It’s been hard to reach Beno\u00eet Fader Keita, aka Beni Fadi, in his small town of Bandafassi, 700 km south of Dakar. The winter rains have taken their toll on his phone, and it’s only when he’s at home with his wife (and the network isn’t acting up) that we can find him, if he’s not off fishing or looking after his animals that is. When we finally get a signal, he’s just come back from a night out catching catfish in the marshes nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Benoit belongs to the B\u00e9dik people, Senegal’s smallest and probably least-known ethnic group, who once lived on rocky hills reminiscent of the cliffs in Mali’s Dogon country. Indeed, it is said that it was from this region that the B\u00e9dik came, fleeing fighting by taking refuge in these hard-to-reach, cave-pierced hills. But with the passage of time and the attraction of the cities, their original culture has been diluted and now is at risk of disappearing altogether. According to Beno\u00eet, at most only 3,000 people still speak the language. More and more young people who have left for the cities no longer master it, and have even less knowledge of all the ceremonies, songs and dances, as well as tales and legends, that make up their rich heritage. Even more impactful than the call of modernity is the increasing scarcity of water in the hills that has gradually driven the inhabitants down to the plains. In Benoit’s village, Ethiouaard, there already wasn\u2019t any school, pharmacy, or store… but when the water ran out, life there became just too difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beno\u00eet left to study English in Dakar, and it was there that he realized just how unknown the B\u00e9dik people were. With his surname, Keita, people took him for a Malink\u00e9, or a Bambara, or a Soc\u00e9. But when he talked about the B\u00e9dik, nobody knew… So he decided to put all his energy into making his people known and recognizing their existence, and at the same time, trying to make the young people back home proud of their own culture. But how to get these messages across to the general public? Music, which he had played for fun in high school, became an obvious choice. And so he gathered some instrumentals from the Internet and began laying down his lyrics in M\u00ebnik (the B\u00e9dik language). A coup\u00e9-d\u00e9cal\u00e9-style track made him a household name back home. But he wanted to go further, and said to himself, “If I made a film, maybe people could follow it on the internet or on TV, and then people would wonder: who are these people?<\/em>” So he moved on from English after his degree, took a course in video production and editing, and applied to the Dakar TV channel DTV, where he was hired as an editor to go and film Gamond, a traditional B\u00e9dik ceremony that takes place in May, at the end of the dry season. Equipped with a professional camera, he hopped on a bus and traveled across Senegal to capture the ritual. He trained his team on the spot, asking the young villagers to hold the microphone or point the reflector. “The people were proud that it was a local boy making this film, and proud to participate,<\/em>” he explained. On his return to Dakar, he edited the film and had one of his journalist colleagues record the voice-over. The finished film was broadcast on DTV, the channel he works for, and can still be seen on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some time later, Kalito, a singer friend of his from Bassari country (the Bassari are one of the neighboring peoples of the B\u00e9diks in southern Senegal) came across the film and asked Beno\u00eet to shoot his video. Kalito had no money to set up a crew, but Beno\u00eet agreed anyways and the two of them set off to Bandafassi and the mountains of Bedik country to shoot with a simple camcorder. It was at this point, in December 2020, that Beno\u00eet crossed paths with a Swiss man based in Dakar, who had come to discover Bedik country during a vacation. He stopped off at Bandafassi\u2019s only tourist accommodation, run by Beno\u00eet’s sister. The traveler was none other than Cortega, DJ, producer and founder of the ElectrAfrique collective. “On the first or second night, I see this young guy directing a music video and he tells me about his approach,<\/em>” recalls Cortega, who invited him to the ElectrAfrique evenings in Dakar. The DJ had an idea in the back of his head: if Beno\u00eet was up for it, he would propose a collaboration with electro producers who would bring “electro music to give it visibility, and he would bring his culture and language, his vision, to make a joint project.<\/em>” It would take some time, but the seeds of Beni Fadi’s first EP had just been sown.<\/p>\n\n\n\nElectro-B\u00e9dik<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n