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p Beginning with the 1960s Soviet painters and sculplors have been turning more and more often to the African theme in their works. The first exhibition of their works devoted to Africa took place in 1961. One of the biggest was the exhibition “Africa” which was organised in Moscow in May 1909, when more than twenty Moscow artists displayed paintings and sculptural and graphic works most of which were made during their African trips. Individual and collective exhibitions of folk and professional artists from Ethiopia, Senegal, Dahomey (Benin), Mali, Egypt, Nigeria, and other African countries were organised in the USSR.

p A major event in the artistic life of Moscow was an exhibition of African art which opened in April 1965 at the Museum of Oriental Art. More than 500 works of art, including wooden statuettes and masks from various regions of Tropical Africa, bronze sculptures from Benin, and small sculptures of bone and terracotta and artifacts, were on display. They were part of the large collections of African art belonging to the Leningrad Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and the Museum of Anthropology of Moscow University. A small but very valuable collection cf Congolese sculptures belonging to Tartu University, some excellent statuettes from the collection of the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, and several private collections were also on display. The exhibition was a great success and was highly praised in the press.

p The Soviet public learned quite a lot about African art from an album entitled The Art of Tropical Africa in USSR Collections, which was put out by the Sovietsky Khudozhnik 280 Publishers in 1967. Compiled by the Institute of Ethnography and the Institute of Africa, it has 190 photographs which give an idea of Soviet collections of African sculpture.

p A large number of Africans acquainted themselves with many works of Soviet specialists in African art that were on show at the III International Biennial Exhibition of African Books "Publications on African Art" which ran in Cameroon in November and December 1972. Drawings and paintings by Soviet artists on the theme "The Art of Africa" were also on display.

p Works by Soviet Africanists specialising in African art have been widely acclaimed abroad. They regularly attend international conferences and symposiums at Pan-African Art Festivals. Some of their works on African art are published in bulletins issued by Soviet embassies and are reprinted in local periodicals.

p Today there are theatres on the African continent, which belong to several different artistic cultures and have very distinct histories.

p Theatrical art is most developed in Egypt whose major cities Cairo and Alexandria have excellent theatres and state and private professional companies.

p The history of theatre in Tropical Africa was most difficult and little is known about what sort of a theatre existed there prior to the arrival of Europeans. It was only in the past fifteen or twenty years that studies were published, which prove that there were different types of theatre in pre-colonial Africa.

p A national professional theatre was founded in Senegal. In 1965, in preparation for the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, a special Daniel Sorano Theatre was built. Its permanent national company consisting of experienced actors who had been trained at the Dakar Drama School has already staged several interesting plays.

p In some other states only the first steps have been taken towards the establishment of a professional theatre. In Nigeria, Mali, Ivory Coast, Kenya, and Tanzania the state has set up national companies or semi-professional touring groups which are still weak materially.

p The acquaintance of the Soviet public with the theatre, choreography and music of Tropical Africa began in the 1960s. Since then artistic groups from that part of Africa have’ given performances in the USSR, some of them toured it even 281 two and more times. Groups from Guinea gave performances in the USSR in 1961, 1964, 1966 and 1971; from Ethiopia in 1961 and 1977; from Mali in 1961 and 1970; from Ghana in 1961 and 1965; from Senegal in 1965, 1970, 1975 and 1977; from Dahomey in 1966; from Uganda in 1967 and 1973 (two different groups); from Zambia in 1970; from Sierra Leone in 1971; from Somalia in 1972; from Nigeria in 1973; from Cameroon in 1973; and from Kenya in 1976.

p The Soviet public displayed great interest in pantomimes, sketches and musical and dance scenes based on traditional themes. Such performances not only acquainted audiences with African art as such, but also with the past and present of the inhabitants of the continent, with different types of people, their characters and everyday work.

p Two of the African groups which visited the USSR brought along two complete shows. One, the musical comedy Obadzeng, was shown by the Ghanaian group in 1961, and the other was the musical drama Renga Moi that was staged by the Ugandan company in 1973.

p The author of Obadzeng (Born Anew), the gifted composer Saka Acquaye, is regarded as the founder of the Ghanaian musical theatre. The subject of the comedy is the conflict between traditions and the new urban culture in the life and consciousness of the African, and was quite topical for the continent in the first years after liberation.

p The programmes of the groups which toured the Soviet Union gave the audiences a very good idea of African life. They were a sort of encyclopaedia of African life disclosing the character of the continent’s peoples and their distinctive world outlook.

p Beginning with the early 1960s Soviet actors have made numerous trips to Tropical Africa, each of which was a festival of friendship between the USSR and Africa.

p In 1964 a group of Soviet artistes toured Mali, Dahomey, Sierra Leone and Niger. This time, in addition to singers, an instrumental quartet and dancers, the group included circus performers. In view of the latter’s great success with African audiences, the Soviet Union began regularly to send circus groups to the continent.

p The performances of a Soviet circus group that visited Guinea in 1966 took place in a particularly festive atmosphere . The first concert was attended by President Sekou Touré 282 and Cabinet members. At the end of the year the group visited Cameroon.

p In 1967, as distinct from the concert and circus groups which usually toured Tropical Africa, an entire artistic collective—the Bashkirian Song and Dance Ensemble—went there. Its director told African audiences about the development of culture in Bashkiria since the establishment of Soviet power there and the flowering of art and culture in the Soviet national republics. In addition to Bashkirian dances the ensemble’s programme included the dances of the Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar, Uzbek and other peoples of the USSR. In recent years other ensembles toured Africa: in 1976 the Uzbek national group Bakhor toured Angola, and in 1977 Voynakh, an ensemble from the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, gave performances in Mozambique, Tanzania, and Kenya.

p In 1968 a Leningrad ballet group performed to enthusiastic audiences in Dakar. Their programme included scenes from the Russian ballets The Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty.

p The tour of Soviet artistes of Togo in the summer of 1970 was a very important cultural event. The Togolese Foreign Minister said that their performances not only gave the Togolese people a deeper understanding of the folklore and art of the USSR, but also strengthened the friendship between the two countries.

p In the second half of the 1970s Soviet artistes made very successful tours of many countries in West and East Africa, including Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Angola, Madagascar, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Upper Volta, Benin, and Zambia.

p The Liberian Minister for Information, Culture and Tourism noted that the arrival of Soviet artistes was an important event in the life of his country. President Kenneth Kaunda said in Lusaka (Zambia) that the magnificent performance of the artistes from the multinational Soviet Union inspired the peoples of Africa in their fight against imperialism, colonialism and racialism.

p Naturally, no plays by Russian classics and Soviet authors were produced in Tropical Africa during the colonial period. Things changed only in the early 1960s. The first Russian play that was produced in Africa south of the Sahara 283 Gogol’s The Inspector-General. It was staged by the Arts Theatre in Nigeria that was built shortly before by the University of Ibadan. There were two other productions of this play, one at Kampala (Uganda) in 1961 and the other at Enugu (Nigeria) in 1962.

p The Uganda press reported that the actors merged quite well with the characters of Gogol’s play and that there was a good chance of it becoming popular in the country. The evil against which Gogol fought is well known in Africa: mercenary officials, bribe-takers, the arrogant braggart and trickster who professes to be high-ranking official. As the years passed The Inspector-General became one of the most important plays in the repertoires of drama groups at universities, schools and youth associations which produced it as a satire on some aspects of present-day life in Africa.

p In 1967 the play was staged by the Higher School at Thika near Nairobi (Kenya). The director said that he chose the play because it had many characters who were typical of present-day Africa.

p In 1969 scenes from Gogol’s play were rehearsed by the Drama School of the Mali Institute of National Fine Arts under the guidance of director Gaoussou Diawara who had undergone qualification apprenticeship at the State Institute of Theatrical Art in Moscow. The Inspector-General was also produced in some countries by leading drama companies which were called national or which aspired to this title. And everywhere the play was regarded as a satire on the evils of local life and made a profound impression by its vivid characters.

p The Inspector-General was staged by the Daniel Sorano Theatre in Dakar. Producer Maurice Sonar Senghor was amazed by the universality of the characters of Gogol’s comedy and its searing satire. Senghor gave it a local colouring and called it Mister Bribe-Taker and Company. He said that the theatre managed to use this expose of iniquity in the struggle against the country’s dire colonial heritage, against superficiality, arrogance, bribe-taking, nepotism, and contempt for the needs of the man in the street.

p The play transported the audience into the atmosphere of present-day Senegal and its characters appeared on the stage in local dress. The preview created such an overwhelming impression that "some very influential people" in the republic demanded that the play should be banned. But 284 progressive views won the day and the play ran for several years with invariable success.

p Gogol’s The Inspector-General was staged by the Ivory Coast National Theatre in 1971, by the National Theatre in Zaire in 1972, and in Kenya in 1973.

p Anton Chekhov is another Russian playwright whose works are very popular in Africa. "Chekhov, the great Russian 19th-century writer, is most esteemed by Congolese theatrical companies”, wrote Afrique chrétienne.  [284•1 

p Yet not all of his plays are staged on the continent, only his humorous sketches such as The Proposal, The Bear and, to a lesser degree, The Jubilee. Chekhov’s humorous sketches appeal to audiences because they disclose the full depths of their characters and their relations with each other. In order to make these characters understandable and interesting to the local audiences the producers adapted the text and Africanised it to a degree.

p Chekhov’s humorous sketches which are easily understood and particularly popular were repeatedly included in the repertoires of local touring companies. In Uganda in 1965 the student theatrical group of the Makerere University College included The Bear in the repertoire of its summer tour. One newspaper called it the most successful play staged by the group. In three weeks it was performed thirteen times. In 1969 the play The Proposal was included into the repertoire of the touring Kusum Agoromba Company of Ghana which was formed under the guidance of the prominent Ghanaian poetess and playwright Efua T. Sutherland.

p The Theatre Express in Nigeria, which was founded in 1965 as an experimental company pioneering the development of the national theatre, used Chekhov’s humorous sketches in an original manner. It performed The Bear and The Proposal in a programme which also included a comedy entitled Sailor Boy in Town dealing with the same theme and written by its director Segun Sofowote.

p Nigeria was the only country in Tropical Africa which produced Chekhov’s third humorous sketch The Jubilee. The Lagos Star Players which staged it in 1972 received high and deserved praise in the press. A particularly great performance was given by the company’s actresses.

p African actors, directors and playwrights display 285 considerable interest in the art of the Soviet Union which differs basically from bourgeois art. They are interested in the position of the theatre in the socialist society, the status of the Soviet actor, the development of the theatre in the Soviet national republics and plays that are staged in their national languages.

p During his visit to Moscow in 1966 Joe C. de Graft, director of the Ghanaian Drama Studio which is very popular in Africa and author of the plays Sons and Daughters and Visitor from the Past, described his impressions of Moscow theatres and the activity of his Drama Studio at the Institute of Africa of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

p Maurice Sonar Senghor has a great interest in the Soviet theatre. The Dakar matin reported that while on a visit to Moscow in 1969 he became convinced that in the USSR the theatre is regarded as a great art whose mission is not only to promote the cultural and social development of the masses but also to strengthen the unity, friendship and solidarity of peoples.  [285•2  And he pursues these principles in his theatre. The Soviet press repeatedly wrote about the great respect which the Stanislavsky method enjoys among many actors and directors of African theatres, especially in North Africa. The prominent Egyptian theatre critic Rashid Fuad wrote that Stanislavsky’s method and his discoveries in the fields of theatrical aesthetics, the actor’s psychology and laws of scenic perception are of a truly international significance. His concepts are also important for the young national theatres in Asia and Africa. Fuad is critical of Western artistic culture and contrasts it with the realism of the Soviet theatre, with Stanislavsky’s realism which opposes all inhumane, racialist and nationalistic views.  [285•3 

p The countries of North Africa repeatedly turned to Soviet choreographers for help in developing the local ballet. A Moscow choreographer was invited to Cairo in 1958 in the capacity of artistic director of a newly organised ballet school. Other choreographers from the Bolshoi Theatre were also invited to teach there.

p In 1964 and 1965 five ballerinas, pupils of the Cairo Ballet School, underwent qualification training at the Ballet School of the Bolshoi Theatre and took part in its 286 performances. When they returned to Cairo, Egypt began to form its own ballet company.

p Soviet choreographers took part in the first productions of this company: The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, Giselle, The Nutcracker, and Don Quixote. Soviet ballet dancers who were in Cairo in 1971 participated in the performances of Don Quixote and Uzbek composer Mukhtar Ashrafi was the conductor.

p After that the Cairo Ballet Company under the guidance of a local choreographer staged a ballet called Staunchness. The music was composed by Ashrafi and its subject was the revolutionary struggle of the Arabs against colonialism. Soviet choreographers also helped Egypt to form a national dance ensemble. It was organised in 1960, shortly after a tour of Egypt by the Soviet Folk Dance Ensemble directed by Igor Moiseyev. Having established friendly relations with the Egyptian dancers, the Soviet ensemble sent its choreographers to instruct them. The Cairo ensemble gave several performances in Moscow in 1968. Its director said that the founding of the ensemble offered further proof of the mighty influence of Soviet art on people in different countries.  [286•4 

p The repertoire of the Cairo dance ensemble included folk dances of the peoples of the world and Egypt, beginning with the times of the pharaohs and ending with the present day, with the dances of the Palestinian resistance.

p Among the participants in the festival of Egyptian art which was held in Moscow in 1972 were the National Folk Dance Ensemble and the Cairo Ballet Company. The latter brought along its productions of Don Quixote and Staunchness, and scenes from other ballets. The festival showed that cooperation of the two theatrical cultures was yielding good fruit.

p The Soviet theatre is also helping Algeria to train ballet dancers. In order to study the experience of Soviet ballet schools, the Algerian Ballet School which was founded in 1963 invited Soviet classical dance teachers to instruct its pupils. At the same time Algerian ballerinas studied at the choreographic department of the State Institute of Theatrical Art in Moscow and upon completing their course became ballet masters and choreographers.

p The first graduating class of the Algerian Ballet School in 1967 became the nucleus of the Algerian Folk Dance 287 Group, which also gave performances in Moscow. Over the years the group considerably improved its professional skill and toured the USSR in 1972.

p On their part Soviet cultural and art workers keep constant track of the development of the African theatre and take advantage of every opportunity to cooperate with it. Soviet art workers attended all the more important art conferences and symposiums in Africa, including the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966, and the PanAfrican Cultural Festival in Algiers in 1969.

p A great role in strengthening contacts with African countries was played by the 15th Congress of the International Theatre Institute which took place in Moscow in May 1973. Among its delegates and guests were many theatrical personalities from Africa.

p Music is part of Africa’s spiritual culture and has always occupied an important place in the life of its peoples. In spite of the long period of colonial rule African music has to a very considerable degree preserved its autochthonic character, traditional genres and musical instruments.

p Full understanding and cooperation between African musicians and Soviet composers and music critics were displayed at the 7th International Music Congress held in Moscow in 1971. For the first time such a major international music forum was attended by delegates from many African countries: Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, and Togo. Among them was Professor J. H. Kwabena Nketia, founder of African musicology; Philip Gbeho, Director of the Institute of African Studies in Ghana and one of the oldest African composers and author of Ghana’s national anthem; Joseph Kyagambiddwa of Uganda, a prominent musicologist from East Africa; Akin Eyba, a well-known Nigerian composer and music critic, and many others.

p The Congress discussed how the African musical culture should develop. Most of the African and Soviet delegates agreed that it would be best if local culture absorbed the finest traditions and achievements of European and world musical culture and at the same time followed national traditions.

Kwabena Nketia, Joseph Kyagambiddwa, Philip Gbeho and other African composers and musicologists disagreed with those Western musicologists who suggested that African musical culture should develop all on its own, and 288 emphasised that the great traditions of folk music should not be fetishised but be viewed in close connection with the achievements of world musical civilisation. Similar thoughts were expressed by Soviet musicologists, including the renowned Soviet composer, People’s Artiste of the USSR Dmitri Kabalevsky. Today, when the national liberation movement in Africa has begun to tackle the task of cultural decolonisation, the further deepening of cooperation between the peoples of the USSR and Africa in the field of musical culture will be particularly fruitful.