Have You Been In Benin: Ouidah, Abomey

I've taken some photos and videos but it takes forever to upload here. When the wireless starts working again, you will be able to bask in multimedia delight.

This is a long one. Stick with me.

I spent the beginning of last week giving lessons to a few brass players in the national police band. I wasn't sure how this would go at first, not wanting to appear condescending, making the stereotypical white-might missteps. But it went fine. There is a trombonist named Florent who has really taken my lessons on as a challenge; he listens intently to everything I say (in my flawed French) and writes it down and goes home and practices it. I told him I am thinking of writing a book about African music, and he smiled and asked if I could write something about him. We are working on technique, air, articulation – and he also asked me to help him start learning to improvise. Like he doesn't know already. This is a little bit too much of a mind-bend for me; I never imagined I would be teaching a Beninois how to play the blues! He can sing all these crazy native melodies which are all improvised but he hasn't had anyone sit down with him and the trombone and make a strategy for how to develop that material on the horn.

Benin has no music schools. The Awanginou family is the closest thing there is, and most of the brothers are too busy with touring and recording and family to take on very many students. Then, for some reason, there is also a little bit of a stimulus attached to teaching jazz here; a lot of times, the people who have learned this music by traveling in Europe or America are very protective of the secrets they have procured. So I have been spending whatever time I can with whoever is interested. I taught two sixteen-year-old trombonists, a girl and a boy, the other night at the Christianisme Celeste church. I am really enjoying teaching. I think it makes me feel like I have something to give, which allows me entrance to the community in an important way.

I've also started taking percussion lessons on the sakra, a small hand drum that is related to the talking drums of Nigeria. You can change the pitch by putting more or less pressure on the back of the drum with your thumb. My teacher, Simone, explains rhythms to me in Yoruba first, because the rhythms are based in that language. Then I try to figure out how to match the cadence on the drum. It's pretty challenging, and I can only play basic things right now, but it is a really good thing to be able to relate to. I get really excited whenever I see someone performing on sakra in church or at a funeral, and I go sit behind them and watch what they are doing.

Last week Rock and I also spent some time digging up some authentic vodoun ceremonies. We drove by motorcycle out to a village about 30 minutes away from Porto Novo where Rock knows a vodoun priest. There was a Christian cross above the door to the house, and everyone stopped there and prayed in Yoruba or Goun before entering. There were about eight young men waiting for us there in the yard, and they received us uneasily. Rock explained to me that they were worried about summoning the vodoun fetishes without first consulting the elders of the village, and if they consulted the elders, this would cost more money. They said that if they summoned the fetishes anyway, the elders would sense this and come running to see what the fuss was about. The fetish is a spiritual force, intangible, but powerful enough to be evident once it arrives. It has the tendency to put people into trance, possessing them and inspiring them to dance. Rock is consistently warning me about the dangers of vodoun. He spent some years as a vodoun adept, going to Nigeria to seek out a vodoun priest, and coming back and practicing in Benin. But he left everything and became a Christian a few years ago. He says that there is a beneficial side to vodoun, with protection and meditation and everything – but in order to reach this level, the white level, you must first pass through the red and the black, which involve murder and treachery. So he says the entire religion has hidden roots in sorcery and he no longer wants anything to do with it. That's enough for me to know. My interest in vodoun, I remind Rock daily, is in connection with its sacred rhythms which became the basis for Afro-American music in the U.S. For me, it is really important to know the historical connection between this music and spirituality, even when that spirituality is pre-Christian.

We saw all the stuff I've read about, starting with sacrifices of animal blood, sugar, and liquor to Legba, the god of doorways and thresholds and transitions – I saw them consult the Fa oracle with the kola nuts so they would know what sacrifices to give. They had me eat a kola nut (twice) as part of the ritual. If someone offers you a kola nut a highly charged ritual, and even if you think it might be a nice gesture of cultural acceptance, do not eat it. It tastes like death. And death is not food.

Thursday was a little bit of a disaster. My neighbor hadn't paid her electricity bill, so Wednesday night they cut off the power to the whole building. It was really hot and humid, and, without a fan, I stared at the ceiling all night. I had plans to have my hair braided and run errands in Cotonou during the day, but it was just not going to happen. Rock's wife Latisha came over with her little girl Bianca to do my hair, but it was all so rushed and Bianca started going through all of my stuff that we started getting really frustrated. Rock came over and told us that he didn't like the way the braids looked and we had to start over. Now, maybe I was just overtired, but this started to get intolerable at a certain point. So we bagged the whole plan and I took a nap.

But I woke up with a fever. I knew in a flash it was malaria again – the cold, the sweats, the bitter taste in my mouth. Fun, fun, fun. And we had plans to leave for Ouidah on Friday. And the power was still off. Aaron came over around dinner and told me that the fever was in my head and I should get myself out of it and go play at le Repaire de Bacchus that night. I couldn't think of a worse idea. But he convinced me to at least go sleep at Mattieu's house where there was a fan, so I could get a good night's rest.

I left Friday for Ouidah anyway with Rock and his chauffeur friend Jacques, because we'd already rented a car, and bought me some more Alaxin to take care of the malaria. This actually worked out fine in the end; it was SO GOOD to get out of Porto Novo for a while and see something different. So we had a little touristy weekend, researching the slave trade and the Point of No Return and vodoun culture in Ouidah. I like Ouidah a lot. They have really hung on to a lot of the old traditions there, and are very proud. The coolest thing is the sense of connection with the diaspora – the knowledge that these beliefs and practices have gone out, been changed and developed, and come back. I think what interests me so much about vodoun is not the fetish worship or the sacrifices, but the parallels with the music – the way culture travels in cycles back and forth across the Atlantic and the way music and spirituality always travel together. At the Portuguese museum in Ouidah, the guide showed us a tam-tam drum that is Beninois-style but which comes from Cuba, brought back by an ex-slave. Rock told the guide that I am 50 percent African and that this is what is happening with my trip, too. I don't know why he insists on telling people I have mixed ancestry. It's not true. But if it gets people to tell me more, I suppose I can't protest.

Ali, the trombonist from Ghana, just gave me a call to see how I'm doing. Some of these friends are real keepers. I'm going to have to stay in touch with the Awanginous when I leave, too. Didie spent the other night showing me how he harmonizes traditional vodoun melodies on piano – all in fourths, which ends up sounding like Herbie Hancock (who Didie adores) or McCoy Tyner or something. There is a Beninois guitarist in Herbie's band right now. We watched a fantastic DVD recorded a few years ago with their group – the bassist is one of Coltrane's sons. It's stories like that that make this project worthwhile.

So after Ouidah we drove three hours north to Abomey, the city of kings, where the weather is drier. I liked it a lot there, too. (Coming back to the coastal humidity of Porto Novo last night was kind of awful. I'll be glad when I get to Mali, just to have a different kind of heat, I guess.) Abomey is home to the biggest museum in Benin, and the tour is really fascinating – the history of the Dahomey people and this region. It's been very bloody, for one thing – so peace is a blessing to be thankful for. The other thing that is stunning is the authenticity of the culture in Abomey. In Porto Novo, Cotonou, and Ouidah, there is a lot of foreign and colonial influence – Portuguese, French, Yoruba, etc. But in Abomey, that is real Beninois territory – the kingdom of Dahomey.

One of Rock's cousins invited us to a funeral party in Abomey, so we went and listened and danced. It was one of the more festive funeral parties I've seen, with some really good dancers and fantastic set drummers and percussionists in the band. We sat in and played a few numbers, which was good for me, because I was starting to miss playing for people. One of the strange things that has happened with my project in Benin is that it has become unusually skewed toward the traditional, perhaps for good reason. Most musicians here, even the jazz musicians, are absolutely determined to incorporate native Beninois music into whatever they do. The tradition is strong. That is why, Rock explained to me, the Gangbe brass band members won't move to Europe. They want to stay close to the real roots. Angelique Kidjo has a house here, on the road to Ouidah, but evidently she spends most of her time in the U.S. But the end result of all the traditional research, and the malaria and my lips, is that I haven't been playing as much trombone. I have two more weeks here, so I'm hoping to slowly make my way back into Cotonou to compare notes with the jazz folks there.

It's good to be home, even though home has minimal furniture and more than a few inconveniences. I cleaned the apartment last night, which made me feel good. Today I went into Cotonou and see what Aaron and Jeremie were doing in the studio. Amazing. Jeremie through-composes these hugely intricate parts over African 6/8 on the form of "All the Things You Are." I think that just about sums it up. This is the music of the revolution. They said avant-garde trombonist Roswell Rudd visited two years ago, when they started working on the album, and he cried when he heard it, and said it was the most joy he'd had in a long time. Things can't be that bad for that long. Clear skies ahead.