Reclaiming Josephine Baker in the Filmic Ethnomusicology of Djibril Diop Mambéty

Abstract

This paper proposes an ethnomusicological approach to Djibril Diop Mambéty's films, as a means of reading their diverse musical soundscapes. Paying particular attention to Touki Bouki (1974), it demonstrates how, in this film, the approach delineates what may be seen as a reclamation of Josephine Baker -an international figure who has been objectified for her race and gender -resituating her within a wider global African cultural heritage.At the beginning of Djibril Diop Mambéty's first film, the 21-minute Contras City (1969), we find an early example of the director's interest in the manipulation of music as a means of generating culturally significant meaning. Initiating a scathing critique of neo-colonialism in Senegal, the film imposes a recording of Handel over a downward tracking shot of Dakar's city hall, over which we hear an anonymous female voice proclaim 'Oh my sweet France'. A male voice swiftly retorts -'Your sweet France apparently can't stand the sun…this is Dakar sweetie'. At this point the music 'windsdown', slowing and gradually lowering in pitch, as if it were playing on a gramophone to which the power had been cut. The electronic failure represents the wider failure of Europe's colonial legacy in Africa, where the initial hope offered in upbeat European classical music is interrupted by the reality of contemporary Senegal. With this manipulation of musical sound, Mambéty establishes the vital importance of music within his work, from the outset invoking the wide-ranging functions of music as a

Ecos pós-coloniais em dois filmes africanos:

“…Para Fisher (2019), na obra do Mambéty, de modo geral, a música opera produzindo significados narrativos para além daqueles já oferecidos pela imagem. No caso específico de Touki Bouki, tal processo de significação se daria através do uso de uma estrutura musical "tripartite" composta pela referência a três figuras musicais internacionalmente reconhecidas: a já citada Josephine Baker, mas também a soprano francesa Mado Robin e a cantora senegalesa de mbalax 20 Aminata Fall (Fisher, 2019, p. 3).…”