In the Rhythm of Cree Samba: transculturality and decolonization in Tomson Highway´s Theatre
The voice that comes from Indigenous artists, writers and activists in the Americas, in artistic works which can be related to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of autoethnographic expression (1992), inevitably engages with discourses constructed about them in order to reconstruct or deconstruct colonial...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2017 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Huelva (UHU) |
| Repositorio: | Arias Montano. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ariasmontano.uhu.es:10272/15074 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10272/15074 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Tricksterism Tomson Highway Transculturality |
| Sumario: | The voice that comes from Indigenous artists, writers and activists in the Americas, in artistic works which can be related to Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of autoethnographic expression (1992), inevitably engages with discourses constructed about them in order to reconstruct or deconstruct colonial narratives. However, some artists seem to go beyond the discussion of a colonizing voice versus a response from the colonized, since they engage with practices that include Indigenous knowledge in a global perspective. This is the case of Cree Canadian artist Tomson Highway. He creates a transcultural and transnational work that challenges territorial and genre conventions in a kind of practice that can be related to what Diana Taylor (2007) denominates hemispheric performance. Highway is an artist and a cultural agent that participates in the exchange of knowledge between cultures and in the continuation of Cree/Ojibway storytelling. His openness to artists and critics from many different countries, as well as the experience of travelling abroad as a musician in his cabaret shows, underline the value of his plays as a means of cross-cultural dialogue which creates knowledge. In this article, I demonstrate that Highway’s shows in cabaret style employ transcultural phenomena and explore how his experiences in Brazil and his knowledge of Brazilian music have been integrated into his theatrical production. I propose a poetics of tricksterism as Highway’s strategy to engage with the world in a global perspective and at the same time reinforce Indigenous cultural and spiritual traditions |
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