Global Roots at The Cedar Cultural Center

Tuesday is going to be a sublime night at the Cedar Cultural Center, as Malian kora-player Ballaké Sissoko and French cellist Vincent Ségal appear together for the opening night of the Global Roots Festival. If this video from their new collaboration Chamber Music is any indication, it is going to be gorgeous and not to be missed. You can also check out their NPR Tiny Desk Concert for an extra push, and if that wasn’t enough, the fact that this is a FREE SHOW is even more amazing.

The other reason you should really get down to the Cedar for this show is to stand in solidarity with the artists who were supposed to be coming to the Twin Cities as part of the Global Roots Festival who, due to visa delays, won’t be there. The Cedar put up a blog post earlier today titled “Homeland Insecurity” detailing the issues that have surrounded obtaining visas in a timely manner for international artists. The two groups specifically affected are Aar Maanta, a London-based singer of Somali descent who was the only member of his quintet whose visa was not approved in a timely manner and Staff Benda Bilili, a group from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose core members are survivors of childhood polio. The Cedar notes that none of the visas were outright denied, which would have been controversial, but the delays amount to the same result, before going on to state what has been lost to the Twin Cities through these artists not being able to come:

“At a certain point, such policies that are designed to protect and secure actually become counterproductive, and even counter to our national interests. The Twin Cities Somali community has become a national focus for law enforcement due to heavily reported incidents of external extremist recruitment, as well as local gang violence. It is virtually universally agreed that a key strategy for fighting these dangers is to provide positive role models, particularly young males who embody tolerance and the successful integration of Somali immigrants into the fabric of the greater community. There are few better examples of this than Aar Maanta. Similarly, it is hard to find a more inspirational story about overcoming adversity than that of Staff Benda Bilili.”

Maybe U.S. Homeland Security didn’t like that in 2010, Aar Maanta wrote a song to protest the detention of Somalis in airports, but it would be certainly hypocritical to deny the right of non-violent free expression to others when we would seek to preserve it for ourselves. It is the role of artists, especially artists who live and work internationally, to give voice to issues of international humanity. Staff Benda Bilili were supposed to be presented in conjunction with the Walker Art Center’s mini-festival, “Despair Be Damned: New Music and Dance from the Congo“, along with dancer/choreographer Faustin Linyekula and Linyekula’s lead quote from the festival is telling, both to the survival of art and overcoming narrow-minded bureaucracy. Says Linyekula, “To be positive is the most subversive. Celebrating is a way of resisting. We are still alive in all of this.” Which is what will happen at the Cedar tomorrow night, and hopefully it will be as well-attended and celebratory as possible.