N A DINGY UNDERGROUND
corridor, within the fortifications of the
old slave-trading port of Gorée Island,
the only sound is a rusty chain rattling
against a steel door. In the dim light,
Fallou Kandji works a key into a heavy
padlock and struggles with it until he hears
the dull click. Then the young man, his short
dreads hidden beneath a red wool beret, flashes
a magician’s smile before unlooping the chain
and pushing the creaking door ajar. Heat rushes
out as though he has opened an oven. Yellow
paint flakes off the walls in the small, low-
ceilinged room. Arranged in it are a full drumkit,
keyboard, stacks of speakers and a pair of kora,
the West African string instruments that paved
the way for acoustic guitars. One wall is
plastered with old gig posters, peeling in the
sticky damp. This secret subterranean hideaway
is the studio and rehearsal space of reggae band
Civil Society, who have brought music to a place
that once reverberated only with echoes of its
horrific past.i
Sitting a little over a mile out from Dakar’s
sheltered harbour, Gorée Island is tiny and
pretty, its narrow car-free streets leading
between faded colonial buildings. It was
Senegal’s most notorious slave port in the late
1700s. Now visitors come to reflect at the House
of Slaves, a museum and memorial enshrining
the Door of No Return, an infamous passageway
through which the museum's late founder
believed hundreds of thousands of people
were transported to the Americas. When
President Obama visited the island in 2013,
he took moment to stand in the doorway and
gaze out to sea. Later, he would say that the visit
helped him “fully appreciate the magnitude
of the slave trade.”
These days, the island has been reclaimed
as a place of life and hope. Many who live here
are artists. As well as playing guitar with Civil
Society, Fallou is a painter. He leads me along
nameless alleys to the yard where he keeps his
battered acoustic guitar and displays his work,
past vendors selling baguettes and kids playing- Musician and artist
Fallou Kandji,
who plays guitar
with Civil Society - A beach on
Gorée Island - A statue depicting
slaves, symbolically
freed and standing
on a djembe drum,
at the House of Slaves
on Gorée Island - A kora – the West
African precursor
to the acoustic guitar
- with a drumkit
and speakers in
Civil Society's
rehearsal space
- A girl running
across a football
pitch on the island,
where there are either
cars nor roads
12392 August 2019