I Bring What I Love is a documentary about Senegalese singer Youssou N’dour. It follows the release and tour of his acclaimed album Egypt, which was a huge international success, but was hugely controversial upon its release in Senegal. In seeking to celebrate his strong Muslim faith, Youssou faced strong criticism at home for mixing religion together with pop music, to the extent that his records were withdrawn from sale.
The man himself comes across as somebody personally committed to a great number of causes, and the film sees him dealing with his position as somebody who is simultaneously national hero, international statesman, family man and musician.
The film premiered in the UK at Sensoria, Sheffield, where we spoke to its director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.
Screaming in music divides opinion almost more than anything else. There are those like my friend Alec who will not listen to anything that is not screached at an inaudible volume. And at the other side of the spectrum there are those who insists that anything without a a melody isn’t really music. Now, i don’t approach music with as much of a narrow view as Alec, but i do have to say that bands like Trivium, whether or not they are ‘music’ are pretty shite. So to describe Rolo Tomassi, without making it sound crass to the majority of the music consuming public is difficult. They scream and shriek a lot. But for once, it makes sense, at least to me. Their music switches between jazz melodies on a guitar, to post rock to grating noise core and then to ambient. Classifying it is really difficult and not really worth bothering. The best way to describe it is to misuse a quote from Chris Morris, that listening to a Rolo Tomassi record has an effect “much like the relief at the end of an hours vomiting.”