Dakar debut

Yesterday I spent the majority of the afternoon skyping and emailing at l'Endroit, my internet cafe "office," which is around the corner from where I live.  I treated myself to a nice lunch to congratulate myself on reaching my first weekend here.  Sounds silly, but it was a bit tough adjusting this week, and little treats like that keep me going. 

As I was wrapping up, the sound engineer for the evening's band was setting things up and accidentally knocked me with a cord as he was plugging things in.  He apologized and we started talking - he told me about the band that would be playing, called Milim - an Afro-Caribbean jazz combo.  He said there was an American saxophonist playing with them, and when I told him I also play sax, he invited me to come back and meet everybody and maybe play a little.  I was nervous - first of all, my sax has been having some issues since I got here, relating to the sudden change in temperature and humidity.  But the guy said the saxophonist could look at it and tell me if it needed to be fixed or not.  So I thought, why not?  I went home and practiced...  I was afraid to go back, but I told myself that the worst that could happen would be that I sounded horrible and they never invited me back, and from now on I avoid going to l'Endroit on nights when they are playing to save face. 

So I came back in the evening and met up with the sound engineer, who introduced me to the saxophonist, a singer-guitarist who was performing a solo opening act, and the band's manager.  The saxophonist was really nice, looked at my horn, and confirmed that it was only having the same temperature / humidity issues that he has with his horns when he first arrives here from out of town (he lives in Dakar now).  The manager was incredibly manganimous and insisted that, as a fellow musician, I was part of "the family."  The sound engineer said the same thing.  They suggested that I play with the guitarist / singer on a song or two, if she was ok with that.  She said that would be fine, so before too long I found myself on stage playing along with her.  She has an incredibly beautiful, soulful, plaintive voice, and the music she plays is very amenable to soprano sax.  One of the songs I knew - "Soldade," which Cesaria Evora sings.  Many of the songs had relatively simple harmonies, which made it easy to play along... a lot of rumba chords / form.  There were a few songs that were a little trickier (I think these were the ones she wrote, and sang in Wolof), but I think I managed to do ok.  I received very generous applause and feedback from people, and for the first time since arriving I felt truly MYSELF - it was a great feeling.  When it was time for Milim to play, I stuck around and hung out with Tabou, the singer/guitarist, and a few other musicians.  Damien, the saxophonist, told me he'd have me up for a tune, which he eventually did - I played on a funk number and was a little intimidated (Damien is amazing!  As a saxophonist and also on harmonica - he really plays a MEAN harmonica...), but I think I held my own.  It felt so liberating to just play... 

Tabou wants to work with me again - she was excited at the sound of our duo.  So, who knows - maybe we'll play some more concerts around town - I'll keep you posted on how things develop.

There is another Milim concert tonight, but I think I'm going to pass - concerts here don't really get going until 10pm at the earliest, and go until after 3am...  I left last night at 2:30am and they were still going.  Then I was all revved up and couldn't get to sleep until after 4...   I would love to go again tonight, but tomorrow I have to run some errands during business hours - at the Embassy, at Sonatel (to hopefully, finally get internet access in my room!), post office, etc.  But I plan to touch base today with all of the musicians I met, so they have my number (I didn't have my phone with me and don't have my number memorized yet) and we can make plans to meet / play again.  If I can play on a somewhat regular basis here, I think I might be alright.