MEDI1TV Afrique : Musique au TanJazz 2024, cinéma avec Dahomey et l'Art avec El Anatsui - 14/09/2024
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00:00It's with great pleasure that I meet you on Mediain TV for this new Escale Culture at the heart of Africa.
00:17In a few moments, we will talk about cinema with this film that makes a sensation at this moment,
00:23named Daume, we will come back with pleasure on this very beautiful cinematographic work.
00:29We will also talk about, with a big A, the international renown artist,
00:35Ana Tzou, who was recently awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
00:41But first of all, let's welcome our guest of the day.
00:44And today, we have the immense pleasure of welcoming this born meloman, a true artist in the soul,
00:59multi-instrumentalist artist, Magid Vrkas, whom we no longer introduce. He is with us. Hello Magid.
01:05Hello.
01:08Thank you for being with us today in Africa, in Culture. It is always a pleasure to receive you.
01:15Besides, we have very beautiful news waiting for you, since from September 18, the Tanjaz Festival will start.
01:24You will also give the tone in the company of Omar Sosa, so it's very soon.
01:31And I would like to know, you are used to the art of fusion, it is something that you master perfectly from A to Z.
01:40And my question would be today, with all this beautiful career that you have,
01:46how could you define your musical universe and the place of fusion in this same musical universe?
01:55Well, music for me started very early in the 70s. I was inspired by the famous mythical group Nassel Rewan.
02:12And I had a group to get rid of Nassel Rewan in Salé.
02:17And since then, I have not stopped multiplying my experiences and learning different cultures,
02:27including African music and Saharan music, and blues and jazz.
02:34And all this journey, I continued to do it and create until I created what I called African Guinewa Blues,
02:50which is a mix between blues and African music and Guinewa music.
02:57And with this artist for Le Temps Jazz, Omar Sosa, with whom you will be on stage,
03:06how will it go? Do you already have an idea?
03:11And above all, what is waiting for the public?
03:13Because you come from two universes that are very similar, but of course each have their particularities.
03:20Yes, first of all, you should know that Omar Sosa and I met a lot at the big jazz festivals in Europe,
03:32when I was touring with the famous German pianist Joachim Kühne.
03:40I had a trio with Joachim Kühne for 22 years and 25 years.
03:45And Omar Sosa is also a fan of this pianist.
03:48So through Joachim Kühne, we met, we exchanged, and we must not forget that in 2018 or 2019,
04:02Omar Sosa and I, plus the group Djoko, paid a very nice tribute to the teacher Mahmoud Guinea.
04:17We paid a very nice tribute to him at Raba in the context of the festival in Mauritius.
04:23So this is not the first time I play with Omar Sosa, but this time at Ton Jazz, it will really be a creation.
04:32And it's been more than a month since we've been exchanging music and preparing for this beautiful creation,
04:41which will really lead to something very good.
04:47I would also like to know if, Magide, you are used to the art of fusion,
04:52you also master several musical genres, including Tegnewit, which is your first love, if I dare say so.
05:00And is it true that, I don't know if it's true, but you are an expert in the field, you can enlighten us,
05:07is it true that music and Tegnewit do not merge?
05:12It's true that there are a lot of experiences that came together like this.
05:27I can tell you that this is not the case for me.
05:32Because I also play other people's music.
05:37When I meet an artist of jazz, blues or world music, I ask him to play his music too.
05:48And then I can also propose some arrangements of my music.
05:59Even when it comes to traditional Guinean music, I can compose some phrases or some riffs to play,
06:08by the musicians who accompany me or who meet with me.
06:14For me, in order for the meeting to succeed, it must be balanced.
06:21That is to say, it must be balanced and it must also go towards the other, not go in one direction.
06:32That's my opinion.
06:35Of course, and as I said, you master several musical genres and genres that ultimately have the same soul,
06:45if we can say that like that.
06:47But you, your sensitivity as an artist and as a human being,
06:52which genre do you feel most comfortable with?
06:56What speaks to you the most or can't you make a choice?
07:01For me, jazz.
07:03I feel comfortable when it comes to jazz because in jazz there is a certain freedom.
07:11There is freedom of expression, there is improvisation and there is also a harmonic richness.
07:19We must not forget that there is not only improvisation, there is a harmonic richness
07:24and there is an earthly rhythm, like what we find in Gnawa music and in African music in general.
07:34And recently you released your album Jodor, which was a success,
07:41which was particularly applauded by the music critics.
07:46And are you preparing something for us right now?
07:49Is there an album that is about to be released?
07:56Certainly.
07:57On October 25, I will play at Jazz Café.
08:03Jazz Café is a famous place in London where all the jazzmen have played there and play there.
08:10I want to present a new album that I recorded with young English musicians,
08:16talented young musicians.
08:19An album called Alone, which we will present on October 25, God willing, at Jazz Café.
08:27Also on November 10, I will play at the Berlin Philharmonic, God willing.
08:35And I invited the excellent guitarist of Rencontres et de Fusion and Music du Monde, Nguyen Ly, the Vietnamese guitarist,
08:46and the drummer Hamid Drake, who was the drummer of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shep, and even Don Cherry.
08:58He is an outstanding drummer, as they say.
09:03And so it will be a live concert at the Berlin Philharmonic,
09:08recorded and which will be the subject of a new album with the German label Actu Records, God willing.
09:17God willing, so a very nice news in sight before leaving us, just out of curiosity.
09:25Why Alone, if of course you can tell us about it?
09:29Well, Alone, it's the colors, it's the seven colors of Gnawa, it's the seven colors of Goethe.
09:36Alone, it's the colors, but it's mostly about the seven colors of Gnawa, of Lalila, of the evening of Trance.
09:45And we will be at the rendezvous, thank you very much too, Magid Bagtas.
09:49So from September 18 in Jazz, and you will be there with Omar Sosa.
09:55The rendezvous is on September 19 at the famous place that housed the International Jazz Day, the Palace of Culture.
10:10Exactly, and we will be at the rendezvous. Thank you very much too, Magid, for being with us.
10:14You're welcome, and thank you for the invitation.
10:17With great pleasure, thank you very much.
10:26And after talking about jazz music, we talk about art with the internationally renowned artist El Anatsou,
10:35who was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
10:39A supreme award for this representative of the African continent, who was presented for the first time at this event in 1990.
10:48Loyal to his roots, he travels the world and attracts international attention with his work on recycled materials.
10:55His great emblematic paintings are made from capsules of bottles flattened,
11:02connected by copper wires in a rather complex and meticulous assembly,
11:06mixing fabrics, paint and sculptures, often monumental, up to 16 meters high and 50 meters wide,
11:13for the facade of the Royal Academy in London in 2013.
11:17These complex metallic sculptures, of course metaphorically charged,
11:21and whose use attests above all to a both cultural and environmental concern.
11:26Let's listen to him.
11:28Because I was born on a peninsula in Ghana, the sight of boats always excites me.
11:38Because my hometown is such that the boat is the means of transportation.
11:49Since the boats we have seen have had a long life of work, but are no longer used,
11:58I decided that I had to resurrect them, literally make them fly to the sky.
12:07And by deciding to resurrect them, I saw that I would need support.
12:16And I thought about surrounding them with metal, to give them more body.
12:25In trying to do that, I realized that it would make a perfect sculpture with this bronze mold.
12:33Many sculptures of Anutsu are designed to be free and flexible.
12:39They can be shaped in any way and modified in appearance for each installation,
12:45working with wood, clay, metal and more recently with metal caps.
12:49Anutsu goes hand in hand with the traditional adhesion of sculpture to fixed forms,
12:55while visually referring to the history of abstraction in African and European art.
13:01The colored fields and the dense motifs of the works assembled from bottle caps
13:06also trace a broader history of economic and cultural exchanges,
13:10colonial and especially post-colonial, in Africa,
13:13told in the history of rebuttal materials.
13:16The wood sculptures in these ceramics introduce, you guessed it, ideas
13:21on the function of objects, their destruction, transformation and regeneration in everyday life
13:26and on the role of language in deciphering visual symbols.
13:31Sculpture casting.
13:33The process of casting the lost wax is one of the most common ways of casting in bronze.
13:41The wax is encased in a mold and when the mold is set, it is heated and the wax melts.
13:53The bronze is then melted and poured into the spaces that the wax left.
13:59So in a way, the wax is represented by the boat that has given its life to give birth to a new life.
14:10And I think that is what boats do most of the time.
14:15And I thought that the title for this work could be Lost Wax,
14:22which tells the idea that people sacrifice their lives to allow others to live,
14:28to give birth to a new life, so that this situation is realized and is understood in this way.
14:37El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor who spent a large part of his career
14:42rich in realizations, living and working in Nigeria.
14:46El Anatsui currently runs a very solid studio located in Nsukka, Ngugu, Nigeria,
14:52and Tema, in Ghana, where some of the most beautiful and touching works of art
14:57in the contemporary African world are created.
15:00He is one of the most acclaimed artists in African history
15:04and one of the most eminent contemporary artists in the world.
15:12I think it comes from my Christian education.
15:15The idea of sacrifice, just like Jesus Christ sacrificed his life and ascended to heaven.
15:25And this idea of three boats is a sort of trinity to the spiritual connotation.
15:32The exodus from Europe to America was done by boat.
15:36Slavery was also done by boat.
15:39This is a forced exodus.
15:42In so many parts of the world, boats have been used in major topical events.
15:52And the boats carry goods as well as ideas.
15:58DAHOMEY
16:03Let's talk about cinema with Dahomey.
16:06On November 10, 2021, 26 works of art were restored in the Republic of Benin.
16:1226 royal treasures of Dahomey, plundered by French colonial troops at the end of the 19th century.
16:19Dahomey's second feature film,
16:22the Senegalese filmmaker Mathilde Diop-Dahomey,
16:26created the golden bear at the last Berlinale.
16:29What does a work become when its cultural, metaphorical, symbolic attribute is taken away
16:34and displayed in a museum, moreover in a foreign place?
16:38Can statues die and be reborn?
16:41Let's watch an excerpt from the trailer.
16:49I was born in this world.
16:52I was born in this world.
17:01I was born in this world.
17:04I was born in this world.
17:07I was born in this world.
17:10I was born in this world.
17:19It will allow historians and artists to reappropriate this story.
17:27It is a fact for the political world.
17:29In nothing, it is historical.
17:34Even our own culture has not been taken in our language.
17:38What was plundered more than a century ago,
17:41is the soul of the people.
17:44I was born in this world.
17:48I was born in this world.
17:54What is the life of a work of art?
17:57In any case, this is one of the questions we ask ourselves when we see
18:00Dahomey, a hybrid film between documentary and fiction
18:03on the restoration process of preserved works
18:06at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris,
18:08which will make the trip back to Cotonou.
18:11It is a documentary as well as a matidiop,
18:14a film, a debate between students at the University of Dahomey in Benin.
18:17But fiction, when it makes us hear in voice-over
18:20and in the background the inner monologue of one of the works,
18:23the anthropomorphic statue of King Guizot.
18:26But how does the return of his ancestors live in a country
18:29that had to be built and composed with their absence,
18:32while the soul of the works is released?
18:35The debate is raging among the students of the University of Dahomey.
18:39What is the opinion of a fiction documentary
18:42to watch urgently and which makes a sensation?
18:45Signed, Matidiop.
18:54And before leaving us in the African culture,
18:57we talk about the night, this very beautiful night,
19:00which is added to the night of the Mauritian Ananda Devi.
19:03Published in the Manui collection at the Museum of Stock Editions,
19:06it is not a novel, but was inspired by a memorable night
19:09that the author spent in the Lyon prison of Monteluk,
19:12which became a museum where Jews were incarcerated,
19:15including Jean Moulin, 18 before their deportation,
19:18but also criminals of French and German wars.
19:21The story of Devi is a deep meditation
19:24on history and its detours.
19:27Let's listen to it right now.
19:30History is also a way through which
19:33to tell this way that modern society has
19:36to be in excess,
19:39in excess of food,
19:42but also of consumption of objects, of materials.
19:45And so she will end up
19:48in the capacity to move,
19:51to get out of her room.
19:54We are in her story, in her destiny
19:57and in a way of seeing the world through her eyes.
20:00At the beginning, we have the impression
20:03that we are moving a little bit to a kind of regionalization
20:06of our writing and that it becomes
20:09a very easy gateway in what we do.
20:12I say yes, because there are many other authors
20:15who are in the same situation,
20:18although we would like to talk about style, for example,
20:21or content, but not only about the place we are talking about.
20:24But it has been a bit of a struggle
20:27for many years
20:30to get out of there.
20:33But I think little by little we are getting there.
20:36And today there is a different look, I think,
20:39in relation to this literature.
20:42I am sitting in front of the cell where the names are displayed
20:45and the children say yes.
20:48The echoes settle and respond between me
20:51who writes the photos of the children who look at me.
20:54There was no purchase, no forgiveness
20:57in their last hours, nor men, nor both extracts.
21:00So, from the night, a book to read urgently
21:03in this year 2024.
21:06We are reaching the end of Africa in Culture.
21:09Thank you for being with us and we look forward to seeing you
21:12next week, always on Média TV.
21:24www.media.org