Here's the merch kiosk at the Cultural Center. One complaint I heard from people (foreigners, mostly) was that there weren't many areas selling merch or concessions at the festival. It's true. There was this one and one other at a different exhibition hall. No souvenir kiosks at the main performance venues, no concession stands, etc. Kind of strange, and a loss of much potential revenue, I would think. I know for a fact that in 1966 they did have kiosks and concession stands, because I read the papers advertising people to apply, saw the paperwork to get a vending license, etc. Also, many events at FESMAN '66 were ticketed, whereas all of the music events this time around were free. While I think that, democratically speaking, it's much nicer that the tickets were free this time, it was also certainly another loss of potential income for the Festival. Also, it didn't necessarily fully democratize the concerts anyway, because many people couldn't afford to take cabs to the venues that were less accessible by bus. And people also didn't always know who was playing when because, while the online site was updated everyday, the paper programs were always distributed to places too late - you'd see the day's program at the evening's concert, for instance, rather than the program for the following day. I did see some daily programs at convenience stores, however. But in general many people told me they still felt out of the loop.
The first room of the exhibit consisted of individual video "tubes" featuring 21 black (mostly) music performers who were considered by the curator (Marc Benaïche, a white Frenchman and founder of Mondomix) to be the most important to the history of black music around the world. They were: Gilberto Gil, Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba, Ali Farka Toure, Oum Kalthoum, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Manu Dibango, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Youssou N'Dour, James Brown and Elvis Presley. I'll leave you to discuss amongst yourselves to what extent you agree or disagree with Benaïche's choices, or which 21 you would have considered indispensible...
This room featured three short documentaries for each region of Africa (Central, Southern, East, West, and North) plus a "close-up" of Senegal, so 18 documentaires total. For each region, one documentary was devoted to traditional music, one to popular music, and the third to one of the region's most iconic performers.
The exhibit then took us through a very narrow hallway representing the trans-Atlantic slave trade - on both walls, fences covered portraits of black faces.
In the same hallway, on the floor, words were projected that evoked the suffereing of the passage.
The next room was dedicated to the influence of African sacred music and rituals across the Atlantic - for example, vodou, gospel, negro spirituals, candomblé (a Brazilian synthesis of Catholic and indigenous, and African (multiple regions) religious practices), santéria (a Cuban hybrid with Yoruba ancestry), etc.
The following room featured black music of the Americas, and for each region / genre two screens offered different short documentaries. The categories were: "The Jazz and Blues Adventure," "Rhythm 'n' Blues, Soul, Funk: The March for Civil Rights," "From Samba to Salsa, Black Latin America," "Caribbean Repercussions," and "Cuba Musical Club."
The opposite wall in the Black Americas room displayed a red pipeline that served as a timeline for the history of black music from 1000 AD to the present. The video screens contained brief historical footnotes but no actual videos.
The last room was called "The Global Mix: Black Music is Worldwide." It featured four categories: "Reggae and Jamaican Music," "The Hip Hop Odyssey," "Black Music Machine," and "The African Mix." Like the Black Americas room, each category had two video screens playing different short documentaries. In addition, there was a turntable set up where people could try out their mixing skills (with headphones on). Also, the above photos show a virtual graffiti wall which people could fool around with, and if they wanted to they could email themselves the results.
For more on the exhibit, see:
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