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Fesman2009

Singing in Gorée
ile_de_goreeGorée Island is located a mere 2 km at sea from the main harbour of Dakar: today UNESCO World Heritage Site, yesterday refuge for slaves. It is on these grounds of contrast where a past distinguished by tragic human exploitation and a future of reconciliation between different peoples meshes, that a second reunion, after the one in 1966, will take place by way of a concert organised for the Festival.
Under Portuguese, Dutch, English and French domination, Gorée Island discovered many different cultures. But it is mainly under slavery, which lasted over 4 centuries, from the XVth to the XIXth century, that Gorée discovered many different kinds of pain.
Nevertheless, in the serenity which reigns on the island, reinforced by the silence of the carless streets, the vivacity of bougainvillaea and the ochre, pink, yellow facades of the 18th century’s colonial houses, it is hard to believe that the Goreans truly suffered in the past.

In fact, despite the appreciable open-mindedness of the islanders, which allowed them to live today all together without racial, ethnical and religious distinction, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Rastas, the famous “House of Slaves” located in the island is the best proof that the Others did not have the same open-mindedness towards them.
According to Boubacar Jospeh Ndiaye, the mythical curator of the House of Slaves in Gorée, symbol of the “memory of the Atlantic slavery’s history”, who passed away last February, “one must remember his past in order to reconstruct his dignity”.

It is exactly on this occasion and in order to pay homage to Ndjaye that descendants of thousands of slaves who left Gorée, “will enter through the gate of the trip from which no one returned” in order to return to their island.
This famous gate from which slaves tried to escape and which separated peoples, this time, will reconcile them during an emotional duet between Youssou N’Dour and a famous American artist.

And for the second time after 1966, it is on Gorée’s beach that the music will be the voice of a tragic past which will certainly be replaced by a dignified future for black peoples, as wished Ndiaye.