Festivals and Peace Building: A Conversation about Festival au Desert of Mali
Still from the zoom presentation
By Germaine Ingram, IMPACT Leadership Circle Member
What makes a festival? How do the social dynamics of a festival differ from those of other gatherings, such as concerts, happenings, parades, conferences, round/long tables... ? How can the particular characteristics of festivals be used to support peace building and conflict transformation? These were questions that animated Brandeis University Professor of Creativity, Arts and Conflict Transformation Toni Shapiro-Phim and me when we were approached by the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, based in Nicosia, Cyprus, and The Festival Academy, based in Brussels, Belgium, to design a panel session for their Oct. 11-12, 2021, hybrid symposium titled "Telling the Uncommon Stories of Festivals: The Role of Festivals and Creativity in Conflict Transformation." It was a chance for IMPACT to extend its collaboration with the Buffer Fringe Festival since working with festival organizers in 2020 to start the "Thinking Partners" initiative, connecting the Festival's performing artists with advisers from the arts, culture and conflict transformation field. It became a chance for me to probe the truly uncommon story of a festival that I hadn't experienced personally, but that has long fascinated me.
Festival au Desert started in 2001 as a small Sahara Desert gathering of Tuareg tribes and Malian musicians in the aftermath of civil strife between Mali’s principal ethnic groups. Its centerpieces were the practice of traditional dispute resolution customs and the sharing of Malian music, including an intoxicating elixir of traditional Malian melodies and electric guitar riffs. As the festival evolved, fueling exchanges of food, stories and music, Mali's competing ethnic groups from the south (Bambara) and north (Tuareg) became acquainted with each other's — and their common — needs, interests, languages and cultures. Stories by international journalists and the attention of music celebrities including Bono and Robert Plant attracted increasing numbers of global visitors. One arresting image shared by journalists was of hundreds of points of light emitted from the eyes of camels, traveled by local festival-goers, studding the desert landscape. In just more than 10 years the annual gathering grew to more than 10,000 people, including about 1,000 international visitors.
It was around 2009 when I learned of Festival au Desert and began talking with colleagues in my vocal improvisation network about attending the Festival, to engage with the people, the culture, the music and the landscape, and also to bring our own musical offerings of improvised song and circle singing. That dreaming and planning was arrested when a coalition of Tuareg separatists and Islamic extremists invaded northern Mali, enacted a military coup, and the Islamic element imposed Sharia law across the north of the country. Music was banned, education tightly restricted, antiquities destroyed, women oppressed and those who did not conform to the new regime were terrorized. Hundreds of thousands were displaced and exiled. In early 2012, the Festival itself went into exile and transformed into a traveling company of Malian artists, performing across Africa and other parts of the world, and awaiting the day when they could return to the festival’s home. Although northern Mali was liberated from Islamic rule, the situation there remains sufficiently fragile that reinstatement of Festival au Desert continues in abeyance. Watch a succinct history of the Festival by Bandsplaining.
This festival — born in the wake of conflict, displaced by conflict and violence, committed to using arts and culture to address conflict — seemed the perfect case for consideration in a symposium focused on the intersections of festivals and conflict transformation. It took about three months to track down the right discussants. But finally we got entree to the Festival's founder and continuing visionary, ag Mohamed Aly "Manny" Ansar, for whom sustaining the Festival's legacy is something he does beyond his "day job" in the field of international public policy and humanitarian aid. Manny introduced us to Cynthia Schneider, a former U.S. ambassador, an educator, speaker and writer on the intersections of culture and diplomacy, and a co-founder with Manny and another Malian of Timbuktu Renaissance, a Mali-based platform for countering extremism and building peace and sustainable development.
Together, Manny and Cynthia assembled an exciting roster of participants for a lively conversation about the history, impact and emerging revival of the Festival au Desert. Over a span of almost two hours, the panel participants offered diverse perspectives, from the Festival's founder, artists, staff, supporters and audiences, as well as reports on recent work under the auspices of Timbuktu Renaissance to restore the festival platform as an engine for cultural exchange and economic development for Malian people. And if that wasn't enough, the presentation included short "live" performances from artists who recalled their appearances on the Festival's stage.
The presentation made me wish all the more that I had experienced the Festival in 2010 to 2012, before it was displaced by violence and extremism. I was intrigued by the irony that Tuareg fighters who, in the early 1990s, used their music to recruit people to their militant campaign against the central Malian government, subsequently used that same music to appeal for peace after hostilities abated. The presentation lent specificity to the proposition that economic opportunity can be a preventive or antidote to conflict, and that a festival like Festival au Desert can help relieve economic desperation that is fertile territory for extremist elements. The panelists, through their remembrances, showed how the Festival has become a site of memory for many, and a source of connection between people from different geographies and ethnic groups. I'd borrow the term "spectral infrastructure" from writer/educator Irit Rogoff — "the mesh of work of social action and human connection that continues to thrum across time, even when the space is taken over by other forces." The facia of remembrance from the years of the annual Festival does indeed continue to "thrum," evoking ongoing acts of cultural peacebuilding by the Festival's organizers, offspring and artists.
Viewers of the presentation, principally festival professionals and members of the arts, culture and conflict transformation field, might debate how well any of our galvanizing questions about the efficacy of festivals as a means of conflict transformation were addressed. One questioner in the Q&A expressed doubts about the degree to which arts and culture events can mediate intense and long standing conflicts. How can we recognize circumstances that hold potential for a festival environment to advance conflict transformation? We might ask whether changes in the nature of violent conflict over the past two decades, as a result of the increased power of social media, use of cyber warfare and other factors, have altered the ability of gatherings like the Festival au Desert to serve peacebuilding. How do heightened concerns about health, safety and security affect the ability to create environments where large numbers of people are disposed to meet and engage with one another? The toll in deaths and injuries (10 killed and hundreds injured) suffered on Nov. 5, 2021, at the Astroworld music festival in Houston, Texas (USA) is gripping evidence of how quickly a joyous festival atmosphere can turn to tragedy.
And with the need for major private and public investment and sponsorships in order to mount festivals, how do organizers ensure that peacebuilding and local development efforts aren't eclipsed by conflicting or divergent donor interests? I'm sure that all of these questions are in the minds of Manny Ansar and his colleagues as they forge ahead with Timbuktu Renaissance and plan for another festival, the Ag'na Festival in Kolikoro, Mali, in late February 2022.
IMPACT's work derives from linked beliefs in 1) the power of arts and culture to contribute to the will, knowledge and capacity of humans to transform conflict and the social conditions that lead to it; and 2) the ability of the arts, culture and conflict transformation field to enhance its impact on conflict transformation through forging stronger connections and discourse among field participants and between the field and other peace-building disciplines. The past, current and potential role of festivals in conflict transformation seems a fertile place for exchange, research and innovation for this field in light of the historic place that festivals hold as celebrations of culture, arts, ritual, customs, identity and tradition — all of which feed and sustain the work of arts, culture and conflict transformation practitioners and scholars.
And looking at festivals from the perspective of peacebuilding can rescue the emerging field of festival studies from occupation with tourism and commercialism. IMPACT, through its work with the Cyprus Buffer Fringe and the Festival Academy, and through facilitating conversations like our presentation on the Festival au Desert, aims to ignite discussions in festival-related spaces and the arts, culture and conflict transformation field with the kinds of questions that led off this article. We invite your comments and questions.
Watch the recording of the presentation.