OUR OPENING FILM

The marimba and the balafon are magical instruments connected in their past, which are expressed in the black and mestizo sounds of popular music, folk music, and jazz. We traveled through three continents; we met iconic players of the marimba and the balafon. We reviewed the film and photographic archives that revealed the deep musical relationship between Senegal, Mexico, Germany, Ecuador, the United States, and Colombia.

El Viaje de la Marimba is a living portrait of how ancestral music is nourished by the soil in which it is born or the air that its creators breathe. In Dakar, the balafons Djyby Diabaté and the Colombian marimbero Candelario Gonzalez, talk with their instruments. In Chiapas, Mexico with Carlos Nandayapa and Israel Moreno, we walked the path of a black marimba that became the popular instrument in that country. On the streets of NewYork, Dan Neville presents his jazz work inspired by the learning he received from Colombian maestro Diego Obregón. In Esmeraldas Ecuador, the marimbero Larry Preciado reveals the connection between the Ecuadorian and Colombian black people. In Stuttgart, Germany the composer Magnus Lingrend and Candelario meet in the Big Band format and its powerful sound. In Barbacoas, an Afro-descendant town in the Colombian Pacific, we witness the natural spell of a traditional marimba.