Raymond Borremans
Encyclopedia
Raymond Borremans, was a French
musician
performing as a one-man band
and a globe-trotter and encyclopaedist.
in 1929. He visited parts of northern Africa (Morocco
and Oran
), then, from 1929 to 1934, all countries of West Africa
and Equatorial Africa
. For a living, he performed as a one-man band
with his banjo
for an audience of colonizers. When he performed with his orchestra
at the Hotel de France in Grand-Bassam
in 1931, he became so enchanted by the surroundings, that he settled there permanently in 1934, taking a room in the house in which has been established the foundation that bears his name. After some time he ceases his activities as a musician and buys a film projector
, a movie screen and some film
s to travel with a mobile cinema
through French West Africa
to play films for an audience of local Africans from 1937 to 1974. Mid seventies, television
had sufficiently been introduced in Africa for the interest in his cinema to decrease. He stopped with music and, from then until his death, focused entirely on his life work: the Encyclopédie Borremans.
Starting in 1934, he focused on the composition of this encyclopaedic dictionary
for French West Africa. In the towns and villages he visited, the chiefs - among others - taught him the history of the region and its legends; he systematically took notes of everything he was told and of many other possible topics regarding what he saw or was told: from newspaper
articles to landscape
s, animal
s and event
s. The notes grew gradually into his encyclopaedia of French West Africa. He worked on a enormous system with index cards and a very extensive bibliography
on subjects related to Ivory Coast, Senegal
, Mali
, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso
) and Guinea-Conakry. After their independence, the files were fragmented among these five countries. Borremans has never been able to complete his encyclopaedia: he ended up with the letter N.
The encyclopaedia found a taker in 1983. Together with the index cards on Ivory Coast, the Grand Dictionnaire encyclopédique de Côte d'Ivoire, also known as "Le Borremans", was published in 1986. The file on Ivory Coast is now the main one and counts 75,000 index cards for as much entries; with its extensive documentation and its basic bibliography, it is to be compared in size to the first Petit Larousse.
Borremans' library has 500 books on flora
, fauna
, history
, ethnology
, geography
, politics
, economics
, art
, etc.
His ambitious and ironic slogan
was: "Comme Larousse, je sème à tout vent ; et ce, pour le continent noir ..." ( "Like Larousse, I sow against the wind and to the benefit of the dark continent ...") .
In 1987, he was handed the price Jean Sainteny by académician
Michel Deon
: for the occasion, Borremans, after a stay of 40 years in Africa, returned to France
.
His particularly adventurous life as a self-taught man and itinerant musician has been the subject of several radio broadcasts and newspaper articles.
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
performing as a one-man band
One-man band
A one-man band is a musician who plays a number of musical instruments simultaneously using their hands, feet, limbs, and various mechanical contraptions. The simplest type of "one-man band" — a singer accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and harmonica mounted in a metal "harp rack" below the...
and a globe-trotter and encyclopaedist.
Life
After an unsuccessful love Borremans left EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in 1929. He visited parts of northern Africa (Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
and Oran
Oran
Oran is a major city on the northwestern Mediterranean coast of Algeria, and the second largest city of the country.It is the capital of the Oran Province . The city has a population of 759,645 , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately 1,500,000, making it the second largest...
), then, from 1929 to 1934, all countries of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
and Equatorial Africa
Equatorial Africa
Equatorial Africa is an ambiguous term that is sometimes used to refer to tropical Africa, or the region of Sub-Saharan Africa traversed by the equator....
. For a living, he performed as a one-man band
One-man band
A one-man band is a musician who plays a number of musical instruments simultaneously using their hands, feet, limbs, and various mechanical contraptions. The simplest type of "one-man band" — a singer accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and harmonica mounted in a metal "harp rack" below the...
with his banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
for an audience of colonizers. When he performed with his orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
at the Hotel de France in Grand-Bassam
Grand-Bassam
Grand-Bassam is a city in Côte d'Ivoire, lying east of Abidjan. It was the French colonial capital city from 1893 until 1896, when the administration was transferred to Bingerville after a bout of yellow fever. The city remained a key seaport until the growth of Abidjan from the...
in 1931, he became so enchanted by the surroundings, that he settled there permanently in 1934, taking a room in the house in which has been established the foundation that bears his name. After some time he ceases his activities as a musician and buys a film projector
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
, a movie screen and some film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s to travel with a mobile cinema
Mobile cinema
A mobile cinema is a cinema on wheels.An example is the Screen machine Mobile Cinema of Scotland, which provides conventional up-to-date 35mm screenings of recent movies, with full digital surround sound, air conditioning, comfortable raked seating, and full disabled access...
through French West Africa
French West Africa
French West Africa was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan , French Guinea , Côte d'Ivoire , Upper Volta , Dahomey and Niger...
to play films for an audience of local Africans from 1937 to 1974. Mid seventies, television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
had sufficiently been introduced in Africa for the interest in his cinema to decrease. He stopped with music and, from then until his death, focused entirely on his life work: the Encyclopédie Borremans.
Starting in 1934, he focused on the composition of this encyclopaedic dictionary
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
for French West Africa. In the towns and villages he visited, the chiefs - among others - taught him the history of the region and its legends; he systematically took notes of everything he was told and of many other possible topics regarding what he saw or was told: from newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
articles to landscape
Landscape
Landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of...
s, animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
s and event
Event
Event can refer to many things such as:* An observable occurrence, phenomenon or an extraordinary occurrenceA type of gathering:* A ceremony, for example, a marriage* A competition, for example, a sports competition* A convention...
s. The notes grew gradually into his encyclopaedia of French West Africa. He worked on a enormous system with index cards and a very extensive bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
on subjects related to Ivory Coast, Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...
) and Guinea-Conakry. After their independence, the files were fragmented among these five countries. Borremans has never been able to complete his encyclopaedia: he ended up with the letter N.
The encyclopaedia found a taker in 1983. Together with the index cards on Ivory Coast, the Grand Dictionnaire encyclopédique de Côte d'Ivoire, also known as "Le Borremans", was published in 1986. The file on Ivory Coast is now the main one and counts 75,000 index cards for as much entries; with its extensive documentation and its basic bibliography, it is to be compared in size to the first Petit Larousse.
Borremans' library has 500 books on flora
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
, fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, ethnology
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, etc.
His ambitious and ironic slogan
Slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a political, commercial, religious and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose. The word slogan is derived from slogorn which was an Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm . Slogans vary from the written and the...
was: "Comme Larousse, je sème à tout vent ; et ce, pour le continent noir ..." ( "Like Larousse, I sow against the wind and to the benefit of the dark continent ...") .
In 1987, he was handed the price Jean Sainteny by académician
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
Michel Deon
Michel Déon
Michel Déon is a French writer.With Antoine Blondin, Jacques Laurent and Roger Nimier, he belonged to the literary group of the Hussards. He is a novelist as well as a literary columnist....
: for the occasion, Borremans, after a stay of 40 years in Africa, returned to France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
His particularly adventurous life as a self-taught man and itinerant musician has been the subject of several radio broadcasts and newspaper articles.
External links
- La Fondation Borremans (website)
- http://books.google.com/books?id=pj_iXavwBbEC&pg=PA2172&lpg=PA2172&dq=%22Raymond+Borremans%22&source=bl&ots=GnvCa_WSBB&sig=Tw5YhbJOpaRErgjH-PN8HHdNvB8&hl=nl&ei=bkUIS9GUAoGA4gbg4fHLCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCIQ6AEwCDgU#v=onepage&q=%22Raymond%20Borremans%22&f=falseBurkina Faso : cent ans d'histoire, 1895-1995 (two volumes, 2 206 pages), proceedings of the first international congres on the history of Burkina Faso, organised in 1996 by the Département d'Histoire et Archéologie de l'université de Ouagadougou, p. 2172]