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Modou, The Hang Player, by Mino Dutertre
Modou on a Tour of Peace
critique
rédigé par Muritala Sule
publié le 07/01/2011
Modou GAYE, Hang player
Modou GAYE, Hang player
Modou GAYE, at Cairo
Modou GAYE, at Cairo
Modou Gaye, 23 dec 2010, at Q&A, after the screening (World Black Arts festival / festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, Dakar).
Modou Gaye, 23 dec 2010, at Q&A, after the screening (World Black Arts festival / festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, Dakar).

The film fare at the 3rd World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures in Dakar, Senegal includes a splendid 52-minute gem entitled, Modou, The Hang Player, a 2007 presentation of FST Productions.

Director, Mino Dutertre tours a few cities of the World with 36-year old Senegalese Modou Gaye whose dexterity on his African musical instrument, the Hang (Hand, in Swiss) bear with it a soul-stirring feeling of love and peace.

What a trip! Modou visits, among other cities, Paris and Cairo, delivering a master performance on his instrument as he meets other instrumentalists, mostly guitarists, and jamming with them. It is sheer delightful jazz and whatever else the audience's imagination says it is. And that's the beauty of the performance and the film. The audience is able to invest imagination and emotion in the performances.

This underscores the purpose of Modou's trip at a time when cultural animosities seem to be justifying Professor Hutchinson's notion of the Clash of the Cultures which he says would bring the World to a self-destructive end. But, no, you'd say, after seeing this film, Hang Player, especially because Modou's music and message are steeped in Islamic Sufism.

"My music is spiritual", Modou says at a question-and-answer session after the exhibition. "My father is a Sufi poet and I got Sufi spiritual education from him."

This wonderful instrumentalist and singer gets into character the moment he meets his host musicians whom you get the impression he hadn't met previously and a soul-lifting jazzy affair ensues.

Frequently brief and juicy, it gets the audience applauding at every performance. And you begin to wonder, ‘So, there's this sort of Islamic philosophy that accommodates other people's music and culture and blends so seamlessly with them! After each city, Modou's host musicians are as affected emotionally as he is, and as the film audience is and the result is unfailingly laughter and back-slapping and mutual respect as Modou packs up his instrument and moves on. This dome-like instrument sounds sometimes like a xylophone, sometimes like a piano, sometimes like a base drum, but always like a perfect instrument in the hands of a perfect instrumentalist as he slaps, taps and knocks and caresses it.

Modou ends his tour on Mount Sinai in Egypt in a chant praising Allah and expressing gratitude to Him.

Director Dutertre is unobtrusive; that's why Modou and his friends have fun playing their music and the audience has fun watching their performances. It's absolutely vicarious, that is, the feeling of love, fun, peace and respect.

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