BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Ethiopia is an early starter and a late achiever in many things. We are almost the first country in the world in architecture (Axum, Lalibela, Tiya, Harar Walls…etc.) but we have now become imitators of foreign building design models because we have not developed our own architectural know how. We were the only country in Africa for having a written script dating back to many centuries but we are at the tail end of modern literary development even by African standards.
We pioneered modern cinema (with the help of foreigners of course) and produced the first feature film fifty or sixty years ago (Hirut Abatwa Manew). Yet, we are now at the tail’s end of cinematic art even by African standards. The older generations often thought and believed that “Ethiopia is first in everything”. Now we are only first in long distance race. We have lost the race for invention, creativity and technology unless we substitute imitation or copy paste for creativity.
We are also among the first countries in Africa, if not in the world, to start modern publishing with offset machines back in the 19th century. However, we have not so far proved competent enough to produce paper for printing and we are still importing paper pulp from abroad often at exaggerated prices paid in hard currency. How can our writers and publishers afford the rising costs of paper and other inputs? The good news is that a local company has recently announced that it is going to produce print paper here at home. Right or wrong? So many good news have remained simply good news in the past. This problem has been turning in cycles for many decades and no solution has so far appeared on the horizon.
Despite our technological lag, we have produced some of the best artists in the person of Afewerk Tekle, Gebre Kristos Desta and the likes. Afewerk was an international artistic icon who did not enjoy the respect he deserved while he was alive due to the notorious culture of celebrating the dead while ignoring them when they were alive. How many of our best authors, artists and teachers have ended up in the gutters and in the streets or died as they were ignored by society and even by their loved ones and were collected from the garbage damps thanks to the works of Good Samaritans?
As a people we love arts, music and books but we do not care about the producers of those beautiful things. We have a natural bent for creativity but we often ignore the creators who have given us all those good things. How many of the singers and song writers whom we celebrated or glorified in their younger years are now crippled and deprived of humane treatment as old age and poverty consigned them to bed-ridden existence? Suffice it to turn our attention to the litany of complaints and appeals for help we hear coming almost every day over the media, leaving aside the number of deceased artists, shrouded as they were in veils of anonymity. One of the reasons why arts and literature did not grow in Ethiopia as they should is our careless approach to the artists who gave all they had only to be thrown away like garbage and forgotten in their old ages. A society that does not respect or take care of its artists and creators in general may not be able to grow spiritually and this is one of the many dilemmas we are facing when it comes to developing our arts and literature.
The art of writing in Ethiopia is as old as Christianity but it could not develop as fast as it could before the importation of the first modern printing press that was used not to print books but newspapers. There were a couple of printing houses in the then Italian colony of Eritrea but they were owned and operated by foreigners and published books that promoted their colonial interests. Had modern printing started with traditional education in Ethiopia or the use of Ge’ez as a medium of written communication, the country could have been one of the leading countries in Africa and the world in the development of its arts and literature. Compared to some of the late starters in technology as well as in arts and literature, we are not only slow movers but also conservatives beyond belief. And when it comes to technology, we may even mostly be impassive onlookers. How many years have we been dragging our feet to introduced satellite TV technology while our neighbors Kenya and even war-torn Somalia enjoyed the latest communication technologies including the mobile phone?
As some foreigners sometimes portray us in their books and their media, we Ethiopians might be suspicious of change, and slow to adopt or adapt to new things. We may be suspicious of the real intentions of foreigners because they have duped us, cheated us or taken advantage of us on many occasions. Adwa was in part the outcome of colonial duplicity. Suspicion on our part might be legitimate doubt if you like. But why are we suspicious of new technologies or new ways of doing things in this century when every society is rushing to play catch up with new things in almost all areas of existence?
We are talking here about arts and culture but how many of us know that a new technology is allowing authors to publish their own books on a newly invented machine with the prospect of freeing them from the exploitation by big publishing houses. Nowadays, the rule is that you adapt to change faster so that you may catch up or follow closely global technological innovations. Foot-dragging may be a sure recipe for failure because the pace of development in particular areas is so fast that you cannot be sure that you can catch up with the front runners. We are sort of satisfied with our inbuilt traditionalism and our legendary suspicion and slow pace while the world is fed up of even the latest gadgets and inventions. And when we wake up to play catch up it often proves almost too late and we give up the fight before we start it. This same mentality seems rampant in the domestic art and culture scenes.
The other problem is our tendency to look inward too much to the extent of almost forgetting what is going around the world. Had it not been for the disturbing nature of new technology and our human propensity ‘to do as others do’, and the globally sweeping nature of modern technology, we might even be unaware of many inventions and gadgets. We are too much absorbed in our past or ‘the glorious old days’ that we almost overlook our present or turn pessimistic about our future. Art and literature have the natural capacity to shake us out of our sleep. Unfortunately, we have not developed art and literature that could shake us out of our slumber.
Art and literature are supposed to be critical and innovative but we prefer conformism or conservatism. It is more than half a century since Haddis Alemayehu wrote “Love Unto the Grave” (Feker eske Mekaber) but all the subsequent generations are made to accept the book as the one and only best work that Ethiopians are capable of producing. Some of them try to imitate it; others are so disappointed with their own limitations that they think no other book, or a better book for that matter, is possible to be written by an Ethiopian. As a rule, if you are a famous musician, vocalist or writer in this country, you can rest assured that your “throne” will remain unshakable for half a century or more. And most members of the new generation are not aware that perseverance should prevail in their creative activities. They should know that Haddis Alemayehu took a very long time, a couple of decades if memory does not cheat me, to write “Love Unto Death” and most of it in his spare time when he was posted as Ethiopian ambassador to foreign countries.
We often choose the easiest way to attain artistic greatness. We are not bored to consume the same type of arts and literature for many decades. We listen to the same music or vocalist for many decades even after the said singer has passed away. We continue to read books written half a century or more ago simply because they were appreciated by some self-styled critics who were often friends of the late artists. We don’t ask for new things. Worse still, we try to imitate the styles and temperaments of the late singers and writers. The absence of novelty in our cultural life has turned us into consumers of what the media and the social media throw at us as “best music or best books”.
There are for instance many people in this country who think that once a book is read over the radio, it automatically assumes the status of a classic, or the fact that it is read on the radio because it is considered the best of its type while in reality it may even be the best among the worst. We sheepishly follow what others tell us about the merits of works of arts and literature. We have no social value system to critically upraise these works and arrive at an honest conclusion about a particular work of arts.
In this century of fast developing technology and soft-power in general, education is rightly considered a sine qua non for the emergence of new talents in arts and literature. Gone are the days when natural talent alone was sufficient for aspiring writers to publish their books in the good old traditional way. Or for exceptionally talented painters to do pictures that may fetch good money as a result of critical acclaim. It was then a deal between writers and publishers or painters and auction houses or exhibition centers, who used old ways of publishing books while writers labor day and night with their pens and papers in complete anonymity.
Even by international standards, writers earned little from their works while publishers’ incomes were limited by earning from book sales that were not as big as new because of the limited number of book buyers. In Europe, the industrial revolution helped the growth of publishing in a big way while in the 20th the growth in educational opportunities and technological advancements combined to produce many talented writers who revolutionized the way books were written by introducing new styles and literary tools and techniques. The Irish writer James Joyce produced perhaps the best novel in the history of modern or post-modern literature with “Ulysses: a stream of consciousness narrative covering 24 hours in the life of Leopold Bloom, the main character.
Things are radically different when we come to Africa or more specifically to Ethiopia. Even if there is growth in arts and literature, the growth is not linear, consistent or predictable. Periods of declines are bound to change places with moments of glories. If we consider Africa, the post-colonial period in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were glorious moments when African artists criticized the colonial experience and glorified its struggles. Some of the best fiction in Africa appeared in that period when Achebe published “Things Fall Apart” or Ngugi wrote “Petals of Blood” or South African writes produced some of their best works.
Historical moments are very important for arts and literature in Africa as are in Europe where the major works could be located in time and space and coincided with some noticeable historical moment. Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” was written at a specific time in post-revolution France. The Ethiopian revolution had also produced some of the best modern Ethiopian novels. How many critical historical moments have appeared in the last couple of decades? What have we written or read? Almost nothing!
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH 2023
