If Delia Zapata Olivella is a pioneer of folkloric research in Colombia, from a practical and scenic perspective, It would be necessary to review the material he produced to learn more about his intellectual vision. For Delia, what was folklore? How did you assume it, and what is her need to make this peripheral knowledge known? From where did she propose her practice? I have decided to unearth some of her archives, directly visiting the places where she made her artistic and academic life to re-visit and re-live her work.
So far, the trip to Bogotá has been a bit unsuccessful. One of the three sites I had scheduled canceled our meeting because it has no more information than the book Delia wrote. The Luis Ángel Arango library seems to have no more information than what it offers digitally on its portal. Valuable, yes, but I can't go too deep.
The experience at Antonio Nariño University was quite precarious, not to say disappointing. The academic program that Delia Zapata Olivella helped create at the end of the 1970s has been transformed several times, and minimal remains of her -material- legacy. As is typical, things evolve and try to respond to the needs of their time, even more so if it is a university academic program. However, it has been unsuccessful (impossible) to access the files that gave birth to the aforementioned educational program. In a series of visits, interviews, and emails, I have not obtained access to any archive other than a magazine article recently published by the Bogota program.
As a last alternative in Bogotá, I contacted the Palenque Delia Zapata Olivella, a scenic and artistic training space managed by her daughter Edelmira Massa Zapata. In this vast house in the La Candelaria neighborhood, where Delia lived, I had a short but emotional encounter with the daughter of the teacher Zapata, an encounter that I will present below.
After congratulating her for the beautiful space it manages to keep alive, I ask her about tradition, practice, and technology and how they navigate it, specifically if they registered with everything that happens in the palenque.
EDELMIRA… It's too much, so we're on the practice, and now with my classmates, my students who are more digital than me, we're trying to make a document gathering all the things, but we're still stuck because there's a lot of work.
MANUEL… I don't know… in this two-week trip, in the beginning, I plan to visit, in addition to two other sites, the IPC in Cali and the archives of Pages of culture…. I understand, in principle, for example, my idea is…
EDELMIRA… yes, that is from the 60s. The research we did on the Nativity, for example, in Guapi for the Nativity. So, a script written on that research later produced the first play back in the 70. And then I continued every year performing the Nativity… the play has undergone constant transformations due to displacement and all things that have happened here. We constantly update it according to the situation in the country. So yes, you know, the same things but seeing them from another point of view. This work was fascinating, and I love it… Those students from the IPC were here last year, and we did some music and dance workshops, although the exchange has not been as intense as it should be. I have been very concerned about the methodology because, initially, Delia's reason for creating a school was to train teachers so that they could multiply the work in the schools (pedagogy). We did that at the (University) Antonio Nariño, but the program changed after she died. It has nothing to do with what Delia and Rosario Montaña Cuellar dreamed. She and Rosario were fighting partners there in the Antonio Nariño. We here at the foundation try to continue working and developing its methodology. For example, here we have continued doing many productions, (recently) celebrating the 100 years of Manuel (Zapata Olivella). We worked on "Changó el gran Putas" and did a show called "Nagó el navigator," which, like all productions from here, has singing, music, theater, and dance that are the natural ingredients to have a "traditional" work. Because it cannot be said that we work on any of them exclusively, but rather that we work on all of that integrated, that is the foundation of our work.
MANUEL… I interrupt you for the following, you mentioned four elements… in the past doing my Master's thesis with one of Manuel's plays, when trying to introduce one of his plays within the Afro(North) American theater, I find a text by Zora Neale Hurston from 1934 who was part of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Due to the dates, the geography, and the history of Manuel's wanderings, it is very likely that he knew her, or at least knew of her work, since -Manuel- exchanged correspondence with Langston Hughes. Hughes and Hurston used to collaborate for a time. The Proposal for a Popular Theater Identifier by Manuel Zapata is similar to a text by Hurston. Manuel and Delia were not only brothers; they did their investigative, intellectual and activist work together. These four elements that you mentioned as the basis for the work of Delia and her foundation coincide and are present in Hurston's text. Hurston speaks specifically about black communities in the United States; coincidentally, they are also part of Delia's methodology here in Colombia...
EDELMIRA…. In the times when Delia was dedicated to writing, I don't think she left that on record as you present it, however you have to look for it. I have read the art of the thesis of a young man who was in the United States and he mentions something that had never occurred to me, he mentions the political thought of Delia Zapata... and so there are other young people who are in London and asked me questions about the Delia's thought with affirmations that never occurred to me and that Delia didn't either. Those analyzes are very interesting and cool…
MANUEL… yes, my experience has shown me that there is little written from the dense communities in Colombia, compared to the United States… maybe we have to look for more in archives… you told me about several investigations… are those results here?… her lessons…
EDELMIRA…. Many of the papers that Delia assigned to her students and the results…I turned them in. I gave Vanderbilt (University) many of our archives. Some of them on research in Central America on ritual theater. We worked on dramatic expressions before the European arrival and the form of expression of the people around those genres. In Antonio Nariño, for example, there was little talk about mestizaje. I requested that those classes be taught there at the Antonio Nariño. Then, there were lessons on Africa, America, and Europe to understand miscegenation. The issue is the vision that people have of tradition... the way some folk groups approach dances is different, you can get to see a lot of luxury, but little about the expression of the people. Here at the foundation with young people, we try to be very rigorous with those elements that I mentioned before, because we believe that it is there where the expression of the peoples really is. Now we also struggle with many imaginaries and prejudices about race and cultural expressions.
For reasons of time and logistics, we had to finish our meeting, but I keep this key of the 4 characteristic elements of Delia Zapata Olivella's work as a seed to start the approach to Black Performance in the United States. The visit to the confirmed and digitally pre-explored archives of the Popular Institute of Culture in Cali remains.
This meeting has saved the visit to Bogotá, incidentally has opened a possibility of exchange of information and continuous dialogue.