[Projection] “Lomé en fanfare” (2022)

In March 2022, the Skokiaan Brass Band (France) was invited to Togo to give a series of concerts and lead a four-day brass band workshop as part of the Togoville Jazz Festival. This experience of exchange and sharing between these French musicians and about thirty young Togolese and Beninese musicians is the common thread of “Lomé en fanfare“.

In parallel to this experience, the film also offers an insight into the world of brass bands in Lomé. It deals with the history of brass bands in Togo, their structuring within the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the development of private brass bands as well as the training of musicians and the material and musicological problems they face.

Through this subject, the film highlights the openness, dynamism and inventiveness of contemporary African societies. We meet characters who are both firmly anchored in their cultural heritage and eager to evolve through contact with outside influences. And, in the image of what Martial Koudjo, a Togolese trumpeter, tells us, the brass band appears as a real space of emancipation: “I can make any kind of music with the brass band… There is freedom in the brass band!”

Production : ADME-Obstinato (Lyon)

With the financial support of the French Institute in Paris and the City of Lyon, the CNM, the Togoville Jazz Festival.