The musician, actor and stage director is one of the great ambassadors of African culture whose work has helped open cultural horizons
El griot, actor, percussionist and stage director Hassane Kouyaté will be recognized as an Illustrious Cartographer of MAPS 2019. A native of Burkina Fasso, he is one of the great ambassadors of African culture, proving that the distance imposed by the oceans and borders are nothing when it comes to sharing art.
Hassane Kouyaté He was born in 1964 into a family with an enormous artistic tradition, he is a descendant of the highest caste of griots in Upper Volta. He enjoys both a consolidated training and an extensive record that have made possible a prestigious career. His early learning years focused on the traditional music and dance of his native Northwest Africa. Later he studied in Paris and Canada, opening new horizons to contemporary performativity.
For five years, he developed his work as an actor and artistic coordinator of the Bouffes du Nord Company, directed by Peter brook –Recently awarded the 2019 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts– with whom he has contributed “to the exchange of knowledge between cultures as different as those of Europe, Africa and Asia”, according to the jury.
This figure of the live arts has thrilled audiences from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Togo, Guinea, Congo, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, with his shows, works of great social and creative commitment, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Reunion Island, Canada, United States, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Germany and Cuba.
In his considerable artistic career, he has been a commissioner of the International Organization for the Development of the Arts of the Word «Mondoral» Y Les Arts de Récits de Grenoble, which has led him to artistically direct 12 orality festivals worldwide. His work at the head of the Yeleen, from Burkina Faso, the oldest story festival in Africa, or The House of the Word from Francophone Africa. In Europe, he was appointed to the leadership of the Festival of the Francophonies in Limousin (France). His professional career has also been linked to the development of culture in Martinique. In 2014 he assumed the direction of Tropiques Atrium, which brings together the island's cultural action center.
The Illustrious Cartographer Award was created by the South Atlantic Performative Arts Market to reward people and institutions of the institutional sphere whose work in favor of the promotion and cultural exchange deserves to be highlighted.
