Sociolingo’s Mali

Source: IPA

Festival Fosters Cultural Exchange in the Desert
Jennifer Hollett

Credit:Jennifer Hollett/IPS Artcirq on stage

ESSAKANE, Mali, Jan 16 (IPS) - A polar bear is in the middle of the Sahara desert. It is not a mirage.

Underneath the bear’s head could be seen the face of an Inuit actor, who is wearing the skin for a skit. Artcirq — an Inuit circus collective — had travelled from the Arctic to Africa for Festival in the Desert, held here on the weekend.

The festival is the largest concert in Mali, and probably the most remote in the world. Set in the Sahara sand dunes north of Timbuktu, it brings people from everywhere to the middle of nowhere for a mix of music and a celebration of culture.

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Source: Globe and Mail

FROM THE ARCTIC TO THE SAHARA: AN INUIT ADVENTURE IN TIMBUKTU

A troupe of performers from Igloolik has replaced snow with sand, venturing to the Festival au Desert near the fabled Tuareg city. Starkly different, there’s also a familiarity - indigenous peoples who share the threat of global warming to their lives and cultures

STEPHANIE NOLEN

snolen@globeandmail.com

January 12, 2008

ESSEKANE, MALI — When Terence Leonard Uyarak looks up at the star-cluttered night sky over the Sahara, the four people running - ulaktut in the language of the Inuit - are there.

Tuktgurjuk, the caribou toward which they head, is there. So is nunurjuk, the polar bear from which they flee.

But they aren’t where they’re supposed to be. It’s as if they have all stumbled, and slipped half way down the sky. Nunurjuk, the north star and all of the other stars by which Mr. Uyarak tells his way in the snow of the Canadian Arctic are laid out above the desert night. But they are skewed, down near the equator. He cannot tell his way by them, not here in this desert.

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Source: smh

Saharan Touareg men gather for the festival.
Photo: Frans Lemmens/Lonely Planet

The Festival du Chameau brings vibrant music, hundreds of nomads and Michael Kessler to the middle of nowhere.

We’re not in Timbuktu but it sure feels like it. It’s been a five-hour flight from Paris to Mali’s Mopti Airport, then we’re confined to a battered four-wheel-drive for what turns out to be two arse-thumping days and nights over 600 Saharan kilometres. In the middle of the rugged Malian desert on the mountain border of Algeria, hunched up in the back of our dusty truck, I wonder: “Will we ever, ever get there?”

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A Timbuktu Funk Affair: A Benefit Event

03/07/2007 07:39PM Contributed by: WMC_News_Dept. San Francisco (California), USA - The Marin-based Global Education and Action Network (GLEAN) and The Timbuktu Music Project will hold their annual fundraiser concert March 23rd at SomArts Cultural Center (934 Brannan Street – between 8th and 9th Street). Headliners will be the critically-acclaimed local favorites, Sila and the Afrofunk Experience. Entrance to the event is $20 for adults and $10 for students, but anyone who RSVPs to timbuktufunk@hotmail.com by March 21st will be added to the guest-list and pay only $15. The all-ages event will raise funds for musical education and instruments in Mali, as well as this year’s youth expedition to West Africa, where Bay Area teens will learn about, and help document local culture, and especially music. The night’s events will include an African buffet, a bazaar, a silent auction as well as a paintings and photographs by local artists for sale. Several African restaurants have agreed to donate their services to form a buffet, and there will also be a bar. African arts, jewelry and crafts sellers from around the San Francisco Bay Area will be selling exotic goods. For more information go to www.gleansworld.org.

The third Festival on the Niger

This festival, which will take place from 1 to 4 February 2007 in Segou. It offers a unique spectacle, with music and dance from the region, as well as well-known West-African artists, who will play on the river Niger.

This years theme will be: tourism and employment, culture and employement. So we’ll communicate a lot about job creation by tourist and cultural enterprises and its importance for sustainable economic development of Mali.

The principal program elements will be: a discussion forum (theme: young people and employment), art expositions (theme: Bogolan), tales and legends, music and dance, masks and puppets, a craft fair, and workshops.

Web site: http://www.festivalsegou.org/homepage.htm