A great Mauritian oral tradition made its way into university, when storyteller Véronique Nankoo decided to return to her studies in 2022. The in literature is devoting her doctorate to the Mauritian tale, a cultural marronnage inherited from the first Creoles and the travelling transformations of our stories of liev ek torti, lion ek sinz, Tizan, Tizann ek Bolom Loulou… Dominique Bellier
All is not lost from our legendary funeral wakes, Zistwar fer per evenings and the adventures of Tizan ek Bolom Loulou. Véronique Nankoo keeps a close eye on the situation, peddling the tale from schools to libraries and other cultural centers, and sometimes even beyond our borders to the sister island, at festivals, for Kozé Konté for example. She also brought it into the University of Mauritius for the very first doctorate in the new Performing arts option. The storyteller, who has been teaching at St Mary’s for 19 years, is certainly worried, but confident, as she notes that despite the disappearance of family oral traditions, Mauritian stories have continued to be written and perpetuated through the committed theater of Henry Favory, Dev Virahsawmy or Gaston Valayden, Abaim’s activities on various fronts of popular expressivity, or thanks to such wonderful artists as Fanfan, Mélanie Pérès or Daniella Bastien. “We’ve gone from storytelling to a more conscious live performance,” she says in her research hypotheses. This project explores our oldest oratory tradition, born in slave camps and wakes, the one that enabled the great resistance fighters of the deported populations, our reborn Creoles, to recharge their batteries, communicate with each other and put words to their existence and condition…
Redeploying the family legacy
This thesis opens a window onto an unexplored, but rich, part of Mauritian expression. When they still exist, funeral wakes are often held in funeral parlors, where the lack of privacy destroys the storyteller’s voice, who used to recount the experiences of the deceased and bring lightness to heavy hearts. In families, intergenerational transmission has all but disappeared, except in Rodrigues and here with the Mauritian Perrine family… Véronique inherits a most captivating grandfather, who marked family gatherings and evenings with his fascinating verve. A cemetery-keeper ancestor also left behind a few superstitious stories about the many activities of the dead… at night.
20 years ago, inviting the ravanier Fanfan was enough to entertain the gallery, with young and old laughing at the stories of monkeys, crocodiles and other hares, mocking the ignominy of colonial power. These travel stories, the fruit of an unfathomable blend of Africa and the islands, were already in perdition when Charles Baissac transcribed them in Le Folk-lore de l’île Maurice in 1888. Véronique Nankoo, a true storyteller, perpetuates these tales with her husband and a few other musicians. They even write new ones!
