Ah, New York. I thought of the scene in
where Youssou is walking briskly through the street the day of his Carnegie Hall gig, and can’t avoid greeting random African men as he goes on his way — including one cab driver who yells out his window, “Youssou! Youssou! My son’s going tonight!”
I can see validity in Anastasia’s constructive
critique of the film, which addresses how Senegalese religious conservatives objected to N’Dour’s spiritually themed album
Egypt, leading to something of a local public backlash that stung all the more in light of the album’s international acclaim. Anastasia found the film’s treatment incomplete:
While not exactly glossing over the controversy, we never hear directly from his opponents; indeed, it’s full of hazy hagiography (and I say that as even as a devoted Youssou fan.) And when N’Dour finally gets his Grammy, and the whole capital of Dakar seems to turn out in the streets to greet his triumph, we never learn why the tide of Senegalese public opinon has turned. (Does American approbation really count for so much?) Apparently, when the highly respected Senegalese religious griot singer Mustapha M’baye recorded a duet with N’Dour in praise of the prophet Muhammad, public opinion began to shift more decisively. We see the duo recording together, but the whole arc is never made fully explicit in the film.
Like I said, valid. But as for the whole capital of Dakar flocking into the streets after the Grammy, I just took this as proof that the controversy was never bad enough to prevent N’Dour from drawing an adulatory crowd. We also see him give a pep-talk to a university class in Dakar, and it seems clear that kids like these were loyal to him throughout.
Mulling over the Egypt controversy, I am of course entirely with N’Dour, on the side of free expression, and not just because I think Egypt is a work of untrammeled genius. But I found myself thinking: If the fight only reached the level of some nasty editorials and a few pulled ads, then Senegal’s in pretty good shape. To be clear, I don’t want to gloss over the chilling effect, the self-censorship that happens when sellers become ashamed to stock a certain work of art — which is what befell Egypt in Senegal, at least initially.
In the film, one of N’Dour’s young Senegalese record reps is spilling indignation at the attacks on Egypt — you want to applaud her as she rails against senseless taboos and repressive attitudes. But thank goodness N’Dour is from a country where negative responses are mainly just words, not accompanied by bullets and bombs, acid and poison.
When multicultural Brooklyn poured onto the BAM stage to join Youssou in dancing, booty-shaking fun, and all in the name of a peaceful Islam, I couldn’t help thinking a dark thought: There are militia leaders in the Swat Valley and Waziristan who, given the chance, would murder everyone in the room.
“Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists,” said President Obama in Cairo the other day. “They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths — more than any other, they have killed Muslims.” An irrefutable fact, and yet one far too often ignored by the Rush Limbaugh right as well as the Code Pink left.
Didn’t mean to end on a downer after such an uplifting film. 🙂
