Yes I Am - film review

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The documentary film, Yes I Am, tells the story of Flame, Mamadee, Xavier and Adé and the story of the Brothers Keepers/Sisters Keepers. It tells of the power of music and shows how good it feels to raise one's voice as a group.

When Flame was sixteen, he left his parents' place to live in a home where he learnt the "gangsta" trade. When Mamadee was ten, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) collapsed, dashing her dreams of wearing the Thälmann pioneers' red scarf. When Adé was fifteen, his father was killed and he left Nigeria for Leverkusenin Germany. Xavier Naidoo learnt early from his parents that owning a car made one respectable in the community.

These artists grew up as German children of African fathers and German mothers, except for Xavier whose father had some Indian ancestry and D-Flame whose father was an African-American GI soldier. In the end, all of them grew up without their fathers. Yet they have made it big time through determination, self-will and religious faith.

Their paths never crossed till an African from Mozambique, Alberto Adriano, was brutally killed by three Nazi youths in a park in the Eastern German city of Dessau. Following the murder, more than twenty of the best-known African-German musicians joined up to found the band project Brothers Keepers. They recorded the maxi Adriano (Last Warning) and the album Lightkultur on which they were partnered by the female counterpart, Sisters Keepers. They visited, and still visit, schools in East Germany to talk to schoolchildren.