An Evening with Public Radio's Afropop Worldwide: Film, Music, Food

Description

An Evening with Afropop Worldwide includes the film ***Festival in the Desert: The Tent Sessions (Timbuktu, Mali);*** concert with **The Mandingo Ambassadors.** West African food is available to purchase by Cafe Drake. Film will be shown at The Orpheum's Mark Theater. In January, 2003, Afropop's Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre borrowed two movie cameras and headed to the Malian desert to attend the fourth Festival in the Desert. In the rolling white dunes outside Timbuktu, organizers constructed a sound stage and presented three nights of music from Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré, Lobi Traoré, Tartit, Lojo, Tinariwen and Robert Plant, among others. The Afropop team filmed intimate daytime performances in tents around the site, and spoke deeply with artists about that era’s newfound peace in northern Mali. The resulting film captures a moment of hope and solidarity not to be repeated in our time, not to mention spine-tingling performances by some of Mali’s greatest hidden talents. In subsequent years, as security conditions deteriorated, the Festival was moved into Timbuktu. Its final edition came in 2012, just as Tuareg and Islamist rebels seized control of the region, igniting conflicts that continue to this day. This film stands today as a record of a poignant but perilous time in this fantastically rich musical country. Barlow and Eyre will deliver brief remarks before the screening. **The Mandingo Ambassadors,** led by veteran Guinean guitarist and maestro Mamady Kouyaté, capture the thrilling sound of Guinea's famous dance bands of the 1960s and '70s. Since 2007, the band has hosted Wednesday night residency at Barbes in Brooklyn, generally before a room full of dancers. Echoing legendary bands of Guinea, like Bembeya Jazz, Horoya Band and Bala et ses Baladins, Kouytaté and his musicians continue to inspire listeners and dancers with the spirit of Conakry, Guinea, where, incidentally, Ali Farka Touré first began playing guitar back in 1956. A dance set from the Mandingo Ambassadors will cap an evening of celebration and reflection of the West African past. Peabody Award-winning **Afropop Worldwide** promotes understanding and enjoyment of contemporary African and diaspora music on public radio, online (afropop.org) and social media. Launched by NPR in 1988 (airing locally on the WAMC network since then) and hosted by African broadcast personality Georges Collinet, Afropop was the first nationally distributed broadcast showcase for African music in the U.S. media. The program introduced American listeners to the greats—Youssou N’Dour, Angelique Kidjo, Oumou Sangare, Gilberto Gil, and others and took them to Lagos, Havana, Kinshasa, Cairo, Paris and other cultural capitals. Afropop Worldwide showcases artists and their work in cultural and historic context, across the generational spectrum, building community in support of artists’ narratives, live performances, album and video releases, and varied collaborative projects. In Afropop productions, music becomes a lens for exploring contemporary and traditional perspectives on women’s rights, climate change, governance and other issues that define our shared future. West African food by Cafe Drake will be available to purchase at The Local *A collaboration between Upstate Films, Afropop Worldwide and The Local*