By Ana Temudo

Emergent Conversation 21

This essay is part of the series Cultural Rights are Human Rights: Decolonizing Museums through Repatriation and Source Community Partnerships, PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 21.

It is the trope of our times to locate the question of culture in the realm of the beyond.

Homi Bhabha (2004, 1)

“Culture is communication,” is a simple yet profound phrase that struck a chord with me when I first heard it on television. This resonating statement forms the foundation of this short essay, as I contemplate the present-day relationship of the people of Guinea-Bissau with their cultural heritage using their talking drum (bombolom) as a starting point. The bombolom is a community drum used in coastal villages of Guinea Bissau. It is understood as a sacred object used to transmit messages, that traverse and shorten distances. Used to announce deaths and mourning ceremonies, its beating transmits a coded language that only trained people can decipher.

The will to trace the meaning of the path taken by the objects, in the layers they accumulate from their colonial presence to the post-colonial one, turns the bombolom into the metaphor of this journey. Through transmitting messages at a distance, this drum asserts itself in the immateriality of the sound it propagates, eternally displaced and continuously re-contextualized. The bombolom symbolizes the transformation operating in Guinean culture from the colonial to the post-colonial era, and projects the possibility of being in movement, displaced, transnational, of being in space in the interstice—and yet still existing. Additionally, the word bombolom transmits an image of infinity through its graphics and phonetics. In evoking A. Saint-Exupéry’s (2001) words “what is essential is invisible to the eye,”  perhaps we can venture that, when considering African material heritage, the importance does not lie in the objects themselves, but in the paths they travel and in the way in which, crossing different contexts and historical times, they are read by the individuals and communities to which they belong, even if only temporarily. Said (1993) emphasizes the importance of describing the interwoven histories of these objects, and Homi Bhabha (2004) alerts us to the fact that our commitment to cultural differences can be consensual or conflicting. For Bhabha (2004) the term “beyond” signifies spatial distance, marks progress, promises the future (5); “to be beyond” is to inhabit a space of change (10). Along the same line of thought, Basu (2011) highlights the importance of diasporic contexts, such as European museums, in constructing the biography of African objects while Nyamnjoh (2017) emphasizes  the significance of concepts like “frontier,” “incompleteness” and “conviviality” as a “complementary mode” to help understand the reality of post-colonial Africa.

From this perspective of dismantling borders, of thinking of nomadic and transcultural objects in transit (Restany 2006) within a global and changing world, I will analyze the first encounter I had with the Guinea-Bissauan diaspora inside the walls of the National Museum of Ethnology (NME) in Lisbon. These meetings were inspired by the concept of conviviality (e.g. Gilroy 2004; Nyamnjoh 2017; Rodríguez 2020) as something that defines a way of being together, of accepting diversity without questioning conceptions of ethnic or racial difference. This insight inspires strategies of remembering in common (Mbembe 2019) and breaks down barriers of thought allowing to consider today’s post-colonial world in a space of freedom (Mbembe 2020).

The Guinea-Bissau Collection of the National Museum of Ethnology:  A Brief Context

In order to understand the importance of colonial collections to specific diaspora groups, it is crucial to highlight the context of how these collections from Guinea-Bissau were incorporated into the former Overseas Museum, now known as the NME in Lisbon. It is important to remember that, although we do not have evidence of any explicitly illicit looting of ethnographic or artistic pieces from Guinea-Bissau, the collection was made in colonial times, and therefore the conditions of possibility for a consensual just exchange between African and Portuguese did not exist. Even colonial documents that I consulted questioned the manner in which some art traders were acquiring their collections in Portuguese colonies.

The Overseas Museum’s acquisition policies were created by a 1965 decree[1] that favored the aesthetic over the ethnographic dimension of the objects. The major collector of the Overseas Museum collection was Victor Bandeira (b.1930). Bandeira was an art dealer who became an informal collaborator with the Museum and the main person responsible for the acquisition of the most significant pieces stored there (Temudo 2022). The inventory files describe the acquisitions he made in Guinea-Bissau during the colonial period, and the museum’s annual records testify to the monetary amounts allocated to Bandeira for the purchase of objects. Two other important collectors in the history of this institution were the colonial administrators António Carreira and Fernando Rogado Quintino. As anthropologist, Celeste Rogado Quintino (Rogado Quintino’s niece) told me during a conversation in 2022[2], Carreira and Rogado Quintino subscribed to a diffusionist paradigm, and collected objects that Duquette (1983) would later categorize as utilitarian or ludic.

Subject / Object – A Necessary Dialogue  

In Africa’s Diasporas of Images (2005), Peffer argues that objects are diasporas in themselves in the sense that they can hybridize subjects and their beholders in different configurations according to the historical context. Nowadays in Portugal, the decolonial critique is questioning the place of belonging of these objects, mostly through a political lens (Temudo 2021).  In contrast, in Guinea-Bissau, as we shall see below, culture is not seen by the majority of citizens as a priority in their lives. The diaspora groups that I interviewed, however, were very knowledgeable about the traditional culture of their country. Although they all highlighted the ethnic diversity of Guinea-Bissau and the regime of  “secrecy” in which the ethnic groups lived in relation to their practices, all the interviewees referred to objects and practices that do not only concern their ethnic group. The interviewees gave relevance to the ethnic dimension of Guinean culture, simultaneously referring to the importance of globalization, acculturation, and cultural representation abroad.  Against my initial expectations, none of them questioned the nature and politics of how the objects were acquired during the colonial period.

It should be noted that of the group of around 10 interviewees, only one was over 35 years old and, therefore, all of them were born after independence. They recognized the role and importance of history and memory institutions such as museums, and expressed a wish to have an institution which could help them understand their past, although admitting that it would be difficult to maintain a museum in Guinea Bissau since they expressed that “culture is not a priority.” These groups also acknowledged the importance of cultural transformations, presenting the Carnival as the highest expression of the national culture. Carnival is a one-week cultural performance with street dances and masquerades, and is a cultural expression inherited from the colonial period but still very vital in today’s Guinea Bissau.[3] When we left the museum, they expressed satisfaction at having visited a museum they did not know about and the desire to return.

Following the snowball method (Parker, Scott, and Geddes 2019), these contacts were possible after I met a number of emigrants who led me to others. I started this research with a small group of four Guineans from different ethnic groups who knew each other from Bairro da Presidência in Bissau. Having lived in Portugal for several years, they are known among the diaspora in Lisbon as the “Sons and friends of Pilum” (a neighborhood of Bissau). They form a multi-ethnic community that gathers for parties and other celebrations. This first face-to-face meeting at the NME was arranged with Saliu Djeme, a 33-year-old Baiote, with whom the first contact was established. My contact with Djeme led to the participation of Ampa Sanha (29), João Lopes (32), and Maria José (55), self-identified as Felupe, Manjaco and Papel respectively.[4] As they all have jobs, and Djeme studies during the week, I arranged a visit to the permanent exhibition of the Museum for a Saturday afternoon.

None of the interviewees knew of the existence of this museum, nor of the collections from their country of origin. The permanent exhibition does not show any objects from Guinea-Bissau. It instead exhibits other objects  from Africa, specifically from Angola, which, as they said, are very similar to the Guinean ones. When we got next to the Angolan bombolom they immediately commented: “This is one of the most sacred objects in our culture. Only a few can touch it, and it transmits messages from a distance. It serves to announce a funeral” (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022). They told me the same about the horn from Angola, also displayed in the permanent exhibition, adding that only those who are authorized can touch the horn that plays “different types of sounds” depending on the event it is being played for. They were reading the objects from other countries and ethnic groups through their cultural lenses and experiences while making original connections and communications across the African cultural heritage that enriched my own perception of it and reflection on culture as communication.

They had never been to a museum, and I reminded them that many European countries house African objects in their museums, obtained from their colonial conquests.  I wanted to understand the importance given by this Guinean diaspora to their heritage, and which objects they valued the most nowadays. They stressed the importance of music and textiles in Guinea-Bissau. According to them, the comb cloth—a particularly large and long woven textile done by local weavers using a very specialized kind of loom—is the most expensive and famous cloth in Guinea. It is a cloth offered at important moments as a form of homage. For Sanha, the cloth “has to be worn by the person who is honored at the time of the tribute,” and it can have a written phrase “that reinforces the message that the person who offers it wants to convey” (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022). They also told me about the importance of the clothes they wear at important moments, about the differences between the dress code of Christians and Muslims, how the customs change, and that almost all these differences are blurred when they migrate to Europe.

These Guineans attributed the creation of certain objects to specific ethnic groups. For them, the Pepéis and Manjacos make cloth, the Bijagós make masks, the Felupes make moringos (pitchers for carrying water), and the Fulas and Bijagós make drums. I asked if they knew the National Ethnographic Museum of Guinea-Bissau (Sarró and Temudo 2021), and they said no. When I described the type of objects that were in storage at the National Ethnological Museum (e.g. music instruments, everyday objects, dance masks, religious sculptures), Saliu Djeme replied:

It seems that you know more about the history of Guinea-Bissau than we do. We have different ethnic groups there. For example, I am Baiote, he is Manjaco and she is Papel. (…) We have forty or so ethnic groups, so we have different cultures (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022).

The different ethnic groups visit each other’s festivals, but admit that there are rituals to which only some ethnic groups are invited. Saliu Djeme recalled the case of the Balanta fanado (male initiation ritual): “Not just any ethnic group is allowed to go” (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022). They choose the ethnic groups that can attend their fanado. In Portugal, this diaspora group celebrates its culture through music and festivals of traditional dances. They believe that because their heritage is delocalized from their country, it allows them to get to know it better. Nevertheless, and due to the division into ethnic communities in Guinea-Bissau, there are many rituals and objects that are kept secret despite the curiosity shown by other ethnic groups. Djeme explains:

A person who does not go to the villages does not know these stories, these objects. Most students, for example, are from the city of Bissau and are not connected to the objects that are here (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022).

Djeme thinks that the objects brought from Guinea-Bissau by the Portuguese during the colonial era function as “a souvenir.” In his opinion, bringing these objects to Portugal allows him to have a knowledge of the country’s history that he himself did not have until he left Guinea:

Here in Portugal I’m more aware of the importance of Guinean heritage. Who will have the time in Guinea to tell you that this object is like this, like this, and like this? A person of any ethnicity only knows his own ethnicity. For example: I’m Felupe and I don’t know the Manjaco ethnic group, what their traditions are. Sometimes the Manjacos really limit themselves and don’t tell you their traditions, but with the Portuguese and others it’s easier. If you go and do a study in Guinea, you’ll know more about things than we do. The Manjacos will be more open with you. When a foreigner comes, he has more chance of knowing things than any native son from any neighboring village (Fieldnotes, June 26, 2022).

Our conversation ended with the promise to visit the African storage, which is only accessible by appointment during the week. Throughout the following weeks, I arranged other individual and group meetings inside and outside the NME. Themes such as multiculturalism and tradition were discussed. The space for dialogue emerged without a pre-defined agenda. The themes were linked together in a space of freedom (Mbembe 2020) and with the common will to deconstruct the great narratives and find answers in the deviations that the mainstream discourse proposes. Like the sound projected by the bombolom drum, this research is still very broad, thus it is still impossible to draw definitive conclusions. 

Ana Temudo is a PhD candidate in Heritage Studies, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, School of Arts, Research Centre for Science and Technology of the Arts. The doctoral project “Representational Politics of Guinean Heritage in Portuguese Museums in the Transition from Colonial to Postcolonial Period: Histories, Transits and Discourses” is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Union (EU). PhD individual scholarship REF 2020.08039.BD. E-mail: anatglima@gmail.com. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2463-3975.

Notes

[1] Decree 46254 of March 19, 1965.

[2] Celeste Rogado Quintino, semi-structured interview to interviewer Ana Temudo, Zoom, 05.07.2022.

[3] Ethnographic information on Bissauan carnival was obtained in Guinea-Bissau in  2023 among young people and cultural representatives of the country. The results of this research will be presented in a forthcoming article.

[4] All the interviewees gave their consent to be identified in the research.

Works Cited

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