Happy Ramakormasween Elm Street

Ramadan and Koriteh have come and gone, which I can only describe as a combination of Christmas, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street. The latter is possibly an exaggeration, but the combination of Lariam (anti-malarial drug with vivid-dream side effects) dreams and 30+ African singers/chanters outside my hut at 4 A.M. was frightening. I’m not sure what the significance of all if it was, but I’m thinking maybe they were singing because Ramadan was coming to an end. Had I known that was the case, I might have joined them in rejoicing because now I can buy food from street vendors again that were closed during the month of fasting. It all officially came to an end on Monday after a big prayer ceremony (pictured). Monday night was a nightmarish scene in itself because hundreds of kids were rampant in the streets asking me for money. It’s part of some trick-or-treat-like tradition, but some of the kids looked a little too old to be trick-or-treating in my opinion. In addition to being able to eat without hiding in a corner, I can now drum on my djembe again. I met another djembe player who knows a few other local musicians and we're going to try to get together at some point. I talked to one of the bar owners here and he said that we could possibly start playing there once every few weeks or so.

Many businesses here are missing out on a lot of income that could be made. Just simple things like having a better selection of food, more products, or having live music every now and then would boost their profits dramatically. And it's not that they can't afford it. Sometimes they just don't see it and sometimes they see it but would just rather work less than make more money. Simple things like having an entire fruit stand instead of going to the watermelon seller, then the mango seller, and then the banana seller. In the future, I would like to sit down with a few business owners and try to give them a few ideas, but we'll see what happens. Money doesn't necessarily motivate many people here. I would also love to try to develope a live music scene here. There's musicians here and there's a couple different venues, but it seems no one takes any initiative to organize any sort of regular schedule. Every now and then a musician will just show up and play, which is great and everything, but not everyone knows about it. The next day everyone will say "well I would have gone had I known about it." So there's a bit of a promotion and advertisement problem also. Oh well, baby steps.

Speaking of which, I saw an amazing band from Guinea last night called Jango Bari (pictured) or something like that. I haven't been able to track them down anywhere on the internet yet, but I might have their name wrong. They had a drummer, a djembe player, a percussionist, 2 guitarists, and a bassist. I would describe them as very high energy, percussion driven African music with surf guitar tones with delay, and a lot of West African-Jazz thrown in. Guinea is well known for their musical talent, and now I know why. The energy still hasn't worn off of me from last night. The only thing missing was a decent P.A. set up. Unfortunately, I think I gave them false hope because I think they thought I was some talent agent or press photographer from the U.S. They sent a transaltor over to me twice to ask what my name was and where I was from. In either case, they told me they were happy that I was there. At one point the manager or promoter of the event came up to me with his wireless microphone and gave his thanks and told me I was welcomed there in Fula. At least that's what someone told me he said.. in Wolof. It was a little uncomfortable having a couple hundred staring at me waiting for me to say something. My Fula vocabulary maybe consists of 15 words.. so all I said was "jarama (thank you)."

*Photo Album Update: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52546085@N00/

Coming Soon: Note Worthy Statistics and Music of West Africa