A Productive Few Days at Last!

On Friday I went out to the Hotel Terrou-Bi, one of Dakar's swankiest, with Zal to hear Serge play.  Zal, you'll remember, is my drummer/composer friend, and Serge is his mentor and also a valuable friend / resource for me here (he is the one who has been keeping the Fesman III scrapbooks!).  As is often the case here, a night of music inevitably became one of those serendipitous evenings in which doors seem to magically open for me.  The other drummer / vocalist in the group (he has a very suave, Nat King Cole-like voice) is incredibly nice and invited me to play with them next week.  I suppose by now I should really stop looking at these invitations to play as magical, serendipitous moments because it is simply what people do here:  as soon as they learn you play an instrument, they invite you to play, like inviting you for tea or something.  I think that it is part of the general spirit of how things work here in Senegal - people are valuable resources, and it is always in one's best interest to a) open doors for as many people as you can and b) be receptive to the opportunities other people might present to you.  But besides offering me the opportunity to blow a little, the musicians I met all have interesting thoughts about the state of music in Senegal today, and the older ones have memories to relate to me of what my friend Florent calls the "belle epoque," or the time of Senghor (Senegal's first President).  So the evening was fortuitouus for all facets of my research, besides being just a fun time hanging out with new musician friends and laughing a lot (Serge is a quick-witted, master wordsmith and in that respect reminds me fondly of my late friend Mark Weiger, whom no one could rival as a punster!).

Then Monday evening I went to the French Cultural Center to hear Florent, the French music journalist / author I mentioned having met back in December, give a talk about American soul music (the subject of his newest book).  He has a remarkable digital music library and I enjoyed hearing some rare clips - for instance, at one point, in response to a question about crossovers with Senegalese music, he played a clip of Orchestra Baobab playing with James Brown!  Very cool.  One of the people who asked a follow-up question struck me as interesting - he was reminiscing about concerts he had seen here at the Daniel Sorano Theatre back in the '70s, including James Brown, and remembering what a remakable showman the "hardest working man in show business" was.  I could see that he liked to talk about music and had a lot of musical experiences / memories stored up inside, so after the talk I introduced myself to him.  He had worked for Radio TV Senegal (RTS) and hosted its first live music program beginning in 1978 (Senegal didn't have TV until 1972).  He gave me his contact information and said he'd love to talk with me more about Fesman '66, etc. 

Then another person came up to me as if he recognized me and asked me if I was the saxophonist that played at Just 4 U.  I was confused because, yes, I'm a saxophonist, but no, I've never played at Just 4 U.  Anyway, it turns out that my last night in Dakar, when I went out with Eva (French sociology student and neighbor) her boyfriend Mohamed, and my friend Balla to hear Orchestra Baobab play (Balla is friends with the band's saxophonist), Balla introduced me to this guy, another musician friend of his, and told him I played saxophone, too, etc.  We took a group photo which I should try to find.  Ok, here it is:

That's Balla on the left, and El Hadje on the right.

Of course I felt like a jerk for not remembering him (El Hadje), but anyway, he was excited to see me and said that he is a music manager / promoter and wants me to meet and play with a trombonist from the National Orchestra he works with.  Cool!  Why not?  So, another one of these - hey, come play! things.  I realize that besides the whole people-being-a-valuable-resource reason, these invitations also have everything to do with my being a toubab chickie, but I figure I may as well take advantage of my exotic status if it affords me more opportunities to play.

Then today, Florent called me up to have lunch with him and a friend of his he wanted me to meet.  The friend is Papis, who has just finished writing a history of Senegalese music that Florent is editing.  Of course it was great to talk with a fellow music researcher, and a local one at that.  Needless to say we had lots to discuss and plan to meet again to talk more.  After lunch we went over to Antoine's (the guy I met the night before at Florent's talk) because, as a former RTS music host, he has quite a personal archive of old LPs and photographs.  Papis found some valuable images for his book, Florent left with an armful of old LPs to borrow, and I flipped through old issues of a popular music magazine edited by Manu Dibango in the '70s, called Afro-Music. 

By the time I got back this evening, I was exhausted (I walked a lot today).  I think it was in part because of the walking, but also because of so many things happening in such a short amount of time.  I felt overwhelmed!  It gave me a headache, actually, trying to keep track of all of the things swirling in my head.  Fortunately, after a restorative nap, I was able to write everything down in my notebook before I forgot it all. 

So - there you go, a pretty productive few days of research!  Now that I'm rested up, I might go out with my roommate and some of his friends to hear a band play nearby...  Or, maybe I'll just stay in and sleep...