Voices of the People
On stage at New York’s Nokia Theatre on Broadway in late 2008, Youssou N’Dour and Aurelio Martínez shook hands and embarked the year-long journey of working together. New York was somehow neutral ground for these two artists from opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Youssou N’Dour, is a griot through his grandmother. This caste, composed of respected members of Senegalese village society, holds sway over the people by singing the genealogy of princes, praising the bravery of the powerful or lecturing them when they stray. Tall and slender, “You” is the spokesman for Black cool in Dakar and an advocate for the creative values of urban Senegal. His songs are a commentary on the issues of his time: soap operas destroying customs, the use of Africa as the dumping-ground for the world’s toxic waste, to name but a few.
Youssou N’Dour is present on all fronts: at the G8 in 2007, beside Bono and Sir Bob Geldof, to call for the cancellation of African countries’ debt; at the UN in Geneva with Roll Back Malaria, which campaigns against that particular scourge.
Shunning labels, the Senegalese is politically committed and a passionate pan-African. Some say that if he wanted to, he could be a political leader, even president of Senegal.
Aurelio Martínez listens to him from his Central American viewpoint, and with the attentiveness of a nomad in search of his origins. “When I was selected as a finalist in the Rolex Arts Initiative, I learned I had to go to Africa. And that was my dream! It was also the dream of Andy Palacio, who was my master and friend [a Black music star from Belize, Andy Palacio died suddenly in 2008 at the age of 47]. And there I met my mentor, Youssou N’Dour. It was such a thrill! I really admire him; he’s an artist for peace, with an amazing voice. And I felt very close to his political and human causes.”
Aurelio Martínez is no political light-weight, either. President of the Commission of Ethnic Peoples of the National Congress of Honduras, he represents his people, the Garifuna – Afro-Caribbeans living mostly in the province of Atlántida. Martinez is the first Black member of parliament in the history of Honduras with its 6.2 million inhabitants, about 10% of whom are Garifuna and speak their own language. In 2001, Garifuna dances, music and language were together proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.
Martínez is fighting to prevent his culture from being confined to eastern Honduras. “My parents didn’t want me to be a musician, but, at the age of 14, I left home for La Ceiba, where I live now. I learned by doing, going around to the places where the older musicians played, and, since I had talent, they taught me.”
The meeting between Youssou N’Dour and Aurelio Martínez is significant, for it brings together two worlds that were already interlinked, two men who grew up in poverty and whose elders imparted to them their knowledge and roots.