I’m going to start with a mix of this
and that a little bit of Technology and
African traditions African cultures
things that we build in Africa because I
think it’s one of the most important
movements in the world at the moment the
movement of exchange that comes out of
Africa is what we need is what we need
to connect everybody we need to go back
to the roots and when you see movies
like 2012 I don’t know if people here
remember that movie the destruction of
this whole planet and the only continent
even in an American movie where
everybody survived was Africa and you
saw all these ships coming from Europe
from America everywhere people coming
back to Africa and the African standing
guys come here you’re safe so this is
the story of a griot sabinekim you agree
on a griot it’s a story of silence a
drum with no beats no resonance in its
chamber somebody’s playing beating
trying to express himself on that to
share his story his day-to-day life his
dreams to the world but nobody hears it
the African griot travels to tell his
story
loaded with advice and wisdom disguised
in clever tales and proverbs but nobody
can hear him desperately he grabs the
djembe and says Jai
what does Jai means Jai means peace BAE
means gather come together let’s come
together in peace and show our culture’s
our heritage to the world
it was loud around agree oh because of
book and Instagram and all those things
nobody could hear the djembe anymore he
would tap but no sound comes out people
don’t hear him at that moment I
connected to the gym to do the griot I
looked in his eyes and I saw hey I’m a
storyteller like him it’s me actually
and nobody hears my stories my African
stories are dying everything is
disappearing because everybody is
focused and everybody’s trying ok it’s
justified everybody is trying to tell
his story but we don’t have amplifiers
we don’t have means to make our our
stories resonate in the world it’s hard
for us to do that and that’s our problem
basically anything so when I connected
to the grill I finally heard what he
said the grill was saying that the full
speaks the wise man listens the fool
speaks the wise man listens and my
connection to Africa as a person born
outside cover Yankee McGraw and janessa
my connection came through this guy
amilcar cabral
he’s incredibly inspiring I’ve been
investigating and researching him for
years now and one of the last stories
that I heard is that in 1978 mr. Jimmy
Cliff went to Senegal to give a concert
and when he went through the public and
got on stage everybody was happy and
yelling now Jimmy’s Jimmy Cliff is gonna
sing you know Jimmy Cliff know I can see
clearly now the rain is gone but he
stayed there he got on stage and he
stays there he doesn’t sing and he says
until I don’t get my boonie hat back I
assume BIA my boonie hat can shut my
Cabral Deena I will not start to sing
the people are there in the crowd and
start getting getting nervous
and Jimmy Cliff is standing there and he
says when I was coming up here
somebody took my boonie and I want my
boonie back or else I will not sing so
then all of a sudden you see people
reaching a boonie forward over the hands
like that and he gets his boonie back
and he says Cabral gave me this boonie
and I would not sing without this and
everywhere I go I hear that kind of
story is about a male Kirk abroad so he
was silenced just like the griot
he was silenced a long time ago before
we got independence before Guinea got
independence because he freed two
countries not one that was not enough
for him every two countries before we
got independence they silenced him he
was assassinated just like our culture’s
keep disappearing everything keeps
disappearing and people say sorry people
say that if he was still alive he would
have become a dictator maybe like many
African leaders but the problem is what
happens very often in Africa is like the
best way to understand what happens in
Africa is to take the idea of a soccer
team people are playing soccer somewhere
let’s say Portugal this great team
you see Portugal starting to develop a
good team you remove the best players in
a way or another you silenced them in a
way or another what happens to Portugal
in soccer they will become weak because
without best players you’re going to
choose the second best players and then
the country becomes weak that’s what has
been been going on in Africa for years
and years since the first countries got
independence every time there was a good
leader somebody would have chosen a
democratic way and something that helps
the people he’s removed but I believe
that Cabral would have continued as my
hero and heroes are very important
heroes in history books
and heroes in films reality heroes and
fictive heroes in school they would tell
me in Europe about Napoleon and and how
these jang dok and all these people that
were superheroes basically in their
history books and when i would in the
80’s and 90’s when I would turn on TV
and see Superman flying around and that
woman in America somewhere far away
saying help help and Superman would hear
him and he would go there and save her I
would ask myself what does Superman do
when he flies over Africa why doesn’t he
do something for us
like if flies around like this maybe but
basically we need to create create our
own heroes our own Superman’s to tell
our stories because that’s the only way
that we can continue and be proud of our
cultures and gain back what we are and
show that to the world because it’s time
for every color this is Facebook in the
60s I know it does it didn’t exist but
let’s imagine that Cabral had Facebook
in the 60s
what would Cabral have posted on his
timeline it would have made a check-in
from the United Nations he would have
taken a selfie with with the Pope
because he met the Pope at the time he
would have made other check-ins from the
matter in DNA like negging the the other
soldiers and the enemy and say look I’m
hiding here that’s the interesting about
the interesting thing about Facebook is
how you can use it positively so I asked
myself what am i proud of on my facebook
wall how am I using those amazing tools
to do something good to change something
in this world so I started working on on
a project called cover Alicia because I
made this documentary because every time
I would go somewhere and talk about
America bralla talk about Sankara
talk about all these F
can lead us they would say oh we know
that kind of ideology that’s Marxism
that’s goal ISM that’s all kind of ISM
but that’s not something you guys
invented in Africa so I thought okay we
need our own ISM our own East our cover
list we need to be able to say I am a
cover list Cobra wrote a lot of books
and theories just like Marx did just
like many other big fingers did and as
long as we don’t define this kind of
ideologies people will always think that
we stole it from somebody else so we
need to define whatever we think so with
Institute Papish here in in capered
another project that I’m working on that
goes in the same direction was to create
a system for us to save the histories of
our heroes how do we archive whatever
happened in the 60s or in the 50s when
they were working on things I went to
Guinea I went to many places where I saw
I saw documents of a Milkha Cabral and
other people that were disappearing if
we don’t preserve our history we will
not have a future they always always say
that youth young people are the future
but before being the future young people
are the past because if we don’t save
our past if people if young if kids if a
child doesn’t grow up with his past in
him he will lose his identity and he
will be nobody in future as long as you
don’t know who you are as long as you
don’t know where you’re coming from
you can’t know where you’re going so we
developed this project called our
keyboard or cloud which is a system an
online platform that allows African
organizations NGOs and everything to
save whatever documents they have and
put them online and preserve the history
so that researchers can go behind and
study whatever happened and develop
something around it
so Carol talked also a lot about
neo-colonialism
he said the problem is not colonialism
the problem was not the fight that she
was fighting at the time the problem is
what comes after that’s where that’s the
second fire and that’s the biggest fight
that we that we would have to do I’m not
going to talk much about that I’m going
to give you guys the example of you
wanna you wanna ladder the chatter a
clay a crate lker a creeper
Saku Pyrrha and Ultima communication
Imams listenin Percy me sheik sheik a
shoe fair tax so Joanna wants to go to
sue capira to the marketplace and she
calls Chico a taxi driver so he comes
picks her up
he pays she pays money stays here
between Joanna and chic money stays here
wherever it happened and then this is
room
don’t let’s in Tonto home from San Juan
town he came to Sao Vicente’s a Fisher
man he came to some be sent to sell his
fish to the restaurants all over the
place so Maria has a restaurant
Maria buys Zhang’s fish the money stays
in some recent very easy to understand
but now comes a big change most of you
guys might have heard of uber Airbnb and
all these services on demand these new
websites that come up where you can sign
up create an account sell whatever you
have and somebody else can buy it can be
a service can be something you want to
do for someone can be a product can be
anything so now again the same person
again
jiwon wants to go to so capira
she uses uber so what happens she gets
the money but a part of the money goes
to the United States
then again the fishermen there’s not an
app for that yet for the fishermen
he has no app to Sally’s fish but
somebody will come and invent an app
where he can go fish put everything
available online restaurants come put
whatever they need online and make that
transaction so then Maria can buy the
fish through that app and bring it to
her restaurant but what happens again a
cut of that money goes to the United
States the griot if I would tell the
griot about that he would hmm that
reminds me of the time that we had to
pay taxes to Europe and other places why
every time I buy something in Africa
every time I Drive a car around in
Africa with the money part of the money
go to the US why every time somebody do
something because somebody else
developed a website the money needs to
go to the US it’s fully understandable
that’s that they call it capitalism okay
fine
but let’s be capitalist to that app that
doesn’t exist yet I tell you guys here
who’s gonna invent that okay that would
be perfect an uber for cafard who’s
gonna invent that let’s make sure that
raise resources stay here let’s make
great apps send them out and show them
to the world that’s what we need to do
and that’s what I call digital
colonialism we need to fight that and
it’s an important point a very important
point
you see m-pesa in Kenya and Pisa is
paying a payment system that was
developed in Kenya they never got a
chance to export it but they would have
were the first to make SMS based mobile
payment if Kenya was a country like the
US they would have taken over the world
with that and everybody around the world
would be paying with in Pisa but we
didn’t get that chance so I developed
this prep hour and still developing
because it’s an ongoing work this
platform called a freak that is all
about creating
terms for us to make our own propaganda
methods to make our own apps to make
everything with it so that our culture’s
our history our identity can survive
here on on this dis continent and the
storyteller the storytellers in Africa
have to be story hustlers we have no
other choice we don’t have the means to
be something else to be something bigger
greater in X n so let’s start with
hustling let’s do something in our way
and let’s develop something that takes
us forward so I have to give an example
and I’m going to take the djembe I hope
it’s still on people asked me many times
so how do you do that how do you
actually prove us that is possible to
mix African stuff with whatever we have
for for our cultures so I made this
little thing here
I took the djembe and I added some
electronics to it you just take a 3d
printer develop something different so
now the djembe is a speaker a bluetooth
speaker this is just for fun just to
show that it’s possible to make African
traditions become something
technological something modern but then
how do you play djembe nothing comes out
so you just make the apps while you then
play your djembe here that’s how we need
to think and then you don’t it’s not our
only about the djembe it’s also about
other African instrument that are
disappearing like for example here in
kafir you have the cymbal and I hope
everybody here knows where the cymbal is
the only real African instrument
historically in which two men lit up
with symbol so that’s the kind of things
that we need to make apps for for these
instruments to survive or in this case
for example also I just put here a
kalimba then you just play calamba here
now the speaker just went off the
bluetooth it off but it’s just to show
you guys that everything is possible
instead of looking to the US or other
places let’s look to Africa thank you
[Applause]
[Music] [Applause]