Back to Kidal

Serge Aimé Coulibaly / Faso Danse Théâtre & Brussels Jazz Orchestra

In his most recent creation Back to Kidal, Serge Aimé Coulibaly and the Brussels Jazz Orchestra go back to the origins of blues and jazz and the hometown of Afro-Blues legend Ali Farka Touré in the northern region of Mali. As usually, Coulibaly seeks to connect not only across disciplines, cultures and continents but also throughout history.

For Back to Kidal, Coulibaly once again takes up the challenge of holding up a mirror to Western, African and Afro-descendant cultures through music and by bringing them closer together by means of that renewed gaze. The starting point for the collaboration with the BJO is Jazz – via Afro-blues, the musical discipline par excellence that has its origins in African and Afro-American culture. The artist laid the basis for his new choreography by uniting an orchestra consisting of seventeen Europeans with a seven-member mixed European-African dance ensemble, one African actress and one African guitarist around a selection of the great Jazz standards.

The project features a unique collaboration between Brussels Jazz Orchestra and a Malian guitar virtuoso Vieux Farka Touré, the son and inheritor of the legendary Ali Farka Touré. Odile Sankara, a Burkinabe actress, writer and flagbearer of the struggle for emancipation and self-determination in Africa, will write and recite the text. Uniting the two historically related genres – West-African blues and jazz – in one spectacle will bear witness to the immense importance of African influences in modern Western music and to the cultural depth of jazz.

Back to Kidal, like all Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s other performances, is created partly on the African continent (in ANKATA) and partly in Europe with an international cast and crew. This working method is essential to the philosophy and practice of Serge Aimé Coulibaly and FDT and contributes to the unique artistic quality of the creations.

© Omar Badsha