- 1 “Voix de nos aïeux: Que faire des tout premiers enregistrements sonores de musiques et voix togolai (...)
During the workshop in the main hall of the Université de Lomé library.
Photo: Mèhèza Kalibani
1The debate on African objects from colonial contexts in European museums has gained momentum in Europe and Africa in recent years thanks to the restitution report written by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in 2018 (Sarr and Savoy 2018). In addition to the tangible objects addressed in this debate, objects of an intangible or hybrid nature (intangible being those on a storage medium) are comparatively less discussed and sometimes overlooked altogether.
2The “Voices of Our Ancestors (1900–1930)” workshop at the Université de Lomé in November 2023 focused on this latter category. It dealt mainly with sound recordings made in a colonial context, currently held at the Berlin Phonographic Archives, and in particular those from Togo. I was a history PhD student at the time at Tübingen (Institut für Geschichtsdidaktik und Public History) and organized this workshop with the support of the Université de Lomé Literature and Germano-African Identities (LIGA) research group. There were more than seventy participants from a range of fields, including university professors, students, cultural promoters, heritage officers, etc.
3The workshop’s principal aim was to present an inventory of these recordings to a Togolese audience and to engage in joint reflection on their scientific, cultural, and didactic potential in Togo. These sound objects owe their existence to the phonograph, a revolutionary invention by Thomas Edison (1847–1931) in 1877, that marked a turning point in the history of communication. This innovation made it possible to record and retransmit any sound. During the German colonization of Togo, missionaries, ethnologists, and colonial administrators, among others, used the phonograph to record songs, instrumental music, and the words of the colonized, sending these recordings to German ethnologists and linguists.
4The first part of the workshop, titled “Inventories and Production Conditions,” began with a presentation of a list of historical recordings from Togo held in European institutions, along with an analysis of the colonial dimension of these sources through their production conditions. Access to the historical collections of these archives remains extremely difficult for users based in Africa.
5At the request of the moderator, Professor M. C. Obikoli Assemboni (Université de Lomé), the participants shared their knowledge concerning these recordings and their interest in listening to them; it was a first-time experience for most of them. As the main facilitator, I then presented various European archives likely to have conserved these historic sound recordings from Togo between 1900 and 1960. These include the phonographic archives of Berlin (Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv) and Vienna (Phonogrammarchiv der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften); the sound archives of Berlin’s Humboldt University (Lautarchiv der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin); as well as those of the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris and the sound archives of the Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme in Aix-en-Provence. I briefly explained the technical mechanism by showing a wax cylinder, the phonograph’s recording medium, as well as the principles of saving and replaying recorded sound and their effects on sound quality over time. I then presented an inventory of existing Togo recordings in Germany, based on the work of Susanne Ziegler (Ziegler 2006; Lotz et al. 1998). Of the nearly twenty thousand historical recordings held in Germany’s two main sound archives (Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv and Lautarchiv der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), more than two hundred, dating from 1902 to the 1930s, relate to Togo, a large proportion of which are digitized and accessible as audio files divided into various collections according to the archive’s nomenclature: “Archiv Ewe I,” “Archiv Ewe II,” “Smend Togo I,” “Smend Togo II,” “Stoevesandt Togo,” “Witte Togo,” “Waldow Kamerun,” etc.
6The beginning of the workshop also involved listening to excerpts from ten or so recordings of vocal or instrumental music made in Togo, then a German colony, or in Germany during and after the colonial period, all of which focused on local cultures and languages. We can assume that these recordings were carried out in a climate of violence given the nature of the individuals who initiated them, in particular colonists such as Julius Smend (1873–1939), known for his brutal actions (Kalibani 2019, 30). As the writings of missionaries and colonists show, the Germans of the time considered themselves superior to the colonized people whose voices they recorded. Their apprehension of the music and culture of those colonized reflected nineteenth-century evolutionist currents. In their quest for the origins of mankind, European scientists considered the cultures of these peoples, whom they described as “primitive,” to be an earlier stage of European civilization, Europe having already reached the ideal civilizational level to be the de facto model to follow.
7The second part of the workshop focused on the issue of “authenticity” in the recordings’ content, prompting reflection on the extent to which they can be considered genuine sources of Togolese culture. To enrich the discussion, I chose a recording that I suspected might be problematic. It was listened to collectively, then discussed, as recommended by anthropologist Irene Hilden (Hilden 2021). This is cylinder thirty-six from the “Smend Togo I” collection (BPhA, VII WS 0281, VII W 5322), which includes a song in Kabyè (Togo’s language) that settler Julius Smend had described in his documentation as accompanying work in the fields. However, the native Kabyè participants immediately recognized that it was a song specific to initiation ceremonies for young girls (or “Akpema”) in Kabyè country. Given the lack of clear indications about the colonized people in the archives or inconsistencies in existing documentation, I encouraged participants, especially the academic audience, to collaborate with the “source communities” throughout research carried out on these artifacts.
8A second collective listening session took place in order to deconstruct and identify the content of a recording whose documentation was incomplete. This was cylinder eight from the “Smend Togo II” collection (BPhA, VII W 5337, VIII), featuring a tom-tom drum. Once again, the sound was played to the audience without mentioning the origin of the music, so that possible elements of Togolese culture could be recognized. Two main perceptions emerged: some assumed it was a type of drumming language (“talking drum”) of the Ewe of southern Togo, while others felt it was more akin to a rhythm used by the Akan in Ghana. The meaning that the collector (Julius Smend) had attributed to this sound was met with considerable skepticism among the participants, once revealed. Indeed, Smend had noted that this “talking drum” sound was played during funeral ceremonies, which they found implausible given its specific rhythm. Although the message of the instrument could not be identified, the mention of the Akan offers a clue for future research on this recording.
- 2 See Rémy Jadinon, “Les défis du partage des archives sonores (coloniales) au Rwanda” (The challenge (...)
9The third and final part of the workshop focused on the current potential of these audio files and their eventual restitution to Togo. Several questions governed the discussions: after analysis of the conditions under which the materials were produced, and despite doubts expressed about the value of the descriptions associated with some of them, is there a desire for these sound objects to be returned to Togo and shared with the “source communities,” in digital form, as was the case, for example, with the mining archives handed over on hard disks to Rwanda by the Royal Museum for Central Africa in 2020 (Africamuseum 2020: 48)?2 Is there a risk of these objects becoming a source of conflict among Togolese people? Is their content potentially sensitive for certain cultures? Would it be wise to make these objects accessible to the public online?
10Although opinions were sometimes divided, the majority of participants expressed their interest in having access in Togo to these recordings, opening up new didactic, scientific, and artistic possibilities to them: they could encourage new fields of research, be used to teach history in schools, or be a source of inspiration for artists.
11The “Voices of Our Ancestors” workshop took an in-depth look at Togo’s colonial sound recordings, highlighting the challenges and opportunities involved in conserving this historic cultural heritage. It revealed the gulf between their conservation and use in Europe and the lack of awareness of these intangible objects in former colonies. This highlighted both the importance of closer collaboration with the “source communities” and the strong interest in Togo for the restitution of these recordings. On a practical level, the workshop was followed by recommendations that I presented a few months later to the Berlin Phonographic Archives (Kalibani 2023).