272 notes to pages 35–78
- the wicked major
- Of course, they spread much farther to the east and southeast than just to Maradi (Mas-
quelier 2001). In 1993, a bori adept living in Zinder gave me a detailed list of more than forty
Babule spirits’ names. Throughout the 1990s, I met the Wicked Major and Caporal Salma
(whose name goes back to the French officer Victor Salaman, Niamey’s first commandant
de cercle; he served from 1901 to 1905). I came across many other Babule spirits during bori
dances in all parts of Hausaphone Nigeria and as far as Maiduguri in the northeastern part of
the country (Krings 1997; see also Besmer 1983). - The Tuka movement in Fiji described by Peter Worsley (1957) is a particularly striking
example of this. - The following account is based on the 1954 film and on a transcript of the film’s audio
track published in German (Rouch 1983). The quotes refer to this transcript that I have trans-
lated. I use Rouch’s film as an ethnographic document, rather than discussing it as a film. For
a summary of the critical debate about this highly controversial film, see Lim (2002). - The lyrics in the original Hausa look like this: “Babba’ku iyalan gwamna / Na gwamna
ga rawa ga ya’ki / Soja birgimar hankaka / kowa ya ga ba’kinku / zai ga farinku.” - lance spearman
- For a contemporary account of Drum Publications’ look-reads, I rely heavily on a short
but very informative article by Stanley Meisler (1969), who was then based in Nairobi as a
foreign correspondent of the Los Angeles Times. For the history of South African look-reads
with white casts, see Saint (2010) and the steadily growing archives of the South African
Comic Books blog (http://southafricancomicbooks.blogspot.co.uk). - The same seems to hold true for a number of other black characters, such as Supermask
(another superhero); Chunky (also called Chunky Charlie, a corpulent black detective); Big
Ben, whose “of London” epithet has a cosmopolitan sound to it; and the heroine, She, each of
whom featured in his or her respective magazine in the southern African photo-novel land-
scape in the second half of the 1960s. I gathered this information on the South African Comic
Books blog. - Later on, the East African and West African editions were printed in Tanzania (later
Kenya) and Nigeria, respectively.
4.African Film was used as the title of the look-read in East Africa and West Africa, while
the same content was published as Spear magazine in South Africa; similarly, Boom magazine,
which contained the stories of Fearless Fang and The Stranger, was published in Nigeria and
Kenya, while The Stranger served as the magazine title in South Africa. The South African
photo-novel True Love appeared in East Africa and West Africa as Sadness and Joy. - All interviews are confidential, with the names of the interviewees withheld by mutual
agreement. - I got a similar explanation for Spear’s popularity from Richard Ndunguru, lecturer at
University of Dar es Salaam, who avidly followed African Film as a child. - Interview with Faraji H. H. Katambula by Claudia Böhme, Dar es Salaam, October 20,
2009, translation of transcript by Uta Reuster-Jahn. - In the 1990s, this magazine, with a circulation of 10,000, was published every two weeks
(Sturmer 1998). - According to Segun Sofowote, who was the first editor of West African Book Publish-
ers’ photo-play magazines Atoka and Magnet, the format was inspired by the look-reads of