Mali-Cuba: Music across generations

This film documents a unique project bringing together children from two of the world’s most musical countries: Mali and Cuba. Using a single camera, it follows the daily encounters in Havana and Matanzas between four Malian children aged 7-14 (away from West Africa for the first time), and several children from celebrated Cuban musical families, as they explore each other’s cultures over a ten-day period in Havana and Matanzas. Tentative and shy in the beginning, with no common language, and very different repertoires and instruments (kora, balafon, kamalengoni, batá, congas, and voices), the children gradually find ways of communicating and sharing through gesture and dance. In the process, we see some fine performances by rumba and batá groups (Muñequitos de Matanzas, Columbia del Puerto, Mordeya y sus raices) as well as by the Cuban and Malian children and their musical mentor, virtuoso balafon player Lassana Diabaté. As the days progress, the children become friends, and begin a real exchange, exploring commonalities such as clave, and eventually even swapping instruments and roles. The film culminates in a touching grand finale featuring all the children at the newly refurbished Teatro Miramar in Havana.
Mali-Cuba: Music Across Generations is a unique project that celebrates two great musical cultures and their deep historical and cultural connections through the musicianship of young children. It follows on from a three-year, film-based research project -Growing Into Music- funded by the UK Arts & Humanities’ Research Council.
The musical traditions of Mali and Cuba have strong stylistic links. These links were first established during the slave trade, as many slaves from West Africa were taken to the Caribbean. Then much later during the 20th century, Afro-Cuban music “returned” to Mali through commercial recordings and the radio, making a huge impact on the development of popular music in West Africa in general. As a consequence, many of even the most traditional musicians in Mali are familiar with Cuban music. In Cuba, on the other hand, there is little awareness of the sophisticated contemporary styles from Mali that are currently making waves in the world music market.
Mali-Cuba: music across generations set out to explore the connections between children in these two great cultures, and to share the exciting results of our investigation both with the families involved and the general public.
The first destination of our project was Bamako, Mali’s capital city. There, in January 2012, we organized a series of screenings of our documentary films -the first of which for an all-children audience- and a public music performance at the National Museum of Mali, which saw most of the protagonists of our Mali documentary films perform on the same stage.
Mali-Cuba: Music Across Generations then travelled to Cuba in March 2012, when we brought four Malian children to Havana and Matanzas to meet and work with their Cuban peers. The children participated together in a series of music workshops that culminated in joint performances during an all-day Mali-Cuba festival at the beautiful and newly refurbished Miramar Theatre in Havana.
A film by Michele Banal
Documenting a project led by Lucy Durán and Geoffrey Baker
2012-2017
Mali-Cuba: Music Across Generations. Funded by AHRC - Beyond Text