an expert in a kind of humorous documentary fiction, Bjørn,3 who ran the film/culture café too—and he also became a friend. Lucky me. The editorial group also led the welcome and training sessions for newcomers. Ink on the fingers, love in the air too for some (was it Annette and Allan?). We met in the basement without windows, drank tea and distributed to the approximately 1000 rooms/flats when the zine was ready around the first of each month. The group/magazine association received small funds for printing, tea, beer and so forth. There was also, only occasionally, some home-grown pot around—possibly coming from the ‘garden group’?— and most people spend more time in that basement than on campus for studies: bildung (Part II) was underway, again highly appreciated. Many were long-term students (‘evighedsstuderende’) at a time in Denmark where you could continue getting grants for being enrolled, but without taking your exams. The mag/zine still exists. In a way pamphlets in general, and maybe Det Sædvanlige Fis/The Usual Stuff , in particular, was a form of textual and visual mix tape.4 ‘The Usual Stuff’ was produced by amateurish, passionate voices, that felt that something needed to be compiled and disseminated or told in an easy,

2 Morbærhaven, Albertslund, Denmark. 3 The three friends were, and are, Kim Esmark, Morten Munk Marcussen and Bjørn

Hamre. 4 Aryan Kaganof (the editor of herri) response to this sentence was: ‘This really fascinates me. Of course, at the time (in the early 1980s) I was making a fanzine as well as mix tapes. So, your sentence would have sounded silly to me then. But now, in retrospect, I see that the very strict distinction between print media and tape of course is abandoned once the digital period collates everything that we can see and hear into zeros and ones.’

170

A. H. HANSEN

manageable format. As indicated, its content and genres were diverse. Its messages direct. Its producers were also its writers and contributors—not far from zine philosophy.5

The Women Making History Movement and Its Newsletters While producing other kinds of zines regularly over the next years, 20 years later I became engaged in a movement called Women Making History (see, e.g., Høg Hansen and Björgvinsson 2018). It centred around workshops, trainings and sharing experiences sessions among mainly female immigrants in Malmö, Sweden, and the reconstructing of histories of immigration. The activity led to continuous documentation of materials in small zine-style newsletters where several people contributed every time, passing on notes from events and talks. I ran some of these on the university copy machine and we distributed them in the network and created pdfs online attached to a developing movement blog. Before I go into examples of the content of the newsletter, some background and context on Women Making History. ‘The past changes under the pressure of the present’, Eva Hoffman once noted (2009, 108). Women Making History was a movement made up of an undefined number of people from my university city, Malmö, in Southern Sweden, and around. It had the ambition to make that kind of pressure, on the past and as well the present. Formulated in a more traditional sense, the idea was to challenge existing public records, but also to challenge storytelling, and experiment with new forms of presentation and representation. The movement was initiated in 2013 by Parvin Ardalan, Malmö’s first safe-haven writer in residence 2010–2012. With a core group of women, mainly activists from the local society Feminist Dialogue, they launched 100 of Years of Immigrant Women’s Life and Work in Malmö , or in short, Women Making History. Ardalan is a former journalist and civil rights activist from Iran. In 2007, she was awarded the

5 In addition to the early zine experiences with the table tennis mag and The Usual Stuff magazine, I was a writer on newsletters and booklets as coordinator for Friluftsrådet (The Danish Outdoor Council) on the international project Eco-Schools, as well as zines/ booklets on forest in the city and city ecology (in Danish) during 1994–1996. The latter two available at Danish libraries even in 2023.

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

171

Olof Palme prize for her work on equal rights for men and women in Iran. From the beginning of 2013, Ardalan got a range of institutions involved; a worker’s association, the municipality, the museum, the city archive, and the university where I with my then colleague Erling Björgvinsson had just begun to look for cases and collaborators for activity related to a newly begun research project called Living Archives .6 We were interested in collaborating with various local groups on issues around people’s archives/ popular archives and were quick to begin collaborating with Ardalan and representatives from the public and the mentioned institutions. The Women Making History movement was concerned with the difficulties of recovering and developing positions and possibilities of historical and contemporary immigrant experiences from diverse class— and ethnic backgrounds. The idea was not to produce a new frame of a ‘marginal’, but to create a new diverse polyphony of history. Polyphony in the sense of a possible constructive respect across differences in collaborative work and representations; workshops, training sessions and zine-style newsletters documenting the activity. This in terms of making historical material and heritage visible in an active dialogue with contemporary activities and voices. The modes of engaging have had a strong concern with popular and social modes of memory production, about a largely untold, hidden history of immigrant women in Malmö. Sweden had become a country of immigration from the 1920s and 100 years onwards, changing from its equally long phase as a country of emigration. However, it was tricky to find out how both historical and contemporary stories could be expressed in a horizontal and collaborative fashion giving space to laywomen and men and university people, but it attracted me and reminded me of the inspiration of people’s histories and heritage and history from below from England; Raphael Samuel (1994), the Popular Memory Group 1982), and the like (things I learned during my England days in cultural studies and afterwards). Parvin Ardalan did not have that particular reference, but she did not need it. She had lived it so far.

6 Living Archives was a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and run by Malmö University. The official title of the project is Living Archives: Enhancing the role of the public archive by performing memory, open data access, and participatory design. It ran from 2013 until 2017 and was led by Prof. Susan Kozel, Malmö University, see https://livingarchives.mah.se/.

172

A. H. HANSEN

The ways to do this would be debated and tested as the movement grew. More traditional oral histories and interviews played a role, but the movement soon focused on a variety of social forms of data production. Briefly put, women had been over half of the immigrant population since after World War II and they had been crucial in the built-up of the Swedish welfare state and the city, working in factories and households in the early decades (where it was more common that Swedish women stayed at home). However, still today they have little presence in historywriting about a city, where 30 per cent of the population of Malmö, the third largest city of the country, is born outside Sweden. The movement did not only want to add or amend some stories to be boxed and archived inside existing institutions—or just somewhere in a counter-archive, but rather to train people to become popular archivists, historians of the present and to engage in a collaborative rewriting and re-imagination of history (of the past and of the present) which was not too detached or distanced from existing institutions. Maybe paradoxically, it was carried along on radical feel and imagination of formulating something new, yet in collaboration with a handful of key institutions. So, it was on the one hand ‘underground’ but together with institutions, Parvin Ardalan giving free hands to play while also working for the municipality. Yet, it proved a bit more difficult to create an exhibition with Malmö museum and as well to play ball with the City Archive. In this chapter, I will mainly focus on the zine activity (and examples of some of the content) free of institutional demands. Before that, some philosophies of the movement should be mentioned. One recurring ethos or approach was that the movement was intended not primarily to discuss in terms of ethnicity and religion, much debate falls in these tracks. Instead, there was an emphasis on life and work, as noted in an often-used movement subtitle: 100 years of immigrant women’s life and work in Malmö, and also a continuous development based on ideas and themes proposed by participants: It came to involve a long list of events and documentations over 3 years which mainly took the shape as smaller and larger fanzine-style newsletters (in Swedish and English). Here you could find content and impressions from the events reshaped into the newsletters; it could be photos from workshops and training sessions, summaries and quotes, reflective essays, drawings, mappings and draft material produced at the workshops, accounts of exhibitions or talks, round tables or even dinner meetings.

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

173

In addition, an online Tumblr website and lastly not least a book in Swedish and English where activist and academics came out (Ardalan et al. 2018). Writers engaged in a collaboratively produced new timeline texts for each decade of the last 100 years+ a range of other articles and stories. A short piece also exists in History Workshop Online and a longer in the journal Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture (Høg Hansen and Björgvinsson 2018, 2019). Interaction Design students at Malmö University also produced various temporary models and media of representation—and some of our MA Communication for Development students also participated in events. To return to the account of workshops and meetings in the zine/ newsletter: In one of the issues, there is a dinner conversation with three Latin American immigrants in conversation with Parvin Ardalan, recorded and transcribed in original Swedish by Linda Stark—and then translated to English by me. Most of the life story interviews for the movement were done by other immigrants (and there were training sessions for those with little or no experience in interviewing). I however also did some interviews myself. One with Elizabeth Flores, who was at the mentioned dinner meeting. During the dinner talk reported in the zine, Flores had intriguingly said ‘stigmatisation is what keeps you from growing’—and she also had reflected upon that you have to be careful not to stick out, in particular when you are not only an immigrant but also an immigrant women. She had also earlier been involved in forms of ‘identity and growth’discussions for immigrants, similar to what was happening in Women Making History at the time, during 2014–2016. She had arranged meetings with immigrants for the municipality. Initially, it had been more traditionally conceptualized by the municipality: invite some researchers to speak about immigrants. But she wanted to make a seminar with them, not for them (my italics). She did those kinds of seminars for six years. It developed into marathons, with stories from morning till evening. My own interview expanded on the summary produced for the newsletter. Elizabeth was around twenty years old, and pregnant, when she came to Malmö from Colombia in the early 1980s. She had a cousin in Sweden. Her husband and to-be-father of the forthcoming baby came a few months later. She had been through a class journey already in Colombia, her home country, she says. Her family had become middle class. In Sweden, they were offered cleaning jobs. They do not talk about class in Sweden, she says. After raising kids and settling, finally, after

174

A. H. HANSEN

almost 8 years in Sweden, some of the years also spend learning Swedish, she begins education as preschool teacher at a teacher college. She had begun working with things she wanted from 1986, with Spanish language in daycare. It was the best time after arrival, she notes, an opening to society through work in the educational field. Also, an opening of language and reflection, not just Swedish and the Swedish part of her identity but also a language around feminism, gender, democracy and the postcolonial which she developed here. She was curious and had things to say. Her then-husband could not get the kind of work he liked. They divorced in 1995 (In 2023, she is with a Danish partner). In the beginning, they had moved around a bit. At first, they wanted to be where other immigrants lived, later they became conscious of the ghetto-labelling and wanted to try how life would be elsewhere in the city. During the dinner talk earlier, where I was not present, they had all four pondered their strong Latin American roots and how they got challenged or grew in their different ways on their Swedish routes. Giovanna Tello had noted ‘I wonder a lot about the issue of “home”. Maybe home is where you have the best network?’. Leonor Churquina Ortiz had talked about a book she wrote about Bolivians in Sweden. ‘I wanted to leave a reference from our generation to the new generations’, she had pointed out. Elisabeth Mendoza had noted ‘we were internationalists’. Mendoza had studied in Chile but took off to escape Pinochet’s camps. At some point after beginning life in Sweden, they had moved to a small town, so nice and clean they thought, but also with a strong neo-Nazi presence, they found out later. They were the only immigrants. Mendoza did not see a point in debating with the neo-Nazi leader, as noted, they were internationalists. At some point she leaves Sweden for Chile again, then Cuba, then Spain and some years ago she returned to Sweden. ‘The most important thing for me is to imagine and demand a society which we want to live in. Here as well as within the EU. What kind of society do we want? How can we create contact with those people who are invisible and those who have the political power?’ (quote from dinner conversation, Stark 2016). Returning to Elizabeth Florez, she says that during the first many years in Malmö, she and the family was considering going back. She cherished her Latin American culture and background, gave it to the kids and were engaged in Latin American groups. The Latin American past became idealized, she says. It became too much like ‘living in Colombia in

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

175

Sweden’. The upbringing of her three kids was much about Colombia and Latin American music and dance. Her first husband was playing music. That was the part of the world she really could relate to, and which she nurtured in Sweden. Her children have fought with the doubleness too. She brings on a notion, ni chicha ni lemonada, from a Victor Jara song. She is neither the alcoholic beverage ‘chicha’ nor the lemonade it is to be mixed with. She is something third. She also brings in the term ‘multiple subjectivities’ as a way of describing her being, or her double or multiple consciousness, I may add? She explains that she was white in Colombia, but not here, here I am black, she notes. Also, kids and grandkids get questions about colour. But the older she gets, she says, more nuances of identity or more layers are opening. I am Latina in another way, in my way, she states.

herri---A New Art and Music Online Zine-Journal in South Africa In November 2021, I invited guest speakers for a seminar called ‘Small press passions’ (providing the seeds for the development of this chapter/ track) at Malmö University to introduce a few examples of zine initiatives and cultures/movements outside Europe for the students on the MA program in Communication for Development—and as part of our activity chain at the Faculty’s Rethinking Democracy research environment.7 Among the presenters were Aryan Kaganof, a South African filmmaker who in early 2020 as editor alongside a group of designers and illustrators8 had launched the first issue of herri, what I to him called a

7 The Rethinking Democracy research environment at Malmö University. From the web: ‘The Rethinking Democracy research platform (REDEM) is a shared space for discussing questions around democracy. We consider broad issues such as what democracy actually is, how it should work, and criteria for a functioning democracy. Alongside this, we consider how democracy functions beyond formal political settings, and in other spheres of social life.’ https://mau.se/en/research/research-platforms/redem/. 8 herri is conceived, edited and curated by Aryan Kaganof. Designed by Andrea Rolfes, Jurgen Meekel and Martijn Pantlin. Graphic illustration by Tsepo Ntsukunyane and Slovo Mamphaga. Sound archiving by Pakama Ncume and published by Stephanus Muller for Africa Open Institute. https://herri.org.za/6/. Aryan just recently noted that the online journal had had over 250,000 clicks during its first year. This sounds big and good. But for me the way it works I still classify it as a small press passion.

176

A. H. HANSEN

sort of ‘zine-journal’. Another presenter was Adam David from the Philippines who had been leading a zine collective in and around Manilla for 10 years, BLTX/Better Living Through Xeroxography. The two ‘movements’ were not only different in terms of geography but also in terms of outlook and design. herri is a screen-based art and music journal, while BLTX is a sort of umbrella for numerous smaller DIY-style zines only out in physical copies of folded paper etc. They appeared to me to represent two very different and exciting forms of zine culture. I begin with herri which I first encountered by way of Kaganof’s Facebook page. I had gone to the site and clicked around. Found myself in a productive daze, seduced by striking colours, photography, sounds and various loops of artwork and writing that move across or represent different genres, life writing, academic essays and poetry. Kaganof did not think of herri as a fanzine, before I mentioned it in an email to him with a proposal that he could speak at the seminar about herri. But he liked the label. When he joined in November 2021, he introduced his past with zines life in South Africa in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He introduced his past with an account of zine making in Durban at this time. Together with his then-girlfriend Sarah Hills, they broke into the copy shop at night where she worked in the day, to get their fanzine Take That You Cad multiplied, as well as folded and stapled. It was then distributed for free at local nightclubs like Faces and Rumours. They wrote about music and other things they could not read about in mainstream press or publications, the different zine people got inspiration and energy from each other, sharing each other’s zines. With herri, he made quite a return to a different kind of ‘zine’ world, I thought. It is coming together as a platform with a shape and identity and apparently also a theme or a figure at the centre of each issues. In the top right corner, there is however a blinking red button, which proved not to be dangerous, but ‘just’ creates a roll/contents menu with contributions for the specific issue, when clicking on it. German artist Kerstin Ergenzinger (who has been a visiting artist at Malmö University many years ago, just as Aryan Kaganof) has characterised herri ‘as a living archive’ and a place where art, music, text and design ‘all merge into an overpoweringly sensorial gesamtkunstwerk’. The sensorial and living aspects are striking. Ergenzinger also quotes the about pages of herri; a ‘soundmine of narrative, mythologies’, ‘and ideas waiting to be excavated’ (https://herri.org.za/about/).

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

177

With herri they did not want to reproduce a written zine, it was to be a unique online and screen-based format. Kaganof is a filmmaker and he discussed with the designers how this may be inspired by films or movies and TV should be reflected into how it should work. It should make movies with text. The zine-journal takes its name from South African Herry de Strandloper or Autshumato, a Khoi leader and interpreter for the European colonial administration during the Dutch Settlement of Cape Town in seventeenth century South Africa. Autshumato was a freedom fighter who was imprisoned on Robben Island but later escaped. herri is also the Afrikaans (and Dutch) word for noise. Read more about Autshumato here: https://herri.org.za/1/pat ric-tariq-mellet/. The journal looks, sounds and re-presents themes, and people (alive and deceased) that tend to bring attention to the unseen beauties of South African life, now and then, using ‘memories of lived experience and the digital media currently available for recording and stories’ (Ergenzinger 2022). What goes into herri appears not as pasts or history, but as something alive in the present and future. As ruins, vibrations, texts and imagery around us which our ears passed by—or life and productions which are excavated and curated anew. Each contribution is a collage of signs or ‘texts’. Grand images or loops of movement or installation, text parts, videos, sound clips and the like, as installations. At times, layers are on top of each other, and one is able to switch languages. Just as time writes itself over buildings or people, palimpsestic. These overlayerings, loops and key issues are addressed, for example, in Teshome Gabriel’s ‘Ruin and the other: towards a language of memory’, in issue #6. Our memories, the Ethiopian-born American film scholar wrote (he lived from 1939 to 2010), are always scattered or ruined, but they may be brought up and into continuation. He brings in examples of a ritual of making intricate and detailed sand painting as part of healing meditation and ceremonies among Native American Indians. When the sand painting is complete it is erased! And the healing can proceed. The object here, the painting, appears to be important as a process of living, but the staying imprint is to be in people. Not in the sand or objectified (as, e.g., Western monuments), he writes. It is ruined to become a memory. The gesamtkunstwerk or collection of herri lends itself to the ephemerality of zines to create new cultural productions, but in the dazzling and moving format, its contributions also appear enigmatic with a quality which on the one hand is crisp but also carrying its own secrets or opacity.

178

A. H. HANSEN

Philippine Zine Culture: Adam David and Better Living Through Xeroxography/BLTX BLTX is, in the words of initiator Adam David, a community of individuals willing to both teach and learn from other individuals differing practices. It has been a recurring expo with a series of events every year since 2010. A sort of zine community of all sorts of self-production and training. Adam David has been making zines for about twenty years—since he was nineteen. Zines belong to small press involving other ephemerals such as stickers, flyers and posters, he says, moving through his examples of zines from over the years. You basically just need paper, scissors, write and draw utensils, other media to cut and paste from. Then put together and fold and maybe also stable, copy and distribute. They only do paper/physical zines, not internet based which is not reliable or safe in Philippines for the content that comes out of BLTX engaged zine producers, often provocative, political and minority rights focused (bringing up gender and queer issues). While they do distrust the internet, they use it for promotion and FB and Instagram accounts, but they are not updated. David works full time as a teacher in high school on art subjects mainly. While it has been quiet during the pandemic, there has been a relatively steady output of zines and events. In 2016, there were five events operating under its banner, taking place all throughout the last month of the year, taking place around the Philippines: Quezon City, Naga, Davao, Cagayan de Oro and Baguio. The expo featured the new, emerging zineasts from the literary underground. Writing organisations from a variety of different colleges, small collectives unaffiliated with any major publishing houses, individual creators of comics, poetry and other also collaborated to colour each scene with life, finding ways around the arduous task of publishing and distributing their own work (Cabral 2016, 2017). Over the years, the community has become more explicitly activist, political and socially conscious addressing an array of current themes in zine production: food security, the urban poor, housing issues, gender and queer themes. Zines have become platforms vocalising what there was no space for in mainstream publishing avenues in the Philippines. The styles differ; the accordion or wrapped poem that when opened in different unfolding can be read in various ways. Comics narratives,

B4 SMALL PRESS PASSIONS: ZINES AND SCENES …

179

instruction manuals for the inclined (a sarcastic manual for creative writing, David called it at the seminar). Zines are mostly in English or Dagalog/Filipino. They are keeping it simple and avoid an internet where certain things cannot be said. The subversive is easier in the physical format, while online forms though are used for promotion and there are also FB and Instagram pages with extracts from the production. However, according to Cabral, Adam David has earlier made some of his works available as downloadable pdfs. A degree of piracy is allowed, which also highlights the portability and non-profitability of zines. Remember the act of writing is always an act of autobiography, Adam writes in ‘instructions for the inclined’. Multiplying is also multiplying a mindset. These zines walk on a sort of threshold or across different things; poetry and prose, informative pamphlets, art and humour (adapted after Cabral 2017, and Adams lecture Nov 2021). In a Scout Magazine conversation (2018), where Adam David participated, Pola Beronilla ponders around a resurgence of zines, saying it could be a lack of homegrown literature in bookstores (although we may be able to find online). Could it be that we are nostalgic, she continues? Or the cheap DIY nature we are drawn to? She continues reflecting that they offer a form of escapism for artist and audience, ‘zines piece together untampered creative freedom’. ‘Getting everyone’s sheets together, they are a refuge for young creatives to express paper-led testimonies, aesthetics and cultural ideologies’ (Beronilla 2018). Yeah, let us get our sheets together.9

9 In addition to the examples mentioned in this track, there has been smaller ‘zine’ initiatives involving clusters of friends, friends’ friends and families, such as a zine on the football world cup, Summer 2021, which came out more or less weekly during the games. In the Summer of 2023, I am, with a South African collaborator (Alex Halligey) preparing to introduce zines as part of a project documenting experiences with site specific theatre based on amateur writing on the city of Johannesburg. A pilot took place in Johannesburg in April 2023 where amateur writings were transferred to street theatre productions outside a youth center (Windybrow, in Hillbrow). The participants at the centre are now to produce zines on the theatre experiences and their activities at the centre. An exhibition involving a documentary and the first zine-ish DIY-style mediations of the project took place at the Windybrow Art Centre, Johannesburg, in late August 2023.

B5 Black and White: Race, Football and Music in the Midlands, UK, Late 1970s The Black and White Testimonial, Laurie Cunningham and the Bodies That Changed British Football

It was clear that this was a historic occasion and I was delighted to have had the chance to witness it / Laurie had lit up that season and we all knew he was leaving so there was a mood of farewell about that. He and I are the same age and grew up in the same area of London so I always had a particular identification with him / The game wasn’t much though it was nice to see so many black spectators in the ground. Laurie took one of those artistic corner kicks. Paul Gilroy, April 20181

The ‘historical occasion’, which the British cultural theorist Paul Gilroy here comments on (personal correspondence 3 April 2018), was ‘just’ a testimonial football match for a player named Len Cantello that took place more than four decades ago, in May 1979 at a UK Birmingham football club. However, it had a particular formation of players that made it novel or strange, at a particular time in British history—and football history. Gilroy mentions Laurie. That was Laurie Cunningham, a swaggering soul boy, music-lover and dancer—often gliding elegantly over the muddy pitches until envious tackles began to damage his promising career. Laurie was on that day in May 1979 in a team of black players only, gathering most of the few black players that played in the British football 1 Høg Hansen (2020, 227).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_13

181

182

A. H. HANSEN

league at the time. They were up against a more common sight: a team of white players only, including Len Cantello. All the blacks dressed in white, the whites in dark/black and white stripes and black shorts. The match caused some stir at the time, contrary to most testimonials. BBC TV journalist, Adrian Chiles, in 2016 made an hour-long TV documentary that included recent interviews with many of the former players, now in their late fifties. In 2017, the first and only biography of Laurie Cunningham came out. One iconic image depicts Laurie with his West Bromwich teammates, the muscular forward Cyrille Regis, captain of the black team at the match, and defender Brendon Batson. The three black players that year to be nicknamed ‘The Three Degrees’ (after an American soul trio)—and in a recent book called ‘The Men who changed British football forever’ (Rees 2014). The black v white testimonial event—alongside other popular signs of integration as well as disintegration and tension in late-1970s Britain— can be seen as a significant example of a performance of multicultural echoing a heritage of colonialism. In Nowicka and Heil’s (2015) work on cosmopolitanism and conviviality, it is posed that there are plenty of peaceful situations in which people live or/and work ‘beyond their identities’, and ‘despite their differential positions in social structures’ (2015, 12). The mainly British footballers of the testimonial match (the black team of Caribbean or African heritage), were in most cases emerging from a common denominator of a workingclass background, mirrored a particular positive dynamic or integration, a thrown-togetherness for fun and play, but also a clear expression of antagonism, pointing to a country which was in the midst of a wave of destructive tensions. A wave of so-called muggings had filled the media most of the decade, since Powell’s infamous speech 10 years earlier.2 Tensions had risen and a new crisis had captured the former empire, with Thatcher taking over. Before moving into some of the more theoretical as well as empirical examples of this case and chapter, I want to dwell at the crisis that had captured the former empire while it went into the transition to Thatcher. I was on the run for additional documentary sources to complement the writing on this case. I do my occasional check in the Danish and Swedish 2 Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s strong anti-immigration speech in Birmingham, UK, in April 1968, which led to his sacking, but made Powell famous and it is commonly assumed that it triggered popular sentiment against immigration.

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

183

TV documentary archives and run into something I could hardly believe had just come out when writing on this. It was through Göran Olsson’s Black Power Mix Tape (2012) I had encountered the bookseller Lewis Michaux in his collection’s Chapter A1. Olsson had now in England 79, apparently so far only a limited release for Swedish public service (SVT) in 2019, managed to conduct interviews with a range of interesting artists, musicians and academics of the era and after, including Jon Savage, Don Letts, Paul Gilroy and others—and framed the tale by diary readings from Tracy Thorn, whose book Another Planet came out the same year, 2019. They all appear as voices only and with no imagery (similar to the approach of Black Power Mix Tape where contemporary artists and writers spoke on top of the archival footage) and clearly demonstrated their reputation (and distilling their writings) as eloquent transmitters and interpreters of British cultural history of the late 1970s and onwards. The focal point of the moving images is one particular band, that at the turn of the decade manage to blend the various styles that had dominated the so-called British economical ‘ebb’, but what we could call a musical flow. In the spirit of punk, a potential disaster can be turned into an asset (as Letts explained), and so it was with the music of the era and also with The Clash. The documentary is rich with archival clips with the band, on and off stage, around 1979, including stories about the video for ‘London Calling’, filmed by Don Letts who had been the public face of Acme Attractions 3 a store selling baggy trousers4 while pumping dub reggae— and which soon attracted many from the music scene, The Clash included. In 1979 Letts was embarking on a career as filmmaker, musician and DJ

3 Acme Attrations inspired by Westwood and McLaren’s contemporary boutique Let

it Rock, and then renamed Sex, which is no more, was also a place where different subcultural elements could meet. It was a grand success, people queuing up. Pounding dub and reggae forced it to retreat to the basement. The shop’s accountant saw a potential and helped initiate the first punk venue The Roxy, so people could eventually leave the shop and party somewhere else. Letts became house DJ. 4 The most commonly used name for baggy trousers was zoot suit, made famous by

Black Americans, notably in the Jazz music scene, in the 1940s. A young Malcolm X wore them. The Ska band Madness featured them on the cover of their 1980 album Absolutely, and with the song Baggy Trousers. Funnily enough the nick name of West Bromwich football club, where Laurie played (with Gilroy attending the Black-White testimonial) is The Baggies.

184

A. H. HANSEN

and as an unknown name he was invited by The Clash to do the videography (he made a winning documentary on the band, The Clash: Westway to the World). Olsson though begins England 79 with a three-year older clip, from Swedish Television the year 1976, where journalist Christian Stannov solemnly characterises Britain in a phase of ‘ebb’. In a few sentences, England’s history is compressed by the calm Stannov: groups of people coming and going. The visuals show waves hitting the coast, and a few folks walking. A long period of migration to the British Isles by various groups (Kelts, Romans, Northerners and Normans) is followed by a period of ruthless journeying and making of an empire. Now, in 1979, an era of unravelling? Larger parts of London and other bigger cities were derelict. Factories were closing. Unemployment and poverty were rising everywhere. The cultural vitality and activity of London are gone (we are told)—and out of empty spaces, decay and standstill, punk arrived, around 1976 (it had been underway in the US for a while, and it is debatable if punk, as an attitude and subculture is not much older). The documentary moves forward to photos of North London made by Jon Savage on a gloomy day in January 1979. Savage’s mood appeared to have been fittingly grim too. The series has been exhibited as Uninhabited London. They may come across as a too unambiguous portrayal of the day, and the agenda of the England 79 project? Jon Savage compares the turning point of 79 to the present day. The decline and end of empire ‘has resurfaced 40 years later, with the complete disaster that is Brexit. Haha, Yes, Fucking shit, I hate Brexit’ (Savage in Olsson 2019). While the chosen Savage series (Uninhabited London) can appear onedimensional as an English big city depiction, it shares similarities with another more famous and often referred to cultural document of the time, The Specials tune ‘Ghost Town’ and music video from 1981. This similarly bleak portrayal of a city was filmed in the East End of London. A contrast to the bleakness and greyness of Uninhabited London and ‘Ghost Town’ is the colours of punk, and the sounds, sparkle, fury, rhythms of the era and their fanzines, dressing, unruly stages and concerts. It was a time of do-it-yourself culture, punk belonging to that wider practice, which used the empty space (literally there were many derelict places to squat and be for poor unemployed youth) and parts of the subculture engaged in a merging of Jamaican dance, music and clothing with the rawness of the younger brothers of mod, the Skinheads, which proved to

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

185

be fertile ground for musical fusion, dance and collaborations. Punk, postpunk, reggae, new wave, dub and 2 tone 5 flourished during a few years. Many of these styles6 were part of The Clash record London Calling out in December 1979—which made the years up till the turn of the decade (and a bit further into the 1980s7 ) a musically remarkable and vibrant ‘flow’ in the post-war era of British popular music history (who is The Beatles ?8 ). As Don Letts explains, regarding the ‘no future’, which Sex Pistols the Johnny Rotten sang about, ‘Rotten did only mean there is no

5 Under the influence of contemporary punk rock, the multi-ethnic ska culture emerged into a coherent movement called 2 Tone in the late 1970s. It often featured politically charged lyrics and musical styles including Jamaican ska, bluebeat, reggae, northern soul, punk and rock. Bands were often multi-racial (Alchetron encyclopaedia, 2022) growing out of the blended West Midlands communities, notably Coventry and Birmingham. The West Midlands had been a magnet of West Indian immigration during its post WWII industrial boom. The activity around ska and reggae styles led to 2 Tone Records founded by The Specials ’ Jerry Dammers—and a string of hits including some interpretations of early ska, notably Prince Buster, and some original productions. Interestingly, a movement of such diverse ethnicities and audiences also gained a visual profile helped by Dammers and graphic designers’ invention of the fictional Walt Jabsco character in postmod dressing, hats, and checkerboard black and white. Ska (and reggae) had some male dominating leanings, however with the 7-women strong The Bodysnatchers and Pauline Black in front of The Selecter, women put their mark on the movement too. It became ambiguous and radical in the sense ‘that it did not just speak to the converted’, as film writer Mark Kermode expressed it when reviewing the recent remastered ‘Dance Craze’ from 1981 (2023 edition). In general, black and white musicians were less segregated in the West Midlands, than in London, attracting mostly young people, though, who needed to dance through tough times. Resourceless youngsters could afford to go the unlicensed or cheaper venues where much of the music flourished. 6 Not to forget other brief and major cultural moments around 1980, such as the colours and outfits of ‘The blitz kids’ at the Tuesday club night at London’s The Blitz nightclub created by Steve Strange (later hitting with ‘Fade to Grey’ in Visage) and Rusty Egan (Rich Kids). Also, short lived. The flamboyant underground fashion became mainstream. London was far from a place where nothing new happened during its ‘derelict’ years. 7 The change may be illustrated with a change within one band. Eurythmics was a guitar, bass and drum bass postpunk band. Listen to Belinda on the Old Grey Whistle Test the 1981. Then David Stewart discovered the synthesiser, and many others did too. The rest is history. 8 The Beatles was strongly heard on Sound Affects by The Jam, one of the most exciting English bands of the late 70s and early 80s. Notably the song ‘The Start’. The Jam’s Paul Weller also collaborated with Tracy Thorn, of Everything but the girl, the diary reader in England 79. As The Clash were reaching back to rock roots and the 60s on London Calling, The Jam did too.

186

A. H. HANSEN

future’—‘unless you do something about it’, Letts exclamated (Letts in Olsson 2019). Although the winter of discontent of ‘79 (as it was named when prime minister Callaghan downplayed the crisis9 ) was an era where the social contract of the post-World War 2 society—between the government, the trade unions and the people—fell apart (as argued by Jon Savage in Olsson 2019), it was also an era where many ‘did’ or shouted, expressed, dressed, banged and danced ‘something about it’. It helped that in 2 tone political and social indignation was given a danceable beat (race crossed musically, as in the subsequent and very different new romantic/s , which however was one of the first subcultures of the Post War West giving gender a serious bend). West Bromwich Albion’s play with the three degrees and a bunch of charismatic white lads, equally skilful, around them, made a kind of footballish ‘2 tone’.10 Read: attack with speed and ball playing skills! Someway between Coventry and Birmingham, they were also close to the centre of much reggae and 2 tone during those years. So, clearly, on the football pitches, in dance halls/clubs and as well in band formations, as in the second wave of ska and blue beat/2 tone in late 1970s and early 1980s Britain, signs of peaceful play were prominent. But so was the general fragility. Musical movements changed very quickly. Within a few years key British punk or ska revival-influenced bands, emerging in the mid/ late 70s such as, e.g., The Bodysnatchers , The Specials , The (English) Beat ,

9 January 1979 had seen a tanned Jim Callaghan return from a Caribbean conference and now caught at home in the cold: lorry drivers were on striking halting petrol supply which had followed a series of strikes in many sectors the previous months (uncannily enough, in post-Brexit era 2021, Britain was in a similar fuel shortage problem, lorry drivers had left to work in other countries). The country was on the verge of standstill and a state of emergency. Callaghan was not too bothered, as the rest of the nation, including Thatcher who then won the election four months later. At Callaghan’s return from the Caribbean sun, The Sun newspaper quoted Shakespeare’s Richard III ‘now is the winter of our discontent’—and it has since been attached to that period. 10 In fact, 2 Tone did sort of find its way to the football grounds too, to the

Hawthorns, West Brom’s home ground. In 1982 Terry Hall from The Specials (may he rest in peace, he just passed while editing this chapter, Dec 2022) and Bran Cox and David Wakeling from The Beat plays a charity match on the ground. Hall was also offered to try for a contract at West Brom (Sarkar, Birmingham Post, 20 Dec 2022). He though concentrated on music—and became a Man U supporter. I can forgive him that.

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

187

The Selecter, The Sex Pistols , The Slits , The Jam and The Clash,11 either did not exist—or existed in radically changed formations, and with new or altered names, and they went musically in other directions12 . The Madness is one of the well-known ska-influenced bands that has kept going more or less in the same formation. However, the winter of discontent came to an end and so did many of the punk and ska revival bands. Leaving this general context aside for the moment, I am going to continue with two sets of terms, which I am also working with across a wider set of cases in related research. I will here slowly try to make sense of this theoretically before elaborating on them—opening some of the sources/mediations mentioned in the introduction to the chapter. The first set of terms is reclusive openness (self-coined), assisted by the notion of opacity (Glissant 1997). Reclusive openness, what we could call an oxymoron, may ‘convey the tense ambiguities of diasporic and displaced identities’ (personal correspondence, Phil Cohen 2017). The word reclusive may be traced to the French reclus; an adjective describing a person who hides—often with the purpose of meditation. We may twist or extend this a bit and say that a group or a person finds herself reclusive as being put into a corner or space, with or against her will, where she is surrounded by a majority culture and finds her track(s) for survival— and maybe in that process play and develop her own openness. Openness is in philosophy a state of transparency, and also in our era, a cherished state of free and open access to information and data. However, we may try to rethink reclus and open together as a form of conviviality where more protected communicative spheres and ‘caves’ lead to another kind of openness, identity development and cohabitation—possibly one where difference is normalised, and a third space-thinking thrives (Bhabha 1994). Neither elitist, ethnic nor subcultural, but diverse within as a habitual ideal. 11 Several of these bands toured England during the winter of discontent and the year after, experiencing an England in crisis. For some, it inspired new, great songs, such as ‘Ghost Town’ (The Specials ). Some, unfairly, did only make it to get singles out, but have a restored reputation, such as The Bodysnatchers . The lead singer Rhoda Dakar later joined AKA Specials where Jerry Dammers appropriated Dakar’s original, fab composition ‘The Boiler’. The best introduction to The Bodysnatchers is John Peel sessions on YouTube, including a haunting and swinging ‘The Boiler’. 12 The era is richly documented in autobiographies, see, e.g., books by Pauline Black (2012), Viv Albertine (2014) or Tracey Thorn (2019)—the latter used extensively in Olsson’s England 79 with Thorn as voice over reading loud.

188

A. H. HANSEN

Reclusivity or with-drawnness to another state of being can be seen as another kind of openness, but within a space or community where one feels that he/she can perform and be what she wants—like, e.g., Laurie’s dancefloor, football pitch or Victor’s music classrooms or white choir practices?—may be seen as such spaces ‘beyond identity’ in Nowicka/ Heil’s sense (2015). Understanding reclusiveness has implications for thinking around gaze and race. The first question is whether reclusiveness can be seen as involuntary—and the other term open as a sign of freedom. What if such a condition is turned around for the racialized subject? (Tinsley 2018). When a black person is constantly subjected to and surveiled by a white gaze and surrounded by a white majority that does not live sensing its own colour/race. Reclusiveness and some degree of invisibility could then, by the black, be seen as liberating. And now I am trying to assist and develop reclusive openness by adopting a third term, that of Glissant’s opacity or a right to opacity (Glissant 1997) where a certain ‘stubborn shadow’ (Simek 2015), a fuzziness or a creative repertoire of surprise and in-transparency performs in parts as an attempt to escape a framing gaze. A performance that does not quite make the white/powerful able to understand or read you. The opacity is here in parts a tricky veiling or a disguise of tricks, which the subject uses tactically to escape the gaze and reinvent herself or make him not readable/transparent. This creates a situation where the white cannot read the black, while this ‘you’, the black, were fully able to read the white/the colonizer—the latter reasoning inspired by Bhabha’s discussion of mimicry (1994, 85–92).13 Laurie—as well as Victor (4A)—had such repertoires; abilities to conceal as well as to disrupt, to live the ambivalent worlds of their own, or make them their own to some extent. Laurie was thrown bananas while being seen as one of the world’s most talented footballer’s—at a time spending just as much time on the dance floor as on the pitch (Kavanagh 2017, 49). He was an enigma in the dressing room, kept to himself, yet seen as highly expressive. His biographer Dermot Kavanagh writes that a person that dressed so lavishly might be assumed to be extrovert, but on the contrary he was not. Cautious with strangers,

13 I am indebted to several commenter’s for inspiring me to link reclusive openness to opacity and more closely discuss race under this theoretical framework: first of all, Meghan Tinsley (correspondence 22 Jan 2018, after a conference presentation in Dec 2017), but also the use or mentioning of Glissant by Kerry Byström, Oscar Hemer, Per-Markku Ristilammi and Temi Odumosu on various occasions.

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

189

he was, and ‘the clothes he loved to wear sent out a message so powerful that they succeeded in deflecting attention away from the person wearing them’ (2017, 75)—a sign of a tactical or habitual opacity? The singular Laurie easily splitting himself up in several stage personas or ‘multiplicities’ (Rodwick in Demos, debating Glissant, 123)? Opacities can coexist and converge, as Glissant writes (1997, 191). The artistic corner kicks Gilroy mentioned, were a form of shot or kick of the ball where the player uses the outside of his foot, contrary to the more common use of the inside. Furthermore, Laurie was flamboyant and floating on the pitch. His athleticism produced an offer of a tour with a Harlem ballet ensemble. Furthermore, like many of his fellow black footballers, he chose not to respond to banana throwing and sticking during games. Several black players of the time said that they heard every utter of racism but chose to channel it and step up their game instead (e.g., Regis 2010; Hazell in Childs 2016; Kavanagh on Laurie 2017). When Laurie left West Brom in England for Real Madrid in Spain, he had brought his white English girlfriend, Nikki, with him. They separated some years later but on friendly terms. Laurie had a child with Spanish Silvia a few years before his early death in a car crash in Madrid in 1989. Nikki, whom he had met on some London dance floor just before he joined West Bromwich, was closing the casket. He is buried in North London. Victor Cornelins, portrayed on side A, was also, as Laurie, resurging or unleashing different aspects of his given, often racialized identity. However, as I will try to show, they had their games against reduction or public attempts to ‘corner them in any essence’ (Glissant 1997, 192) Laurie’s ballet football, ‘a black Nureyev’ (Kavanagh 2017, 79) was just one mode or sign of his displacing of labelling, as well as was Victor’s embrace of Danish songs, enlightenment and civilisation—the values he praises in his autobiography, and which he thought he was sent north to teach. Today, a third of the top English football league’s players are of African-Caribbean origin—much in disproportion of the few per cent of the population they number. The multi-ethnic outlook of the English premier league is if not unremarkable, then at least a reality where its important turning point was back around 1979 when there was only a handful of black players in the top league, including those three mentioned at West Bromwich in Birmingham. At the testimonial are also three other top-level black players, Hazell and Berry from Wolves (also a

190

A. H. HANSEN

midlands club, a rival) and Crooks from Stoke. Crooks, today a football commenter, was missing from Chiles TV documentary. Chiles do however track down many of the players of the time and interview them about the event. He follows up interviewing more recent generations of players, to get a sense of changes in the game. Nobody wants to take the credit or the blame for the original idea for this white and black game, Chiles says—although The Guardian article by Simon Burnton (2016) claims the idea came from Cantello and Regis discussing the event. They thought this setup would cause attention—and produce some additional quid in retirement bonus for Cantello via more people on the terraces. The game was well visited for a testimonial. The Guardian, back in 1979, called it ‘tasteless’ and noted it could ignite violence among the crowds. It went by peacefully. Chiles peculiarly keep the whites and black separate also in the interviews, apart from a final convivial get-together of players from both teams. A bunch of well-known white players says they hardly remember the event—but had noted that there were more blacks and Asians on the terraces than ever before. Blacks and Asians were following football on TV—but many were scared to enter the stadiums—where they risked rubbing shoulders with the National Front. The black players, on the contrary, remembered it as something special. They noted that they were making history, and this was a fantastic event for them. ‘A novelty thing, which was fun’, Brendon Batson said, who since has worked in the Football Association to get more black players involved in managing. It was a sign that a problem was recognised and performed and not ignored anymore. They now spoke of the emerging collective using a broad category of ethnicity or African-Caribbean heritage. All the blacks knew each other, they were on the one hand conforming to the white game and the shouting—but also building community. In the dressing rooms, racialisation was played out on another level of embodied conviviality. One thing is the tackles. Then there is the banter, the stripping naked and the sharing of creams. ‘what’s going on there? ‘Daren’t put it on’, older white players, would respond (Back et al. 2000, 152), but they broke the ice. Outside on the stadium terraces large parts of the mainly whites spectators had in those days been shouting at blacks. Blacks may become okayed in the rites of the fans, as long as they are one of our boys (Mercer in Back et al. 2000, 76). As Cyrille Regis one of the black West Bromwich players said it. ‘At the time we were going to Millwall, Chelsea and Tottenham and 10,000 were singing nigger, nigger, lick my boots’ (Regis 2010).

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

191

Regis dies suddenly of a heart attack, aged 59, in early 2018. Alongside Regis, the black players who lived with the problem and just had to continue playing had for that fleeting event thrown themselves together as a force. One of the young talented teenage black players, Vernon Hodgson, had to put his career on hold after the 1979 game due to a bad knee he had had for a year. He went to drink heavily for some years but was ‘saved by the bins’, as he says to Chiles, when Chiles find him at work as a bin man. West Bromwich is next to Handsworth in Birmingham, documented some years later in Akomfrah’s debut documentary Handsworth Songs. Close by too was the home of the Centre for Contemporary Studies. The Jamaican-British academic and public intellectual Stuart Hall led it in his last year in office. One of Akomfrah’s latest films is on Stuart Hall (see, e.g., Høg Hansen et al. 2016). One of Hall’s PhD students around 1979 was Paul Gilroy—the guy at the testimonial match quoted in a personal correspondence at the beginning of the chapter and also one of the voices in Olsson’s England 79. In his footnotes in one of its working paper collections (1980), he notes his joy of watching West Bromwich on Saturdays. They had a handful of good years in the best league in the late 70s and early 80s but have since then only for briefer visits been in the best league, today called the premier league. I followed the English division one league intensely (and West Brom in particular) during those years. Free to watch on public service TV in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (This was before the formation of the premier league in 1992 and Sky’s buying out of the rights)—and I was most often in the armchair in the front of the then black and white TV. Black youngsters, many second-generation Caribbean who arrived in the UK as children, were at the time around 1979, in different ways exploring belonging to Britain and through sports and music carving out new routes of identity. Laurie Cunningham often had fellow white players with him to black music clubs in Birmingham. As noted earlier, this at a time where Ska revival and post-punk merged audiences and playing spaces and bands among blacks and whites. However, also particular racist fractions of skinheads created tense friction. Dancing to the new music and shouting white supremacy. Suggs (Graham McPherson) from one of the white bands, Madness, that built themselves on Jamaican Prince Buster with their initial ska sound, once explained that they were performing to people doing sieg heil. The music, on the other hand, an embrace of the new Black Britain, was as far from that salute as it could be. It

192

A. H. HANSEN

was ambivalent times. The Skinheads (a sort of younger siblings of mods who could not afford their clothes, as Letts characterise them in England 79) had initially removed themselves from the middle-class hippies and embraced the Jamaican dance moves and music which they thought were cool. Thus, the Birmingham area—including Coventry, where some black and white Ska-bands emerged from, including The Specials mentioned earlier—was a stronghold for promoting integration, maybe even colourblindness. This while the National Front fans and the racist fractions of skinheads were on the terraces shouting and throwing bananas at black players. Chiles’ documentary can be interpreted as a rather pleasing pad to social progress, yet with a definite sting in the tail, as Jasper Rees notes (2016). Racism has now moved from the terraces into social media, according to several contemporary and recent players. Director Chiles also met Les Ferdinand, a former black footballer, at the time Director at QPR, and one of the few blacks to reach a management position. ‘We can make as many of these documentaries as you like,’ he warned, ‘but you won’t change what’s in people’s heads right now’. A handful of years after Chiles made his documentary and England is in a penalty shoot-out in the European Cup final, in 2021. Two younger skilled black players miss penalties and racist hate speech makes its way into social media. Don Letts noted in England 79 that the same trick against blacks and immigration has been used several times in his lifetime—and now it stuck its face out in the 2021 final. Thatcher managed to appeal to the deprived white working classes by creating scapegoats. Under Brexit, Muslims have become the new scapegoat, the new racialised category. The end of empire melancholia, as Paul Gilroy has named it, repeats itself again (Gilroy 2004). The material of the chapter shares a focus on footballing (as well as musical) pioneers that came to pronounce or ignite their artistic field’s convivial forms of cohabitation and conflict. The hagiographic character of this archival and documentary work may have a downside. As Lapina notes, such celebratory discourses, might allow inequalities to slip out of the debate (Lapina 2016, 39). We may be aware of the pros and cons of the healing-seeking or reconciliatory nature—and ask why they are shaped as they are and for whom are they for? Furthermore, such narratives may perform a particular working-through of difficult lives (Ricoeur using Freud 1999, 5–11) towards an endpoint of ‘success after all’. Kavanagh captures well the lows and highs of Laurie’s life—and the choices he had

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

193

to make tight roping between ballet and football while still in England before the vicious tackles of Spain. After 2 good years at West Bromwich, he is sold to Real Madrid, 23 years old, in the Summer of 1979, and from then on, with glimpses of genius notably in the beginning, injuries mark the beginning of his trouble which were to stay throughout his career. He returns to England several times and ends up playing for various clubs for shorter periods. His beginning was in the small London club, Leyton Orient, before moving up to West Bromwich. Ironically, one year before his death a decade later, in 1988, he had joined Wimbledon FC. He is in his early 30s, a more solid/muscular figure, who had had to turn his previous habitual grace into something more solid after a plague of injuries. Wimbledon FC is a surprise. The club is a crazy gang of rough and tough, as un-Laurie as it could get (John Barnes in Kavanagh 2017, 89). The team, apart from playing the hard way, had a tactic of just hoofing the ball into the opponent’s defence and getting players rushing forward. Statistically, it would higher the chances of scoring, to have the ball close to goal often, they believed. Somehow it worked. They reach the FA Cup final in 1988—and wins. Laurie comes in as a substitute at the final at Wembley. He has deflected again, joined another crowd, and despite all signs of breakdown, he is in the midst of another kind of conviviality. Valluvan writes about how ethnic differences should cease to require scrutiny (Valluvan 2016, 207). She refers to Amin’s work, where conviviality is defined as ‘indifference to difference’ (207). Research into conviviality, as, for example, Gilroy’s work from 2004, discusses modes of interaction and cohabitation replacing or reworking older notions of multiculturalism or cosmopolitanism. The case of Laurie—and we may add, for example, Izzy, Eugene, Victor, and Lewis from this collection—can be grasped as stories of agency rather than stuckness, carrying redemptive plotting and generative life practices (after McAdams 2006). It is emerging as memory work playing the game ‘wilfully’. This should not lead us to forget the ongoing struggles and persistent inequalities for a particular class, gender, race/ethnicity to become part of a certain domain of artistic work, such as classical music, the teaching profession, or a manager career in the English premier league. This collection has had some emphasis on exceptional journeys and subject’s roaming in unhomely terrain. The black St Louis boy Eugene’s way into classical music. The New York Jew’s established a Stockholm centre promoting Swedish folk music. A St. Croix boy teaching in a Danish provincial town

194

A. H. HANSEN

and playing harmonica in hospitals. Three black footballers in just one club became the talk of the winter, while only a few other blacks played in the same league. In parallel the same winter and a year beyond came the emergence of a unique British Jamaican Ska sound at this crisis point in time—which also fed from connections between reggae and punk. The British ska sound had essentially upped the slower reggae beat with a punk edge and pace—a bit like what The Coventry Automatics did in demos (reggae, but the punky ska also heard) before becoming The Specials , British ska. Many of the tracks—including this chapter on a turning point in English social, political, musical and football history—have opened and compared a variety of mediations of migrating subjects’ pasts. Most examples include my own interviews with key subjects or relatives. Research using biography, interviews, letters and diaries as historical records leads to questions around the representation of past events. These genres carry their degree of ‘noise’, one could say, however they may not be viewed as ‘high fidelity’ when it comes to information or facts about the actual past events, but rather as rich sources in the way they reveal how subjects did see themselves and their worlds, as Caine points out (2010, 75)— or rich in their ways of thinking in and about time, I would add. Tracy Thorn who reflected upon her diaries from 1978 and onwards in England 79 (her reading taken directly from her book) could be said to provide a counterpoint to the distrust in diaries as a source of ‘what actually happened’. When I try to summon up the past—when I want to know what really happened, instead of what I think happened, and what I really felt, instead of what I’d like to think I felt, and what I really did, instead of what I say I did—I look at my diaries. (Thorn 2020)

For the 13-year-old, and later singer–songwriter Tracy Thorn, her teen scribble in a diary given to her as a Christmas present in 1975, her first few years of diary scribbling contains countless entries about daily banalities and notably on things that did not happen, she adds. Things not bought in posh places, except for a bag of Kentucky chips nearby flashy Harrod, not going to the disco, or school, piano lessons cancelled and so forth. It was a life ‘described by what’s missing and what fails to happen’ (Thorn, preface, 2020). Her bag of Kentucky Chips as the only ‘take away’ from a trip to Harrods, according to her diary, a sign of a

B5 BLACK AND WHITE: RACE, FOOTBALL AND MUSIC …

195

girl’s misgiving (this though until she became part of Marine Girls —one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite bands—then sang with Massive Attack and formed the duo Everything But the Girl with Ben Watt). We may try to reconcile these positions or ambiguities of the diary as a genre. They can be brief and laconic about a conflict-ridden or tense everyday life, as in Michael Raines’ 1944 pocket diary from his time as a soldier in Europe during the war. They can be lengthy about nothing or little, as in the case of Tracy Thorn. The diarist records his/her own mix tape. Which may include memorabilia clips, photos, drawings, pressed flowers etc. (Eugene Haynes had next to a remarkable leather case some pressed flowers in a frame, all left in the suitcase). The diary and important keepsakes either inside it or around it shape a subject’s own life writerly work. Traditionally reclusive and slow, but today in social media moving towards the fast and public—or at least semi-public route into social media, yet it may still be a place where we are allowed to repeat, re-mix and ramble without disturbance? Fewer likes maybe? Diaries may in part become historical sources but also this special place or mediations of spaces of anxieties about failed projects and future imaginings (King using Stoller 2012, 19). Kavanagh, Laurie’s biographer, maps a rich life but also a series of failed projects and misgivings. But Laurie however kept returning through his career until that fatal car crash. During this track, I have tried to link different significant cultural domains in England at a specific time. Football and race, foremostly, but with a connection to music, the soundtracks of the time—and this track’s constellation or mix. Many black players, in the decades after, have referred to the ‘guiding stars or pioneers mentioned here (and so have ska musicians referred to that era).14 The way we shape or renew these key events, artists (footballers or musicians15 ) or epochs is important for future imagination. It is said that our style of speaking about events with children strongly affects the way they remember. I am considering if this is the case for adults too? Life stories and life writing of others may provide 14 While the ska revival was on demonstrating a new approach to racial awareness as well as unity and cocreation, it was the new romantics, coming immediately after in the early 1980s, who were the pioneers in gender bending. At that time fast forwarding. 15 Thanks to singer Rhoda Dakar (formerly The Bodysnatchers and the Special AKA) for answering some questions on Messenger before a talk I had on 2-Tone in 2019 (for Erin Cory’s K3 Music Club). And thank you to Simon Whaley for reading and making a few comments to this chapter. Simon is a good friend from the MA days, guitarist in The Green Ray and Slithtey Tove. Check them out.

196

A. H. HANSEN

some torchlight for the future. Using Glissant’s notes or call for opacity (1997, 193), we do not necessarily need to understand our fellows fully (as noted earlier in the collection) to act in solidarity with them.

B6 Musical Living Archives Sorrow Songs, Dengue Fever, Sixto Rodriguez and Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam

The Veiled Sorrow Songs I am nearing the end of the mix tape and will aim for closure with stories on the global travel of sounds and the re-activation of the hidden. In this final chapter, I bring on an unlikely crossing of tracks speaking back to themes and tunes that echo earlier moves in the book. In a way I continue here where I left off with the British punk and ska revival sounds of the former chapter (1979). Now football is left out of the picture—and I begin some 80 years back in time at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1895, the first black person graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. on the African slave trade; W. E. B. Du Bois was a civil rights activist historian, sociologist and writer. During his Harvard postgraduate work, he had obtained a fellowship to study in Berlin as part of his Ph.D. After completing his studies, he worked, among other things, on what would be his first major work The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903—a historical, sociological and personal landmark for its postslavery social analysis and its unravelling of personal and societal identity and difference. It was an unusual piece of writing and intellectual accomplishment; 13 essay-style chapters complemented with one solely fictional chapter. Each chapter is introduced with a lyrical and a musical notation, which I will return to. Du Bois had earlier graduated from Fisk University, a black college in Nashville, where he met the Fisk Jubilee singers. Music runs through the book which centres around white and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4_14

197

198

A. H. HANSEN

black relations which defined his life—Du Bois himself a child of a black mother and white father. As noted, a pairing of lyric and music, as two sorts of epigraphs, begins each chapter. Lyrics on top and a musical notation below. Du Bois calls the music sorrow songs , which is a synonym of black spirituals, a religious folk song often characterised by deep emotion or sadness. The sorrow songs are a blend of older African traditional — or songs with newer nineteenth-century song; or seen together as music that welled up, ‘from the bones of those living within the veil’, he writes (1903). The lyrical epigraph for the first 12 chapters comes from a white author, often a primary example from within the Western canon. Du Bois is hereby pairing or fusing white and black heritage. An example below, Chapter I, a then-recent lyric (1903) by the white British Arthur Symons and a musical notation from the travelling and continuously appropriated melodies from African oral and musical tradition, a spiritual melody known as ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’. Later covered extensively. For example, by Sam Cooke on Night Beat, 1963. With this, we can say that Du Bois is coupling an established voice (the lyric, Symons) and as well a hidden or unrecognized voice or sorrow song. The pairing can be seen as almost equal or each providing half of the space of the page and of the art, so to speak. The musical notation though does not have its most common lyric and is placed second. It may also call our attention to white appropriation of black music and white enthusiasm for black styles, one would argue. The slave and the enslaver, or the coloniser and the colonised, are inevitably in relation and exchange culturally and also, certainly, in an uneven power relationship. So, while there is some sense of a sharing of the page as it stands on the paper, we may also regard the melody as hidden or ‘veiled’ behind the canonised poem or verse. Also, it should be noted that the lyric is not related to the musical notation and melody, but here brought together in Du Bois illustration of a relation or a double consciousness . Du Bois is brought up with Western texts as well as black melodies. In later chapters of his book, we are introduced to verses, by Alfred Tennyson—and the musical notation below to ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ (which by the way was recorded by Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1909). We also get Lord Byron, assisted by the melody ‘Great camp meeting in the Promised land’—and Elizabeth Browning is there twice, one of them with the spiritual ‘I’m rolling’. In the last Chapter IV Du Bois changes concepts with a black lyric as well as song notation.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

199

Du Bois introduces the notion of double consciousness for his personal toiling and as well his abilities to inhabit two different worlds of behaviours, representations and identifications—and himself passing through and learning from white and black environments during his upbringing and youth, not least the very different university environments. A largely white school as a kid, then the black Fisk University and later the graduate school at Harvard in the early 1890s which also led him to a fellowship at the University of Berlin. While being looked at as a black person in the US and trying to balance and understand differences, within himself, and around him, in Berlin he could take a step away and try to see things from the outside. Du Bois introduces the notion of the veil , which though not given much explanation, works to be a rich enough image and metaphor to express some of the predicaments of being an oppressed minority with double coconsciousness. In a footnote it becomes clear that Du Bois borrows or draws from the bible in understanding the veil, at least in parts: Moses covering his face after speaking to God. Then he reworks it into present realities, the turn of twentieth century—but possibly not irrelevant a century later and illustrates this in the example of lyrics and musical notation. The veil (which I have brought along in another article engaging with Danish literature, accepted for a forthcoming issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies )—can mean, to reiterate, (1) the literally darker skin of blacks which marks that blacks are different from whites, (2) white people’s lack of clarity to see blacks as true Americans, something is ‘covering them’ from being seen as Americans (i.e., skin colour) and (3) black people lacking courage and ability to see themselves outside or independent of what white America describes or sees. In this sense, the sorrow songs of each chapter, until the change in the last chapter, stays behind a veil or demarcation, but are brought into relation. Only in the last chapter, the black sorrow song is not only a melody behind but also visible in a lyric, next to the melody. Have the black lyrics and melodies moved beyond the veil? Du Bois’ illustration at least demonstrates a tension and a relationship. Both lyric as well as melody are not detached from lyrical and musical context and history and in that sense already relying on some degree of cultural hybridity and dynamism. It may also be seen as an example of hidden or incorporated sounds from elsewhere, or other traditions and identities, which became common in popular music throughout the twentieth century and into the new twenty-first century.

200

A. H. HANSEN

Means of appropriation and new hybrid cultures were debated in the former chapter where ska, reggae and punk provided the soundtrack and subcultures for British football fans while communicating inclusion and also embracing a politically diverse fan base. Before I move on with a more current example, 100 years forward, I bring back the notion of the archive engaged with in most chapters. While knowers have been connected to archival traces or documents in many cases, through a family relationship and first-hand memory, archival knowledge is in principle separating the source of knowledge from the knower. It may stay there, on a file or in a drawer. What then changes over time is the value, relevance or meaning of what we find in the archive (Taylor 2003, 19). In the popular memory movement of Women Making History in Malmö, there was a closeness between the contemporary knowers and the new archive produced, in the form of blog material and newsletter. However, older archive and historical material were also pulled up. The point was to put old and new material into relation, just like Izzy did with his newsletters. Past and present in living contact: The archive is then able to become a social resource and a vibrant and popular engagement; as active working memory (Aleida Assmann 2010, 93)—or as living archive with a range of efforts which were both trying to dig or recover but also construct and remediate material. So, we may see the archive in the more active sense as a place where we can rummage about and pick up and remediate forgotten gems—as I’ve tried with these tracks. However, the archive, or most of the material which resides in archives, may also— maybe more often—be likened to a storehouse where, in general, much of the stuff has no everyday use. So, it is about saving and storing often original documents which one day may attract interest—which however most of the time rests in a domain of passive memory (Aleida Assmann 2010, 93). In the private collection it may be letters from an old partner, or a deceased family member’s old love letters. At the back of the attic? In this latter sense, the archive is a form of cultural memory, often keeping material which were in use beyond living generations now resting in the store house, the cabinet, the web pages you need to scroll a bit more to get to, and so forth. It may be institutionalized and authorized archiving following principles of curation, ordering and cataloguing—or personal archiving with a collector’s sense of order and demonstration—or it may be of a more accidental or alternative nature. As demonstrated in an old movie; when teen Harold is introduced intrigued to near 80 years old youthful Maude’s ‘Wunderkammer’ of a home—in the movie Harold and

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

201

Maude, by Hal Ashby (1971)—Maude comments ‘that is all memorabilia, but its incidental, not integral’. Maude’s notable objects have no narrative, order or exhibit(ionist) intentions, rather they are evoked through active memory interactions, not least through Maude’s odorifics or mixed memories ‘smell machine’, where Harold takes a sniff through a face mask of the smell of various phenomena which Maude has somehow recorded or stored; from the subway over cigarettes (coughing) and then with eyes in delight, fresh falling snow. Both characters bump into each other often through their shared interest in attending funerals. When they begin to meet privately and Harold wants to show his affection, he gives her an old hand watch. Maude sighs with joy, touches it, and looks at it intensely— and then throws it into a lake (which they sit next to). ‘Then I always know where it is’, she then says—and Harold then understands her action. Maude’s methods are brought in here to demonstrate active memory work in various ways—or means of working with the archival. There are different ways of bringing the stored into the open: With luck if not systematic digging, and maybe with a mouth’s blow, dust flying and caring hands, in thin white gloves, or the sampling of a beat or some fragments of a melody, with a click on a hyperlink, or enhanced as augmented reality on a smart phone, the archival can be brought up into light and activation. And even into the street or the stage or studio. In popular music, archival traces appear constantly adapted and re-circulated, re-incorporated. The upcoming three examples are all concerned with circulation, adaptation and re-emergence of sounds—or examples of when the forgotten or presumably deceased ‘returns’. Or when sleeping sounds or artists flashes up renewing the relevance of a tradition.

Dengue Fever Dengue Fever is the name of a tropical disease, but it also became a name of an American West Coast band formed in 2001. Two Jewish American brothers, Ethan and Zac Holtzman, Ethan previously ‘smitten’ by Cambodian music while on an earlier visit to the country in 1997, looked for a singer of Khmer origin to join their new band. They found a Khmer fluent lead singer Chhom Nimol in Long Beach’s Long Phomh Penh area. Although a well-known singer in Cambodia, she had visited her sister in the US to earn money to send home. A Venus on Earth—as their 2008 album was titled? During the mentioned trip to Cambodia Zac and his brother had been intrigued with how Western psychedelic

202

A. H. HANSEN

rock, surf and 1960s pop had blended with more traditional Cambodian and East Asian styles. When Chhom Nimol joined the band her wailing and cooing assisted by Cambodian romvong moves and hand dancing gestures in front of five also very noticeable American males all made quite an appearance in addition to the sounds. Guitarist and backing singer Zac always features a 2-feet long beard. Senon Williams the bass player a towering 7–8-foot presence. The history of foreign musical influence in Cambodia can be traced back to the Cambodian King Sihanouk where French and Latin American pop had been imported already during the late 1950s. The presence of Western/American soldiers in the region, notably from the mid-1960s and onwards, introduced other foreign waves of music. This influenced the local musicians to invent what became a popular repertoire of Cambodian popular music and made Sinn Sisamouth, Ros Serey Sothea, Pan Ron, Yol Aularong and other singers an integral part of Cambodia’s musical canon. They ‘disappeared’, killed it is assumed, during the Pol Pot era, 1975–1979. Tapes remain, they were played and were copied— and some of the old musicians remain alive. Dengue Fever was after their first albums able to do a tour in Cambodia, meeting old musicians and playing old Cambodian tunes and new original Dengue Fever compositions in their own fusion of styles, sung in Khmer and English. This is documented in the film Sleepwalking Through the Mekong from 2007 (taken after a song and album title, 2005), by John Pirozzi who also did another documentary on the Cambodian ‘golden age’ in 2014. At the time of Sleepwalking’s release, the band, although hardly mainstream, has won so-called ‘world music’ nominations and awards—a conventional Western way of compartmentalising non-Western music. The band has also become ambassador for development work in Cambodia. The later documentary, Don’t Think I have Forgotten (2014) also by John Peruzzi, is continuing this work, bringing the sounds, images and stories up in the open. A music tradition that had been stimulated by first Latin (including cha cha) and French pop, and then new psychedelic, surf and pop music sounds from the radio during the late 1960s were almost erased during Pol Pot. A 1996 compilation Cambodian Rocks was influential in creating interest in the West. Both Ethan and Zak noticed the compilation. Ethan went to Cambodia in 1997, found traces of a tradition’s former glory, travelled back to the US humming, ran into a Cambodian singer there,

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

203

then began making songs, as well as recording Cambodian classics, before ‘bringing it all back home’ to Cambodia again in Sleepwalking. This aim of Dengue Fever can also be read as a more purposeful endeavour of cultural appropriation, at least after the band members found a musical orientation. The compilation Cambodian Rocks from 1996 initially had 22 untitled psychedelic, analogue recorded garagesounding bluesy songs. Generally, fabulous adaptations drawing upon Westerns styles of rock’n’roll, blues, surf and psychedelia. But I am not so worried about Cambodian ‘love and theft’ in enjoying and re-arranging bits and pieces of Western styles that also had borrowed from African and Eastern forms. What may be problematic is that this US-published record had no details on songs, titles, or singer/band names on the Parallel World label’s initial record. Just untitled tracks. Did they not bother researching a bit? By this, the label bypassed what could have been a fair pay of royalties to the families of the disappeared and some context to the art pieces they just picked and earned money on. The source was initially 6 cassette tapes bought by American tourist Paul Wheeler (not to confuse with Paul Weller, see previous case). Wheeler did not provide info either. However, some pooling of brains and sharing of digging on the then-new internet (1996–1997) reconstructed singers and titles and in some cases also which tunes they were, in parts, covering. All tracks were in Khmer. I wonder if the relatives are now paid when I visit it again and again on Spotify? Back to Dengue Fever who was also kicked off inspired by Cambodian Rocks. Ethan and Zac were in search of an ethnic subject singer, which became Chhom Nimol, to authenticate the band’s cultural appropriation, Chambers-Letson argues (2011, 263), leading me back to the previous critique. However, the band appears genuinely interested in the Khmer soundscape, scene and history—including the language. Naturally, a Khmer singer might be able to help them achieve that groove—and that particular visual identity too. Chhom communicated as a clearly gendered ethnic outsider—although allegedly she just wanted to wear jeans. They found her at Dragon House club at Long Beach in 2001, where the newly immigrated 20 years old-ish woman performed. Dengue Fever debuted with their first album in 2003. Fuzzy guitars, a danceable beat, the Cambodian ‘Bollywood rock’ was intact, especially on the first albums before they expanded their sources. One may ask if Dengue Fever is recalling a past traumatically lost—or a fantasy? A sonic version of a creole world we wanted to be? Or an aesthetic shuttle between past and present

204

A. H. HANSEN

and Asia, Africa and America (Chambers-Letson 2011). Highlighting a war most Americans have forgotten (1975–1979). It is not uncommon to see indigenous music styles adopted and appropriated by more well- known Western musicians and made more widely known through Western record labels or documentary products, like, e.g., Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. The list is long, the Beatles visit to India and the Revolver album on their return (1966), jumping two decades to Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986, album and song title) and the collaboration with South African musicians during Apartheid. And two decades we can jump forward again to the 2000s and 10s of Beyoncé, Lorde and many others, including the upcoming example on M.I.A. Going back to the music that several band members of Dengue Fever had discovered (before they became a band) including bass player Senon Williams who had travelled to other places in East Asia. These sounds did not come from some pure source but from a vibrant, stimulated and flowing source. Afro-diasporic music from the Philippine Sea trade had affected Cambodia, and so did the Latin, French and then American sounds from the American war in Vietnam. Also, of importance, was then leader King Sihanouk’s liberal attitude towards music (in many other ways he was less liberal). He was a trained musician also, encouraged all styles and night clubs thrived at least compared to the situation from 1975 and onwards (Pacific Affairs, 89, 2). While Dengue Fever has developed their musical influences also taking on Ethiopian jazz and other African styles, they have also literally been inventive in terms of their musical instruments. Zac, the guitarist, has created a combination of the traditional Cambodian 2-stringed longnecked lute the Chapei Dong Veng and the American Fender Jazz master, now named the ‘Mastadong’, which is on the cover of the 2011 album Cannibal Courtship (also title of first song, clearly showing the band’s musical development). The Dong Veng has most famously been played by a performer called Kong Nay, playing with Dengue Fever in Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. Nay is a sort of Cambodian Ray Charles, who won a Japanese Fukuoka prize in 2017 for his contribution to Asian-pacific music. One of the few old musicians surviving the Khmer Rouge regime. At least the music has survived. It is not so easy to kill.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

205

Sixto Rodriguez Sixto Rodrigues was, as this is written (2022 and early 2023), a retired Detroit-based folk-rock singer and construction worker—with a BA in Philosophy. He was born in 1942 to an American Indian mother and a Mexican father who had come to work in the Mid-West industries of the US. As number six born, he is named ‘Sixto’. He dies 8 August 2023 after some years of illness (During the summer of 2023 I had written an essay for the South African journal herri. see Chapter B4. Parts of the writing on Sixto appearing in this book, was rearranged for herri in a juxtaposition with another contemporary singer of Indigenous heritage, the Cree Canadian, Buffy Sainte-Marie). Moving back in time, to the late 1960s, Sixto is in his late 20s when he embarks on a musical career playing in seedy bars in Detroit. Allegedly discovered in a place called The Sewer, full of smoke, where he plays with his back towards the audience. He had however still made an impression. He is discovered, first records a single ‘I’ll Slip Away’ for the smaller label ‘Impact’ and then records Cold Fact, his first album, in 1970, with Sussex Records. Allegedly, the record only sold about six, yes 6, copies. His second album Coming from Reality from 1971, also with Sussex Records, is not successful either. His sharp, dark and also sensitive voice and both rough and soft strumming are given space, resonance and additional instruments in the trippy but also cleansounding production with a reverbish spacious echo or aura around his voice and intitial lone guitar playing. It is folk music but taken to a very different place. The synth effect on the tune ‘Sugar Man’ was strings, as on other songs, but the tape on a quarter-inch machine was slowed by hand by the producer, Theodore, to acheive a trippy, pitch-bending effect (Theodore in Strydom and Segerman, 2016, 115). Melodies shine, relaxing and haunting at the same time (From Cold Fact, e.g., ‘Sugar Man’, ‘Crucify your mind’, or ‘I wonder’. From Coming to reality ‘ I think of You’ and ‘Cause’ are outstanding). The words, often of a reciting Dylanesque quality, sway with insight, boldness, surprise and lyrical flair. While Sixto could be argued to create something extraordinary as Bob, Buffy, Leonard, Joni and other popular North American folk singers of the day—or of earlier or of later, he nevertheless sold the allegedly ‘six copies only’. One could argue that he came along with the style a little bit late: the folk era had somehow passed. Besides that, Sixto is Indian– Mexican. This may explain the lack of interest. Did he fit in?

206

A. H. HANSEN

Sixto is dismissed from his record label briefly after the second album (out 1971, a year after Cold Fact ) and concentrates on other things; works in construction and cleans up houses while slowly completing a degree in philosophy. During and around his time at university in the late 1970s, at Monteith College (part of Wayne State University), he was involved in various grass root activity, he helped to organise powwows and also supported the Chicano movement that engaged in Mexican indigenous identity issues (Strydom and Segerman 2016, 144). He also had a fling with local politics, running for mayor, but not winning. Rodriguez could be said to be forgotten if he had ever been known, which he had hardly. While his other life proceeds, labels in Australia, and also in South Africa, take up his recordings and he slowly develops a fan base there without his knowledge. Eight years later after recording his last album, he tours Australia. Further years ahead, in 1998, he tours South Africa for the first time. In between touring, Sixto returns to his everyday life mostly occupied with manual jobs, distributing earnings from the infrequent touring to family and friends. It is however first around mid-late 2012 that Sixto becomes a more widely known figure, now beginning to sell records in many countries, also the US, being called to tour around the world, and invited to shows as Letterman’s and Jools Holland. He is turning seventy, but fit enough, though with some eyesight trouble. What made the difference was the documentary Searching for Sugar Man by Swedish-Algerian filmmaker Malik Bjendelloul, premiering in early 2012, generally with rave reviews in the journalistic press—and it soon receives a series of prizes, including the British BAFTA and the US Oscar in 2012. When I watched it back then, I did not know Sixto’s music or anything about him, it came as a revelation, as for many others. It helped that I was also instantly smitten with the music (at that time I had just finished my first monograph, on Bob Dylan). Malik’s documentary read, or rather felt, as a remarkable story of redemption and release. Not only for Sixto, who was portrayed as moving from obscurity to recognition in South Africa. However, there was also a strong sense of release for the film’s two main informants, who brought him to South Africa, and for the whole South African fan community it portrayed. Filmmaker Malik died tragically in 2014, a bit over two years after the film had shot to fame and prizes, and constant attention and interviews— and possible also high expectations on what he could deliver next. He had taken his life in front of a train in Stockholm. This guy who took

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

207

me (and many others) on such a journey had struggled with insomnia, but the he would take his lif struch everyone who knew him as absurd (Strydom and Segerman 355). ‘His creativity came from a place of lighy, never darkness’, friends of Malik, tells Strydom and Segerman (356). With the film Malik, who had spent years and all his money also suddenly moved to the limelight, as Sixto. Malik went from eightmillimetre film to his own mobile camera when he ran out of money. He spoke with sparkle in his eyes in interviews in 2012–2013 of the process and the fun it was to make it. It was a kind of redemption story for Malik too. In short, Searching for Sugar Man follows mainly two Cape Town fans, Stephen Segerman (given the middle name ‘Sugar’ after Sixto’s song ‘Sugar Man’) and Craig Bartholemew Strydom searching for Sugar Man (much of their work with Malik, and Sixto, is documented in their book from 2016 also used in this section). In South Africa, he was assumed dead our two key characters tell. There were rumours about suicide on stage and other stories. People knew he had recorded his albums in the US, but the LPs and the cassettes, that were circulating in South Africa, did not hold information, it is stated in the film. People did not know where he had lived—or lived now—if he was still alive. The film does not reveal if Sixto is alive to begin with, although we know. It takes over half of the movie before it is revealed. Malik treats us with a sort of fairy-tale format for adults. Until the revelation, we have the quest as a sort of ‘detective documentary’ laid out which reconstructs the search for Sugar Man, as it supposedly took place over some time in the 1990s after the fall of Apartheid. In addition to Stephen and Craig, various other informants are brought along, such as a few other journalists, the old Susex label owner, some fans and a person allegedly from ‘the archive’. What is portrayed is an almost hermetically closed South Africa, where Sixto’s songs ‘almost set us free as oppressed people’, as Craig noted (Bjendelloul 2012). Stephen and Craig are retelling the story as they remember it; how they called record label people around, searched the lyrics for clues, tried to find someone who knows, and so forth. Craig finds a clue, the name ‘Dearborn’ dropped in the song ‘Inner City Blues’; goes to grab his old Atlas, and finds it is in Detroit. They succeed in getting contact with Sixto’s family in the city. And finally, Stephen Segerman receives a call at 1 pm in the morning from Sixto himself. Malik, the director, slowly builds this narrative up to this ondistance encounter. It is highly emotional; the story arch moving from

208

A. H. HANSEN

the initial rupture and the beginning of the quest: is Sixto alive? Then a rising curve of detective work to the climax of the real Sixto entering on-stage concerts in South Africa in 1998, backed by South African musicians (all whites) which allegedly bonded with him instantly. He did not have a band when he arrived, and Stephen and Craig helped. It appeared to work magically. One gets the same feeling of the connection in an earlier South African concert movie from 2001 (Dead Men Don’t Tour) by then-young journalist Tonia Selley. As in Malik’s movie, we also here get a sense of a balanced, humble, wise and unassuming personality that did not see his other labouring life as ‘obscure’, who did not worry too much about money and material things, and who was not bitter from the 1971 break with the label but thankful for what he achieved. Malik also works his way to maintain this picture. But then he builds something else into his emotional rollercoaster; firstly, a sort of causal relationship between what was allegedly bootleg cassettes and a White Afrikaaner counter-culture in South Africa that got inspired by Sixto’s anti-establishment lyrics as inspiration for developing their own critical views towards Apartheid. Malik here ignores South Africa’s antiApartheid music culture and does not place Rodriguez’ music in a musical context.1 Instead, we are led to believe that this man’s words and sounds, from another continent, produced important seeds to the anti-Apartheid struggle. It made the story even more fantastic. I was surprised and intrigued by the alleged anti-Apartheid connection when watching the documentary around 2014, but kind of left it there. I was carried away. There are other creative liberties in the film. According to Drewett (2021) there was no Cold Fact LP-record in an archive with careful

1 Michael Drewett, a South African scholar, notes that under Apartheid there was a

‘compelling tradition of directly resistant anti-apartheid songs’. He lists Jennifer Ferguson, Peter Gabriel, Roger Lucey, Mzwakhe Mbuli, the Special AKA, Steel Pulse and Peter Tosh (Drewett 2021, 134). One could also mention Johnny Clegg, the ‘white zulu’, beginning his career under Apartheid with the mixed-race band Juluka. Clegg died in 2017, at 66, as one of South Africa’s most celebrated musicians.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

209

scratches making ‘Sugar Man’ unplayable.2 However, scratching of records, making them unplayable, was quite common during Apartheid. I ask white South African filmmaker Aryan Kaganof (see also Chapter B4 editor of herri) what he thinks about the film and the antiapartheid connection. Kaganof is in his mid-50s, he refused army service during the apartheid and can with fairness be said to belong to a white ‘resistance’ under Apartheid. He said of the film. I quote his full email response (before a link to the musician Nora Dean’s Ay Ay Ay Ay): The idea that Rodriguez’ white fan base were in any way connected with the anti-apartheid movement in ludicrous. That is pure invention. He was popular precisely with the ‘average’ whites, lumpen whites, as well as what you might call dissident or lefty whites. But definitely his major fan base was among absolutely mainstream white South Africans. Every white South African I know loved Rodriguez; I never met a white South African of my generation who did not love Rodriguez. It is in our blood somehow. A curious anomaly. As for making things up—well films themselves are made up so I don’t think one should be too puritanical about it. It’s a wonderful film with a fairy tale narrative and a unique protagonist. To get iffy about some scratched records I think misses the point. Your mail reminds me that I have not listened to Rodriguez for a few years now. Maybe it’s time.

What makes this remediation of Sixto’s work, and journey, a living archive of gems, I’d say, has a certain bitter irony to it. As excited as I was about Malik’s documentary, some feelings of disappointment arrived when I realized that Malik apparently (according to Michael Drewett 2021, and others) had taken some liberties beyond the ‘contract’ with 2 An Ilse Assman, an ‘Apartheid Archivist’, we are told, is in the film at ‘Archive of Censored Material’ in Johannesburg showing us how Sixto’s Cold Fact LP has lines crossed over the first song, ‘Sugar Man’, allegedly by censoring authorities. However, the film makers did not find any record, according to Drewett. Malik brought a copy and did the scratches trying to imitate a common practice. The South African label never handed the record in to SABC where Assman worked. So, it could not have been officially censored, it is argued by Drewett (2021). While Drewett may have point in relation to Malik’s manipulation in relation to that specific record, we are nevertheless made aware of a practice of censorship by scratching records, which did exist.

210

A. H. HANSEN

the viewers on accuracy. Maybe I am getting ‘iffy’, apropos Aryan’s email. It is on the one hand clear for us that the scenes in the bar The Sewer are staged. Malik is reconstructing the feeling. There is no footage from the bar. That is fair enough. It is the archive scene (filmed in a library somewhere) that is problematic.3 Malik’s 2012 documentary is an example of a literary or documentary work igniting a new interest in a largely forgotten artist, who though had resurfaced far from home at certain points long after the first two albums had come out. Rodriguez and the dedicated followers and music lovers in Cape Town, as well as the genre travelling Dengue Fever, are just two examples of unpredictable means of the globalisation or cross-continental spread of limited or less known oddball public memories4 that in various ways have been given new fields to play on. As The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw reminds us in his review of Searching for Sugar Man (2012) this may be a known tale about the ‘reclusive rock star who vanishes’. Yes, Sixto was and is reclusive, but he was never a ‘rock star’. He played bars and sold six copies. He though unknowingly became a rock star. Bradshaw furthermore writes that one reason that Sixto could make it big among ‘counter cultures’ in South Africa was that he escaped the white–black divide. These points are disputed by Aryan Kaganof, above. As said earlier, Malik ignored the race aspect completely. And there were few to no blacks at the 1998s concerts. Clearly as a Mexican, he did offer another entry point to mainly white folk music culture. We do though not get to understand him fully through, Bradshaw adds. And as with the reclusive Laurie, or as the deflecting rhymes of Lewis, or the private life of Eugene which we do not get to know of despite the many letters, we do not have to know or understand fully, to bond with them. I would forgive Malik and his ways of making the documentary and instead not spend much further time (except for the footnotes) on the 3 Drewett, and other academics pulled guns against Malik in issues of Safundi (e.g., issue 4, 2013), while also engaging in ways of belittling Rodriguez as an artist and performer. The magic of the 1998 concerts they are not able to feel. This was before Malik’s passing in 2014. In a later article (2022), Drewett is still on a mission of critique against the former documentary film maker, as well as Sixto, the artist. Drewett does not mention Malik’s tragic passing. Only through an informant saying that we cannot ask Malik, we learn of Malik’s untimely death, in this article. 4 Public memory is less often researched in relation to processes of globalization and the possible global character of public memory, yet Phillips (2011) and Olesen (2014), provided attempts in the anthology Memory on Trial (2015).

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

211

critics who try to debunk Malik as well as Sixto. May Malik rest in peace and Sixto too. What we really should remember and spend time on, beyond this age and decade, is the music of Sixto Rodriguez. My then 7-year-old daughter was introduced. We talked about Sixto’s age in a 2018-live performance, where he was frail. At this event, his age was similar to my father, her granddad, when he died. We had brought him up too, for age similarity, I think. Not so much for comparison. Maybe one thing they shared, a modesty, and a pleasure of doing things on your own. He died in 2012 (see Chapter A5 on Svend Åge).

M.I.A./Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam London/Quiet down, I need to make a sound 5

This chapter began with the spiritual sorrow songs that ‘welled up’ in Du Bois’ dedication in The Souls of Black Folk, continued Westward and to the East (?)’ with Los Angeles-Cambodian Dengue Fever—and then further on to Mexican Detroit-based singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. I now arrive at the last musical journey of the chapter: new ‘sorrow songs’ and visual artwork of the artist born Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam. She breaks through as M.I.A. in the early 2000s with the albums Arular (2005) and then Kala (2007). These two first two albums involved African and Australian folk, Brazilian favela funk/baile funk, Jamaican dancehall, hardcore rap and lyric or music samples from British punk and Bollywood pop. Maya initially enters the scene, before the first album release, with a free online mix tape Piracy funds terrorism in 2004. At this time not dependent on a company, band, or producer to develop as a musical artist—and spread her work. If one concentrates on the audio of her first mix tape and records, a productive confusion of ‘who sings? from where? in which genre?’ meets the ears. A strong cockney accent is heard. It is a female voice, but ethnicity and musical location and musical direction is ambiguous. Purity is difficult to associate with popular culture, yet the chameleonic dynamism (in particular on the second album) was intense: there is a presence of original analogue sounds and instruments, drums and swords alongside beatbox beats. Australian Aboriginal boys

5 From ‘Bucky Done Gun’, on the album Arular by M.I.A., 2007.

212

A. H. HANSEN

(Wilcannia Mob) on one tune. A largely unknown Nigerian kid residing in London, Afrikan Boy. Then Timbaland. Then a keyboard run by The Clash, an old Bollywood cover. Also New Order, Pixies and The Modern Lovers. Her use of parts of ‘Roadrunner’ by Modern Lovers could be said to fit Maya’s own constant journeying through music and the world. An artist fusing influences or memories looming in the present, haunting? The verb to haunt has in philosophical and musical writings been stretched to the notion of hauntology 6 (Derrida 1993, Fischer 2010), a notion that suggests a ghostly or slippery presence of something ungraspable and spooky. Hauntology, interestingly, was also a name given to electronic British musical genres evoking an aesthetics of the past. Artists such as Burial, Tricky and others, a scene related to Maya’s early years. There was a sense of nostalgia, a backwards longing but also a longing forward, for a future which could not be reached, creating a double spectrality, one could say. We may see Maya’s first decade in music as on the one hand reaching back for analogue sounds and spaces, yet also ‘futuristic’ in style. Her ethno-musical voices and extracts come across as traces (put into musical encounter and soundscape) spun out of her own upbringing, living and travel—and not as imported exotica. The process of the coming together of the second album may explain this point: Maya plans to go to the US straight after the first album Arular 7 to record Kala, but in retrospect, it can be said to be a case of luck that there were delays in renewing her work visa. So, she instead goes on a great ‘detour’ to West Africa, India and Australia, and then back—now engaging in her own unplanned world mix tape tour? While travelling and absorbing new impressions, she is able to create kaleidoscopic soundscapes reaching into the past and then remodelling it into original material. She digs into geographically and genre-wise very different sources of effects, samples, melody, rhythm and lyrical snippets, which she incorporates into 6 In French, the ‘h’ in hauntology is not heard making it sound like ontology (being). So, the ‘h’ is there (in writing) and not there (in sound). The term was also used to express the presence of Marx’s ideas after the death of communism and the alleged ‘end of history’. Various memory and cultural studies in the 2000s used in a on a range of phenomena, ruins, film etc. (Reynolds 2011, 328–329). Marx is still here, sort of. 7 From basic tracks laid down on a Roland MC505 (see Section III London) and the added original music and sounds moulded together in the studio, Arular came across as collisions of beats and styles and samples, abrasive and switching tempos and an embracing of syncretism that became her trademark. The syncretism though evolving to a stronger extent on the second album release Kala.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

213

her own music. It can at first be mistaken as a form of techno music, using rap. The rap is there, but as Irene Lönnblad notes, unlike techno music, where new sounds come through careful work with amps and distortions, Maya’s sounds on the records come from appropriating existing material, such as guitar riffs, drumbeats, vocals or lyrics. Adding to Lönnblad, I would note that techno music (a label for a variety of genres) is also created through new sounds offered by digital tools and programming. Maya’s found sounds, she layers into her own sonic architecture. ‘Using technology to mutilate, cut and distort music that already exists out there’ (Lönnblad 2012, 14). This extracting of layers into her own sound ‘poison’ is felt to a stronger extent on the challenging sound of her third, rough-noise-cacophony album MAYA. The ‘tape’ sounds like it can go into bandsalat (‘cassette tape tangle’) at any moment—a term more wellknown in Germany and Scandinavia than in the UK and the US? It is a distorted industry on a ‘burning’ sequencer following the second album’s sparkling globalism. Once I played the CD of MAYA 8 while driving our old diesel car on a rainy evening. The right sort of car and weather to give her high volume. My two girls and wife begged to have it taken off—and I was not sure if there was something wrong with the used CD. The CD was fine, and I will keep it forever. The car was taken to the metal recycling plant soon after.9 He went out to buy a pint of milk but did not come back for four months

Maya is born in London in 1975 to Tamil Sri Lankan parents. Two months pass and her Dad leaves, ‘He went out to buy a pint of milk but did not come back for four months’ (Maya to Sawyer 2010). He went to Lebanon to train with the PLO. When he comes back it is to convince the family to go to Sri Lanka so he can continue political work on the ground there. Her Dad nurtures contacts with the Tamil diaspora 8 Discography: Piracy funds terrorism (a mix tape), 2004, Arular, 2005, Kala, 2007, Mathangi, 2013 (thanks to colleague Bojana for finding a CD version of this album in a library used sale and giving it to me), AIM , 2016 and MAYA, 2022. In addition, a range of mixes and tunes are released online (YouTube etc.). Some of them are rather fabulous, such as Damascus, Amen, Ohmni, Babylon and Ctrl., to mention a handful from recent years. 9 While sonic attacks have always been outspoken, her most recent album MATA marks a confirmation of her style of exchanging between catchy beats and refrains smitten with irritating and challenging sounds.

214

A. H. HANSEN

in London and forms one of the resistance movements, the Eelam Revolutionary Group of Students . The family leaves for Sri Lanka when Maya is still a baby. She lives most of the next ten years in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, during civil unrest. The new Tamil movements are fighting for autonomy and the Sri Lankan army harasses the Tamil minority, looking for their resistance fighters, trying to stall the opposition. After almost a decade in Sri Lanka, the family relocates to Chennai in India for a few years, hiding from the army and then they return to Jaffna, Sri Lanka. She recounts how they were hiding under the tables at school when the army or police were shooting through the windows. However, happy times are also given space, ‘on our street, there were maybe 50 kids, it was brilliant’ (Sawyer 2010). At her home, they hire a TV and a video about once a month. The neighbourhood crams together and watches Tamil films for 24 hours, putting ice on their face to stay awake (Sawyer 2010). The Indian movie, The Disco Dancer, from 1982, also play a role in her life. At around seven years of age, she goes to earn money dancing to Jimmi Aaja from that movie (twenty-five years later it turns up as a cover on Kala). However, life in Sri Lanka is very difficult and the family decides to flee to a Tamil area of India. When they return a few years later, the army shows up asking for ‘Dad’. Putting little Maya on a knee, the soldier asks, is this toy from your Dad? ‘I would be, like, I wish’, she reflects in 2010 (Sawyer). When Maya is close to eleven years of age, her mother Kala and the three kids leave again. This time back to London where they had not been for 10 years. Arul Pragasam, Dad, now with the code name Arular, stays in Sri Lanka to continue his resistance work. The family is granted asylum in the UK and Maya, close to her teens, continues life in the South London estate of Phipps Bridge. She is called ‘Paki’, now and then, but that was not as bad as being shot at by Sinhalese government forces chasing her father (Maya in Empire, 2005). While Dad appears to have been a centre for longing, and as well an inspiration for her fighter’s stance, Maya however brings in Uncle: ‘everyone thinks my story is to do with my dad, you know, it’s my Uncle in Morden on my mother’s side who is my inspiration’. He smuggled himself into the UK and sold clothes out of a car (Sawyer 2010). Maya also credits her mother, ‘she was incredibly strong for having three jobs and three kids and not knowing

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

215

English’ (Maya in Barlow, 2018). Her mum used her experience in sewing to work as a seamstress for the UK Royal family10 (Hahn 2020). Before Arul was a Dad and had gone to buy that pint of milk, he had initially come to London to visit after engineering studies in Russia. There he meets Kala, also a Tamil Sri Lankan, visiting her brother who lived in London. They are in a pub in Hounslow, apparently liking each other, and Kala’s visa is expiring. Arul has a visa. They get married. She can stay. Soon Maya is born. When Maya finally goes back to London close to eleven years of age, she does not hear from Arul for many years. After the college years preparing her first album, she finds a way of ‘calling for him’. She announces the album will be named ‘Arular’. The media buzz around her music distribution on the internet, including her 2004 Mix Tape, is about to make her name known. Her Dad reads about it in Sri Lanka Times, emails her ‘This is Dad. Change the title of your album. I am really proud. Just read about you in Sri Lanka Times. Dad’. She does not follow his advice. ‘It irritates me that I end up giving him so much attention when he has so little to do with my life’ (Sawyer 2010). Maya puts herself out on the open ground to see what will haunt her. Which way does the wind blow? She cannot get rid of the irritating father. He keeps blowing. So, she is collaging her scarce childhood memories of Sri Lanka and Dad into the warrior semiotics of the cover of her first album named by Dad’s freedom fighter alias, ‘Arular’. That is her visuals: a story beginning at the threshold of London’s prestigious St. Martin’s College. I don’t need any audition I just got my own little mission It grew bigger than a politician 11

Around a decade after arriving in London, Maya—now around twenty—has set her eyes on the famed Saint Martin’s College of Art 10 Maya received an MBE medial in 2020, including a ribbon which was one of those her mother, Kala Pragasam, had hand-stitched for the Queen after coming to England as a refugee in 1986. The MBE (Most Excellent order of the British empire) is an order bestowed to those who have made major contributions to the arts (Young 2020). The MBE was also given to the footballer Cyrille Regis, in 2008. Regis played with Laurie Cunningham in West Bromwich in the late 1979s, see track Chapter B5. 11 From ‘Freedun’ by M.I.A. On the album AIM , 2016.

216

A. H. HANSEN

and Design. Several musicians before her went there: Joe Strummer from The Clash, The Nigerian-British singer Sade, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp. ‘Common People’? The entry to the college was however difficult: Maya didn’t have the grades and she was not on time with submitting a formal application either, but she called the principal constantly and put on all sorts of pressure, including: ‘I’d go and be a hooker in King’s Cross and make a film about it and come back in three years’ time and be like ‘this is what happened to me when I got rejected by Saint Martin’ (as quoted by Whitehill in the web news site Sunday Times Style in 2013). She was finally accepted for her ‘chutzpah’ (Cheng 2013). As an aspiring visual artist at the end of her Saint Martin’s days, Maya had met Justine Frischman and over those years before turning to music, Maya directed a video, designed an album cover, and documented a tour of Justine’s band Elastica. At Saint Martin’s she had made a script about London youth offenders which she unsuccessfully tried to turn into a film production. Her life had taken a turn towards opportunity with these various documentary projects. After completion of studies at St. Martin’s, she returned to Sri Lanka to nurture her memories and catch up with what was happening there—and turn that into a documentary. It was in 2000 and it was to be about Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act allowing the police to detain suspects for 18 months on very little if no evidence. ‘I worked on it for a year, and then 9/11 happened’ (Simonpillai 2016). She was in her early twenties, had just graduated from Saint Martin’s, and was following people with a camera. Many were reluctant to speak about the conflict, anxious about being visited by the army at midnight. This material did not turn into a documentary either. She feared her work would be taken as propaganda in the changed global atmosphere after 9/11 (Nirali Mag 2004). Maya had been put off by the approach of many fellow students at Saint Martin’s, ‘making films for the intelligentsia’. ‘It missed the whole point of art representing society’ (Cheng 2013). However, her footage became stills, photo and stencils with spray paint and graffiti- style appropriations which made it for her first art exhibition called ‘M.I.A’ (for ‘Missing in Action’, assigned to combatants reported missing during war, or missing in Acton, the West London suburb). Her mix of stencil, photo stills, spray paint and graffiti reflected her DIY ethos, and it became her way into music, ironically. ‘I just had this show, and everything was going really well with the art’. Her Missing in Action exhibition is going very well at Portobello Road (pieces sell

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

217

out quickly)—and she is nominated for the Alternative Turner Prize. But something else was also happening: ‘I knew when I found the right medium nothing else would exist. When I rediscovered music nothing else existed. I just shot down, stopped answering my calls, didn’t leave the house, never brushed my teeth’. Maya’s work with music on her own took advantage of groove boxes/ sequencers and the new internet for spreading the music. As noted, she had documented the touring of friend Justine Frischman and her band Elastica. Justine had a decade earlier formed what was to become an international brit pop sensation, Suede. Justine is the daughter of Jewish parents, one from Hungary, the other from Russia, the former a Holocaust survivor. In the early 2000s Maya however began to move her own ways—with a simple Roland MC505 groove box with drum machine, synth, sequencer and controller in one. The groove box was lent to her by Justine although it was the electronic artist Peaches who had introduced Maya to this wonder machine during 2001, when Peaches was supporting Elastica on tour. With the Roland MC505, M.I.A. was in the latent stage, beginning the compiling and encountering of a variety of sounds and musical cultures. Maya was encouraged and began working, initially intending to produce music while looking for Caribbean singers in clubs. This did not work and then Maya herself became the singer. An official album was delayed throughout 2003 and 2004, while waiting for legal rights to use samples. However, she manages to bypass the legal gatekeepers temporarily (encouraged by her then co-producer—and lover—Diplo) through an internet-circulated unofficial mix tape, Piracy funds Terrorism in 2004. In 2005, the legal issues were sorted and her first album Arular finally came out. Despite the new absorption into music, the visual aspect of her cultural production remained prominent. The visual artwork of her albums12 — as well as some remarkable visual productions of her songs—lifts the material to another level, adding to its already layered meaning and sonic challenge. The Middle Eastern influences of ‘Bad Girls’ (2010) which cherished the women to drive movement in Saudi Arabia, or the human architecture and staging of ‘Borders’ in 2016 (a video she directed herself), or perhaps the most interesting and controversial of them all: 12 The sleeve/album designs of M.I.A.s two first albums bursts of colour, graffiti, patterns repeated (including machine guns and the like on Arular), GIF image and stencil-styles, early internet imitations, digital art, and Eastern inspirations.

218

A. H. HANSEN

the genocide of red-haired people in ‘Born Free’ from January 2010. A nine-minute short film, directed by filmmaker Roman Gavras, filmed in January and released in April—and banned on YouTube. In March of the same year, a similar, less controversial and more well-known concept of short film video was premiered by two other notable female visual artists in the musical business: Lady Gaga, with Beyoncè guest starring in Gaga’s ‘Telephone’.13 In 2016, M.I.A. continued her speaking back to power in the combination-video to the song ‘Swords’ (on bonus edition of AIM , 2016) and ‘Warriors’ from Matangi 2013. It was shot on location in India and West Africa. It includes a remarkable dance (to the song ‘Warriors’) by an unknown member of a Zaoli troupe in Ivory Coast which Maya tracked down and went to film. Finally, her documentary practice was paying off. Also, teens performing sword theatrics in India (for the song ‘Swords’) were included. The clang of sword blades aligned well with Maya’s sonic habits. Her biggest hit (but not the most remarkable video) is ‘Paper Planes’ from 2007 (on Kala). In the song, street kids from around Brixton, South London, were invited in to sing the chorus: All I wanna do is.. BANG BANG BANG!)/And.. KA CHING!/ And take all your money. The three ‘bangs’ are unmistakably the sounds of gunshots (after the sounds loading of a gun) and the ‘ka ching’ is a cash register opening. Gunshots had to be removed when she went on Letterman. The song reworks a dual guitar and bass line stutter-intro to The Clash’s ‘Straight to Hell’ (1982) —and she credited The Clash members as co-writers of the song. I’m trying to create a third place, somewhere in between the developed world and the developing world.

13 The ‘Telephone’ music video came briefly after the first Beyonce-Gaga collaboration for Beyonce’s ‘Video Phone’ in 2009. The two ‘music-video-films’ trailed similar territory celebrating girl power, as well as identities beyond gender divisions, while paying homage to cinema. Notably various works by Tarantino, such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill—but also with imagery of Bettie Page and Josephine Baker (Vernalis, 2013, 89). Both videos and their countless musical and visual references are explored in detail in Vernalis’ 2013 study on the unruliness of visual culture embracing YouTube, cinema and music video. ‘Where should we place ourselves in the media swirl?’, she asks, in relation to the experience of ‘Video Phone’ (189). Vernalis’ comprehensive study (2013) however surprisingly I thought, left out work by M.I.A., which I think provide a similar sense of ‘swirl’, sonically and visually.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

219

‘I’m just trying to build some sort of bridge’, she said around the time Kala came out (Sisario 2007). ‘I’m trying to create a third place, somewhere in between the developed world and the developing world’. Is this third place, in her own phrasing, places where traditions and worlds cross and something new is created?14 Maya has a non-Western background. One may though still question the circuit here. Evolving from the West and through Western producers and companies, drawing from a mix of personal experiences and an available heritage—and then the music made is sold primarily to Western audiences (Lönnblad 2012, 26) —this although she is/was known in Sri Lanka too and has found fans outside Western Europe and the US. Maya has done what she could to make this about the world at large. This is in the sense, that on the one hand sounds are merged and catapulted up to a global sound in space, yet also very ‘grounded’ with those various kids’ groups, local rappers and Tamil drums. M.I.A. has, as other popular musicians, appropriated cultural content and sown it into her musical (not so straight) jackets. A contaminating practice or modus operandi buys an artist freedom. Always something else, old, or new to invite inside. Maya’s entry on the art and music scene happened at the threshold between the fading of analogue practices and the spiralling of the digital; blogging, piracy, social media, and streaming in the 2000s. And she appeared to sit well on both chairs. The visual inside of the double album (LP) Kala is an uneasy dance of Bollywood and a punk zine graphics, twelve quarter collages for the twelve songs, with whips of hip hop, reggae, graffiti and stencil print. Next to her analogue-looking DIY, there is in the sound work a strong sense of a digital DIY.15 She is ‘preserving’ by sounding up inspirational snippets and genres in new tracking. However, the cat’s cradle of sound and vision/ary work did not have a primary attention in former college friend Steve Loveridge’s 2018 documentary/biopic Mathangi/ Maya/MIA. The biopic which relied mainly on hundreds of hours of video footage (as well as interviews and concert documentation), appears mainly to have been able to visualise the period before she really took on 14 We are in the territory of Homi Bhabha’s third space, as elaborated in Bhabha’s interview with Jonathan Rutherford in 1990, a space that works as an enabler of ‘other positions’ based on a ‘spirit of alterity’ (211). 15 Michelle Hyun Kim named M.I.A. as the progenitor of digital DIY in a review of MATA, Rolling Stone, 2022. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-rev iews/m-i-a-mata-1234608273/.

220

A. H. HANSEN

music—and some private times after fame. We do not really get into her laboratory of artistic creation. Still, Maya and her friends and family are to be seen and heard behind or in front of the camera, in direct cinema style, documented in everyday life and social discussions from her early youth and onwards. The biopic came about slowly. The many tapes of ‘from the inside and out’ piling up in Maya’s vaults were sometime around 2009 handed over to her old friend, Steve, whom she hung out with during college days. They both had graduated in fine art and film. Loveridge spent years preparing the project, stopping it underway due to lack of funding, M.I.A.’s record company halting support, and then restarting when new funding was found. Steve and Maya had a contract saying that Maya had to keep her fingers off her archive while Steve was working and editing for the film. When it was out Maya thought it was too much a personal story with too little focus on her music. It went for a framing of a rebel personality with radical politics, a media angle’s portrayal of ‘the protest singer’, the prodigal daughter crossing continents, selling records, getting followers etc. Strongly attached to her DIY but increasingly having to think of the brand M.I.A. Maya becoming ‘infected’ in the polluted river of fame? Sitting in a big L.A. department wondering what the next step could be in the dances with a global press. The vaults of footage that Loveridge had at his disposal might not have had the visual documents available to reconstruct the creative processes well enough—or did not produce enough drama? However, drama for documentary narrative was found in the sibling’s discussions and reflections on life. Arul and Kala’s three children are captured as young adults providing bursts and reflections on their parents and predicament in the world. For Maya, despite her note in an interview about being irritated giving her Dad so much attention, in these clips she appears to view him as this towering and distant inspiration. ‘He made us damn interesting. He’s given us a bloody background’, ‘… that made us so strong, we are so independent’, Maya teaches, standing in the middle of the room. Her siblings took the opposite stance. Brother Sugu, talking to the camera when 23 years old, notices with some bitterness that Dad came back to his family as older because his life is ‘at a dead end’, ‘he could not fight anymore’. Sister Kali also bemoans his absence, not being around when he was most needed, ‘he could have sent a birthday card at least’, ‘or anything’. But they did not hear from him.

B6 MUSICAL LIVING ARCHIVES

221

‘Out of the blue we got this phone call, this is your Dad speaking and I am going to be in London tomorrow’. Maya appears to be around twenty in the clip, it is not clear if he had arrived when the previous discussion took place. She explains that she has not seen him since she was eleven, and when she saw him in Sri Lanka he gave her apples, the first time she had that. ‘Still, we didn’t know you are (Dad, ed.), we thought you were Uncle’. Dad Arul now sits calmly on the sofa explaining with a grin that he was hiding explosives under a toy duck in this suitcase for Maya and the other kids when on the rare visit home. Mum Kala is doing crochet (the seamstress). This makes for great viewing. Looking back on a two decades-long career in visual arts and music, Maya’s art material can be seen as productions that transform her worlds into something manageable and different. The third place, she speaks about, is the positive flipside of a world where minorities are faced with, or forced to, compartmentalise their identities into one drawer.

Temporarily Closing the Archive (Tape End)

The mix tape is often handed over as a gift or dedication, as noted in the Prologue. It can be courtship. Do I come with flowers or mix tape? The latter is a transmission of a narrative, not only in the songs and the kind of meaning they may carry, as single songs and as part of a mix but also the inlay card, the writing and graphic work, may play a role. Thurston Moore (from Sonic Youth) demonstrated that very well in his book The Art of Cassette Culture (2005) which gave a narrative of his life with in-lay cards, their colour, writing, drawings and designs. Moore also lends the pages to others to write about their experiences with mix tape communication— their contexts and what they meant for creators and receivers. This mix tape is coming to an end. I hope I have been able to make this archive of material living and relevant in the present. Some stories are recent, some may appear to have had a temporary closure a while ago. But here they are opened again, related to and given a new narrated life alongside others. ‘A memory is never really finished as long as we are alive’, we can say, quoting the character Jesse in the movie Before Sunset, 2004. Life writing as a series of events and encounters which we sting together, a mix tape? Life can be thought of as a series of tracks. The (magnetic) chain, as a life lived, may be characterised by continuity, causality, breaks, pauses, rupture, noise, surprise and change. Certain moments pluralise in a series of conflicting or complimentary emotions. As Thurston Moore’s punk mix tapes or many others. Constellations

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4

223

224

TEMPORARILY CLOSING THE ARCHIVE (TAPE END)

articulate a range of different emotional responses or takes on a relationship (Moore 2005). Even the same track/song may articulate its range or modes in different examples. Dylan’s angry version of ‘Idiot Wind’ on Blood on the Tracks, in contrast to the tender version on Bootleg Series Vol 1. Another take, another mood, around the same time the album was made. As literature, the mix tape also seeks after saying something else (After Ringgaard on literature, 2014). The longer we discuss what that is, the better. Why did she put ‘Psycho killer’ as the first song on that mix tape? (Talking Heads). So, a mix tape is through a personal recontextualisation a fresh DIY anticipation. As M.I.A.’s songscapes (punk, hip hop, African folk, disco-pop, experimental electronica, etc.), Eugene’s piano pieces (drawing from a European classical canon) are aspiration and inspiration. It does not merely re-play, although it may ‘sample’ or ‘cover’. The company that M.I.A. and Eugene have in this collection may affect how readers think of them. The two ‘archive men’ Lewis and Izzy sit next to each other in this collection. They folded the archive out in similar ways. Pi, Svend Åge, Phil and Thomas in each their ways processed war experiences. Youth in Israel and Mozambique, the boys of Mawil’s comic, and the Laurie’s of football, and the zineasts in Philippines or Malmö, treasured their own spaces of expression and creativity: The DIY possibilities of their voices and talents. Thus, the narrative and thematic routes of memory talk or text investigated in the collection, I have come to interpret as means of watering the roots and routes of identity which may also involve a coming to terms with crisis, confusion or changes of self and one’s community. The oral history interviews, diaries, memoirs and column/zine writings show how subjects nurture their individual, but not de-contextualised memories. They are acts of emotional and historical practice of self-perception and exploration—formulated in context or against or adapting to the stream you are swimming in. Memory is so much more than re-collection; it is anticipation and recreation.1 Mix tapes commonly have various forms of anticipative and associative memories among creators and receivers. The tracks may say something on

1 In my own mother tongue, Danish, Berntsen proposes a distinction between ‘hukommelse’ and ‘erindring’. Hukommelse meaning something coming up or memorised, which is the closest we may get to the English recall. ‘Erindring’ (from German erinnerung ) indicates more complex processes of memory work, sense and meaning making, i.e., a historical and biographical approach to memory (Berntsen 2013).

TEMPORARILY CLOSING THE ARCHIVE (TAPE END)

225

their own, or reference to specific events, bands or styles, known by the creator (of the tape) or the receiver. But then later, as with the mixtape, it is ‘offered by the compiler in an attempt to render meaningful the chosen sequence of songs’ (Lacasse and Bennett in Lovatt 2005, 12). And as the mixtaper or receiver tries to incorporate meaning in the object, whether the music is often taken from commercial and impersonal recordings or not, we incorporate elements of popular culture into our life histories. When looking back, life during a restless or moving stream, often awakens the clearest memories. The tracks in this collection also mostly engage with subjects (and interpreters) making sense of some ‘upstream swimming’. Subjects on the road to somewhere, to make meaning, for themselves, their art/passions, and their communities. I do not know which meaning this collection will take for the reader. It may become a sort of mass-produced object and not unique and singular as most amateur mix tapes. But it is still also a gift to a stranger. No flowers for you. Many other stories keep spinning in our heads, and we need to let them out.

Bibliography

Interviews On Site And Phone And Email/Online Exchange Adam David (Manilla, BLTX, Philippines). Email exchanges November 2021. Aryan Kaganof (South Africa, Herri). Email exchanges November 2021 and February 2022. Birgitte Jallov (Bornholm, Denmark) Email exchange March 2019. ‘Bob’. On site interviews and walks, Neve Shalom, Israel, January, and October 2000. Pi Stilvén. On site, Höganäs, Sweden, 14 June 2008. Paul Gilroy (London, UK). Email exchange, May 2018. Phil Cohen (London, UK). Email exchange, May 2017. Phil Raines. Vejby and Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2007. Bergen Belsen and around Germany, July 2007, Hastings, UK, May 2008. Email exchanges 2022. Sara Rehnström. Email exchanges primarily 2008. Sara co-participated in interview with Pi Klitvén (her grandmother), August 2008. Izzy Young. On site interviews Folklore Centrum, Stockholm, Sweden, 15 and 16 January 2011. Ingeborg Phillipsen. Telephone interview. September 2015. Listening Posts Mozambique, with Darmin Mutenda, Flavio, Deonilde, Francisco, and Gilda. WhatsApp interviews 2019–2020 and calls and conference presentations with Darmin 2019. Meghan Tinsley, email exchange, January 2018 (after conference paper December 2017 Memory Studies Association).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4

227

228

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary School teacher, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Phone interview, 2018 (Rebecca. Mother-in-law. With help from Happy Singu Hansen). Rita Megre. Girl Move organisation. Maputo. With Sarita Monjane Henriksen. November 2016. Temi Odumoso. 2015–2017 Exchanges on Victor Cornelins case. Written feedback on early version of Haynes case. Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. Email exchanges during 2017 and 2022. Vicensia Shule. Conversation in Malmö. September 2015. Young (Journalists). Project name changed/anonymised. Various focus groups and group interviews, Zanzibar April 2016, with Sarah Singu. Written summaries of interviews with help from Julieth Kweka, Vicensia Shule, Sarah Singu, Nicola Harford, Hugo Boothby and Samah Ahmad. Givat Haviva, Israel-Palestine, October 2001. Various interviews and observations of encounters for youth, including email exchanges (including phone interview follow up, 2006). Wahat al-Salam—Neve Shalom, Israel-Palestine. Various informal conversations and interviews with residents and facilitators, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2018.

Unpublished Written Personal Testimonies/Documents Eugene Haynes, objects/contents from suitcase kept at Dragør Museum. Svend Åge Hansen, memories from World War II email 26 August 2008. Michael Raines diaries 1944–1945. Michael Raines memoirs as part of war therapy 1995.

Moving Image Sources: Feature and Short Film and Series, Documentary, Biopic, Web Interviews and Lectures Arcoiris TV Face to Face, Maria Moncada and Daniela Ritzman, January 2009. https://www.arcoiris.tv/scheda/en/1138/. American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (2016) ‘Coexistence is no dream’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6MdjnH4Nr8&list=PLN A9355lqfgqHvbbZWVMyv54FOr7SGHxw&index=4. Ashby, Hal. 1971. Harold and Maude. USA (Feature film). Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. 2009. ‘Video Phone’ (music video). Directed by Hype Williams. Bjendelloul, Malik. 2012. Searching for Sugar Man. Sweden. Chiles, Adrian. 2018. Whites vs. Black: How Football Changed a Nation. BBC, UK David, Adam. 2018. Lecture on zine culture and BLTX in the Philippines for Malmö University, MA Communication for Development, 18 November.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

229

Drasin, Dan. 1963. Sunday. USA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEvKe2 WLumI. Fares, Amber. 2021. Reckoning with laughter. Documentary on Noam Shuster-Eliassi, The New Yorker YouTube channel, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=bgqa1zqXh_c&list=PLNA9355lqfgqHvbbZWVMyv54FOr7S GHxw&index=5 (Shorter version of Coexistence my ass ). Kaganof, Aryan. 2021. Lecture on the zine journal herri for Malmö University, MA Communication for Development, 18 November. Lady Gaga and Beyoncé. 2010. ‘Telephone’ (music video). Directed by Jonas Åkerlund. Linklater, Richard. 2004. Before Sunset (Feature film). Loveridge, Steve. 2018. Mathangi/Maya/M.I.A. Museum Amager/Dragør Museum videos. Five short films: ‘En ufuldendt akkord’, ‘Blandt fiskere og bohemer’, ‘Eugene som kulturel ambassadør’, ‘Fra Paris til Rundstedlund’, and ‘Eugene’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= AgpqtAqebD0. Olsson, Göran Hugo. 2012. The Black Power Mixtape. Sweden. Olsson, Göran Hugo. 2019. England 79. Sweden. Pirozzi, John. 2014. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. Cambodia’s lost Rock ’N’ Roll. USA. Playlist, The. 2022. Docu-drama miniseries, 6 episodes, directed by Per-Olav Sørensen. Sweden, Netflix. Scorsese, Martin. 2004. No Direction Home, Sony. USA. Izzy Young interviewed by Jeff Rosen. Larsen, Alex Frank. 2007. Slavernes Slægt. DRs Forlag and DR TV documentary, 2005. Letts, Don. 2016. The Story of Skinhead with Don Letts, BBC4, Broadcast first time:15 October 2016. Selley, Tonia. 2001. Dead men don’t tour. SABC. Shuster-Elisassi, Noam. 2020. ‘Noam Shuster: An Israeli comedian speaks out’. The Stream, Al Jazeera English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoM TN1MJyMI&list=PLNA9355lqfgqHvbbZWVMyv54FOr7SGHxw&index=9. Shuster Eliassi, Noam (2021) In conversation with Rabbi Elhanan Miller. Plus61 J media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxA5Nl4ggTs&list=PLNA93 55lqfgqHvbbZWVMyv54FOr7SGHxw&index=10. X Files, The. 1996. ‘Quagmire’ Season 3, Episode 22. Dir. Kim Manners.

Biographies, Autobiographies, Letters and Diaries, Documentary Novels Akomfrah, John. 1986. Handsworth Songs. Black Audio Film Collective. UK. Akomfrah, John. 2013. The Stuart Hall Project. Smoking Dogs Films. UK.

230

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albertine, Viv. 2014. Clothes Clothes. Music Music. Boys Boys. London: Faber & Faber. Barretta, Scott (ed). 2013. The Conscience of the Folk Revival: The Writings of Israel ‘Izzy’ Young. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Black, Pauline. 2012. Black by Design. A 2-Tone Memoir. London: Serpent’s Tail Cornelins, Victor. 1977. Fra St Croix til. Nakskov: Frimodts Forlag. Dylan, Bob. 2004. Chronicles Vol. 1. New York: Simon & Schuster. Grandin, Philomène. 2021. Glöm allt men inte mig. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Forlag. Haynes, Eugene Jr. et al. 2000. To Soar With Angels. The European Travels — Remembrances of Isak Dinesen. Xlibris Corporation. Print. Hodgkin, Thomas L. 1986. Letters from Palestine. 1932–36. Edited by E. C. Hodgkin. Hodgkin, Thomas L. 2000. Letters from Africa. 1947–1956. Edited by Elizabeth Hodgkin and Michael Walters. Kavanagh, Dermot. 2017. Different Class: The Story of Laurie Cunningham. London: Unbound. Micheaux Nelson, Vaunda and R. Gregory Christie (illustrator). 2012. No Crystal Stair. A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller. Minneapolis, USA: Carolrhoda Lab. Micheaux Nelson, Vaunda and R. Gregory Christie (illustrator). 2015. The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth, and Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore. Minneapolis, US: Carolrhoda Books. Panic, Paul. 2015. I Thought Solihull Was for Snobs. The Mell Square Musick Story. No Rip off Books. Rees, Paul. 2014. The Three Degrees: The Men Who Changed British Football. Constable. Regis, Cyrille. 2010. My Story (As told to Chris Green). London: Andre Deutsch. Sheffield, Rob. 2010. Love Is a Mix Tape. London: Piatkus. Thorn, Tracey. 2019. Another Planet. Teenager in Suburbia. Canongate: Edinburgh, UK.

Comics Flix. 2018. Spiro in Berlin. Flix. 2009. Da war mal was: Erinnerungen an hier und drüben. Mawil. 2014. Kinderland. Mawil. 2004. Die Band. Mawil. 2005. Wir Können ja Freunde Bleiben. Sacco, Joe. 2001. Palestine. Satrapi, Marjane. 2004. Persepolis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

231

Spiegelman, Art. 1991. Maus. A Survivor’s Tale + My father Bleeds History.

Zines and Newsletters AIF Bordtennis (Table tennis club magazine, Albertslund, Denmark. BLTX Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/xeroxography. An umbrella or platform for zine activity/movement. Includes images, text, promotion of zines and parts of zines. Adam David et al. Broken Pencil https://brokenpencil.com/about/. Zine community. Det Sædvanlige Fis (The Usual Stuff), Morbærhaven, Albertslund, Denmark. https://aub.dk/det-saedvanlige-fis/. Izzy Young Folklore Centrum magazine/newsletter (column ‘Motvikt’ and other). No. 5, 6 and 7, 2010 and 1 and 3, 2011. Folklore Centrum, Stockholm. https://www.facebook.com/FolkloreCentrum/. herri. https://herri.org.za/6/. Aryan Kaganof et al. Pop Culture Puke https://popculturepuke.com/. SingOut Magazine, New York, USA. Izzy Young columns. https://singout.org/. Weiss, Valerie. 2021. Mixtape (Feature film). Netflix. Women Making History, Newsletters, Malmö, Sweden. Parvin Ardalan et al. https://livingarchives.mah.se/2015/09/women-making-history-newsle tter-2015/.

Songs Songs mentioned or referred to in the collection. A sort of Mix Tape within the ‘Mix Tape’ —although here not ordered/mixed, just listed alphabetically. Afrikan Boy & M.I.A. 2007. ‘Hussel’. Kala. (Afrikan Boy also on Paper Planes). Beyoncé (and Lady Gaga). 2009. ‘Video Phone’ music video, directed by Hype Williams. The Clash. 1982. ‘Straight to Hell’. Combat Rock. The Clash. 1980. ‘London Calling’. London Calling. The Bodysnatchers/Rhoda Dakar. 1980. ‘The Boiler’. Peel Session, BBC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyhDsY19OpM. Dean, Nora. 1970. ‘Ay ay ay ay’. Gay Jamaica Independence Time. Jamaica Depeche Mode. 1984. ‘People are People’. Some Great Reward. Dengue Fever ‘Sleepwalking through the Mekong’ (album of same name, 2005), ‘Cannibal courtship’ (album of same name, 2011). Bob Dylan. 1966. ‘Visions of Johanna’. Blonde on Blonde. Bob Dylan. 1975. ‘Idiot Wind’. Blood on the Tracks. Bob Dylan. 2020. ‘I Contain Multitudes’. Rough and Rowdy Ways.

232

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eurythmics. 1981. ‘Belinda’ (Old Grey Whistle live version. From the album In the Garden). Ole Hjorth. 2011. Live at Folklore Centrum, Stockholm (‘Skullbräddleken’ and others). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= G7cUeCv4LJc. Ole Hjorth and Björn Ståbi. 1969. ‘Skullbräddleken’. Folk Fiddling from Sweden. The Jam. 1980. ‘Start’. Sound Affects. Lady Gaga (and Beyoncé). 2009. ‘Telephone’ music video, directed by Jonas Åkerlund. Madness. 1980. ‘Baggy Trousers’. Absolutely. M.I.A. ‘Bucky Done Gun’, 2005 Arular/‘Paper Planes’, 2007 Kala/‘Born Free’, 2010 MAYA/‘Warriors’, 2013 Matangi/‘Freedun’, 2016, AIM. The Modern Lovers. 1976. ‘Roadrunner’. The Modern Lovers. Paul Simon. 1986. ‘Graceland’. Graceland. Pavarti Khan. 1982. ‘Jimmi Aaja’. From the movie Disco Dancer. Pulp. 1995. ‘Common People’. Different Class. Sex Pistols. 1978. ‘God Save the Queen’. Never Mind the Bollocks. Sixto Rodriguez, ‘Sugar Man’, ‘Crucify your mind’, ‘I wonder’, 1970, Cold Fact /‘I think of You’, ‘Inner City Blues’, ‘Cause’, 1971, Coming to reality. Talking Heads. 1977. ‘Psycho Killer’. 77. The Specials. 1981. ‘Ghost Town’ (Single). Spirituals/‘Sorrow songs’: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot/Great camp meeting at the Promised Land/I’m Rolling/Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Victor Jara. 1971. ‘Ni chica ni lemonada/lemoná’. El derecho de vivir en paz. Visage. 1980. ‘Fade to Grey’. Wilcannia Mob & M.I.A. 2007. ‘Mango Pickle Down River’. Kala. UK.

Academic and Journalistic Books and Articles (Including Web Articles) Abu-Nimer, Mohamad. 1999. Dialogue, Conflict Resolution, and Change: ArabJewish Encounters in Israel. New York: State University of New York Press. Abu-Saad, I. (2003). ‘Israeli “Development” and Education Policies and Their Impact on the Negev Palestinian Bedouin’, Holy Land Studies: Interdisciplinary Journal, 2(1), 5–32. Alchetron Encyclopedia. 2022. ‘Popular Music of Birmingham’ (edited by Supriya Ghosh). Updated 24 October 2022. Andreassen, Rikke. 2015. Human Exhibitions. London: Ashgate. Appadurai, Arjun. 2003. ‘Archive and Aspiration’, in Brouwer, Joke, Mulder, and Arjen (eds) Information Is Alive, pp. 14–25. Rotterdam: V_2 Publications. Appadurai, Arjun. 2004. ‘The Capacity to Aspire’, in Rao and Walton (eds) Culture and Public Action. Palo Alto, USA: Stanford University Press.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

233

Agamben, Georgio. 2002. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III . New York: Zone Books (orig. Italian, 1999. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen). Ardalan, Parvin et al. (eds). 2016. Women Making History/Herstory. Sweden: Malmö Municipality. Assmann, Aleida. 2010. ‘Canon and Archive’, in Erll and Nünning (eds) A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter. Assmann, Jan. 1995. ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Identity’, New German Critique, 65, 125–133. Bak, Sofie Lene. 2001. Jødeaktionen oktober 1943. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums forlag. Back, Les, Tim Crabbe, and John Solomos. 2001. The Changing Face of Football: Racism Identity and Multiculture in the English Game. Oxford, UK: Berg. Barlow, Helen. 2018. ‘What Really Happened to Rising Rapper MIA?’ news.com.au, 11 July. Benjamin, Walter. 1992. Illuminations. London: Fontana Press. Beronilla, Pola. 2018. ‘Behind the Zines: Looking into Local Zine Culture’, Scout Magazine. https://www.scoutmag.ph/25211/behind-zines-lookinglocal-zine-culture/. Bergson, Henri. 1910/2010. Matter and Memory. digireads.com. Translated by Margaret Paul and Scott Palmer. Berntsen, Dorthe. 2013. Erindring. Århus University Press. Bertelsen, Aage. 1952. Oktober 1943. 5. udgave. København: Gyldendal. Bertolini, Frida. 2015. ‘Truth and Memory After Catastrophe: Historical Fact and the Historical Witness’, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, 29(1), 41–57. Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. ‘The Third Space’, in J. Rutherford (ed) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, pp. 207–221. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bickford, Susan. 1996. Listening, Conflict and Citizenship: The Dissonance of Democracy Ithaca, USA: Cornell University Press. Billboard. 2003. 115(17) 115(17): 68, 26 April 2003. Billed Bladet. 1957. ‘Der bor en Neger I Dragør’. Photos: Tim Wilmann (Author unknown), 26 juli. Copenhagen: Aller. Boldrini, L. and J. Novak (eds). 2017. Experiments in Life-Writing. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Björgvinsson, Erling and Anders Høg Hansen. 2011. ‘Mediating Memory’, Journal of Arts and Communities, 3(1), 3–22. Björgvinsson, Erling and Anders Høg Hansen. 2018. ‘Amendments and Frames: The Women Making History Movement and Malmö Migration History’, Crossings, 9(2), 265–287.

234

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1995/1986. ‘Den biografiske illusion’, Social Kritik, 36, 33–37 [translated from French to Danish by Eva Bertram]. Bowler, Dave. 2004. Attack. Attack. The Story of West Bromwich Albion 1978–79. Britespot Publishing. Bowler, Dave, and Jas Bains. 2000. Samba in the Smethwick End. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing. Burnton, Simon. 2016. ‘The West Brom Testimonial When a Team of Black Players Took on a Team of White Players’, The Guardian 24 November. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/nov/24/westbrom-len-cantello-testimonial-1979-white-black-players Bradshaw, Peter. 2012. ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ (Review), The Guardian 27 July https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jul/26/searching-for-sugarman-review (visited October 2021). Buhle, Paul. 2007. ‘History and Comics’, Review of American History, 35(2), 315–323. Burns, Jehnie. 2021. Mix Tape Nostalgia. Culture, Memory, and Representation. Maryland: Lexington Books. Cabral, Alyana and Itos Ledesma. 2016. ‘The Power of the Small Press’, CNN Philippines 19 December. https://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/lit erature/2016/12/19/bltx-adam-david.html Cabral, Alyana. 2017. ‘How the Zine Can Be a Tool for Social Change’, CNN Philippines. Carpenter, Megan. 2010. ‘Space Age Love Song’, Nevada Law Journal, 11(1). Article 3. Casey, Edward S. 2004. ‘Public Memory in Place and Time’, in Phillips (ed) Framing Public Memory, pp. 17–44. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Chignell, Hugh. 2009. Key Concepts in Radio Studies. London: Sage. Crisell, Andrew. 1994. Understanding Radio, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Chambers-Letson, Joshua. 2011. ‘No I Can’t Forget’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 23(3), 259–287. Cheng, Susan. 2013. ‘10 Things You Didn’t Know About M.I.A.’s Visual Art Career’, Complex 4 November. Cohen, Phil. 2013. Reading Room Only. Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications. Cohen, Phil. 2018. Archive That, Comrade! Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Delorme, Isabelle. 2020. ‘Innovative Teaching: The Winning Bet of Teaching History Through Comics’, https://www.sciencespo.fr/learning-lab/en/inn ovative-teaching-the-winning-bet-of-teaching-history-through-comics-2/. Demos, T. J. 2013. Return to the Postcolony. Sternberg Press. Dever, Maryanne, Sally Newman, and Ann Vickery. 2009. ‘The Intimate Archive’, Archives and Manuscripts, 38(1), 94–137.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

235

Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx (orig. French, 1993). London: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. ‘Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression’, diacritics, 25(2), 9–63. Dittmar, Jakob F. 2008. Comic-Analyse. Cologne, Germany: UvK Verlag Gmbh (2nd edition out 2017). Dittmar, Jakob F., and Anders Høg Hansen. 2021. ‘Pasts Renewed in Contemporary German Graphic Storytelling’, Unpublished Conference Paper, Transitions 9 (London/Zoom). Drewett, Michael. 2021. ‘Rodriguez, Apartheid, and Censorship: Cold Facts, and Fiction’, Safundi. The Journal of South African and American Studies, 22(2), 130–146. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. Norton Edition. Elay, Craig. 2011. ‘Technostalgia and the Resurgence of Cassette Culture’, in Fisher and Flota (eds) The Politics of Post-9/11 Music, pp. 43–54 (chapt 3). London: Ashgate. Empire, Kitty. 2005. ‘Flash-Forward’, The Observer 20 March. Ekström, Y., H. Boothby, and A. Høg Hansen. 2012. ‘The Globalisation of the Pavement’, Nordicom Review, 33(Special Issue), 163–176. Featherstone, Mike. 2006. ‘Archives’, Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2–3), 591– 596. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. 1992. Testimony. London: Routledge. Feuerverger, Grace. 1998. ‘Oasis of Peace: A Community of Moral Education in Israel’, in E. Feuerverger, Grace. 2001. Oasis of Dreams. New York: Routledge Falmer. Fischer, Mark. 2012. ‘What Is Hauntology’, Film Quarterly, 66(1), 16–24. Fortunato, John. 2008. ‘I am M.I.A. Here’s Me Raw’, hightimes.com 21 February. Freire, Paolo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. Freiesleben, Birgit. 1998. Fra St. Croix til Tivoli. En historisk betretning om to vestindiske børns lange rejse (This book is also available in English, with substantial parts of the autobiography included). ACER. Freud, Sigmund. 1916. ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ in Strachey et al. (eds) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol XIV , pp. 243–258. London: Hogarth Press. Gabriel, Teshome. 2022. ‘Ruin and The Other: Towards a Language of Memory’, Herri. Issue 6. https://herri.org.za/6/teshome-gabriel/. Gardner, Abigail S., and Gerard Moorey. 2016. ‘Raiders of the Lost Archives’, Popular Communication, 14(3), 169–177. Getz, Trevor. 2019. ‘The Challenges of Representing History in Comic Form’, https://blog.oup.com/2019/01/the-challenges-of-representing-his tory-in-comic-book-form/.

236

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gilroy, Paul. 2004. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? London: Routledge. Givat Haviva, Jewish Arab Center for Peace, Youth Encounter Programs https://www.givathaviva.org/index.php?dir=site&page=gallery&op=cat egory&cs=3015. Glissant, Éduoard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. University of Michigan Press. Hahn, Rachel. 2020. ‘M.I.A.’s New Royal Honour Weaves in Some Surprising Family History’, Vogue, Fashion 14 January. Halabi, Rabah and U. Beck-Phillips. 2001. Identitäten im dialog. Schwalback: Wochenschau. Halabi, Rabah and Nava Sonnenschein. 2004. ‘The Jewish Palestinian Encounter in Time of Crisis’, Journal of Social Issues, 60, 373–389. Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson (eds). 1975. Resistance Through Rituals. Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 7/8. CCCS, Birmingham. London: Routledge. Hall, Stuart (ed). 1997. Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage (Revised 2013 with Jessica Evans and Sean Nixon as coeditors). Hall-Cathala, David. 1989. The Israeli Peace Movement 1967-1987 . Oxford: St Anthony/Macmillan. Halbwachs, Maurice. 1941. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Translation and introduction by Lewis A. Coser). Hamilton, Paula and Linda Shopes. 2008. Oral History and Public Memories. Philladelphia: Temple University Press. Hansen, Thorkild. 1965, 1968 and 1970. Slavernes kyst (vol 1), Slavernes skibe (vol 2), Slavernes øer (vol 3). Copenhagen: Gyldendal. (Translated as Coast of, Ships of, and Islands of Slaves, by Kari Dao. 2002). Haynes, Eugene Jr. 2000. To Soar with Angels. The European Travels —Remembrances of Isak Dinesen. Xlibris Corporation Print. Hamilton, Paula and Linda Shopes. 2008. Oral History and Public Memories Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Here be dragons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_be_dragons. Hewstone, Miles and R. Brown. 1986. Contact & Conflict in Intergroup Encounters. London: Blackwell. Hewstone, Miles and Hermann Swart. 2011. ‘Fifty Odd Years of Inter-Group Contact’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(3), 374–386. Hass, Amira. 1999. Drinking the Sea at Gaza. Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Hatfield, Charles. 2005. Alternative Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Haynes, Eugene. 2000. To Soar With Angels. The European Travels —Remembrances of Isak Dinesen. Xlibris Corporation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

237

Herman, David et al. 2008. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. London: Routledge. Hillberg, Raul. 1961. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Hjortsø, Thomas. 2010. Den dyre flugt. Copenhagen: People’s Press. Hodgkin, Thomas L. 1956. Nationalism in Colonial Africa. Hoffman, Eva. 2009. Time. London: Profile. Hoskins, Andrew and J. Garde Hansen (eds). 2009. Save As…Digital Memories. London: AIAA. Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of style. London: Methuen. Holst, H. P. 1872. https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/H.P._Holst Hrycak, Alexandra and Maria G. Revkowicz. 2009. ‘Feminism, Intellectuals and the Formation of Micro-Publics in Postcommunist Ukraine’, Studies in East European Thought, 61(4), 303–333. Hyun Kim, Michelle. 2022. ‘M.I.A. Looks to the Past…’, Review of MATA. Rolling Stone, 17 October. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2003. Dialogue with Conflict. Unpublished PhD thesis. Dept of English and Media, Theory, Culture & Society. Centre, Nottingham Trent University (November 2003). Høg Hansen, Anders. 2006. ‘Breve fra Palæstina’, Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap, 3–4, 121–138. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2006. ‘Dialogue With Conflict’, Social Identities, 12(3), 285–308. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2008. ‘På sporet af den levede tid’, Praktiske Grunde. Tidsskrift for Kultur- og Samfundsvidenskab, 3/4, 6–30. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2008. ‘Memorials and Memory Politics in Hamburg and Haifa’, in Terho, Henri et al (eds) Power and Culture: New Perspective in European History, pp. 163–185. University of Pisa Press. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2012. Kærlighed, Krig og Historie. Bob Dylan 1961–67 . København: Frydenlund. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2012. ‘A Reading Room of the Civil Rights Movement’, ComDev portal, https://wpmu.mah.se/comdev/a-reading-room-of-the-civilrights-movement/. Høg Hansen, Anders. 2023. ‘Sixto and Buffy. Two Indigenous North American Musical Journeys’, herri, issue 9, August. https://herri.org.za/9/anders-hoghansen/. Høg Hansen, Anders, Oscar Hemer, and Thomas Tufte (eds). 2015. Memory on Trial: Media, Citizenship and Social Justice. Berlin/London: Lit Verlag. Høg Hansen, Anders, Faye Ginsburg, and Lola Young. 2016. ‘Mediating Stuart Hall’, in Hemer and Tufte (eds) Voice & Matter. Gothenburg: Nordicom.

238

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Høg Hansen, Anders and Erling Björgvinsson. 2018. ‘Women Making History’, History Workshop Online 14 May https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/ women-making-history/. Jackson, Michael. 2013. The Politics of Storytelling. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Jansari, Ashok and Alan J. Parkin. 1996. ‘Things That Go Bump in Your Life: Explaining the Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory’, Psychology and Aging, 11(1): 85–91. Jansen, Bas. 2009. ‘Tape Cassettes and Former Selves’, in Bjisterveld and van Dijck (eds) Sound souvenirs, pp. 43–54. Amsterdam University Press. Johnson, Richard et al (eds). 1982. Making Histories, e.g., Popular Memory Group, ‘Popular Memory’, CCCS, University of Birmingham. Johnson, Samuel. 1826. The Prince of Abissinia. A Tale. Boston: T. Bedlington. Katriel, Tamar. 1986. Talking Straight. Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture. Cambridge University Press, UK. Kermode, Mark. 2023. ‘Mark Kermode Reviews Dance Craze’, Kermode and Mayo’s Take, YouTube. Ketelaar, Eric. 2008. ‘Archives as Spaces of Memory’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 29(1), 9–27. King, Michelle T. 2012. ‘Working with/in Archives’, in Faire and Gunn (eds) Research Methods for History, pp. 13–29. Edinburg University Press, UK. Komurki, John Z. and Lucy Bendandi. 2019. Cassette Cultures. Past and Present of a Musical Icon. Benteli. Kraenzle, Christina and Julia Ludewig. 2020. ‘Transnationalism in German Comics’, Journal of Graphic Novels, and Comics, 11(1), 1–9. Kreth, Rasmus and Michael Mogensen. 2017. Flugten til Sverige. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Lacey, Kate. 2013. Listening Publics. London: Polity. Lapina, Linda. 2016. ‘Besides Conviviality’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 6(1), 33–41. Larsen, Alex Frank. 2005. Slavernes Slægt. DR’s forlag. The Chapter ‘Tivolis sorte magnet’. A TV series on the same material was aired by DR (Denmarks Radio, Denmarks original Public Service broadcaster) also in 2005. Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, UK. Lawler, Steph. 2008. ‘Stories and the Social World’, in Pickering, Michael (ed) Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh University Press. Lindsay, Cam. 2007. ‘M.I.A.’, Exclaim 21 August. Living Archives https://livingarchives.mah.se/. Living Maps Network https://www.livingmaps.org/our-history. Lönnblad, Irene. 2012. Political Elements in the Music of M.I.A. MA thesis, Musicology, University of Helsinki.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

239

Lovatt, Melanie. 2005. ‘Personalising Popular Culture: The Uses and Functions of the Mixtape’, MA Thesis, Dept of Folklore, Memorial University of New Foundland. Lovell, Terry. 2003. ‘Resisting with Authority’, Theory Culture & Society, 20(1), 1–17. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge University of Press, UK. Maki, Youichi and Makiko, Naka. 2006. ‘Reminiscence Bumps and Contents of Autobiographical Memory in Japanese Elders’, The Japanese Journal of Psychology, 77(4), 333–341. Mare, Admire. 2013. ‘New Media, Pirate Radio, and the Creative Appropriation of Technology in Zimbabwe’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 25(1), 30– 41. Maoz, Ifat. 2000. ‘Multiple Conflicts and Competing Agendas’, Peace and Conflict, 6(2), 135–156. Madsen, Henrik. 2015. ‘Fra St Croix til Nakskov’ (Review of Cornelins autobiography) https://beldenak.wordpress.com/tag/victor-cornelins/. Mambrol, Nasrullah. 2018. ‘Analysis of Derrida’s Archive Fever’, https://litera riness.org/2018/02/19/analysis-of-derridas-archive-fever/. McAdams, Don. 2005. The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press, UK. Merleau Ponty, Maurice. 1952. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Mewshaw, Michael. 2005. ‘Travel, Travel Writing and the Literature of Travel’, South Central Review, 22(2), 2–10. Mhagama, Peter. 2016. ‘The Importance of Participation in Development Through Community Radio’, Critical Arts, 30(1), 45–61. Migel, Parmenia. 1967. Titania: The Biography of Isak Dinesen. New York: Random House. MINEDH, Aproveitamento escolar 2009, 2014 (Mozambique ministry of education). Moore, Thurston (ed). 2005. Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture. New York: Universe Publishing. Moorman, Marissa. 2011. ‘Airing the Politics of Nation’, in Gunner and Ligaga (eds) Radio in Africa. South Africa: Wits University Press. Mouffe, Chantal. 2010. ‘Democracy—Radical and Plural’, CSD Bulletin, 9(1), 10–13. Munk-Nielsen, Karen Sivebæk. 2008. ‘Send to Negerbørn—Den dansk vestindiske lærer Victor Cornelins’, in Julie Fryd Johansen et al. (eds) Skoler i Palmernes Skygge. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Nathan, Jesse Zerger. 2007. ‘Equality Within Difference: The Story of Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam’, Peace & Change, 32(3), 252–300.

240

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neiger, Motti et al. (eds). 2011. On Media Memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Nir, Ori. 2002. ‘When Khaled Met Niva’, Haaretz 18 February. Nirali Magazine. 2008. ‘Not-So Missing in Action’, Nirali Magazine April. Issue 30. Nowicka, Magdalena and Tilmann Heil. 2015. ‘On the Analytical and Normative Dimensions of Conviviality and Cosmopolitanism’, Eberhard Karls University Lecture. Oasis of Peace, School for Peace, Programs for Teenagers https://sfpeace.org/ about/activities/. Oasis of Peace. 2017. Historical timeline https://www.wasns.org/-historical-tim eline. Oasis of Peace. 2018. ‘Two WAS-NS Residents Counted as “Most Influential Activists”’, 10 January (Summary of Yedioth Ahronoth, Leading Daily on 50 Most Influential Activists of 2017 in Israel) https://www.wasns.org/activi sts-eng. Onuora, Emy. 2015. Pitch Black: The Story of Black British Footballers. London: Biteback publishing. Osório, Conceição and Ernesto Macuácua. 2014. Rites of Initiation in the Current Context. WLSA Mozambique. Pappé, Ilan (ed). 1999. The Israel/Palestine Question: Rewriting Histories. London: Routledge. Pedersen, Poul. 1990. ‘Anxious Lives and Letters’, Culture & History 8, 7–19. Phillips, Kendall R. (ed). 2008. Framing Public Memory. University of Alabama Press. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 2001. ‘Hybridity, so What? The Anti-Hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition’, Theory, Culture & Society, 18(2–3), 219– 246. Portelli, Alessandro. 1997. The Battle of Valle Guilia. Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. The University of Wisconsin Press. Purrup, Jette. 2013. ‘Negerbørn i Stauerby’, in Bavnen: Vejlby-Strib Lokalhistoriske Forenings blad no. 1. Rabinowitz, Dan. 1998. Overlooking Nazareth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Radstone, Susannah and Kate Hodgkin (2003) Regimes of Memory. London: Routledge. Radstone, Susannah. 2008. The Sexual Politics of Time. London: Routledge. Railton, Diane and Paul Watson. 2011. Music Video and the Politics of Representation. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Rasmussen, Anita Brask. 2017. ‘Der er en grund til at min bog hedder “Ingen undskyldning”’, interview with Astrid Nonbo Andersen, Information 31 marts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

241

Rasmussen, Mai. 2011. Interview with Marianne Horsdal ‘Om og om igen’, Weekendavisen 13 May 2011 (On Horsdal’s Book Telling Lives: The Acquisition and Application of Narratives). Rees, Paul. 2014. The Three Degrees: The Men Who Changed British Football Forever. London: Constable. Rendall, Steven. 1986. ‘Review: On Diaries’, Diacritics, 16(3), 56–65. Rethinking Democracy, Research Platform, Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University, https://mau.se/en/research/research-platforms/redem/. Reynolds, Simon. 2012. Retromania. Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber (Paperback edition). Ricoeur, Paul. 1983. Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1999. ‘Memory and Forgetting’, in R. Kearney and M. Dooley (eds), Questioning Ethics. London: Routledge. Ringgaard, Dan. 2014. Litteratur. Tænkepauser 23. Gylling, Denmark: Århus universitet. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford University Press. Rustin, Barbara and Dorothy Clarke. 1999. Dealing with Conflict. From Confrontation to Cooperation. British friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Session of York, UK: Ebhor Press. Sagy, Shifra. 2002. ‘Intergroup Encounters Between Jewish and Arab Students in Israel: Toward an Interactionist Approach’, Intercultural Education, 13(3), 259–274. Said, Edward. 1994 The Politics of Dispossession. London: Vintage. Samuel, Raphael. 1996. Theatres of Memory Vol 1 Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. London: Verso. Sanderson, Jane. 2020. Mixtape (novel). Transworld Publishers Ltd. Sawyer, Miranda. 2010. ‘MIA: I’m Here for the People’, The Observer 13 June. Sebald, W. G. 2001. Austerlitz. Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter (Danish ed. 2003 translated by Niels Brunse). Siddiqi, Asif. 2023. ‘MIA—Paper Planes (2007)’, in Siddiqi (ed) One Track Mind. Capitalism, Technology and the Art of the Pop Song. London: Routledge (forthcoming). Silberstein, Laurence J. 1999. Postzionism Debates. Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Silverstone, Roger. 2006. Media and Morality. London: Polity Simek, Nicole. 2015. ‘Stubborn Shadows’, symploke, 23(1–2), 363–373. Simonpillai, Radheyan. 2016. ‘M.I.A. Takes a Stand for Tamilis’, Now 4 May. Singu Hansen, Happy. 2017. Solidarity Economy and Informal Grassroots Initiatives in Tanzania, MA thesis, Social Entrepreneurship and Management, Roskilde University, Denmark.

242

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sisario, Ben. 2007. ‘An Itinerant Refugee in a Hip Hop World’, New York Times 19 August. Smooha, Sammy. 1990. ‘Minority Status in an Ethnic Democracy: The Status of the Arab Minority in Israel’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13(3), 389–413. Solomon, Andrew http://andrewsolomon.com/coverage/notes-on-an-exo rcism/. Strömberg, Fredrik. 2022. Comics and the Middle East, PhD compilation thesis, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. Steedman, Carolyn. 1998. ‘The Space of Memory: In the Archive’, in History of the Human Sciences, 11(4), 65–83. Strydom, Craig B. and Stepenh ‘Sugar’ Segerman. 2016. Sugar Man. London: Corgibooks edition. Susina, Jan C. 2020. ‘Soundtracks of our lives’, in Cadden, Mike et al (eds) Teaching Young Adult Literature, pp. 300–304. MLA. Taylor, Diane. 2003. Archive and Repertoire. Durham, USA: Duke University Press. Tegnér, Esaias. 1811. ‘Svea’ http://runeberg.org/tegnersskr/2/0212.html. Thavlov, Lis. 2003. On Dragør Transports to Sweden. Dragør Local Archive. Theatre for a Change. 2019. https://www.tfacafrica.com/mozambique/. Thomsen, Dorthe. 2013. Livshistorien. Denmark: Århus universitetsforlag. Thomson, Alistair and R. Perks (eds). 1998. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge. Toft, Jens. 2013. ‘Spor og tilblivelse’, in van der Meijden, Peter et al. (eds) Arkiver i kunst og visuel kultur, pp. 12–37. Copenhagen University, IKK/ Institut for Kunst og Kultur. Tonkin, Elisabeth. 2000. Narrating Our Pasts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tufte, Thomas and Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron (eds). 2006. The Communication for Social Change Anthology. New Jersy, USA: CFSC Consortium. Tuxen, Katja S. 2016. ‘Sprogeksperter begraver ‘negeren’ for altid’ (Quoting Rikke Andreassen, Roskilde University) https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/kultur/ sprogeksperter-begraver-negeren-altid (in Danish). Twark, Jill E. 2016. ‘Approaching History as Cultural Memory Through Humour, Satire, Comics and Graphic Novels’, Contemporary European History. Valluvan, Sivamohan. 2016. ‘Conviviality and Multiculture’, Young, 24(3), 204– 221. Van Dijck, José. 2007. Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford University Press. Verhoest, Pascal. 2019. ‘Seventh Century Pamphlets’, Theory, Culture & Society, 36(1), 47–62. Vernalis, Carol. 2013. Unruly Media. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

243

Vos, Stephanie. 2020. ‘Review: herri Is a Rare New Arts and Culture Journal from South Africa’, The Conversation 19 May. https://theconversation.com/ review-herri-is-a-rare-new-arts-and-culture-journal-from-south-africa-137805 (Visited January 2022). Wasike, Andrew. 2020. ‘Mozambique: Youth Radio Show Pushes for Gender Equality’, AA/Anadolu Agency https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/mozamb ique-youth-radio-show-pushes-for-gender-equality/1752590 (On InterAct Radio Station, Maputo). Weiner, Eugene (ed). 1998. Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence. New York: Continuum. Whitehill, Gaby. 2013. ‘Rapper Speaks Candidly About Her Early Life’, Gigwise https://www.gigwise.com/news/85726/. Willis, Paul. 1978. Profane culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Worley, Matthew. 2015. ‘Punk, Politics and British (fan)zines, 1976–84’, History Workshop Journal, 79, 76–106. Yiftachel, Oren. 1998. ‘Nation-building and the division of space’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 4(3), 33–58. Yiftachel, Oren, N. Rouhana and A. Ghanem. 1998. ‘Questioning Ethnic Democracy: A Response to Sammy Smooha’, Israel Studies, 3(2), 253–268. Young, David E. 2000. At Memory’s Edge. After Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press. Zupnik, Yael-Janette. 2000. ‘Conversational Interruptions in Israeli-Palestinian “dialogue” events’, Discourse Studies, 2(1), 85–110.

Index

A Absolutism, 40 Abu-Nimer, Mohamad, 126 Abu-Saad, I., 140 Accra, 94 Acme Attractions (fashion store, London), 183 Adam and Eve, 61 African National Memorial Bookstore, New York, xxi Afrikaans, 177 Afrikan boy, 212 Åge, Svend, xvi, xxiii, 54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 81, 96, 114, 224 Akomfrah, John, 191 Albertine, Viv, 187 Albertslund, Denmark, 64, 169 Albionphobia, 89, 92 Allegory, 166 Aleppo, 94 Ali, Muhammad, 5, 13 American Civil War (1860–1865), 79 Andreassen, Rikke, 32

Anthology, xiv, xv, 33, 83, 119, 120, 210 Anthology of American Folk Music (Harry Smith), xiv Apartheid, 83, 204, 207–209 Appadurai, Arjun, 16, 113 Arab, 87–89, 125–127, 129–133, 135, 137, 138, 143–145 Architecture, 43, 91, 93, 213, 217 Archive Archive Fever, xv Archive, hagiographic, xvii Library of Congress , 18, 25 Living Archives (project, Malmö University), 171 Swedish Folk Music Archive, Höga Kusten, 18 Archon, xiv, xv, 16 Ardalan, Parvin, 170–173 Arkheion, xv, 16 Art, xxv, xxvii, 22, 28, 35, 39, 41, 43, 57, 60, 95, 111–114, 116, 142, 160, 167, 168, 176, 178,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. H. Hansen, Mix Tape Memories, Palgrave Studies in Life Writing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40463-4

245

246

INDEX

179, 198, 203, 216, 217, 219–221, 225 craftmanship, xvii, 57 Artefact, xiv, 47, 96 Arulpragasm, Mathangi Maya (M.I.A.) Arul Pragasam, 214 Kala Pragasam, 215 Kali Pragasam, 220 Sugu Arulpragasam, 220 Ashby, Hal, 201 Ashkenazim, 140 Asmara, 94 Assman, Ilse, 209 Assmann, Aleida, 200 Atlas, xxiii, 55, 207 Aularong, Yol, 202 Australia, 62, 206, 211, 212 Authenticity, 95 Autobiography, xxiii, xxv, 28, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47–49, 112, 113, 179, 189

B Bahamas, The, 43 Bak, Sofie Lene, 68, 69 Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, 85 Ballet, xxvii, 46, 189, 193 Bande desinée, 114 Bandsalat (cassette tape tangle), 213 Barnes, John, 193 Barretta, Scott, 15, 17 Bartholemow Strydom, Craig, 207 Batson, Brendon, 182, 190 BBC, xxiii, 55, 56, 182 Beatles, The (Band), 185, 204 Beat, The (Band), 186 Beck-Phillips, U., 126 Beer Sheva, 129 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 168 Beit Hagefen (cultural center, Haifa), 131

Belgium, 78 Belonging, xviii, xxii, 29–31, 129, 168, 184, 191 Benjamin, Walter, 21 Bergen Belsen, xxiv, 75–77 Berlin wall, 105, 113–115, 119, 120, 122 Berntsen, Dorthe, 224 Beronilla, Pola, 179 Berry, George, 189 Bertelsen, Aage, 69, 70 Bertolini, Frida, 7 Besiakov, Ben, 49 Beyoncé, 204 Bhabha, Homi K., 46, 88, 133, 187, 188, 219 Bickford, Susan, 161, 163 Bildung, 168, 169 Bildungsroman, 114 Billed Bladet (magazine), 32 Biography, xxii, xxiv, xxvii, 6, 13, 79, 91, 93, 95, 96, 111, 113, 182, 194 Birmingham, UK, xxvii, 9, 181, 182, 186, 189, 191, 192 Bjendelloul, Malik, 206, 207 Björgvinsson, Erling, 171 Björkman, Greg, xx Black, Pauline, 185, 187 Black power (movement), 4, 12, 13 Blitz, The (nightclub, London), 185 Blixen, Karen (aka Isak Dinesen), xxii, 27–36, 83 BLTX (Zine collective, Philippines), 178 Bodysnatschers, The (Band), 185–187, 195 Bookstore, xxi, 4, 6–14, 16, 50, 179 Boothby, Hugo, 163 Boulanger, Nadia, 33 Bradshaw, Peter, 210 Bratislava, Slovakia, 67

INDEX

Brexit, 184, 192 Brixton, South London, 218 Broken Pencil (internet community and magazine), 168 Browning, Elizabeth, 198 Buckley, Tim, 15 Buhle, Paul, 112, 113 Burial (musician), 212 Burns, Jehnie, xx Burnton, Simon, 190 Busk, Kristian, 168 Buster, Prince, 185, 191 Byron, Lord, 89, 198 Byström, Kerry, 46, 188

C Cabral, Alyana, 178, 179 Callaghan, James, 186 Cambodia, 201–204 Cantello, Len, xxvii, 181, 182, 190 Caribbean, xvi, 39, 42, 43, 46, 48, 182, 186, 189–191, 217 Carmichael, Stokely, 3, 4 Carpenter, Megan, xiv Casanova, 33, 36 Casey, Edward S., xxviii Cassette tape, xiii, xvii, 71, 203 Catholic, 115, 166 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, xxvii Chambers-Letson, Joshua, 203, 204 Chapei Dong Veng (musical instrument), 204 Mastadong (musical instrument), 204 Charles, Ray, 204 Cheng, Susan, 216 Chennai, India, 214 Chignell, Hugh, 149 Children Teaching Children project , 130, 139

247

Chiles, Adrian, xxvii, 182, 190–192 Christian, 126, 127, 129, 132, 133, 140, 143, 156 Christie, Gregory R., 5 Civic, 130, 135, 139 Civil Rights movement, xxi, 4, 29 Clarke, Dorothy, 126 Clash, The (band), 183–185, 187, 212, 216, 218 Class, 43, 84, 92, 94, 137, 143, 151, 153, 171, 173, 193 Working class , 192 Clegg, Johnny, 208 Cliffs of Moen, Denmark, 68 Cobain, Kurt, 195 Cohen, Phil, xvii, xviii, 187 Collection, xiv–xviii, xxiv, xxviii, 6, 10, 13, 14, 16, 23, 30, 31, 34, 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 62, 81, 83–85, 89, 91–94, 96, 97, 111, 112, 114, 115, 120, 165, 166, 168, 177, 183, 191, 193, 196, 200, 224, 225 Colonial Exhibition in Tivoli, 1905, 39 Colony/Colonies, xxii, 39, 40, 43–45 colonialism, xix, 28, 90, 92, 182 colonial legacy, 40, 41 Columbia records, xxi Columbus, 43 Column, xvii, xxii, 15, 17–20, 27, 34, 93, 224 Comics, xvii, xxv, 64, 111–115, 121, 167, 178 Commandment. See Derrida, Jacques Commencement. See Derrida, Jacques Community, xiii, xxv, xxvi, 10, 14, 46, 63, 127, 133, 135, 141, 142, 150, 151, 153–155, 158–161, 163, 165, 167–169, 178, 188, 190, 206, 224 intentional community, 130, 133

248

INDEX

Compact Disc (CD), xvi, 30, 33, 213 Congo, 94 Contact hypothesis, 130, 144 Container/container, xix, 113 Conviviality, 19, 50, 51, 94, 182, 187, 190, 193 Cooke, Sam, 198 Cornelins, Frank, 49 Cornelins, Lotte, 47–49 Cornelins, Margit, 49 Cornelins, Sarah Eliza, 49 Cornelins, Victor, xxii, 4, 39, 189 Coventry, UK, 186, 192 Cox, Brian, 186 Crabbe, Tim, 190 Craft, xviii, xxviii, 60, 97 Crisell, Andrew, 149 Crooks, Garth, 190 Crowfoot, Dorothy, 90, 91 Crown colony, 87, 89, 91 Cunningham, Laurie, xxvii, 181, 182, 191, 215 Czechoslovakia, xxiii, 67

D Dakar, Rhoda, 187, 195 Dammers, Jerry, 185, 187 David, Adam, xxvii, 176, 178, 179 Davis, Angela, 3, 4 Davis, Gary Reverend, 21 Davis, Miles, 29 Dean, Nora, 209 de Certeau, Michel, 139 Delorme, Isabelle, 111, 112 Dementia, 23, 54, 64, 65 Democracy, 40, 135, 142, 167, 168, 174, 175 Demos, T.J., 189 Dengue Fever (Band), xxviii, 201–204, 210, 211 Denmark

Amager, 31 Funen, 67 Lolland, 54 Zealand, 67–69 Denmarks Radio (DR), 80 Depeche Mode (Band), 117, 122 Derrida, Jacques, xiv, xv, 16, 212 Detroit, 205, 207, 211 Dialogue, 71, 93, 137, 139, 166, 171 Diary/diaries, xvii, xxii, xxiv, xxv, 25, 27, 29–31, 33, 35–37, 53, 58–60, 62, 76–79, 81, 83, 84, 94, 96, 97, 111, 183, 185, 194, 195, 224 Dias slides, 97 Dichter, Shuli, 128, 130, 139 Difference, xviii, 19–21, 35, 47, 50, 83, 86, 93, 112, 116, 131, 134, 145, 152, 171, 187, 193, 197, 199, 206 Diplo (musician), 217 Dittmar, Jakob F., 112–115 Diversity, xvii, 85, 122, 125, 132 D.I.Y., xxx DJ, xiii, xxviii, 183 Dominican monk, 127 Double consciousness, 198, 199 Dragons, 203 Dragør, Denmark, xxii, 27, 28, 30 Drasin, Dan, 17 Drawing/drawings, xiv, xxviii, 53–55, 57, 58, 64, 96, 97, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 121, 134, 138, 147, 163, 166, 172, 195, 203, 219, 223, 224 Drewett, Michael, 208–210 Druse (ethnic group), 85 Du Bois, W.E.B., 4, 5, 9, 197–199, 211 Durban, South Africa, 176 Dylan, Bob, xxi, 17–20, 22, 206, 224

INDEX

E East Berlin, 114, 115, 122 Education, xxi, xxii, xxvi, 5, 7, 8, 12, 63, 89, 92, 94, 97, 126, 129, 131, 133, 139, 141, 147, 150–152, 156–160, 162, 174 alternative educational spaces/ projects, xvi Eelam Revolutionary Group of Students , 214 Ekström, Ylva, 163 Elay, Craig, 207, 208 Ellison, Ralph, 4 Ergenzinger, Kerstin, 176, 177 Ethiopia, 35, 94, 177, 204 Eurythmics (Band), 185 Everything but the Girl (Band), 195. See also Thorn, Tracey Ewald, Johannes, 35 Exhibitions, xv, xxii, 27, 29–32, 39–41, 45, 50, 62, 172, 216 Experience, xix, xxvi, xxvii, 3, 7, 8, 13, 28, 35, 50, 55, 56, 59, 60, 68, 76–78, 83–85, 87, 88, 90, 96, 112, 113, 116, 118, 119, 129–135, 137, 139, 141, 143–145, 147, 148, 153, 155, 158–162, 168, 170, 171, 173, 177, 179, 215, 218, 219, 223, 224 F Fable, 166 Face to Face encounter project, 131, 158 Fanzines/zines/newsletters, xxvi, 64, 111, 166 Fares, Amber, 142 Feminist Dialog (Movement, Malmö), 170 Fender Jazz Master, 204 Ferguson, Jennifer, 208

249

Feuerverger, Grace, 126 Finland, 41, 54 Fischer, Mark, 212 Fisk Jubilee singers, 197, 198 Fisk university, 197, 199 Flix (Felix Görman), 114 Florez, Elizabeth, 72, 174 Folklore Center, New York, 15, 17, 22 Folklore Centrum, Stockholm, xxi, 17, 18, 20 Football, xvi, xxvii, xxviii, 46, 64, 81, 118, 119, 179, 181–183, 186, 188–190, 193–195, 197, 200, 224 Forselius, 95 France, xxiv, 29, 78, 84, 87, 127, 165 Freiesleben, Birgit, 41 Freire, Paulo, 133, 137 Freud, Sigmund, 50, 192 Frischman, Justine, 216, 217 Elastica (Band), 216, 217 Frontier, 88 G Gabriel, Peter, 208 Gabrie, Teshome, 177 Garden of Eden, 61 Garvey, Marcus, 4 Gaston Lagaffe, 64, 114 Gavrias, Roman, 218 Gaza (strip), 129 GDR (Deutsche Democratische Republik, DDR), 34, 114–122 Generation, 3, 4, 10, 18, 50, 63, 113, 114, 117, 119–122, 141, 155, 174, 190, 200, 209 intergenerational, xxiv, 62 Generativity, 10 Genre, xvii, 28, 36, 37, 42, 53, 79, 84, 95, 111, 139, 170, 176, 194, 195, 210–213, 219

250

INDEX

Germany, xxiii, xxv, 40, 55, 56, 63, 69, 75, 77, 97, 113, 114, 117–119, 122, 140, 213 Gesamtkunstwerk, 176, 177 Getz, Trevor, 112 Gilroy, Paul, xxvii, 50, 181, 183, 189, 191–193 Ginsberg, Allen, 24 Ginsburg, Faye, 191 Giovanni, Nikki, 7 Givat Haviva, 130, 131, 135, 136, 139, 141, 145 Glissant, Éduoard, 46, 47, 51, 187–189, 196 Gold Coast, Ghana, 42, 43, 92 Graffiti, 216, 217, 219 Grandin, Catherine, 24 Grandin, Philomène, xxii, 17, 22, 23 Grandmaster Flash, xiii Great War/World War I, xxiv, 39, 41, 80, 81, 84, 88 Green Line, The (1967, Israel-Palestine), xxv, 128–130 Separation barrier, 130 Green Ray, The (Band), 195 Gustava Brandt, Jørgen, 33

H Habermas, Jürgen, 166 Hagiographic, xvii, 192 Hahn, Rachel, 215 Haifa, 129, 131 Halabi, Rabah, 126 Hall-Cathala, David, 126 Hall, Stuart, 191 Hall, Terry, 186 Hamre, Bjørn, 169 Hansen, Jensine and Jørgen, 58 Hansen, Karen Rigmor (Høg), xviii, 112, 115, 181 Hansen, Svend Åge, xxiii

Hansen, Thorkild, 39, 42 Harold and Maude (movie), 16, 201 Harris, Emmylou, 15 Harvard university, 197 Hassan, Jalal, 130 Hauntology, 212 Hawthorns, The (football stadium), 186 Haynes, Eugene, xxii, 4, 10, 27, 29–31, 33, 35, 36, 83, 195 Hazell, Bob, 189 Hebrew, 125, 126, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139, 143–145 Hemer, Oscar, 46, 188 herri Africa Open Institute, 175 Herry de Strandloper/Autshumato, 177 Mamphaga, Slovo, 175 Meekel, Jurgen, 175 Muller, Stephanus, 175 Ncume, Pakama, 175 Ntsukunyane, Tsepo, 175 Pantlin, Martijn, 175 Rolfes, Andrea, 175 Hertmans, Stefan, 13, 14, 80 Hewstone, Miles, 130 Hillberg, Raul, 68 Himes, Chester, 7, 9 Hippies, 137, 192 History, xiv, xvi–xviii, xxiv, xxv, 3, 6, 8, 11, 15, 20, 21, 32, 36, 40–43, 53, 54, 68, 70, 73, 77, 79, 81, 84, 88, 90–92, 107, 111–114, 116, 119, 122, 125, 129, 133–135, 140, 166, 171, 172, 177, 181, 183–185, 190, 194, 199, 202, 203 Hjorth, Ole, 20 Hjortsø, Thomas, 70 Hodgkin, Kate, xxiv, 85, 90, 96 Hodgkin, Thomas L., 54, 95, 125

INDEX

Hoffman, Eva, 170 Höganäs, Sweden, xxiii, 68 Høg, Bodil, 54 Høg Hansen, Anders, 20, 129, 132, 133, 136, 140, 163, 170, 173, 191 Holland, Jools, 206 Holliday, Billie, 20 Holst, H.P., 41 Holtzman, Ethan, 201 Holtzman, Zac, 201 Home, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, 9, 10, 13, 28–33, 35, 39, 43, 44, 54–58, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 83, 84, 88, 94, 116, 118, 122, 135, 139, 143, 150, 152, 168, 169, 172–174, 186, 191, 200, 201, 203, 210, 214, 221 Horsdal, Marianne, 63 Hotchpotch, xiv, 85 Hounslow, London, 215 House of Silence (Beit Ha-Doumia), 127 Hughes, Langson, 4, 5 Hussar, Bruno, 127, 128, 130, 134 Hvedekorn (Poetry magazine, Denmark), 64 Hybridity, 199 Hyun Kim, Michelle, 219

I Identity, xvii, xix, xxviii, 11, 13, 49, 63, 73, 115, 129, 132, 133, 135, 140, 168, 173–176, 187, 189, 191, 197, 203, 224 Immigration, 73, 88, 170, 171, 182, 185, 192 Inventory spaces, 41, 45, 46 IPod, xvi Isaiah (32:18), 125

251

Israel, xvi, xxv, 17, 71, 73, 75, 86, 87, 97, 125–133, 135, 137–140, 142, 143, 224 Italy/Italian, 18, 85, 87, 112, 145 Iversen, Jørgen, 44 J Jabsco, Walt, 185 Jackson, Michael (author, anthropologist), 161 Jaffna, Sri Lanka, 214 Jallov, Birgitte, 160 Jam, The (Band), 185, 187 Jara, Victor, 175 Jerusalem, 85, 86, 125–127, 129, 142, 143 Jew/Jewish, 23, 67, 72, 86, 88, 89, 91, 125–130, 132, 133, 135, 137–140, 142, 144, 193, 201, 217 Johnson, Samuel, 35 Journey, xxii, xxx, 5, 6, 12, 16, 23, 24, 42, 44, 49, 58, 61, 62, 81, 88, 92, 125, 144, 166, 168, 173, 207, 209, 211 Jukebox, xvii Juluka (Band), 208 Junge Pionir, 115 Jutland, Denmark, xxiii, 54, 67 K Kaganof, Aryan, xxvii, 166, 169, 175–177, 209, 210 Kavanagh, Dermot, 47, 188, 189, 192, 193, 195 Kermode, Mark, 185 Khmer, 201–204 Kildevil (alcoholic drink), 44 King, Michelle, 35, 195 King’s Cross, London, 216 Kitain, Amit, 130

252

INDEX

Kraenzle, Christina, 113, 115 Kreth, Rasmus, 69 Krug, Nora, 113

L Labour Monthly (newspaper), 89 Lacey, Kate, 163 Lady Gaga, 218 Lapina, Linda, 50, 192 Lappland, 54, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 81 Larsen, Alex Frank, 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 51 Latrun hills, Israel, 127 Lawrence, D.H., 89 Leaflet/leaflets, 57 Lebanon, 84, 87, 213 Le Meigen, Anne, 128 Letter/letters, xvii, xix, xxii, xxiv, xxv, 27–31, 33, 36, 37, 44, 50, 51, 54, 58, 79, 83, 85, 89–91, 93–95, 97, 135, 159 Letterman, David, 206, 218 Letts, Don, xxviii, 183, 185, 186, 192 Leyton Orient, 193 Library, 6, 18, 19, 25, 64, 210, 213 Life writing, xvii, xviii, xxv, 10, 50, 53, 64, 81, 96, 97, 111, 112, 114, 120, 121, 176, 195, 223 Lincoln University, Missouri, 30 Linnaeus, Carl, 60, 61 Linnet & Laursen, 57 Living Archives (Research project, Malmö University), 171 Lolland, Denmark, 54 Lomax, Alan, 22 London, UK, 167, 181, 213–215 Lönnblad, Irene, 213, 219 Lorde, 204 Lovatt, Melanie, xiv, 225 Lovell, Terry, 137

Loveridge, Steve, 219, 220 Love, Rob, xiv Lucey, Roger, 208 Ludewig, Julia, 113, 115

M Macuácua, Ernesto, 156, 157 Madness (Band), 183, 187, 191 Madrid, 189 Real Madrid, 189, 193 Magistrate (Guardian), xiv Malcolm X, 4, 13, 16, 183 Malmö Malmö University, xxvii, 33, 114, 171, 173, 175, 176 Rethinking Democracy research platform, 175 School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, xiii Women Making History, xxvi, 107, 168, 170, 173, 200 Mambrol, Nasrullah, 16 Mandate, British government/ mandate of Palestine, xxiv, 84, 88, 89 Maoz, Ifat, 126 Map/mapping, xviii, 56, 59, 69, 86 Living Maps network, xviii Mare, Admire, 163 Marine Girls (Band), 195 Marx, Karl, 212 Massachusetts, USA, 125 Mawil (Marcus Witzel), xxv, 113–119, 122, 224 Maya Mathangi Arulpragasam (M.I.A.), 197, 211, 219, 220 Mbuli, Mzwakhe, 208 McAdams, Don, 10, 49, 50, 193 Medium/media, xiv, 33, 111, 113, 148, 149, 163, 166, 217 Melchior, Bent, 70

INDEX

Melonmarken (Literature magazine, Denmark), 64 Memoir, xvii, xxiv, xxviii, 18, 22, 23, 50, 53, 77, 79, 83 Memorabilia, 49, 97, 195, 201 Memory as container, xix, xxx, 113 as process, 177 collective memory, xxviii, 19, 40, 113 erinnerung , 119, 224 hukommelse, 224 individual memory, xxviii intergenerational memory, 62 long term memories, 28 passive memory, 200 public memory, xxviii, 210 remembrance, xvii Reminiscence, xix social memory, xxviii testimony/testimonies, 20 working memory, 200 Messiah, 86, 87 Mewshaw, Michael, 59 Mhagama, Peter, 158 Michaux, Lewis, xxi, xxiv, 4–16, 21, 27, 28, 50, 51, 53, 80, 91, 96, 166, 167, 183, 193, 210, 224 Micheaux Nelson, Vaunda, 5 Midlands, UK, xxvii Migel, Parmenia, 27 Mimicry, 46, 188 Mitchell, Joni, 205 Mix Tape mixtape (Radio program, Denmark), 169, 215 Mix tape, xiii–xvi, xix, xx, 3, 93, 96, 97, 111, 113, 195, 197, 211–213, 217, 223, 224 mixtape (Radio program, Denmark), xiii, xx Mlega, Rebecca, xxix

253

Mods (subculture), 192 Mogensen, Michael, 69 Moncada, Maria, 145 Monjane Henriksen, Sarita, 147, 155, 157 Monsters, xviii Moore, Thurston, xx, 223, 224 Sonic Youth (Band), 223 Moorman, Marissa, 148 Moses (Old Testament), 199 MotVikt/Counterweight (column, Folklore Centrum magazine), 18 Mouffe, Chantal, 166, 167 Movement, xiii, xviii, xxvi, xxvii, 4, 22, 24, 34, 71, 72, 107, 125, 126, 133, 140, 166, 168, 170–173, 175–177, 185, 186, 200, 209, 214, 217 Mozambique, xxvi, xxix, 92, 96, 97, 137, 147, 148, 150, 152–158, 161, 163, 224 Museum, xv, xxii, 23, 27, 29–32, 77, 171, 172 Music classical, 29, 166, 168, 193 disco, 194 electronica, 224 folk, xxi, 11, 15, 17–22, 25, 62, 96, 193, 210 funk/favela funk/baile funk, 211 hiphop, xiii, 224 psychedelic, 201–203 punk, xxvii, 166, 183, 185, 211 rap, xiv, 211, 213 reggae, xxvii, 183, 185, 186, 194, 219 ska/ska revival, xxvii, 186, 187, 191, 195 soul, 29, 181, 185 surf, 202, 203 Muslim, 91, 129, 132, 143, 156

254

INDEX

Mutenda, Darmin, xxix, 147, 150, 155, 157, 161, 163

N Nakskov, Denmark, 44, 47–50 Nakskov exhibition (Kulturfestival), 2017, 41, 50 Nashville, Tennessee, 197 Nathan, Jesse Zerger, 127, 130, 133, 142 Nationalism, 91, 92, 114 Native Americans, 177 Nature forest, 59, 60, 64 mosquitos, 60, 61 moss, 60 mountain, 60, 79, 84, 85 trunk, 60 Wood, 59, 60 Nay, Kong, 204 Nazareth illit, 129 Negotiation policy (Denmark-Nazi occupiers), 69 Netherlands (Holland), xiv Neuengamme, Germany, 55, 56, 63 New Order (Band), 212 New romantic (subculture movement, UK), 186 New York City Central park, 9 Greenwich Village, 17 Harlem, xxi Washington Park, 17, 22 Nigeria, 91, 92, 212 Nikki (former girlfriend of Laurie Cunningham), 189 Nimol, Chhom, 201–203 Nkrumah, Kwame, 5, 93 Norway, 40, 54, 64, 191 Nottingham Trent University, UK, xxix

Theory, Culture & Society Centre, xiii Nowicka, Magdalena, 46, 51, 182, 188 Nureyev, Rudolf, 47, 189

O Obama, Barack, 3 October 1943 (transportation of Jews), xxiii, 54 Odumosu, Temi, 31, 46, 188 Olesen, 210 Olsson, Göran, xxviii, 3–5, 7, 183, 184, 186, 187, 191 Opacity, 46, 51, 177, 187–189, 196 Open/openness, xviii, 5, 10, 29, 30, 33–37, 46, 61, 96, 118, 135, 187, 188, 201, 202, 215 Oral history, 53, 72, 73, 112–114, 134, 224 Ørvad, Timme, 49 Osório, Conceição, 156, 157 Ottoman Empire, xxiv, 84 Oxford university, 92

P Painting/painter, 9, 63, 64, 177 Palestine, xvi, xxiv–xxvi, xxix, 54, 83, 84, 86–96, 112, 125, 128, 132, 141, 143, 147, 161 Pamphlets, 165, 166, 169, 179. See also Fanzines/Zines/Newsletters Panic, Paul, 61 Paper Alcohol Collective, 166 Pappé, Ilan, 140 Paris, France, 31, 33 Pars-pro-toto approach, 115 Passion, xiii, xvi, xxvi, 16, 18, 23, 49, 62, 115, 117, 127, 143, 166, 167, 175, 225

INDEX

Peace, 70, 78, 125–128, 133, 136, 141–143, 186, 211 Pedersen, Poul, 28 Persepolis , 112 Peruzzi, John, 202 Philippines, xxvii, 166, 168, 176, 178, 224 Phillip, Isador, 33 Phillipsen, Ingeborg, 29, 30, 32, 33 Phipps Bridge (South London estate), 214 Pirozzi, John, 202 Pixies, The (Band), 212 Playlist, xvi, xix The Playlist (Movie), xvii Spotify, xvii, 203 Polyphony, 171 Pop Culture Puke (internet zine), 168 Popular Memory Group (Academic collective, Birmingham, UK), 171 Portelli, Alessandro, 112 Powell, Enoch, 182 Private, xviii, xxv, 3, 14, 16, 31, 32, 34, 35, 62, 70, 72, 88, 161, 200, 210, 220 Processor/process, xix, 5, 7, 8, 13, 20, 43, 80, 84, 91, 97, 121, 134, 137, 139, 187, 207, 212, 220, 224 Public sphere, xxvi, 34, 130, 165, 166 Pulp (Band), 216 Jarvis Cocker, 216 R Rabinowitz, Dan, 140 Race/racialised, xxvii, xxviii, 11, 46, 79, 186, 188, 192, 193, 195, 208, 210 Radio, xiii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxvi, xxviii, 17, 20, 22, 24, 30, 55–57, 80, 97, 116, 147–151, 153, 155, 158–163, 202

255

Radstone, Susannah, 77, 81 Raines, Michael, xxiv, 78, 80, 83, 195 Raines, Phil, xxiv Ramla, 129 Rasmussen, Mai, 63 Rasselas, Prince, 35 Reclusion/reclusive, xviii, 6, 10, 14, 29, 31, 33–37, 46, 166, 187, 195, 210 Redemption/redemptive, xvii, 10, 11, 50, 193, 206, 207 Rees, Paul, xxvii, 182 Reeves, Bass, 13 Regis, Cyrille, 182, 189–191, 215 Rehnström, Sara, xxiii, 68 Rendall, Steven, 84, 95 Reynolds, Simon, 212 Ricoeur, Paul, 50, 133, 192 Ringgaard, Dan, 224 Riot Grrrl, 168 Ristilammi, Per-Markku, 46, 188 Ritzman, Daniela, 145 Roberts, Alberta, xxii, 39 Robinson, Sugar Ray, 9 Rodriguez, Sixto, xxviii, 205, 206, 208–211 Roland MC505, 212, 217 Romeo and Juliet, 93 Romer, Knud, 80 Romic, Bojana, 213 Romvong , 202 Ron, Pan, 202 Roskilde University, Denmark, xiii Rotolo, Suze, 22 Rotten, Johnny, 185 Rouhana, Nadim, 135 Roxy, The (punk venue, London), 183 Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory, 63 Rübner-Petersen, 45

256

INDEX

Rungstedlund, Denmark, 29, 32, 33, 35 Russia/Russian, xxiii, 41, 49, 55, 68, 86, 117, 215, 217 Rustin, Barbara, 126 Rutherford, Jonathan, 219

S Sade (Singer), 216 Safundi (journal), 210 Sagy, Shifra, 126 Said, Edward, 96, 125, 129 Sainte Marie, Buffy, 205 Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, 216 Salaime, Samah, 130 Saloon, 166 Sámi (Sámi speakin people), 58, 61, 62 Samuel, Raphael, 171 Sanderson, Jane, xx Satrapi, Marjane, 112 Savage, Jon, xxviii, 167, 183, 184, 186 Sawyer, Miranda, 213–215 Schleswig- Holstein, 40 School for Peace, Neve Shalom, Israel, 131 Sci-fi, 167 Scorsese, Martin, 17, 22 Seeger, Pete, 15 Segerman, Stephen, 207 Selborn, Clara, xxii, 29–31, 33 Selecter, The (Band), 185, 187 Selley, Tonia, 208 Sephardim, 129, 143 Serey Sothea, Ros, 202 Sewer, The (Bar, Detroit), 205, 210 Sex Pistols, The (Band)/Special AKA, 185, 187 Shakespeare, William, 186

Shared authority, 134 Sheffield, Rob, xx Shule, Vicensia, 35 Shuster-Elisassi, Noam, 142 Sihanouk, King, 202, 204 Silberstein, Laurence J., 140 Silverstone, Roger, 162 Simek, Nicole, 46, 188 Simon, Paul, 204 Simonpillai, Radheyan, 216 SingOut! (folk music magazine), 19–21 Singu Hansen, Happy, 162 Singu, Sarah, 148 Sisamouth, Sinn, 202 Sisario, Ben, 219 Skinheads (subculture), xxvii, 184, 191, 192 Slavery, xix, 8, 40–44, 50, 79, 197 Slithey Tove (Band), 195 Slits, The (Band), 187 Smith, Harry, xiv Smith, Patty, 24 Smooha, Sammy, 135 Solomon, Andrew, 85 Sorrow Songs , xxviii, 198, 199, 211 South Africa, xxvii, 83, 165, 168, 176, 177, 179, 206–210 Specials, The (Band), 185–187, 194 Spiegelman, Art, xxv, 112 Spirituals, 198, 211 Spirou, 114 Sri Lanka, 213–216, 219, 221 Ståbi, Björn and Hjorth, Ole (fiddler duo), 17, 20 Stasi, 115, 119 St. Croix, Caribbean, xxii Steel Pulse (Band), 208 Stencil print, 219 Stilvén, Pi, xxiii, 67 St. Louis, USA, 27

INDEX

Stockholm, xxi, xxii, 15, 17–19, 22–24, 62, 193, 206 Södermalm (city area), 18 Stoke City, 190 Storytelling, 8, 13, 22, 112, 113, 121, 131, 170 Streaming, xiv, xvi, 219 Strömberg, Fredrik, 112 Suede (Band), 217 Suggs (Graham McPherson), 191 Surveillance, xv, 16, 115 Swart, Hermann, 130 Sweden, xvi, xxiii, xxvi, 18–22, 24, 40, 41, 54, 58, 67, 69, 71, 73, 96, 126, 166, 170–175, 191 Skåne, Halland and Blekinge, 40 Stockholm, 17, 20 Symons, Arthur, 198 Syria, 84, 85, 87, 126

T Talking Heads (Band), 224 Tamale, Ghana, 94 Tamil, 213–215, 219 Tanzania, xxvi, 92, 96, 97, 147–149, 153–155, 157–159, 161, 163 Tarantino, Quentin, 218 Taylor, Diane, 200 Tegnér, Esiaias, 41 Tel Aviv, 127, 129 Tennyson, Alfred, 198 Territory uncharted, xviii, 49, 97, 118 undesignated, xviii Thatcher, Margaret, 182, 186, 192 Thavlov, Lis, 69 Theresienstadt, 69 The Usual Stuff (Det Sædvanlige Fis, Zine), 107, 169, 170 Third space (concept), 187, 219 Thomsen, Dorthe, 49

257

Thoreau, Henry David, 60 Thorn, Tracey, xxviii, 183, 185, 187, 194, 195 Three Degrees, The, 182, 186 Three Degrees, The, xxvii Timbaland (Musician), 212 Timbuktu, 93, 96 Tinsley, Meghan, 46, 188 Tivoli, Copenhagen, xxii, 39, 40, 45, 48 Tobacco, 60 Toft, Jens, 16 Tourism, 59 Traditionals, xiii, xix, xxviii, 13, 84, 93, 94, 129, 157, 170, 172, 198, 202, 204 Trankebar, India, 43 Travel, xvi, xxiii, 22, 23, 28, 49, 53, 55, 58, 59, 64, 83, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 169, 197, 204, 212 Trelleborg, Sweden, 68, 71 Tricky (musician), 46, 171, 188, 212 Tuxen, Katja S., 32 Twark, Jill E., 111 2-Tone (musical movement and record company, Coventry), 195 U University of East London, xviii, xxix, 77 Center for New Ethnicities Research, xiii University of Leicester, xiii Department of Museum Studies, xiii USA, xvi, 3, 7, 19, 21, 29, 43, 96, 112, 199, 206, 207, 219 V Valluvan, Sivamohan, 50, 193 van der Meijden, Peter, 16 van Dijck, José, 62

258

INDEX

van Ronk, Dave, 15 Veil (concept, Du Bois), 199 Venn, Couze, xxix Vergangeheitsbewältigung , 113 Verhoest, Pascal, 166, 167 Vernalis, Carol, 218 Vietnam, 9, 24, 91, 94, 204 Vinyl record, xiii, xiv Virgin Islands (Danish West Indies), xxii, 42, 43 Visage (Band), 185 Voltaire, 36 W Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom (Oasis of Peace), xxv, 72, 106, 125, 141, 142 Utopia, xxvi village, xxv, xxvi Wakeling, David, 186 Walkabout , 62 Washington, Booker T., 4 Wasike, Andrew, 158 Watt, Ben, 195 Weiner, Eugene, 126 Weiss, Valerie, xx Weller, Paul, 185, 203 West Bank, The, 126, 129, 140 West Bromwich, UK, xxvii, 189 West Bromwich Albion (football club), 186 Weyhe, Birgit, 113 Whaley, Simon, 195 White choir, xxiii, 46–48, 188 White gaze, 46, 188 Whitehill, Gaby, 216 Wilcannia Mob (Band), 212 Williams, Senon, 202, 204

Willis, Paul, 137 Wimbledon FC, 193 Winter of Discontent (UK, 1978–79), 186, 187 Wolfer, Michael, 91, 93, 95 Wolves/Wolverhampton FC, 189 Women Making History, xxvi, 72, 166, 168, 170, 171, 173, 200 Wood, 59, 60, 93 Working-through (durcharbeitung), 50, 192 World War II, xxiii, 91, 167, 172 Worley, Matthew, 166, 167 Wright, Richard, 4 Wright, Robert (interviewer, Lewis Michaux), 7–10 Wunderkammer, 200

X X-Files, The Mulder, xviii Quagmire, xviii Scully, xviii

Y Yiddish, 23 Yiftachel, Oren, 135, 140 Young, Izzy, xxi, 11, 18, 19, 22, 25

Z Zaoli troupe, 218 Ivory Coast , 218 Zines. See Fanzines/Zines/ Newsletters Zionism, 91, 138, 139 Zupnik, Yael.Janette, 139