How Anansi freed the stories of the world

Text: Maarten van Hinte 

A book is a book is a book. It is what it is, and it stays what it is. If you place them side by side or stack them on top of each other, you can build a wall. Or a house. Or even a palace. It is what it is, and it stays what it is.

A tori is not a book: it is a story that you hear and pass on. You cannot build walls with a tori, because it never stays in one place. When it suddenly appears in the corner of your room, you could try to smack it with your slipper. Yet it will simply reappear in another corner, like a cockroach or a spider. Just like a cockroach, a spider, or a grain of rice in your hair, it travels with you unnoticed.

A tori belongs to everyone. You can start it, someone else can continue it, and a third person can finish it. Or not.

This is a tori. And I will begin:

They call me B’Anansi. Anansi means "spider" in Akan. That is a language from West Africa, where Ghana is now located. There, the spider is a messenger between humans and the gods. The spider travels on its web from earth to heaven and back again. Sometimes Anansi the spider tells the truth, and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he does good. Sometimes he doesn’t.

Five hundred years ago, the heavens were closed for some Akan people. And not just for them. Also for Yoruba people, Igbo people, Fulani people, Wolof people — for many people from Africa. Europeans arrived with ships to capture and trade them. They were shipped to a world that Europeans called "new" because they were the new rulers there. The captives forced aboard were people; those who survived the crossing were seen as livestock. At least, by the Europeans. Anansi traveled with them.

This is how the spider and his stories came ashore in what is now Suriname, Guyana, Jamaica, Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, and many other places in the "new" world. But he was no longer a messenger of the gods, for the heavens were closed. He became a messenger of African people who wanted to reopen the heavens. His tori’s (stories) kept the lid slightly open. They became tales of resistance and defiance.

Anansi has not changed. He is still both good and bad, sometimes trustworthy and sometimes not — he is just like people. But his tori’s have changed. They are no longer about gods but about humans. Good people, bad people, and hustlers — those who always find new ways to survive. People who are just like Anansi.

This text is the beginning of the book Hoe Anansi de verhalen van de wereld bevrijdde, written by Maarten van Hinte in Dutch based on his libretto for this performance and illustrated by Brian Elstak. The book is available at any bookstore and can be purchased for €17.50 in the foyer of our theater.