World Museum’s Day passes by quietly for MW
As the world commemorated World Museum’s Day on May 18, in Malawi the day passed by quietly without a statement from government on its importance.
Every year since 1977, International Museum Day is held worldwide sometime around May 18. This year, more than 30 000 museums are getting ready to celebrate the event in around 100 countries on the five continents!
According to the International Museum Day website, this year’s theme (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change aims at showing that the richness of our historical heritage, preserved and displayed by museums, together with the inventiveness and vitality that have characterised the museum sector’s action in recent years, are where the strength of museum institutions lies today.
The Nation visited a little known private museum called the Jacaranda Museum of Ethnographic Objects in Chileka, Blantyre.
Nestled in the midst of Singano Village, sits a private museum that has collected a lot of information about Malawi’s music and oral history spanning from the southern-most tip of Nsanje to the Central Region.
It looks deserted and registers minimal visitors, mostly school children once in a while.
According to curator and proprietor of the museum, Moya Malamusi, who also happens to be an enthnomusicologist and cultural anthropologist, the problem is that museums set up as private entities do not get any support from government.
“You see we Africans tend to wait for someone to come and document our history. The work that I am doing now was started by Professor Gehard Kubik whose fascination with the music of Malawi led him to start collecting artefacts and recordings for future use. When I met him he taught me the ropes and I have been doing that since then,” said Malamusi.
He said that when he started his work in the 1980s a lot of information could be found but now it is dying out.
“Nowadays you go to several villages and find only a few things, maybe musical instruments that no one might even know how to play,” said Malamusi.
He has researched several parts of the world but has interests in Malawi and East Africa.
Over a period of 30 years he, Kubik and other researchers have built up a vast collection of recordings on audio and video tape, estimated to amount to about 4 500 items (story-telling in context, rare musical instruments, historical performances by Limited Mfundo etc.), all meticulously documented. Extracts have been published on CDs.
