After a thousand years of religious, political and cultural onslaughts, a monolith of West African culture is showing signs of change in the form of a radical new individualism. Ablaye Cissoko, a young West African griot and a stunning musical talent, is our ticket inside the mysterious world of the griot. Cissoko is one of the greatest living players of the kora (African harp). He not only preserves the traditional West African epics, he also composes a new, urban music so powerful that other griots have already begun to incorporate his new songs into the body of West African traditional music.

Griots today are at a crossroads between their ancient traditions, which seem increasingly irrelevant, and … something new. What could not be done in a thousand years through the competing ideals of Islam and occidental philosophies, is being done by a fundamental reordering of economic and social opportunity.

The film captures this moment of historic change in the griot tradition, caught now, as it is, between the imperative to maintain the social structures of the past and the need to enter into a dialogue with the international community and develop new cultural forms that are better adapted to the modern world.

This film celebrates the art and mission of a particular griot by expanding upon Ablaye Cissoko’s amazing, Manding song narratives and by interweaving them with a narrative line that invokes the tonal poetry of Mandinka songs. The narrative elements along with a feast of West African visuals and earthy West African sounds, create a kaleidoscopic or cubistic portrait of modern, urban Africa — multifacets of music, history, culture, people and the continuing struggle to break the chains of West Africa’s restrictive, endogamic past. Our artistic approach taps into the spiritual essence of Ablaye Cissoko and the West African griot, unearthing the underlying spiritual forces that both roil beneath West African oral histories and traditions and, paradoxically, drive him to change.