Tierno Bokar was a Sufi 'sage' from West Africa who lived in the last century. He was a wise man and a voice of tolerance when his country and continent were consumed with religion and politics-based violence.
One of his students, Amadou Hamapaté Bâ, who is apparently a great writer and has been a guiding light to UNESCO after Mali’s independence in 1960 (I had not even heard this name until yesterday… but that only shows how ignorant I am) has written a book about his master. The book is titled ‘The Life and Teaching of Tierno Bokar - The Sage of Bandiagara’. The play was based on this book.
The performance itself took place in gymnasium of a one of the Columbia University colleges. They had converted it into an African village… but except for a stem indicating a tree, there was no structure…it was all open... gave me an idea how his Mahabharata must have appeared.
The man who played Tierno was the same actor who played ‘Bhishma’ in Mr. Brook’s version of Mahabharata. The other characters I could identify where Krishna, Gandhaari and Maadri. The rest I suppose were the actors from Columbia and the Harlem area.
The play was in French with subtitles in English being displayed on a large screen above the stage. To my surprise, it worked out fine. The music was all live. Some Japanese guy, who apparently could play every instrument there is… gave most of the music by himself… at times with some help from an assistant. It was an amazing experience to see how effective this form of music could be. The musicians were participating in the performance. Truly marvelous…!
Mr. Brooks seem to have great control over presenting a story by making it dramatic and interesting… (I guess I am stating the obvious here ;)) and he seems to know precisely how to control the pace of the performance. I have noticed that in the DVD version of Mahabharata and now in Tierno Bokar.
But one thing struck me the most…at the end of the play, the thing I remembered the most was Tierno Bokar and his philosophy... and I am sure that would make Mr. Brook and his cast very happy.
The experience was sublime... like watching a well-made period movie… for the duration of those two hours the audience was in 1930’s West Africa.
The riots that had consumed Mali were started because one group had a practice of reciting a certain prayer 11 times as opposed to another group which recited it 12 times!!! Add to that the French colonial administration… trying to use this situation…. and you have all the material for a drama…with this lone voice of tolerance standing in the midst of that chaos!!
From what I could read in the material provided before the play, Tierno was indeed a very wise man… a very tolerant man… they quoted him as saying…
“There are three truths, your truth, my truth and the truth!” or “The only struggle that really concerns me is the one that is aimed at our own weakness” or “I pray God that at the moment I die, I have more enemies to whom I‘ve done nothing than friends”And his student, Hamapaté Bâ, who said “in Africa, when an old man dies, a library has burned” made sure that he preserved at least some of this library that was his teacher.
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Tierno Bokar copyright © 2007 by Sushrut Vaidya. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No changes or edits in the content of this work or of the digital format are allowed. For information, write Sushrut Vaidya at sushrut.vaidya@gmail.com.
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