22.30 h: Navigated Jam

Salvador de Bahia, Kingston, Jamaica, London, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and New York have been recognized as main ports of activity for Black Atlantic music today.
The central idea of CONGO SQUARE will be to define how slavery, industrialization and now the information age, transported African cultural aesthetics through time and space in writing, language and most prominently, music to arrive at the contemporary art forms converging in and around the centers of cultural life mentioned above.
It is a tribute to the resiliency and adaptivity of black culture that these elements have now become global. Through the immediacy of dialogue and spontaneous composition (better known as “improvisation”) CONGO SQUARE will reveal the anatomy and functionality of the Black Atlantic's consciousness.
Under the artistic direction of guitarist, composer, and conceptualist Jean-Paul Bourelly (former creator of the BACK ROOM), this project will serve as an arena to trigger those impulses that made the music of the Black Atlantic survive. It will reveal parts of the genetic pool of thoughts and emotions that build the art forms as well as new styles that have influenced trans-global cultures of today, viewing the state of Berlin as a new Black Atlantic cultural hub.