About this Event
ABOUT THE EVENT
Presented by JGI in partnership with 651 ARTS
Join Senegalese bassist and composer Alune Wade and the Neighborhood Story Project for a screening of TUKKI: From the Roots to the Bayou, a new documentary film that traces the connections between West Africa, Louisiana and the greater Black music tradition.
Director Alune Wade and Co-producer Rachel Breunlin will be on hand for the film premiere of TUKKI: From the Roots to the Bayou, followed by the launch of their accompanying book, A Family Affair: Conversations Across the Atlantic(University of New Orleans Press).
This event coincides with the release of Family Affair, a new album by Alune Wade, rooted in Afro-Atlantic memory and contemporary dialogue, produced in collaboration with New Orleans's Neighborhood Story Project. On Tuesday, Oct. 13, Alune Wade and the Family Affair band perform a headlining show at National Sawdust.
Building on Wade’s acclaimed album New African Orleans (2025), which drew widespread praise for its fluid dialogue between West African traditions, contemporary jazz, and Louisiana heritage, Family Affair has the feel of a reunion — one that stretches across centuries of shared and scattered memory.
It is not a tribute project. It is a celebration of what these connections actually sound like when musicians on both sides of the Atlantic meet in a room.
WATCH
EVENT DETAILS
Monday, October 12, 2026
Doors: 5:30 PM
Event: 6:00 PM
651 ARTS
Run time: Approximately 90 minutes
ABOUT THE FILM
Tukki: From the Roots to the Bayou
As a boy in Dakar, Alune Wade dreamed to the sound of American jazz drifting from his radio. Now a musician and composer, he embarks on a profound musical pilgrimage across the Atlantic to trace the very roots of the music that inspired him.
Tukki (the Wolof word for "journey") follows Alune as he traces how African traditions, carried by the enslaved, gave birth to jazz in New Orleans, which then reverberated across the ocean to inspire music in Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana.
The film weaves together interviews with scholars, musicians, and cultural workers with in-studio and live performances to create a new way of approaching documentary cinema, showing how history is not a relic, but a living, breathing force—a perpetual movement that defines our past and continues to inspire new generations across the globe.
Directed by Alune Wade and Vincent Le Gal, Tukki is co-produced by Crescendo SUNU Production (Senegal), La Chemise Production (Paris), and the Neighborhood Story Project (New Orleans).
Winner of the Best International Documentary at the African International Film Festival in Lagos in 2025.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A Family Affair: Conversations Across the Atlantic
This bilingual family album chronicles a series of conversations with Senegalese musician and composer Alune Wade and American artist-ethnographer Rachel Breunlin.
Travelling between Senegal, Nigeria, and New Orleans, with musicians and artists, designers and historians, photographers and spiritual healers, they explore the archives of transatlantic histories and jazz music’s Pan-Africanism, sharing artistic lineages, and the power of place, spirit, and collective creation.
ABOUT ALUNE WADE & THE NEIGHBORHOOD STORY PROJECT
Senegalese composer and musician Alune Wade invited the New Orleans-based collaborative anthropology organization the Neighborhood Story Project to co-create New African Orleans: a transatlantic, multi-disciplinary project that bridges two albums (New African Orleans and A Family Affair), a film (Tukki: From the Roots to the Bayou, with director Vincent Le Gal), and the bilingual book, A Family Affair: Conversations Across the Atlantic.
Travelling between Senegal, Nigeria, and New Orleans, with musicians and artists, designers and historians, photographers and spiritual healers, Alune and director of the NSP, artist-ethnographer Rachel Breunlin, explore the archives of transatlantic histories and jazz music’s Pan-Africanism, sharing artistic lineages, and the power of place, spirit, and collective creation.
Event venue & nearby stays
651 ARTS, 10 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, United States
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