After 20 years of musical collaboration within the jazz Mawwal collective, Yann Salètes and Mourad Baïtiche asked Michel Teyssier, a talented bassist with a background in jazz and rock, to develop a hybrid music at the crossroads of African and Arab music. They asked Woz Kaly to use his voice to embody this musical journey. Thanks to his capacity for improvisation, his generosity on stage and the uniqueness of his artistic career, he is one of the Senegalese voices to be reckoned with.
Oriki has been developing its artistic projects for 20 years as part of a collective of around a hundred artists structured as a cooperative: SCOP Tchookar. The members of the group, together or separately, have carried out a series of international cultural cooperation projects (Morocco, Algeria, Bosnia, Spain, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, etc.). The creative cycle, inspired by the work of film-maker Djibril Diop Mambéty, has given rise to a series of actions carried out systematically in France and Senegal: performances in rural areas, outreach to young audiences, artistic encounters and documentary production.
Tchookar organised a tour in early 2023 between Senegal and Gambia to perform its film-concert developed by Oriki and Woz Kaly around the film The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun by Djibril Diop Mambèty. The tour included a date at the Alliance Française de Banjul to host the show, but also to enable the artists in residence to prepare their next film-concert, this time dedicated to the film Le Franc, also by Djibril Diop Mambèty. This project was shared with the Alliance Française de Ziguinchor, which hosted the company beforehand.
Seven artists came to Banjul for an artistic residency. The residency enabled Oriki to continue its exploration of Djibril Diop Mambéty’s visual and poetic universe with the creation of a new film-concert based on a lesser-known masterpiece by the film-maker: Le Franc. A veritable urban tale at the crossroads of realism and mysticism, Le Franc combines modern camerawork, innovative editing, narrative borrowings from oral traditions and the wry humour of dreamlike fantasies. Through this work, Djibril Diop Mambéty delivers an original, unique and singular creation, marked by poetry and humour.
The artists at Oriki, through SCOOP Tchookar, have been working for 20 years to link artistic creation with cultural mediation and artistic education. These initiatives take a variety of forms, and have included school music workshops and workshops for Gambian professionals. The aim is to encourage participants to express themselves in public through artistic practice, and to develop their minds, eyes and sensibilities through the discovery of original shows.