Chérif Keïta had his film “Remembering Nokutela” screened by the Africana Studies program and the Department of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was featured for 30 minutes on JAZZ ON 2, a New Jersey public radio station, for a special program titled “The Making of Modern African Diaspora Jazz Music” with host Isa Blyden, speaking about traditional West African musical instruments in the context of the Medieval Empire of Mali.
He had his first two documentary films, Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube(2005, 54 min) and Cemetery Stories: A Rebel Missionary in South Africa (2009, 57 min), screened as part of the 2015 Oberlin College Commencement/Reunion Weekend. The films highlighted the role played by two Oberlin graduates and Northfield couple that helped plant the seeds of multiracial democracy in South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
He was the guest of “L’Epopée des musiques noires” (The Epic of Black Diaspora Music), a weekly program of Radio France Internationale (RFI), Paris. Keïta spoke about the musical legacy of Nokutela Dube (1873-1917), a forgotten heroine of the South Liberation movement.
He had his research on Nokutela Mdima Dube, the forgotten heroine of South Africa’s Liberation movement, acknowledged in a recent book, Journey Through Johannesburg’s Parks, Cemeteries and Zoo by Lucille Davie. A chapter titled “United In Death” shows the headstone Keïta helped raise for Nokutela in 2013, almost a century after her death, with an overview of her pioneering life and work in the U.S. and South Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.