Progress - and, by the way: BAMBI ROCKS!!!!!

Right now I'm at a very posh café downtown (where I just had fresh-pressed strawberry juice (!!!) that cost an insane $6 but was TOTALLY worth it in this heat) waiting for my friend Bambi (the manager of Milim, the jazz group I've played with a few times) to meet me after he gets done with a meeting.  But before I go any further, I just have to say how much

BAMBI ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, he does.  He's the best.  For many,  many reasons.  But here's one good one:

On Monday, he invited me to meet him at a café downtown (a different one) which he calls his "office," and he promised to try to help me break through the brick wall I've been constantly hitting as I try to make festival contacts here.  Well, one phone call later, I suddenly had an interview for a half an hour later with the DIRECTOR OF MUSIC PROGRAMMING FOR THE WHOLE FESTIVAL.  He deflected my profuse thanks by telling me it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the fact that he mentioned that I was a (white) American.  He said had it not been for that, the director would never have given him the time of day.  I told him that couldn't possibly be true because my nationality / skin color hadn't seemed to have helped me out at all up until then.  MY theory is that the secret is the combination of a local Senegalese connection and the (unfortunately) association here of whiteness and being an American / foreigner with power and influence.  I told him I felt uncomfortable with the latter, but he said I may as well take advantage of it if I can. 

So I cabbed home to grab my video-recorder and then met the director, Mr. Dieng, at his "office," a swanky Lebanese restaurant (of which there are a ton in Dakar) called Sheherezade.  He asked if I wouldn't mind waiting, because he was in the middle of another meeting with somebody.  I assured him I was in no hurry and had plenty of other work to do, so he continued with his meeting and I took advantage of the opportunity to set up my equipment, review my questions, etc.   And of course have some coffee.  Finally, I was able to interview him, and, remarkably, given how busy he is these days, he spoke with me for 45 minutes!!  He answered all of my questions very thoroughly and, while he was rather brusk outside of the interview (on account in large part, I assume, of his extreme stress and insane amount of work this week), when he spoke about music and the festival, he was incredibly animated and happy and magnanimous.  He's a musician as well, and a sound engineer who recorded much of the country's emerging talent back in the 1980s.  He applauded when I told him I was a saxophonist.  So, anyway:  PROGRESS! 

After the interview was over and I returned to my table to write a little in order not to forget anything (just in case the video recording didn't work - one never knows, especially with this luddite), I found my seat already taken by a darling little kitten-teen who was snuggled up all contentedly.  Now, as I've mentioned before, there are very few contented kitties in Dakar.  The only other one I've seen was at the US Ambassador's.  But here, the restaurant owner is clearly an animal lover.  She had 3 dogs with her when she walked in, and four or five well-fed cats here have indoor-outdoor access.  This place, by the way, had an incredibly beautiful backyard area - with a swimming pool (about as rare here as happy cats), and GRASS.  You NEVER see grass here!  A green lawn is more of a sign of wealth here than gold.  Anyway, these cats were clearly well-fed and cared for, and they were contentedly lounging here and there.  The one who had taken my seat, I was told by the waitress, was named Fred. 

So, that was Monday.  Then, Tuesday, I had a Wolof lesson (my first with my new teacher, who's great) and then I met up with Balla.  As I told you in my last blog, I met Balla through my friend Lamine, the "Turtle Guy."  Balla, I had mentioned, is a Baay Faal (Baye Fall - various spellings), a uniquely Senegalese kind of Sufi.  He is also a musician, an arts educator, a humanitarian, an organizer of cultural events for his town of Rufisque, and a deeply spiritual person with a truly artistic soul.  I hadn't seen him since I'd arrived at the beginning of November. Lamine had told him I was back in town, so he called to meet up with me Tuesday (Lamine has been unavailable, as it turns out, because a friend of his is in the hospital).  So after my Wolof lesson, I met Balla and we walked to a cafe called La Gondola, which just so happens to have the BEST falafel in the city (I have absolutely NO experience to back this up, as I haven't had any other falafel in the city, but it's SOOOOO amazing at La Gondola that I can't imagine any other place being able to top it).  So we ate falafel and caught up a little, and then he agreed to let me interview / videotape him for my project.  Of course, the power was out yet again at home, so we went to l'Endroit, where he kindly and thoughtfully answered all of my questions.  After the interview was over we continued talking about this and that for a bit longer, and I asked him how his friend Issa, the saxophonist from Orchestra Baobab, was doing.  He gave him a call right then and put me on with him briefly - I asked him if he'd be playing this Saturday at Just 4 You, their regular place, and he said he wasn't sure yet - he was meeting his younger brother (and the band's alto saxophonist) to work something out pertaining to scheduling. 

Interestingly:  Issa assured me that Orchestra Baobab IS playing at FESMAN, and is booked at the same time as another famous band, Xalam.  However, upon consulting the official calender, Orchestra Baobab is nowhere to be seen.  Hmmm.   Theirs is a notable absence on the calendar - Orchestra Baobab is one of the country's most historically important bands, and even if they are currently somewhat old-school compared with the likes of Youssou N'Dour (in terms of popularity with youth, etc), they are pretty central to the history of Senegalese popular music.  So, it does indeed seem bizarre that they are not listed on the official program.  And yet, he insists they are programmed.  Hmmmmm...   I need to ask Mr. Dieng (the director of music programming, whom I interviewed on Monday) about this discrepency. 

Anyway, here's a picture of Balla and Run:

Wednesday (I'm now writing the rest of this entry on Thursday), I got a surprise call from Issa Cissoko!  He had gotten my number from Balla.  So we ended up hanging out at a bar across the highway from Dakar's famous fish market, playing rumba tunes together.  It's all relatively simple, harmonically, and I was able to pick up the tunes he taught me pretty quickly.  It was a cool, surreal experience to be in a dark, dank, dingy bar with intense, dusty sunlight filtering in through the window, with people smoking and drinking and reading the paper, and every so often applauding Issa and me.  Oh! And for the Yid Vicious fans among you (if you're not, why AREN'T you????), you'll be happy to know that I also introduced klezmer to Dakar (somehow I doubt many klezmer bands get out to Dakar much) - at the bar I played a bit of Metro to warm up.  Issa seemed to like it, and clapped his hands and grinned his brown-stained, toothy grin.  Anyway, to clarify my earlier mystery:  apparently, Orchestra Baobab isn't playing at FESMAN because, at least according to Issa, they were not offered enough money.  I assume that when he said they would be playing (at the same time as the other band), he meant that they were doing their own concert, independent of FESMAN's programming.  I am pretty sure that's not the whole story, so we'll see what else I can dig up.

So, all in all, it was a pretty productive week.  And tomorrow the festival starts!!!