I am very excited for our class with Rhiannon this coming week! The topic of Muslim Africans being forced into slavery was something I was not aware of before reading the autobiography of Omar Ibn Said. His story challenged my prior knowledge of the Africans abducted in the Slave Trade, and provided a different account than that of Equiano. I think that overall, history has been rewritten by the colonizing powers in control, which is a reason that knowledge like this has largely been ignored. That is the reason that primary sources like Equiano's narrative and Omar Ibn Said's autobiography are crucial in order to understand what really happened. Thus, I think Rhiannon's sponsorship of this opera to tell Omar's story is awesome, as more people need to better understand the history of the Slave Trade, even if it's uncomfortable or hard to hear. Here are my two questions for Rhiannon:
1. How did you hear about Omar Ibn Said's account or the stories of African Muslims forced into slavery in general, as I know I hadn't heard much of either before preparing for this discussion.
2. What was the most difficult part of transforming Omar's autobiography into an opera?
I'm excited to hear her answer to your first question. African Muslims have almost been erased from the Slave Trade narrative, and I hadn't heard about this before either!
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think my knowledge of slavery was very singular and did not include a lot of information about African Muslims.
ReplyDelete^^ completely!!
ReplyDeleteQuestion #1 is great--I wonder how she first learned about him.
ReplyDelete