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The prologue connects the histories of temporary migration of African soldiers to Europe during World War I with the migration from Africa to Europe in the present. It discusses the absence of memories and records of the earlier migration in European historiographies. It then examines the history and nature of the Lautarchiv (sound archive) at Humboldt University in Berlin, where recordings of African soldiers and civilians, made in the early twentieth century, are held, and suggests that we understand the speakers on the recordings as the makers of the Lautarchiv. In Fragment I, Samba Diallo, a soldier from Bougounie in French Sudan (now Mali), sings in Bamanakan of the war as “the catcher of the living.”
The prologue connects the histories of temporary migration of African soldiers to Europe during World War I with the migration from Africa to Europe in the present. It discusses the absence of memories and records of the earlier migration in European historiographies. It then examines the history and nature of the Lautarchiv (sound archive) at Humboldt University in Berlin, where recordings of African soldiers and civilians, made in the early twentieth century, are held, and suggests that we understand the speakers on the recordings as the makers of the Lautarchiv. In Fragment I, Samba Diallo, a soldier from Bougounie in French Sudan (now Mali), sings in Bamanakan of the war as “the catcher of the living.”
The introduction presents acoustic recordings from the Lautarchiv (sound archive) in Berlin as acoustic fragments of a polyphonic historical sound track of colonial knowledge production, which were sequestered in an archive for a century. These objectified recorded moments of speech are introduced as components of larger repertoires, which in some cases turn out to be splinters of the fabric of a discursive field transmitted in form of songs and stories. Although they have been isolated from a flock of interconnected utterances and ossified in the archive, these fragments may still complicate our understanding of voice. Close listening and translation allow readers to listen in on moments of knowledge production in German POW and civilian camps. In Fragment II, Jámafáda from Burkina Faso speaks in Mòoré of his experience of being conscripted into the French army and of losing his brothers on the way to Europe.
Chapter 1 interweaves the speech recordings of the Senegalese speaker Abdoulaye Niang with the history of acoustic recording as a practice of colonial knowledge production Germany. Holding these two strands together, the chapter challenges the tale of the Lautarchiv in Berlin as a result of the achievements of German linguists and the introduction of the phonograph. Abdoulaye Niang is presented as one of the makers of the archive. This decolonial strategy of listening allows us to hear Niang’s articulations of critique of French practices of conscripting soldiers to serve in World War I in Europe. His echo in the archive offers an occasion to discuss the performativity of voice in Wolof, something not addressed in the written documentation at the archive. The chapter introduces the practice of close listening and contrasts the depersonalization and dissociation of the recorded voice from the speakers in the process of colonial knowledge production. In Fragment III, Asmani ben Ahmad speaks in Kiswaheli of his travels in the region of the Comoro Islands.
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