waiting for the seeds to sprout

I feel very stretched out… many unknowns / planted but not showing yet.

We have a title now:  drumming bodies dancing !

I am in contact with the musicians, Seckou Keita and Omar Sosa, master kora and piano players. they delivered a fantastic performance a few weeks ago, best of Africa, supremely  playing their respective instruments and playing off each other, pure full body joy together with Gustavo Ovalles the calabash player who played directly to me, since i got the seat right by the stage, satisfying my request. “I had to be able to make eye contact with the musicians”. The Invitation to dance came not to early, the front row was grooving with the musicians. Everything is about participation / engagement, getting everybody moving, feeling the lightness move in like a sweet breeze on a hot day. Fingers crossed we can come to an agreement to have a few minutes of their music in the film - the sound of the African harp is the perfect counter balance to the sabar drums.
Seckou Keita is from Southern Senegal, the Casamance. I was there on my first trip to Senegal. We were in a land rover type vehicle through
the jungle just after rainy season, when we came around a bend, to be faced with a group of young guys playing, spinning a monkey around its tail. That monkey ended up on my shoulders for the rest of the trip, all the way back to M’Bour! When i was called to Dakar to work on the island of Gore, I had to leave him behind. Upon return, i walked the sandy streets looking for him, until ignorant white woman realised that monkeys are food for the locals.
The french government had installed their own people to govern the people of  the Casamance, but they preferred to deal with their queen, who lived in a large tree, surrounded by women servants and their children.


I just received the video from the final pick up shoot, my dancer star looks gorgeous in her tie dyed boubou and long braids, like a young Native American woman. She introduced us to the assortment of sabar drums, so different in tone and function