Searching for sharing: heritage and multimedia in Africa

Focusing on oral literature, this collective volume addresses the issue of sharing the multimedia documents that were initially produced within an academic context, with the local communities, organizations, and storytellers that were the scholars’ partners in the audio-visual research. Local communities and diasporas are those speaking the language of the studied genres of text (narratives, songs, lamentations, theatre performances etc.), irrespective of whether the compositions are faithfully transmitted, renovated, changed, or newly created. The volume also explores the idea of ‘partnering’ to enter into dialogue about the cultural stakeholders’ expectations and about what they can produce and offer through new media. Contributions: Introduction (Daniela Merolla); 1. The Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library: the implications of the digital return of oral tradition (Jan Bender Shetler); 2. Technauriture as a platform to create an inclusive environment for the sharing of research (Russell H. Kaschula); 3. From restitution to redistribution of Ewe heritage: challenges and prospects (Kofi Dorvlo); 4. YouTube in academic teaching: a multimedia documentation of Siramori Diabat’s song ‘Nanyuman’ (Brahima Camara, Graeme Counsel and Jan Jansen); 5. New electronic resources for texts in Manding languages (Valentin Vydrin); 6. Questioning ‘restitution’: oral literature in Madagascar (Brigitte Rasoloniaina and Andriamanivohasina Rakotomalala). Afterword: sharing located (Mark Turin). [ASC Leiden abstract]