Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée (review)

In this 2006 documentary, the internationally recognized Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour tours the world with the well-known Tunisian jazz pianist Moncef Genoud. N’Dour’s road trip is inspired by a desire to trace what he terms “sa musique” (his music) across the Atlantic to the African diaspora. “Mes chansons son liées à la diaspora noire” (my songs are connected to the Black Diaspora), he notes in the opening scenes. By tracing links between music brought by slaves shackled in the underbellies of ships as they made their passage to the coasts of the America, Haiti, and Brazil, N’Dour seeks to understand how cultural influences, history, and languages imposed changes on “la musique qui est partie d’ici” (the music that left from here). “Here,” for N’Dour, is the coast of Senegal, specifically Gorée Island, where millions were held before being forced into passage. What happened to the music of Senegal once it left through “la porte sans retour” (the door of no return) on Gorée Island is the resounding question weaving its way through N’Dour’s narrative.

With Genoud, N’Dour sets out first to Atlanta to study the gospel music of black churches throughout the region. Singing with Michael Turner, a pastor and gospel singer, N’Dour learns that Negro spirituals were meant to be uplifting and also to commemorate those who lost their lives during the time of slavery. “These ‘African songs’ are work songs and sorrow songs,” he says, and they became the foundation of the Blues. Traveling from Atlanta to New Orleans and then New York, N’Dour gathers singers and jazz musicians, all the while peppering these musical forms with his own Senegalese rhythms. N’Dour’s internationally assembled group, which now includes the legendary New Orleans jazz drummer Idris Muhammad and the famous guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, travels to Europe, staging concerts in Bordeaux, France, and Luxembourg before returning to Senegal. The first uncut screening of Return to Gorée took place in tandem with a concert on the island by N’Dour and the internationally renowned musicians featured in the film.

In our age of globalism, N’Dour’s documentary is a testament to the power of music to migrate and become transformed through cross-cultural encounters. Drumming in New Orleans with professional musicians prepping for Mardi Gras celebrations, N’Dour notes that the rhythms resemble those found among drummers residing in Accra and Dakar, the “last places of the enslaved” before they were forced on ships bound for the Americas. One of the final scenes of the documentary is perhaps the most moving. Standing at “la porte sans retour,” American Gospel singers sing “Return to the Land of Gorée” as they pay homage to Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, curator of Gorée Island for over fifty years until his death at the age of 86 in 2009. Known as a modern-day griot, Ndiaye was the keeper of “the knowledge” of the island’s history, vested with the task of recounting the stories of the more than six million men, women, and children who were enslaved and sent to the southern shores of America, Haiti, and Brazil during the three hundred years of the slave trade.

Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée would have benefited from better editing and a tighter narrative structure. Although tedious at times due to its slow pace and rambling commentary, the film for the most part can serve as a good teaching tool for professors seeking to expose students to musical and lyrical transnational links across the African diaspora.