FAQ

In a sense, whether Upper Banta is the Gangá-Longobá members ancestral home in a DNA-based way is not the question I was trying to answer. What I am as certain of as I can be, is that Upper Banta is where the culture today celebrated by the Gangá-Longobá originated. The Gangá-Longobá songs and dances were widely recognized in the region all around Upper Banta as belonging to that chiefdom, and nowhere else at all were they really recognized in any detail, and definitely not like in Upper Banta where people could sing along. In the region around Upper Banta, people were rather baffled about how I couldnt recognize the Gangá-Longobá ceremonies as belonging to Upper Banta. It was kind of like, doesnt everybody know that? Much more importantly than my opinion, both the Cubans involved and the people of Upper Banta have no doubt about the connections veracity. The Sierra Leoneans recognized straight away when they heard the Cubans sing their very specific songs that the Gangá-Longobá are the descendants of one of their lost people. They know of the transatlantic slave trade only through oral tradition passed down from their ancestors, so this claim was both extraordinary and extremely perceptive. And hearing the people of Upper Banta sing variations of their own songs made the Cubans certain of their claim. As Elvira Fumero, who later traveled to Sierra Leone said, its indisputablethey are our peopleare roots are there. I think that ultimately that is what matters.

I never had any real plan, much less expectation, of finding the Gangá-Longobá origins. So for me the entire process was a revelation. First of all I never thought that anything much would be identifiable, then I came to realize that people across much of the Sierra Leone-Liberian region could identify quite a lot of their ceremonies as belonging to the areas secret societies. Then, slowly, it became clear that the Gangá-Longobá songs and dances were really very specific. Of course after that, I still had a great deal of doubt. It took me a long time and much more investigation and research to satisfy my own questions. But no matter how many times I played the Gangá-Longobá songs to all different villages around the Upper Banta villages, I always got the same answers: the same meanings for songs, the same way in which they contributed to the ceremonies. I threw in other songs occasionally as a test, and every time diverse groups of people told me the same things. They were never thrown by these tests at all; they knew exactly which Cuban songs were theirs and which werent, and what their own songs meant.

Well the research in Sierra Leone was an absolute blast. I worked from the second trip there with Barmmy Boy Mansaray, a filmmaker from We Own TV, who is the most wonderful guy. He is super laid back and he was wonderful at translating culturally and explaining things for me. So for me, that was all far less problematic than having to deal with things in Cuba. I was also hopelessly naïve when I started about the racial situation in Cuba. I was aware that racism remains a big problem despite having officially been solved by Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. But I was unaware of the fact that many black people in Cuba have little or no knowledge of Africa or, pretty ironically, about their African heritage. When I started speaking to the Gangá-Longobá members about their ancestors history they knew hardly anything, despite being so proud of the songs and dances she passed down to them. Her suffering on Santa Elena plantation and the wider history of slavery in Cuba was almost totally unknown to them. I remember clearly my Cuban research assistant telling them about slave ships and the horrors of the middle passage. They really didnt know. Alfredo Duquesne, who has always made his own way, proudly declaring himself of African origin and making woodcarvings inspired by Africa and the ancestors, is really unusual. He is really a remarkable person to have stood proudly as a black man in that wider culture.

For the Cubans, I hope very much that it encourages them to keep their Africa-derived songs and dances alive. Ideally--and it will take much more than this film--I hope that the next generation of Cubans might know that being of African origin is something of which to be very proud. For the Sierra Leoneans, there is so much that they need in material terms, and I hope that their wonderful hospitality, generosity, their amazing spirit is shown in the film so that people begin to have a more positive idea of the country. Even now, coming up for 13 years since the war ended there, people in the outside world regularly ask me if the situation is safe. Its such a shame because the war was a horrible anomaly: its really a wonderful country, filled with amazing people and it has been incredibly safe for years and years. In all the time Ive been working there, I've only ever even been asked for a bribe once I think, which is pretty astonishing for West Africa. Id also like the film to show that, in some cases, wondering about ancestral connections and the losses of the slave trade era goes both ways across the Atlantic. Just because they have also suffered so many horrific things since doesn't mean we should overlook what Africa and Africans lost because of the transatlantic slave trade.

Well, in the case of the Gangá-Longobá, they had kept alive a whole collection of songs passed down to them from an individual ancestor. More of their ancestral songs had also been recorded in the 1950s by Cuban-American anthropologist Lydia Cabrera. I also had a basic region of origin in which to start looking, because in Cuba (unlike generally in the USA, for example) enslaved people were known by a name, used as a sort of surname, which denoted their general region of origin. In this case, their ancestor was known as Josefa Gangá, and those known as Gangá had generally been shipped from the Windward Coast of Africa. If you have these things with which to begin your search, plus plenty of time (it took me two years traveling in Africa to search for their roots), lots of resources (its probably not going to be cheap), and the enthusiasm to be going across rivers in dugout canoes and sleeping pretty rough, then it might be possible. It is certainly worth trying, because the journey itself will be incredible!The tragic reality for most people of African origin in the diaspora, though, is that they dont have those things. Thats one of the most tragic legacies of it all and why DNA has been such a revelation to so many.