Please join the

Institute of African American Affairs at NYU for the

New York Screening of

GRIOT: Uncover a Musical Revolution That Could Alter

West Africa’s Cultural Landscape Forever 

Friday, May 4th, 2012

6:30 pm

Cantor Film Center-NYU

36 East 8th Street

NY, NY

Q&A after the screening

With Ablaye Cissoko, Sam Pollard, Victor Kanefsky

and Volker Goetze

 For more info: griotmovie.com

ABOUT THE FILM:

They fought Islam and won. They fought European colonialism and won. Now, after a thousand years of religious, political and cultural onslaughts, a monolith of West African culture is showing signs of change in the form of a radical new individualism. Kora virtuoso Ablaye Cissoko is our ticket inside the mysterious world of the griot. Griots today are at a crossroads between the traditional, which is increasingly irrelevant, and … something new. What could not be done in a thousand years through the competing ideals of Islam and occidental philosophies is being done by a fundamental reordering of economic opportunity.

The film captures this moment of historic change in the griot tradition, caught now, as it is, between the imperative to maintain the social structures of the past and the need to enter into a dialogue with the international community. We are uniquely situated to undertake this task as we have exclusive access to Ablaye Cissoko, a fast-rising star in the World Music scene and a seminal force behind what may be West Africa’s largest cultural revolution in over a thousand years.