Afrovibes: Pourvu Que La Mastication Ne Soit Pas Longue

In 1999, in New York, a young immigrant from Guinea, Amadou Diallo, was shot dead by four white police officers. His misfortune: he did not show his ID quickly enough to the policemen when they asked for it. Guinea-French director and actor Hakim Bah has incorporated this event in ‘Pourvu que la Mastication ne soit pas longue’ (As long as the Chewing does not last too long), a documentary theatre about Amadou Diallo’s tragic death.

Following the death of George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter, Hakim Bah looks back at this other blunder by the police. He denounces a society in which black people are at risk of becoming targets of institutional racism and violence. Hakim Bah tells about this migrant from Guinea, his job, his dream to study, his need to integrate. He describes the city of New York, its noise, its energy and negative force. And that particular night with trigger-happy cops firing 41 bullets. With a verdict by the judge ‘not guilty’.

‘Pourvu que la Mastication ne soit pas longue’ is about the anger about the everyday reality of racism exposed by Black Lives Matter. Hakim Bah almost raps his poetic lyrics. Acrobat Juan Tula, with his acrobatics and Cyr Wheel, is a metaphor for incumbency and institutional violence against black people. Arthur Gillette’s music evokes the ambience of New York from the era of Rudy Giuliani’s zero-tolerance policy.