No. 114/2022

27 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 114/2022 “ AT THE TIME I THOUGHT, IF I CAN ENTERTAIN A THOUSAND PEOPLE, I CAN BECOME A PROFESSOR, TOO.” Photo: Philipp Rothe POPSTARS: In 1993, Kofi Yakpo, alias Linguist (front row, 2nd from left), and his band Advanced Chemistry made the video of the song “Fremd im eigenen Land.” In the mid-1990s, he bade farewell to music, started travelling and concentrating on research. Universität zu Berlin in 2020/21, he was unable to detect much transformation in matters of diversity in German science. Listening to Kofi Yakpo it soon becomes clear that he has always found Germany, the country of his birth, too narrow, geographically but also mentally: “Germany is a bit like the European version of the US. People look inwards, not outwards.” Yakpo was born in Holzminden in Lower Saxony but spent his childhood in Ghana. German is his native tongue. In Ghana he came into contact with his father’s language, Ewe, for the first time. When he was ten, his family moved back to Germany, to Heidelberg, where he taught himself Ewe grammar using an old schoolbook from his parents’ bookshelves. He admits to having been a language nerd. “My first passion was Latin.” Soon he started French and, at 15, was borrowing books on languages from the university library: grammars of Fijian, Tok Pisin, the national language of Papua New Guinea, or Yoruba, one of the three principal languages of Nigeria. “I was under the illusion I could learn any language in no time,” says Yakpo. After doing his civilian service, he enrolled at the University of Cologne to study linguistics. HIP-HOP AGAINST RACISM On stage, he had already become the “Linguist” by that time. At 17, Kofi Yakpo and four friends had formed the hip-hop group, Advanced Chemistry. With their political texts, the band wrote rap history in Germany. Their song “Fremd im eigenen Land” dealt with contemporary racist structures in the country. A populist public debate on asylum, racial murders and arson attacks in Rostock, Mölln, Solingen and Hoyerswerda were the key topics in society at the time. “For all the talk of European unity / When I take the bus or train to the border / I ask myself why I’m the only one who has to show ID / has to prove their identity,” rhymed Advanced Chemistry a good 30 years ago. Lines that are ›