Stan Douglas' Luanda Kinsasha: Depiction of Influence of African Music

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Stan Douglas' Luanda Kinsasha: Depiction of Influence of African Music
Stan Douglas's 2013 movie Lunada Kinshasa is a lengthy musical movie, which is all about jazz. It shows the long-lasting jamming of a fictional jazz band of the 1970s in the famous Columbia studio, which has a more common name, "Church," and involves modern musicians playing on various instruments like piano, congas, tabla, saxophone, bass, drum, and guitar. Through this movie, Douglas attempts to recreate, explore, and explain the fascination of the black community with specific reference to jazz music. The closed observation of the setting, theme, and story of the play reveals that this work elaborates on African music consciousness and their influence on the music of the 1970s in addition to previous works.
The setting is a historic recording studio in New York, famous for black people's musical activities. The camera's movement highlights one musician after another continuously to give an impression of a live performance (Art 21). Having all-black singes singing for long hours in a continuous stream is one of the concepts behind filming this movie as focus on various musicians of mostly African origin make the viewer focus on various aspects of music they produce. Consequently, the viewer can analyze and comprehend the background and mechanics of music produced by African Americans and become aware of the nature and message of their music. The use of an iconic music studio as a setting for this movie further insinuates the reader regarding the class and level of African music produced during the 1970s.
In the same way, the musical instrument that the Black musicians use also manifests an important dimension of their musical consciousness. One can see the extensive use of a wide variety of musical instruments also reflects the musician's command over the multi-purpose use of the varied musical instrument. There is a curious and amusing confluence of the drum, guitar, tabla in one particular session with the interspersed piano interruption that renders a splendid musical cameo (Art 21). The exquisite work by the female drummer is also a treat to watch, and this rendition indicates the widespread music sense of these singers that is not limited by the boundaries of gender or age.
Moreover, another aspect of the movie that makes it a remarkable representation of the influence of African Americans is the ambiguity regarding the timeframe of the movie. Douglas does not give the view any clue regarding the time when this session is being played; in doing so, he points out that these people's influence and music consciousness is beyond the limits of time. The indistinct notion of the time throughout the jamming coupled with continuous music in the form of a looping patchwork of different sessions creates an atmosphere of a fantasy world (Art 21). These devices reinforce the notion that the mastery and awareness of music exhibited by the artists that mostly belong to the Black community is universal and does not depend or is limited by the time reference. Although the clothing and fashions of the artists shown in the movie significantly reflect the fashion trends of the 1970s, their work and its effects are universal in th...