They Are We

Australian filmmaker Emma Christopher divides her documentary between Sierra Leone and Cuba. For 170 years, the Gangá-Longobá in Perico, Cuba, have sung the same songs and danced the same dances every December during the annual San Lazaro ceremony. Christopher shared her video of the Cuban ceremony with villagers throughout Liberia and Sierra Leone, who were surprised and delighted to find cultural traditions so similar to their own. Says one observer, “That's real African.” The enthusiastic reception leads Christopher to search for the original village that gave rise to these practices, receiving assistance from the people she meets along the way. Among the Banta, she discovers the Gangá community of Mokpangumba, where the inhabitants recognize the music, lyrics, and moves. “They are we,” as one man puts it. Lucy Amara, a community leader, is even able to provide missing lyrics that didn't make it to Cuba. The two groups are anxious to meet each other, but it takes two years for the Cuban delegation to work through the legal complications. Once they arrive, the villagers greet them with song and dance. Although they don't speak the same language, they are able to call on their collective knowledge of Spanish and English to communicate. Christopher never presses the point, but the way the two communities have preserved their traditions represents a triumph over the transatlantic slave trade, which aimed to erase their shared African past. Telling an interesting investigative ethnographic story, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)