MEDI1TV Afrique : #Chronique_culture / L'Association Afrikayna lance le site de l'Instrumenthèque d'Afrique - 27/11/2024
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00:00Welcome to Mediain TV and for this chronicle, dear viewers, I take you to the discovery of the musical instruments of the African continent.
00:19Instruments and their history that you can discover on the instrumentech.com site, a site that was created by the African Association.
00:29And to tell us about this wonderful project, I have the pleasure of having Rita Khaldi on my side, who is the president of the African Association.
00:38Rita Khaldi, thank you very much for accepting our invitation.
00:41We met a few years ago to talk about the beginning of this project, the loop with the creation of this site.
00:48How was this project finally made?
00:51Hello, thank you very much. Indeed, the online launch of www.instrumentech.com is the result of the work carried out by Afrika Aina and its partners from several countries on the continent.
01:05A work of colleagues, of information, of visits, of manufacturers, of factors, of metallurgists, of countries that we have been able to visit since the launch of the project in 2017.
01:17And so this website gathers all the information that we have been able to collect to date.
01:24That is to say, what we present today is more than 70 musical instruments from Morocco, Mali, Rwanda, Cameroon.
01:32We have welcomed instruments today from Senegal, Mauritania, Madagascar and the Sagrandi family.
01:40Of course, this does not cover the entire territory of each country, it is a continuous work.
01:45But today, this web platform allows anyone interested to know more, to have the technical files of the instruments, their manufacturing materials, the videos of the manufacturing processes, the photos, the socio-cultural environments of each instrument, to be able to find this information on this platform.
02:04So this is a platform that was wanted and designed in a collaborative way.
02:10There are instruments and countries that we visit ourselves as a Moroccan association, but we have collaborators.
02:18We have collaborators in several countries and every year partner countries are added.
02:24They are always representatives of civil society, passionate about local heritage.
02:28And this platform is there to gather all these contributions.
02:34It is open, we are open to receiving more information on an instrument that we will, for example, repertory in Mali, but we can find the same in Burkina Faso or in the West African basin.
02:46Like the musical instruments of North Africa, where sometimes a musical instrument can tell a story of travel, a story of meeting peoples.
02:54An instrument found in Morocco can be found in other African countries.
02:57And so this platform is there to highlight, to value these instruments for their preservation.
03:03There are some among them that risk disappearance.
03:09So there is this notion of appreciation that is important to us.
03:12But there is also the evolution of these instruments and their continuous existence in current and contemporary musical creations.
03:22So there is a youth to challenge, there are manufacturers, there are craftsmen, there are factors that we thank for, because they have accompanied us since the beginning.
03:31Who are all around this program and who have allowed this work to be put online.
03:36So Richard Khaldi, it is a long-term work, we said it, you have been working on this project for a little over 7 years.
03:44What are the partners who have accompanied you for the implementation of the site, the meeting of these artisans, these musicians,
03:54who first of all want to give their instruments, but also you, the researchers, the scientists who have accompanied you on this project?
04:07So there are of course several levels.
04:11So for a project like this program, which is called VITA, Valuation of Traditional African Musical Instruments,
04:18the first years of development of field research have been made possible thanks to our partners, which are the Association Le Boulevard.
04:26There was the accompaniment of the OCP group and there were country partners, such as the Foundation of the Festival on Niger,
04:31the Association Sanja of Cameroon, which has accompanied us since the beginning of this project.
04:35And today, the program was able to be relaunched after the COVID period, thanks to the support of AFAR, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture,
04:44with the Swiss Development Cooperation, and therefore the family of partners and human resources,
04:52because it is very important, it starts first with human resources,
04:55so all these musicologists, these artisans who have responded to our meetings and our exchange sessions,
05:03plus these partners, technical, financial, but also in terms of research content at the level of each country,
05:12have all contributed to making this project come to life.
05:16The website is once again a success, but it took a few years of preparation and really information around these instruments.
05:27And once again, this success is only the beginning of a program that we hope will last to be able to meet the objectives that we all, with all the partners, have set.
05:39So, Rita Khaldi, maybe one last question, and very briefly, just a word about Africaina, the association.
05:46I would like, it is always good to say and repeat things, if you could introduce us, but very briefly, the Africaina association.
05:53Africaina is a Moroccan association that was created in 2013.
05:57It offers for intercultural exchange, co-development and cooperation in Africa.
06:03Our core of action is the inter-African artistic mobility, which is really an important lever so that these intercultural exchanges can materialize
06:15and that we can meet and exchange around creations, but also themes and topics of development of the sector in general.
06:25And it is an association that works on the African identity component in Morocco,
06:32and therefore all this common heritage that Morocco has with its continent.
06:36And it goes through programs such as the appreciation of heritage through traditional musical instruments,
06:42which tell this story of intercultural exchange and common heritage,
06:48but also meetings that will be held between, for example, Moroccan brotherhoods, musical brotherhoods above all,
06:59so we take the artistic aspect of these brotherhoods, with other communities, other African countries.
07:07We also organize masterclasses in Morocco, whether musical, but also training and exchanges
07:16to allow other cultural operators or project leaders to share their wishes, their projects,
07:24and then see what synergies we can create with an entire ecosystem that we are part of.
07:29And then we hope to continue to implement the vision of the association for a connected Africa with permanent cultural exchanges.
07:46Richard Khaldi, thank you very much for accepting our invitation and thank you for all these explanations.
07:51And I remind you that the association has just launched the website www.instrumentek.com,
07:57a website that tells the story of African instruments and of course a collection that is not yet finished,
08:04but in any case it is worth going to see this site.
08:08Thank you, dear viewers, for your loyalty.
08:11Stay with us, the information continues on our different channels,
08:14Arabic Media TV, Maghreb Media TV, African Media TV, and of course on our digital media, medianews.com.