Dakar, July 1 (APS) – The director general of the Museum of Black Civilizations (MCN), Professor Hamady Bocoum, hailed the memory of Ousmane Sow Huchard, late chairman of the board of directors of the museum institution ‘he directs and whose role he hailed in the creation of this structure.
The Senegalese ecologist Ousmane Sow Huchard, anthropologist, museologist and musicologist, died on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, in Dakar, at 78 years old, following a long illness, learned the APS of his family.
The deceased, who was elected deputy in 2007, was since March 2009 city councilor of Ziguinchor, the city where he was born on December 5, 1942.
In an interview with the APS, Professor Hamady Bocoum praised in him “a strategic player, a key piece in the creation of the Museum of Black Civilizations”.
“Ousmane Sow Huchard was a centerpiece, a strategic player in the creation of the Museum of Black Civilizations. Since he was designated PCA of the museum, everything that we have had to do and achieve in recent years under his management, its authority, its advice, helped us a lot to take charge of this museum “, testified the academic.
Mr. Bocoum notably insisted on the fact that the deceased, by his contribution, enabled the public authorities to better understand the challenges of the creation of this museum.
He explained that during an audience at the Palace of the Republic, before the Prime Minister, the finance and culture ministers of the time, Ousmane Sow Huchard had “explained the whole philosophy of the museum,” which led President Macky Sall to join the project.
According to him, it is this dynamic that led to the opening of the Museum of Black Civilizations on December 6, 2018.
He reassures that the teachings of the museologist and musicologist “Soléya Mama”, by his stage name, “will be perpetuated so that everyone is aware of it, because Ousmane Sow Huchard is an example of a person who believed in the culture he long ago. “
“With everything going on in the world around the death of African-American Georges Floyd, racism, addressing and memory, culture is coming back to the fore and I think people like Ousmane Sow Huchard are examples, “said the director of MCN.
Ousmane Sow Huchard, he notes, “is a great man, not only for Senegal and Africa, but for the world of science and culture. Someone who managed to crystallize around him, several fields , an artist, a brilliant academic who did his thesis on the + kora +, a practitioner, a man of action and state ”, without counting “all that he had to do at the dynamic museum and the exhibitions abroad”.
Ousmane Sow Huchard, a native of Casamance, southern area of Senegal, had big plans for his land, according to Hamady Bocum.
Ousmane Sow Huchard first received technical training in electrical practice before embarking on university studies in anthropology, music and museology in Canada.
Ousmane Sow Huchard holds a BA in art history and classical archeology at Laval University in 1978 and a Master of Science in anthropology, museology option from the University of Montreal in 1980. in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Laval, in 1985.
He was also a lecturer in museology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Laval in 1981.
The deceased was also a singer-songwriter, as a pillar of several Senegalese groups in the years 1970-1980, including the famous “Wato Sita”.
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