This weekend, I visited the Keti Koti festival in Berg en Dal, the Netherlands. At this annual event, the successful fight against the Dutch enslavement of people in Suriname and the Caribbean is commemorated and celebrated. ‘Keti Koti’: the chains are broken.
The day was filled with art: music, dance, ritual, theatre, the spoken word, visual arts… Many of those art works moved me tremendously. For example the stories told by Musivata Onias Akwensetio Gunguka Landveld about his name, its meanings and the ways in which it has been twisted and misunderstood. Or the complex, ever-changing rhythms and paces of the music by Black Harmony and of the Winti dance performance by Untold.
These art works, speaking of the history and long-term effects of slavery, were deeply political.
It reminded me of a lament I heard several times recently. Several people recently expressed their frustration or disappointment to me that so much art nowadays is political, is engaged, has a message. Sometimes you just want to switch off and have fun, don’t you?
Now this is undoubtedly true. But I have come to believe that art that is meaningful to me – even meaningful by offering ‘fun’ – is never without political depth. Or, to say the same thing differently: that art that only amuses, is eventually uninteresting. Why do I think that?
My visit this weekend also reminded me of an evening I had a few weeks back that seemed designed for just that: to have fun. It was a piece of musical theatre with excellent singing that did not ask too many difficult questions. Or perhaps I should say that the difficult questions it asked were rather abstract (does fate exist?) without relating these to anyone’s actual life or circumstances. This evening left me a little empty, wondering why the show had been created in the first place. The book the show was based on is a magical satire of life and art under a soviet regime (among other things), and was written by someone who knew all about these themes. The performance might have adapted the book to talk about experiences that are equally pertinent to its makers or audiences nowadays. However, I did not get the sense that the makers had done this. They had not searched their own souls; had not looked deeply enough within themselves.
A greater contrast with yesterday’s Keti Koti festival could not be imagined. It was abundantly clear that these art works were about something, that they had meaning: for their makers; for that majority of the audience who are intimately acquainted with the long-term negative consequences of slavery, such as racism; and for that minority, including myself, who are more likely to benefit from racism, and for whom these works were a lesson and a message. Yes, they were entertaining. But they were more. And they made me realise that even entertainment itself only ‘works’ when it is more than a layer of paint: when there are layers and layers of wood underneath, with tree rings going back centuries.
A joke is only funny when it steps on someone’s toes – someone whose toes are not already Black and blue from being stepped on. A dance only makes us want to move along when it is more than a choreography: when we see in the eyes and gestures of the dancer that it stems from a need to dance. Virtuosic mastery of an instrument serves the telling of a story. A metaphor in a lecture should show us something new. I am not talking about art at the service of a party or specific political goal, but at the service of life and people.
After my visit to Keti Koti, I reflected on my recent ‘post-covid’ burst of visits to plays, dances, films, processions, performances and readings over the past months. And I realised that the ones that had stuck with me, and had come to mean something to me, all were somehow rooted in political urgency. The drag shows, the immersive post-human dance experiences, the lectures about faith in a secular society, the dramedies about trans men in cis dressing-rooms, the hilariously audio-described parodies/homages to cheesy Disney songs… They were about the will to speak and be heard, breach loneliness, connect to people, create a sanctuary for life and love, and be allowed time and space for pleasure.
These art works are no abstract experiments in artistic form. They are ways of processing experience, passing on heritage, teach, communicate, and accomplish other things that are directly meaningful for our animal souls, our social bodies.
Historian at large 