Thomas Sankara made several trips to Cuba in the course of his time as president of Burkina Faso. The Cuban revolution was a major source of inspiration for him. On October 8, 1987 he gave a premonitory speech entitled "You cannot kill ideas" to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Che Guevara. In it he recounted a story told by Fidel Castro from the failed attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953. An officer of the dictator Batista used the phrase in compassion for the Cuban people in refusing to shoot revolutionary prisoners who stood for ideas that seemed to him to serve the interests of all, whether revolutionaries or not.

One week after his speech, on October 15, 1987 Thomas Sankara was himself assassinated. Of all the ideas and the actions developed by him during his term of office, perhaps the most symbolic was giving Burkinabè back their pride. He leaves behind him the image of a man of integrity, coherent and humble, who had managed to reverse the culture of submission left by the trauma of colonialism. Of course he had his faults and the revolutionary period was not an unalloyed idyll, particularly for the nocturnal activities of musicians hit by the curfews. But Sankara's ideas left their mark on people so much so that they live on today, not just in Burkina either, which attests to the fact that you can kill a man but not his ideas. This composition is polyrhythmic, drawing on a Peul rhythm, and is a tribute to the courage of that man.

Tacitly, there are many people who think that the order to assassinate Thomas Sankara was given by the current Burkinabè president with the consent of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac. That is a stifled truth which disturbs. No trial or investigation has been conducted to this day to clarify this murder because the "international complicity of clear consciences" is still too powerful. One day perhaps the politicians will find the courage. Meanwhile we artists seek to fill the historical gap of their inconsistency.