Mali Blues

Fatoumata Diawara

Ahmed Ag Kaedi

Bassékou Kouyaté

Rapper Master Soumy

Fatoumata Diawara

MALI BLUES            C+                  

Mali  Germany  (90 mi)  2016  d:  Lutz Gregor             Official Site

A curiosity of sorts, as it’s a compilation of conversations with several musicians from Mali mixed with concert footage, with a behind-the-scenes backdrop of political upheaval in the northern desert region of Mali where in 2012 an alliance of Tuareg separatists and jihadists from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb assumed control of the region, implementing their version of Sharian law, and have prohibited dance and forbidden the use of music, eliminating the Festival of the Desert while rounding up and smashing guitars, burning studios, and threatening to kill musicians.  Half a million people, including many performers, fled to the south or to neighboring countries.  A subject touched upon in Abderrahmane Sissako’s earlier film Timbuktu (2014), one of the cities that was overrun by jihadist fanatics, who banned not only the playing but even listening to music.  One of those musicians depicted in the film is basically the star of this film, Fatoumata Diawara, seen here singing in Sissako’s film, TIMBUKTU' - Clip La Musica (2:06), whose colorful outfits and everpresent smile lend a sunny tone to the film, where we hear her say early on, “I can’t imagine a life without music.  It would be like the Earth stopped turning.”  Raised in Mali, but currently living in France, she’s actually better known in Europe, where she was apprehensive about her first solo performance in Mali, as we see her nervously arriving at the Bamako airport, the nation’s southern capital, a city never occupied by the jihadists. The film follows various musicians arriving for the outdoor, open-air, 2015 Niger River Festival in Ségou, an annual 5-day festival of music, attracting an audience of over 35,000 people, suddenly the best place to hear live Malian music.  The stage is actually a floating pontoon sitting just off the banks of the Niger River, where water separates the audience from the musicians, though many hardy souls waded in to dance.  Situated in the heart of West Africa, Mali is one of the poorest countries on earth, but is also the original source of traditional African rhythms transported to America by slaves, giving rise to American blues and jazz.  Music has always been associated with Mali’s cultural identity, where their rich heritage includes Ali Farka Touré, the godfather of desert blues and a superstar on the African continent, along with his son Vieux Farka Touré who has continued his father’s legacy, Fanta Damba, whose career stretched four decades and was primarily responsible for introducing the music of Mali to Europe, Salif Keita, who introduced Afro-pop, usually seen in his colorful African garb, a descendent of Sundiata Keita, one of the founders of the Malian empire in the 13th century, Amadou and Mariam, a husband and wife blind couple specializing in pop fusion, and Oumou Sangaré, perhaps today’s biggest Malian star, a female force popularizing the regional Wassoulou-inflected style practiced by Fatoumata Diawara, who also provided the excruciatingly beautiful music in Sissako’s WAITING FOR HAPPINESS (2002), including what is arguably the most hauntingly beautiful song ever heard, “Djorolen,” Oumou Sangaré - Djorolen - YouTube (8:21).

Upon returning to a beautiful home overlooking the Niger river which cuts through the center of town, with the city of Bamako on the other side, Fatou acknowledges her guitar purchased this house, as she greets other arriving musicians, including Tuareg master guitarist Ahmed Ag Kaedi, leader of the band Amanar, a quietly introspective man who fled the religious persecution in Kidal, part of the northern desert, where extremists burned his home and his guitars before threatening to cut his fingers off.  Now exiled from the desert, he laments being in a big city, with too much pollution, too much noise, and too many people, but it’s no longer safe to return to his hometown.  Accordingly, he sits in open public places dressed in flowing robes and a white turban quietly playing his amplified guitar as people scurry about, moving from place to place around town to practice, with Fatou joining him on a rooftop musical session, both knowing what it is to feel exiled.  Hopping on a bus, Fatou takes off for the southern countryside, returning to her village home near the border of Ivory Coast, where she’s unsure how her family will feel about her, having abruptly left home to avoid a forced marriage, a custom that is part of her Wassoulou culture.  With vendors along the way offering hard-boiled eggs and plastic bags of water, we don’t really get a feel for the passing landscape, as the camera never gets out and explores the territory, missing an opportunity, instead remaining too close to Fatou’s side.  She is openly embraced by the colorfully attired village women, who sit in chairs under a tree and listen to her perform a heartfelt, personalized song “Boloko” pleading to stop the practice of female genital circumcision (“Don’t cut the flower that makes me a woman”), a powerful song directed against a cultural practice in Africa that affects up to 140 million women, including Fatou herself, with 38 out of 54 African states continuing the male-dominated custom, and the subject of an earlier film by Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, MOOLAADE (2004).  While the shocking practice actually claims the lives of as many as 15% of the young girls, performed by local elders or midwives, often without sterilized medical equipment or even anesthesia, causing infections, infertility, and childbirth complications, a decades-long United Nations campaign against it has done little to stop the practice.  According to a 2014 article from The Guardian (What is female genital mutilation and where does it happen? | Society ...), “In eight countries, almost all young girls are cut.  In Somalia, the prevalence is 98%, in Guinea 96%, in Djibouti 93% and in Egypt, in spite of its partly westernised image, 91%.  In Eritrea and Mali the figure is 89% and a prevalence of 88% was reported in both Sierra Leone and Sudan.”

We are also introduced to Bassékou Kouyaté, who specializes in the ngoni instrument, an ancient traditional lute that he describes as the predecessor to the banjo, though he modernizes the sound, using amplifiers and a wah-wah pedal, allowing him to transform the traditional sound of an acoustic instrument to a powerhouse, near psychedelic electrical force.  Kouyaté and his family are griots, part of an African oral tradition that dates back centuries, a living archive of his people’s customs, masters of the word, responsible for passing down the history of his people, where he toured together with the late Ali Farka Touré, standing out as the only ngoni player.  Because of his distinguished position, he brings both male and female musicians into a mosque, passing through a metal detector, where they are frisked, with uniformed guards present as they meet a Muslim teacher and Imam, first asking permission for the whites to be present to film a documentary.  Asking what Islam has to say about the practice of outlawing music, the Imam claimed the Koran does not forbid music, but he did raise a distinction between different kinds of music, as not all is positive, raising the question of what would be considered culturally destructive or harmful, and who has the power to make that claim.  While Kouyaté was often invited by the nation’s President to play music at state affairs, he envisions himself as a voice of the people, but that honor is likely bestowed upon rap artist Master Soumy, a young rapper in a T-shirt who is the most openly defiant, making angered political statements of social rebellion, claiming that’s the easiest way to promote social change.  Targeting corrupt politicians, he relentlessly attacks the hypocrisy of voices of Islamic intolerance, rallying the audience into a frenzy.

Kalashnikovs and bombs, explain your Islam.
Murder and torture, explain your Islam.
Before you forbid me laughing, explain your Islam.

Master Soumy contrasts the protest music of rappers with the more established position of griots, who have been integrated into the culture of Mali for centuries, often singing the praises of rich and powerful patrons, who then shower them with new cars, houses, or airplane tickets, while doing all they can to prevent rappers from performing.  Claiming griots ignore the negative side of society, rappers fill the void by telling the truth, by being the voice of the voiceless.  Disgusted by how easily people sell out for money, rappers are forced to beg for sponsorships, as the Malian record industry has been decimated by piracy.  Still, ignoring the threats leveled against them, which in the volatile political climate of Mali is certainly dangerous, they stand up for what they believe in, suggesting “Rap is music that can change society, that can change mentalities.”  As introductory pieces on the four musicians lead to later concert footage, which feels powerful, but is constantly interrupted with a quick cutting technique, where we only hear fragments, some of which is outstanding, but the film only touches on the surface, never really delving into any prolonged curiosity or discussion, which may leave some viewers infuriated by the choppiness of the editing style, feeling stagnant, with little direction.  Nonetheless, it’s an extraordinary portrait of Fatoumata Diawara, who remains central to the film, and for that footage alone the film is worth seeing. 

Fatoumata Diawara - AFH180 - YouTube  Africa Festival 2010 (12:31)

Fatoumata Diawara Performing at Brooklyn Metrotech  (16:34)

Fatoumata Diawara - African sound & dance styles - Live in ... - YouTube  live concert from Holon, Israel on March 1, 2013 (18:55)

Fatoumata Diawara Live Reggae On The River - Aug 2016  (43:42)

Fatoumata Diawara - Fatou (Full Album) - YouTube  2011 release (43:59)

Fatoumata Diawara @ LEAF Festival 5-13-2016  (1:28:22)

Africa Festival 2014 : Fatoumata Diawara | ARTE Concert  Africa Festival 2014  (1:32:14)

Baloise Sessions Fatoumata Diawara Full Concert HD  live concert from Basel, Switzerland, November 10, 2014 (1:36:49)

L'Olympic Café Tour d'Hindi Zahra & Fatoumata Diawara - Live @ Banlieues Bleues  live concert on French television (1:41:48)

Timbuktu

Director Abderrahmane Sissako

TIMBUKTU        B+                                      

Mauritania  France  (97 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Abderrahmane Sissako

They’re singing praise to the Lord and his prophet; should I arrest them?

—young soldier radioing his superior

This film couldn’t be more timely, as it’s perhaps the only film that predicts the presence of a murderous rogue Islamic militant group like ISIL currently grabbing the headlines with beheadings and unparalleled violence, as it’s based upon real incidents that took place in Northern Mali in 2012 when Ansar Dine Islamic militants occupied Timbuktu, once the center of scholarly Islamic learning in Africa, burning down the only public library, the Ahmed Baba Institute, including 18,000 historical manuscripts in the process.  But in particular what captured the director’s attention was an event depicted in the film, the public stoning of a young unmarried couple in the northern town of Aguelhok, both buried up to their necks and stoned to death in front of hundreds of watchers, a horribly tragic incident precipitated by their view that the couple was committing a crime against divine law.  According to Sissako, “Aguelhok is neither Damascus nor Teheran, and in no way am I looking to over-emotionalize these events for the purposes of a moving film.  What I do want to do is bear witness as a filmmaker.  Because I will never be able to say I didn’t know.  And because of what I know now, I must tell this story — in the hope that no child may ever have to learn this same lesson in the future.  That their parents could die, simply because they love each other.”  Historically, different tribes controlled Timbuktu until the French colonized Mali in 1893, granting their independence in 1960, where it remains one of the poorest regions in the world.  At the request of the government, the French military was eventually called in to run the Tuareg rebels out of the region and re-establish order, where the country recently conducted democratic elections.  While the filmmaker was born in nearby Mauritania, where he was forced to shoot the film due to the actual turmoil taking place in Timbuktu, he completed his early childhood education in Mali before returning home.  He studied cinema in Moscow at the prestigious VGIK (Federal State Film Institute) and now lives in Paris, where he discovered most of the non-professional cast he used, as well as the cinematographer Sofian El Fani, who shot Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013).  Many of the lead roles are played by professional singers, the most prominent being Malian musician Fatoumata Diawara, seen here Fatoumata Diawara - Bissa (OFFICIAL VIDEO) - YouTube (3:24). 

Initially screened in competition at Cannes, the film reportedly received a 10-minute standing ovation afterwards and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury honoring works inspired by “the spiritual dimension of our existence,” and also the François Chalais Prize recognizing “the values of journalism.”  What Sissako brings to the subject is pure cinematic poetry, a common thread throughout his films, including WAITING FOR HAPPINESS (2002), winner of the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes, while also awarded the French Culture Award as the Best Foreign Cineaste of the Year, and BAMAKO (2006), a thought provoking film that examines the effects of globalization in Africa, specifically Mali, where the first world G8 nations historically stole what they could from African nations through colonialist exploitation, only to be replaced today by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund financial systems that remain even more deeply entrenched through the huge debts these impoverished nations supposedly owe to these international institutions, ranging from 40 to 60% of the nation’s total income.  Perhaps even more prescient was the director’s humorous insertion of a film within a film, a fictitious, rather cartoonish American film playing in the region called DEATH IN TIMBUKTU starring Danny Glover in a Sergio Leone style Hollywood western depicting a small African village falling under a torrent of bullets to rebel outsiders, watched in a feverish trance by children, a rather unfathomable intersection of fiction and reality.  While most of the news reports focus upon the wanton jihadist destruction of Timbuktu’s cultural heritage sites, outrageous acts that are themselves unconscionable, Sissako instead focuses upon the day to day effects it has on the local population, a tribal culture that has survived centuries in a brutally harsh sub-Sahara desert climate.  Opening in a stunning moment of lyrical beauty juxtaposed against the madness of ongoing violence, we see a truck of jihadists inexplicably firing machine guns at a deer/gazelle streaking through the desert, where the movement is captured as poetry in motion.  In the next shot, tribal carvings are destroyed by machine gun fire, where the centuries-old traditions of the past are wiped away in seconds.  The incomprehensible aspect is our entryway into understanding the presence of this occupied force, which goes against the laws of nature.  When they enter the mosque with their weapons, explaining they are practicing jihad, the local imam (Adel Mahmoud Cherif) tells them he is practicing jihad as well, but in Timbuktu they use the mind instead of weapons, where bringing guns into the mosque is a disgrace to the piety of God.    

The film recalls the insidious terror expressed in Raoul Peck’s Haitian film The Man On the Shore (L’Homme sur les quais) (1993), shot during the reign of the Duvalier dictatorship and his armed militia, the Tontons Macoute, who similarly terrorized the population.  The villagers in Timbuktu are comprised of various ethnic groups speaking French, Bambara, Songhay, and Tamasheq living in harmony with the nomadic Tuareg people, while these militants bring with them Arabic and even English speaking jihadists from around the globe, where the irony is they have soldiers drive around the city in trucks with loud speakers warning residents of the new laws, where they are not allowed to sing, play music, or dance, while covered women must wear socks at all times and gloves on their hands, but they require multi-lingual interpreters to get their ultra orthodox message of forbidden activities across.  Easily the most absurd example is banning the game of soccer, with armed men with machine guns taking the ball away, leaving the fully dressed players in uniform to continue playing without the ball in a choreographed, ballet-like pantomime that expresses the joy and beauty of movement, where these guys revere the skill level of Lionel Messi and imitate his post goal scoring celebratory moves on the field.  Mali is also known around the world for their intricate music, where the names of Ali Farka Touré and Oumou Sangaré spring to mind, where the idea of soldiers silencing these voices is catastrophic, but real, as they go house to house hunting down the origins of musical sounds, arresting those responsible, including Fatoumata Diawara and others who are then given 40 lashes in public, where she breaks out in song midway through her punishment.  Anyone who has seen Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013) will appreciate the profound difference in how this is visually expressed, losing the grotesque aspect of mutilated flesh, where the focus is on pain, and instead adds a poetic lyricism that highlights the injustice.  Inflicting punishment, like the public stoning, appears to be the goal of Ansar Dine rebels, where they round up villagers and subject them to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic sharia law, bringing the imam out of the temple to question where does God enter into these ungodly actions?  When a young girl is hauled out of her home and forced into marriage to one of the armed rebels against the protests of her family, the ruling court claims this is perfectly legal, as “We are the guardians of all deeds.”  Against this backdrop, another local family is destroyed, where Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed, aka Pino) is a goat and cattle herder living in the freedom of a tent out in the desert with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), young daughter Toya, while also raising a young orphan Issan, who tends to the cattle every day.  When a local dispute over a dead cow results in an accidental death, Kidane is arrested and immediately sentenced to death, where the harsh and excessive punishment contrasts against the sight of rebels routinely violating their own rules, including one that lusts after Kidane’s wife, where the lingering question raised at the end is who will they be coming after next, as instead of a deer they are chasing down humans.    

Daratt (Dry Season)

DARATT (Dry Season)            A-   
Chad  France  Belgium  Austria  (96 mi)  2006  d:  Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

A brilliant film about the aftereffects of war and how amnesty and/or reconciliation never really brings about a peace, as the profound losses leave the nation and its citizens depleted of its most natural resource, human kindness and love, which all but disappears off the face of the earth.  Interestingly, another African film resembles this story nearly exactly, MUNYURANGABO (2007), released a year afterwards and set in Rwanda, shot by the American son of Korean immigrants doing missionary work in Rwanda.  Both are extremely simplistic, but for raw storytelling that gets to the root of anguish and loss, this film is nearly flawless.  Set in Chad, a former French colony in West Africa, the messenger in this film is Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai), aka the Orphan, a 20-year old kid whose father was killed during the nation’s civil war.  His nickname says it all, suggesting what his childhood must have been like in a tribal society where family connections mean everything, though no other reference to his childhood difficulties are shown in this film.  His face, however, reveals an intent seriousness that rarely, if ever, backs down from anyone.  When he and his blind grandfather listen to a radio broadcast announcing the results of the nation’s truth commission investigations, they find the resulting amnesty for everyone insulting, as murderers are free to roam the streets, including the killer of Atim’s father.  When his grandfather hands him his father’s revolver, sending Atim out to execute his father’s killer, there is no other possible solution in this family’s eyes.  Justice must come from their own hand.   

Using a stationary camera throughout, each shot by Abraham Haile Biru is beautifully composed without an ounce of artifice showing the natural colors of the region, the dry arid deserts and the poor dusty villages with mud and clay homes on dirt streets and no trees for miles as far as anyone can see across an empty horizon.  Out into this wilderness Atim is sent, as if fulfilling a Biblical obligation to carry out his mission, which leads him into the capital city of N’Djamena where he is promptly beat up by a few sadistic soldiers, signs of the continuing resentment and rage leftover long after the so-called peace agreement.  He soon discovers the home of Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), a devout Muslim man who speaks with a voice box, a battle scar left over after someone nearly slit his throat.  He’s married to a young bride (Aziza Hisseine) who is closer in age to Atim, the result of an arranged wedding.  What follows is Atim sullenly and wordlessly helping Nassara who assumes a fatherly role with his sweaty and back-breaking routine of baking loaves of bread, where Atim withholds all thoughts and emotions and takes on the role of an angry, aimless youth far away from home.  Nassara personally acknowledges “I’ve done a lot of harm,” and keeps a small closet filled with a hoard of guns and ammunition.  Haroun advances the story through a series of flawless edits that reveal the passing of time in close proximity to one another, where it’s never clear Atim’s real aims, where under the surface is a seething, pent up rage for which there is no relief.  Atim oftentimes contemplates shooting his victim, but each time he gets his nerve up his target is not readily accessible, so against his will he ends up containing his anger.      

A companion piece to the divided lives of Abderrahmane Sissako’s BAMAKO (2006), who is himself a producer on this film, another portrait of the aftereffects of an African truth and justice commission, one also finds a similar theme in the Dardenne brother’s film THE SON (2002), which reverses the role of the child and the adult, as in that film, it is a father’s son that is killed by another kid about his son’s age that he suddenly comes in close contact with at a rehab woodworking workshop for juvenile offenders.  The difference here is the maturity level of the father whose loss is balanced against this adolescent journey to adulthood by a young Atim, continually set against a backdrop of lingering signs of war as evidenced through wordless images of offending police officers, a brutal wife-beating husband, and the seething hostility that continues to exist underneath the surface between father-figure Nassara and Atim.  Written by the director, featuring original music by Wasis Diop, the brother of Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty, all of this is expressed visually through a continuing series of intelligent, near wordless sequences, where we all but lose track of time, but feel the subtle rumblings of something developing, even if it is just brief instances of kindness or human assistance, as it goes against the better judgment of each character, whose life history has been filled with absorbing continuing rounds of neverending punishment.  The camera lingers on what’s unsaid, on the spacious emptiness that surrounds so many moments of this film.  If the war is over, these men show few signs of it, as they couldn’t be more tense and tightly wound, finding it hard to hold it all in.  The finale is a poetic suggestion that people hold the answer to their own destiny, that the mind can find solutions, even if it doesn’t conform to their family or even their government’s wishes, as there is little doubt but that justice was obtained.