I used to be a journalist for many years, and when I first traveled to Africa in the early 2000s, I got a chance to spend time with Mahmoud Ahmed in Ethiopia, Cesaria Evora in Cabo Verde, Ali Farka Toure in Mali, so that's where my passion for African music. ![]() Introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your work and how you came to this project.įlorent Mazzoleni: I am a French writer. ![]() 6 to discuss Bobo Yéyé and other projects for the program “Off the Beaten Track in Malawi and Burkina Faso” Here’s their conversation.īanning Eyre: Let's begin at the beginning. ![]() Afropop’s Banning Eyre reached Florent by Skype in Bordeaux on Sept. Florent has a deep commitment to documenting and preserving West African music from the 1960s and '70s-for many, a golden age. He recently compiled a three-CD box set of classic tracks from Bobo Dioulaso, the second city in Burkina Faso: Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta (out Oct. Major support is provided by The Artworkers Retirement Society.Īdditional funding is contributed by Kenneth and Christine Tanaka and Ralph and Nancy Segall.Florent Mazzoleni is a journalist, author, vinyl collector and record producer based in Bordeaux, France, with a longstanding focus on African music. Lead support for this exhibition is generously provided by Helen and Sam Zell. This immersive installation brings the complex culture of Upper Volta to life through more than 100 of Sory’s photographs from the 1960s objects from Volta Photo such as its signature backdrop, studio lights, and several props digitized music from the era and 45-rpm records. Sory also mounted his own music parties in the villages. Sory photographed many of them, including Volta Jazz and other stars of the Bobo scene, as well as music fans and partygoers, especially in the villages around Bobo. These popular orchestras, combinations of up to a dozen or more musicians, melded instruments and rhythms rooted in West African musical formations-including Cuban salsa, James Brown–style funk, and early rock’n’roll-with regional musical and narrative traditions of the Mande and other cultures. Mutual appreciation brought Sory together with the music ensembles that flourished in Upper Volta from the 1950s through 1980s. ![]() A clever, youthful studio operator, Sory appealed to his sitters’ desires for signs of modernity and leisure, offering a few choice props such as a telephone and a motorbike and using painted backdrops of scenes associated with travel including a beach and an airplane. He specialized in portraits-of Fula villagers, elaborately dressed Malians, and other inhabitants of that vibrant cultural crossroads. In 1960, photographer Sanlé Sory (born 1943) opened his studio, Volta Photo, at the center of Bobo-Dioulasso, the cultural capital of what was then Upper Volta. Through this dynamic conjunction of image and sound, Volta Photo examines the postcolonial culture of an economically challenged but recently liberated country negotiating its local, regional, and international identities. Designed to resemble a cross between a photography studio and a record store, this multisensory exhibition brings together commercial studio photography and popular music from the former West African country of Upper Volta.
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