A great influence on the creation of Kirina has been Felwine Sarr’s essay Afrotopia (2016) in which he encourages Africans to develop their own ideas on how to balance out political, economic, cultural, symbolic and environmental aspects in their societies. Instead of imagining a future within the framework of imposed (neoliberal capitalistic) ideologies, Sarr encourages communities to reflect from their proper cultural histories and to develop a position in a globalized world starting from that local imagination. For this Senegalese economist and academic, Africa can offer the world a new “project for civilization” more respectful of humans and the environment, if only she accomplishes “a profound cultural revolution and gives birth to the newness that she is carrying”. “Today,” Sarr states, “we find many global stories that inhabit us, but African stories are very little present. They circulate and feed the global imagination less.”

Nourished by Sarr’s book and their ongoing personal dialogue since 2017, Serge Aimé Coulibaly decides to take a popular, mythologized Western-African story as a base for this creation. The battle of Kirina (c. 1235) proved to be an interesting point of departure because it presents motifs and themes that pose current questions and that can be universalized. The story of the battle is retold in the Epic of Soundiata an instance of oral tradition, narrated by generations of griot poets and widely consid- ered Mali's national epic.

A second important reason for the choice of this specific epic as an inspiration for this new creation of his, derives directly from Coulibaly’s first outrage towards the limited contemporary view on migrant’s backgrounds and the common prejudices about their cultural and intellectual underdevelopment. According to the Epic of Soundiata, the Mande Charter or the constitution of the Mali Empire was created after the Battle of Kirina by an assembly of nobles to create a government for the newly established empire. According to oral tradition of the griot poets, this charter established the federation of Mandinka clans under one government, outlined how it would operate and established the laws by which the people would live. This thirteenth century African charter is considered by many as a first version of the declaration on the rights of man, long before the European version that followed the French revolution some 500 years later.

It is also this choice for the Epic of Soundiata as a base for the creation that led to the collaboration with composer Rokia Traore. Which contemporary African voice could reflect more strongly on the energy of this strong tradition and its possible bonds with today’s reality? Few artistic careers are at once as free and as rooted in tradition. Traore has often been called unique, post-traditional, mutant, so easily she seems to find herself at unknown crossroads, at confluences both unpredictable and determined by her personal history. Her music proved to be essential for the creation of this new epic, rooted in ancient traditions but talking about today’s world.

— Sara Vanderieck, dramaturge (2018)