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November 2010: Are we seeing the full picture? In early November, I visited the Beijing Opera. Seeing the abstract masks and watching the play as it unfolded, I remembered a play I had seen in May in Johannesburg, South Africa. The play Umoja reports on the history of African music from the time before white (illegal) immigrants arrived to the present. It moved and touched me a lot. It had so much grace and beautiful movements, full of energy and social power. Now, sitting in the Beijing Opera, I couldn't help to ask why we in general think with respect that China represents an old, well developed culture, but don't pay the same respect to the cultures in Africa. They are much older, as illustrated for example in 'Flesh and the Devil' by Kolla Buff. Yes, African cultures may have taken a different paths, closer to nature and less abstract than the Chinese culture, but nevertheless have gone through a long and deep thinking full of contemplation on the basics of being human on Earth. Unlike in China, in Africa the white immigrants destroyed much of the cultures, social structures, and the soft witnesses of history. And with this, we lost a huge part of the picture of humanity's history and got heavily biased toward those cultures that wrote history with stones.
Upper photo: Beijing opera, November 2010, Beijing, China. Lower photo: Scene from Umoja, Johannesburg, South Africa, May 20, 2010.
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