Music documentary
- Written by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and Emmanuel Gétaz
- Directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud
It’s sad when a great idea and an important subject lose their way. I don’t know whether to blame filmmaker Pierre-Yves Borgeaud or the film’s subject, singer/song-writer Youssou N’Dour, but Return to Gorée isn’t the film it should have been.
Part of the problem is a common one in recent music documentaries: too much documentary; not enough music. I don’t recall hearing more than one song from beginning to end in the entire movie. In fact, although Return to Gorée documents a tour, it contains almost no performance footage. Borgeaud appears to prefer showing people rehearsing, or just sitting around talking about the horrors of slavery.
The Gorée of the film’s title is an island off the coast of Senegal; slaves were once loaded onto ships there for passage to the Americas. Borgeaud and N’Dour start and end the film there. Clearly, slavery and its aftermath play an important role in the story they want to tell.
Here’s the basic structure: N’Dour leaves his native Senagal for a tour of the African Diaspora, gathering 
musicians whose work clearly comes from African roots. They jam, they talk about music and slavery, then they all perform together at Gorée (that idea feels a bit like a Klezmer concert at Auschwitz).
But N’Dour pretty severely limits where he goes and who he plays with. He visits only the United States and Europe (that’s right; Europe). The vibrant, African-influenced music of Cuba and Brazil don’t enter into the picture. Neither, despite all the time spent in the U.S.A., do blues, R&B, rock, or rap.
Gospel makes a brief appearance early, and even promises to produce an interesting conflict between the Christian singers and the Muslim N’Dour. The conflict never amounts to much, and N’Dour spends the rest of the film working with jazz musicians. I have nothing against jazz (although, to be honest, I don’t care for much of the modern stuff), but the choices seem limited considering the breath and ambition of the stated project.
Most of the performers interviewed talk some about slavery and its effects. Few besides N’Dour himself and Amiri Baraka (AKA LeRoi Jones) offer any new insights.
Everything, of course, builds to that big, final concert at Gorée. Wait long enough, and it finally arrives–just in time for the closing credits.
Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée opens Friday at the Kabuki‘s SFFS screen.
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