The Second Bouki Blues Festival opened with a splash on Wednesday, January 5, 2005. Sponsored by the West African Research Center (WARC) and the Association de Recherche Ouest Africaine (AROA), Bouki Blues is a bi-annual multi-disciplinary festival/conference on the African diaspora that highlights the multiplicity of cultural expressions it has taken and the similarities, adaptations, and variations created by distance, time, and external influences. The name of the festival, Bouki, is the Wolof word bukki, which refers to the famous West African folktale character, the hyena. The word bukki is still used in Louisiana and refers to the same animal, this illustrating the strong historic connections between that part of the United States and West Africa. This year’s Bouki Festival was supported by the Senegalese Ministries of Industry and Crafts and the Ministry of Culture and by a generous grant from the US Embassy in Senegal. The Daniel Sorano National Theatre, a gathering place for Senegal’s most respected artists, was made available to the Bouki Festival, as were facilities at the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop. Participants hailed from Senegal, various countries in West Africa, Europe, and the United States. Those attending from the U.S. included Professor Yvonne Captain of George Washington University, Calusia Melrose of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Adam Gussow of the University of Mississippi, and Keith Cartwright of the University of North Florida