AFS Essentials Presents Return to Gorée

Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye & Youssou N’Dour at the Maison des Esclaves

AFS Presents Return to Gorée
Tuesday, November 6th
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (1120 S. Lamar)
$4 / Free for AFS members, 7pm
[info]

We'll admit it: our jazz knowledge consists of a couple of Miles Davis and John Coltrane albums mixed with our few and far between visits to the Elephant Room. Well, as the public service announcement says, never stop learning, right? Thankfully the Austin Film Society wishes to aid us in our continuing education tonight as they present Return to Gorée, the fourth in their essential series Torn from the Motherland: Films of the African Diaspora.

Gorée is a small island off the coast of Senegal, and was one of the main hubs of the Atlantic slave trade. Although the volume of human trafficking was much greater on the island of Zanzibar, Gorée is unique in that it is the direct link to the French speaking slave population that was transported to Louisiana, bringing with them their distinct Franco-African creole culture and an entirely new form of music which would come to be known as jazz. In Return to Gorée, Youssou N'Dour, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2007 and Africa's international music superstar (you've heard him, you just may not know it), seeks to follow the path of these accidental innovators, who are not only the symbol of an entire world of suffering, but also the torchbearers for the overwhelming uniting force of music.

N'Dour is guided in his journey by Moncef Genoud, a blind jazz pianist, who at an early age was sent from his birthplace of Tunisia to receive treatment on his eyes in Switzerland, where he was subsequently adopted by jazz enthusiasts who encouraged him to learn the piano whilst introducing him to the likes of Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. Genoud and N'Dour follow the trail left by the slaves through North America and Europe in hopes of compiling a deep repertoire of jazz, including an understanding of the unique events that led to its creation, with the specific aim of performing an epic concert in a place that today symbolizes the horrors of the slave trade. In an effort to commemorate and honor the victims, their travels are documented by filmmaker Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, showing us that under the grip of dire circumstances, the human spirit will unfailingly create art which transcends cultural division.