Full Description
In 1924, the crown prince and future emperor of Ethiopia, Ras Täfäri, on a visit to Jerusalem, called on forty Armenian orphans who had survived the genocide of 1915-1916 to form his empire's royal brass band. The conductor, who was also Armenian, composed the first official anthem of the Ethiopian state.
Drawing on this highly symbolic event, and following the history of the small Armenian community in Ethiopia, in this book Boris Adjemian shows how it operated on the margins of political society, hiding in its interstices, preferring intimacy and discreet loyalty to the glitter of open politics. The astonishing role of the Armenians in their host country was embodied in the friendship that the kings and queens of Ethiopia extended to them, a theme that is echoed in the life stories collected from their descendants.
Bringing to light the political and cultural importance of a community that has long been ignored and has almost vanished, this study draws on the collective memory of Armenian immigration and the centuries-long history of proximity between the Armenian and Ethiopian Churches. The author argues for a sedentary approach to the diaspora, for a socio-history of this collective rootedness, which dates back to the 19th century and builds on historical representations of otherness from the early modern period up to the colonial era. Highlighting stateless immigrants halfway between the national and the foreign, this history reveals the agency of stateless immigrants and their descendants, their ability to play with identities and undermine assigned belongings.
The Brass Band of the King is an original exploration of the social making of nationhood and foreignness in Africa and elsewhere.
Contents
Introduction: From the Sedentary Logic of Diasporas to the History of the Nation-State
Part I: The Genesis of an Ethiopian Political Tradition
Chapter 1
Wax and Gold: The Royal Brass Band's Unsuspected Political Role
Chapter 2
The Long Time of an Event: From Jerusalem to Jerusalem
Chapter 3
Of Immigrants and Kings: Toward a Symbolic Nationalization
Part II: The Friendship of Kings
Prelude to the History of a Collective Memory
Chapter 4
A Past that Engages the Present: The Social Stakes of the Making of Heroes
Chapter 5
Menelik's Armenians: From the Welcome as Experienced to the Sedentarization of an Imaginary
Chapter 6
Arba Lejoch: The Logical Apotheosis of a Collective Destiny
Part III: The Sedimentation of the Ungraspable
Chapter 7
From Threshold to Interstice: A Space of Decompartmentalized Sociabilities
Chapter 8
Between Stateless Person and Citizen: The Belle Époque of a Legal Gray Zone
Chapter 9
Between Färänj and Habäsha: Representations and Social Practices of Hybridity
Conclusion
Bibliography
