WOMAD

“When the media talk about Africa, what sells?” Ricardo Martínez Vázquez answers his own question. “Disasters, catastrophe, famine, terrorism, child soldiers, genital mutilation. Yet all of this doesn’t represent even 10% of Africa.” As Director General of Casa África, an organisation established in 2006 to bind the continent and his native Spain more closely together in mutual understanding, he’s well placed to fill in the uncomfortably large blank. “The other 90% is tolerance between races and religion, because that is the rule there; a long history, twice as long as ours in Europe; 1200 different languages and cultures living together in 53 states. The richest continent - in history, in culture, in resources - on the planet, and still the poorest because we’re making them poor.”

This passionate polemic is being addressed to your correspondent at WOMAD’s 2009 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria festival. Less than 100 miles east lies the coastline where Morocco borders Western Sahara. Tomorrow, the continent will draw closer still, when puppeteers from Burkina Faso, Les Grandes Personnes, will march their extraordinary 20ft tall creations through the festival site. They’ll be joined by the joyous beats and harmonies of Zimbabwe’s Siyaya, and a phalanx of wide-eyed local children proudly holding aloft the desert island-themed models they made in Casa África-organised workshops. Elsewhere, you can find an African-themed film programme headlined by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, the self-described “griot of the screen.” Then there’s the work of Cameroonian photographer, Angèle Etoundi Essamba, her collected portraiture of African women equal parts stark and sensuous.

The weekend’s programme forms but a fraction of Casa África’s work, all intended, says Ricardo, “to bring Africa closer to Spain. I say that intentionally: not Spain closer to Africa. We try to reach where the formal diplomacy cannot.” He should know. In the 20 years before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked him to head up Casa África, Ricardo was part of the Spanish diplomatic service. Time enough to build a formidable contacts list; the day before our meeting he was talking Africa at a conference with former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and a fleet of former world leaders.

More pertinent, perhaps, was the wealth of experience he gained in fostering international relations. Casa África’s intrinsic belief in “soft diplomacy”, he says, “is what foreign policies usually lack. We know so much about Africa in Europe,” he adds, with no little hint of sarcasm. “All our institutions – be it trade, NGOs, development – work from Spain towards Africa. We have so many experts here to tell Africans how to do things. But what [Casa África does] is have Africans tell us how they see their problems and their solutions, try to bring their interests and voices to Spain.

“Our first and most immediate tool is culture: music, cinema, dance, theatre, painting, sculpture, books. Then you can let Africans tell you their viewpoint directly, without intermediaries or interpretation from academics.” From here, he says, gesturing towards the examples of African culture gathered at WOMAD Las Palmas, they can begin to address “the big strategic issues: peace and security in Africa, terrorism, renewable energy, famine, climate change. We’ll run seminars, publish articles, work with think-tanks and economic institutions on both sides, and help match their interests.” Come spring 2010, similar events will be toured across a plethora of Spanish cities and islands, with May 25 the key focal point. This, says Ricardo, is “so that Spanish people can celebrate Africa Day with Africans, and through that try to open eyes to bring justice to Africa.”

You might think that Casa África and WOMAD are obvious bedfellows. The Director of WOMAD Spain Festivals, Dania Dévora Barrera, however, wasn’t always so sure. “At the beginning I thought that their political/diplomatic background would mean that our thinking and ethos were too far apart to work together,” she admits. “But they asked me to curate a concert opening Casa Africa in Vegueta, the old part of Las Palmas, and it was a success. Increasingly I realised that Casa Africa is exactly that: a house of Africa, and not political but cultural.”

Ricardo shows sympathy to her initial reticence. “Sharing room with some new institution like us, they may think ‘Well, we don’t just want to be African – WOMAD is all over the world!’” Ultimately, he explains, they came to an understanding that their partnership could be an embodiment of Peter Gabriel’s founding vision of WOMAD. “Not music just for the sake of it, but to emphasise solidarity, to mobilise people to think that a better world is possible. These are the goals we share.”

Julian Owen.