Back to Center

I feel like I have come home. Cape Town is absolutely beautiful. Since Friday, I have been staying on an eco-farm a little bit outside of the city, with strong winds blowing all day, an unbeatable view of Devil's Peak, community gardens, some Dutch Master's students, and a research assistant from Guam. Lots of hippies and vans and organic vegetables. Something akin to what I imagine Santa Cruz was like when my parents met in the '70s.

I am the proud steward of a 1978 VW Beetle, and now have two (2) days experience driving stick. I suspect that each and every car in Cape Town has honked at me by now. But I haven't rolled down a hill into anyone, so I'm counting that as a win.

I also found an apartment. A garden cottage way up in the foothills of the mountains. Five minutes from Long Street. Absolutely silent. So I'm back to center, in a way. I am slowly but steadily assembling a life here, a nest, a car. Andy will be here on Friday, long overdue.

For such a beautiful place, Cape Town still has latent weirdness. "Affirmative action hurt us all," they say. "Don't talk to him, can't you see he's colored?" [in response to the Muslim call to prayer]: "Man, does that guy have a stomachache or something? Does he have to let everybody know about it?" I listen and file these things away. I fear my silence indicates complicity. Some people speak Afrikaans here, but it's the language of oppression for most native Africans. "It's like speaking German to a Jew after World War II," one woman told me. English is more neutral. But they won't make you speak Xhosa or Zulu the way they will make you speak Wolof in Senegal. South Africa is on top as far as African economies are concerned - but what has really transpired here? Whatever it is, it may be irreversible.

Movin' on up

So. Time heals all wounds. Or at least stitches them up haphazardly and repeats soothing words to you while you attempt to go about your business and strange and mysterious things happen beneath your skin.

Things are getting better. I finally played with blues guitarist Vieux MacFaye around the middle of last week, went down to the Casino du Cap Vert and sat in with the band. What did we play? Nothing I recognized, except "Stand By Me," which Vieux really tore through, ending with a verse of scat-accompanied guitar riff. Everything else was some alternative blues form that oddly made some sense and was full of Vieux's blistering blues guitar riffs ripping off into the Mardi Gras crowd. I was feeling some blues myself, so sat down and gave them a piece of my mind.

At the end of the night, I shook hands all around and Vieux invited me to a television recording session with the band the next day. Pleased and a little scared, I said I'd be sure to be there. This turned out to be the perfect set-up. I got to play music I was really feeling on the air, and hear Vieux interviewed by the show's host about his opinions on the blues and Senegalese music. Most music in Senegal is pretty commercially driven, and, well, mbalax, the percussion-heavy dance music that has re-Africanized the Cuban craze that entered West African several decades ago. There is good mbalax. Youssou N'Dour comes to mind. But like a lot of musicians who play exclusively for dancers rather than listeners, they sometimes put their ears on autopilot. What Vieux is doing is completely different. He explained that he loves jazz and the blues, and feels like it resonates with him in a special way, and it was African to begin with, anyway. If Senegalese music wants to be successful, he said, it needs to examine how it can resonate in a universal way way with the rest of the world so that it can travel outside of the country's borders. That is the beauty of jazz, that it has been embraced by the entire world, and has the power to bring people together, even if America itself is ignorant of its own treasure.

I am happy to report WATSON FELLOW SIGHTING #3, Leigh, who arrived in Dakar last Monday and will stay for several months researching attitudes toward abortion here. We have been spending some time together, aware that I am leaving at the end of the week, so the potential for dependence is not really there. But she said something to me at dinner tonight (we went out for Thai - oh the forgotten joys of having a friend to shoot the breeze with over pad thai) about how her project is different from mine. My project, in its finest moments, yields deep and lasting relationships with musicians that transcend race and nationality. The time I spend with Badu, explaining jazz theory, exchanging advice, musical war stories, anecdotes - that's an automatic in. And it forms relationships that are inherently respectful, and at the same time powerfully personal, in a way that is typically almost impossible as a white, privileged woman traveling in Africa. These are relationships that are not about sex, money, or immigration papers. These are friends I will keep. This is not to say I am against organized aid for Africa or liberal immigration policies or mixed race couples or anything. To the contrary. It is just to say that right now, I am not individually in a position to make any of those things more or less effective.

I have gotten bitten by the grad school bug again and have started to play the "What if?" game, just to try things on, see how they feel. What do they call what I am trying to do? Cultural anthropology? Musicology? Comparative literature? A fantastic farce?

Another good thing: A heavy heart at least keeps your feet on the ground.

Eleven days.

Follow Your Nose

This has been an incredible week. A horrific week in some ways. I took the train last weekend from Bamako to Dakar, which took 48 hours. I slept most of the time, and the rest of the time tried to improve my Wolof with the people in my couchette or stood at the window and watched the baobab trees travel slowly on by. The train arrived late at night and I had (almost) everything I owned with me and had to get all of this into a taxi and to my new place, for which I had only the address. So me and this irritable taxi driver got painfully lost for an hour and finally I decided to do the unthinkable: go back to my homestay and knock on the door at one o'clock in the morning. Ishmael let me in.
I slept fitfully or not at all, and got up early. Some things had changed. My host mother now had malaria and in the last week had been in a car accident. One of her girls was also sick, and her husband, in New York, had stopped sending money and would not return her calls. She asked me to pay for my room in advance. I told her I was thinking of moving.
I went to the internet cafe to check my mail and got some shocking personal news that instantly colored my day sour, along with sudden blessing of the phone number of the place I wanted to move. Within an hour I had found the place and was very pleased. They are downtown, have hot water, DSL, a kitchen. I have my own space. This is what I should have done from the start. I feel a little spoiled, but these are things I have discovered that I cannot do without for very long.
So I am finally, gratefully living in the middle of it all. There are musicians who live here, a bassist and a keyboardist. One helped me to get in touch with Baaba Maal's drummer, and I played with their group at a huge concert for Dakar's ministers and politicians on Friday night. It was a party in the end, and not a concert. They started at midnight and finished around 4 a.m. This is one thing I just cannot get used to in Dakar, is the late hours. It wrecks me to stay out that late, because the mornings are generally too hot to sleep in.
I think I have found my guide. His name is Badu and he is a bassist who lives around the corner. He is one of those excellent, rare people who has been bitten by the jazz bug and it has become a religious devotion for him. He thinks of nothing else. He plays several nights a week with a quartet, and invited me to join them one night. He asked me to teach him how to read music, and I asked him to show me how to keep time in mbalax music. Yesterday, he took me to see a friend of his, a mixed-race Senegalese named Serge. This man is a brilliant hermit, a jazz DJ, a percussionist, a retired NGO worker. He is old enough to remember what music was like in Senegal before the arrival of mbalax. He remembers the jazz revolution in the '60s and '70s, and has photographs of the 6 month music festival that ensued when Dizzy Gillespie's tour came to Dakar. He always has a young musician sitting on his couch; Serge gives advice, plays records. His eyes light up and he tells you, "Wait, listen to this."
Beninois guitarist Lionel Loueke, who has recently recorded an album with Herbie Hancock and is the hero of all the jazz musicians in Cotonou and Porto Novo, played a show last night downtown, but I was so tired that I fell asleep at 9 p.m. last night and woke up this morning very surprised. He is playing again tonight, and I will not miss it.
I am lonely, and in pain. It is astonishing how well my project is going, how one thing follows naturally into the next, how I know intuitively where to look for information, who to talk to. I have been having incredible opportunities to play. The transcript is one success story after another. But I am profoundly conflicted. And empty. Does what I'm doing even matter if I'm not enjoying it? Can I enjoy anything I'm doing without a community and the people I love?
I went to church this morning - Transfiguration Sunday - and participated in a beautiful Catholic service. Along with a healthy percussion section, the choir pulled out some harmonies that were almost South African, and the congregation fell right in with them. I understand pieces of the service in French but mostly just enjoyed the chance to bask in the presence of God and in the fellowship of other Christians.
This coming week is another extreme one: Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, primary elections. I have two more weeks in Dakar - two more weeks in West Africa - to get as much done as I can; but it's all I can do to force myself to take advantage of these incredible opportunities that are coming down the pipeline. I don't know what I want. I want to go home. I want to go to South Africa. I want to be free of whatever is hounding me. I want to have my love and my work in the same place, and to put everything on the table and deal with things like rational adults. Until then I'm just sitting and spinning.

There and back again (almost)

Two Sundays ago, I escaped my living situation in Dakar and set off on a week-long pilgrimage into the interior of the continent – cutting up through the middle of the Republic of Mali, through the central river port of Mopti and the mystical Timbuktu, finally arriving amid sand dunes, camels, and their turbaned masters in Essakane for the three-day Festival in the Desert. One night in Bamako reminded me suddenly of how down-to-earth Mali is, and of what an excellent community I have here.

My journey north was full of colorful characters out of a Vonnegut novel, arduous treks, freezing nights, and hotter days. I think I managed to keep my sense of humor throughout, though the absurdity seemed to mount with each passing day. I took the 10-hour bus ride up to Mopti from Bamako, with a young Italian guy named Andrea for company. We shared what I have come to see as the usual twenty-something disillusionment with What Comes Next. He has a psychology degree, but says he is no longer interested in the field. His girlfriend is starting her opera career in Rome. We parted ways and I found my way to Hotel Flandres, where I was supposed to meet up with Baba, our trip manager, and the group.

I was shown to my room, which I was to share with an eccentric, retired Spanish teacher from Texas named Wanda. She had already filled the room with the makings of her instant coffee, her back massager, and other Western comforts. She had recently come from visiting her daughter in Lebanon and had decided on a whim to come to Mali, expecting someplace warm, though I told her that desert nights are among the coldest on the continent. She has been traveling almost constantly for the past two and half years on her daughter's flight attendant discounts. Time with Wanda was immediately full of stories of Mexico's beaches, wildlife in Zimbabwe, or children in Cambodia.

We left early the following morning on a pinasse (long motorboat seating 12-15 people), for three days and two nights on the Niger River. Baba went up by land to meet us in Timbuktu. Our company was a strange international microcosm: Two Germans, a balding, pot-smoking bookbinder and a very old-fashioned but extremely hardy lady about his age; they fell in love over the course of the trip. Two Austrian ladies, one of whom had just been widowed and explained that she was just now beginning to live again. A French couple. Three brothers in their late 20s from northern California, respectively a PhD student in comparative literature, a photographer, and an art teacher. Me. Wanda. Sori, our guide, who spoke only English and Bambara. Mamadou, Baba's chauffeur, and self-appointed tea and beer-server on the boat. Three other Malians who drove the boat and cooked our meals. A motley crew.

The Niger is beautiful all day long, from sunrise to midday to sunset, and in quiet spots there are hippos and colorful birds and just you with your eyes wide open. We passed countless Bobo and Bozo villages with hoards of kids sprinting along the riverbank and waving frantically at us. We made it our business to wave back. Whenever we stopped, to buy fish for lunch or to look for blankets (no one had brought a sleeping bag), we were mobbed by wide-eyed children demanding “Photo, photo!” and “Cadeau, cadeau!” I don't think they really understood what they were saying most of the time, as none of them seemed to speak a word of French. They were usually thrilled to simply see their own face on the screen of my digital camera.

Now, going by pinasse is probably the most relaxing way to get to Timbuktu, but it is not without its own discomforts. If we were out on open water, waves splashed into the boat and over the tarp that covered our baggage, usually soaking everything underneath. The toilet on the back of the boat was an adventure and a half, and in retrospect I now think I am glad to have the privilege of writing to you about it, rather than having slipped off into the river, or worse, into the roaring motor below. Food was spaghetti and fish and red sauce for lunch, and spaghetti and red sauce for dinner.

But we got by. It became clear that some of us were more adapted to camping than others. We were all very patient, to a point. The first night we camped on a hard sand beach and the Austrians built a huge, roaring fire. I took out my trombone and played, to everyone's amazement. They decided that I had to accompany our arrival in the port of Timbuktu. I agreed. The second day on the river we stopped in Niafunke, the hometown of Ali Farka Toure, the famous blues guitarist. I saw his house and chatted with some of his neighbors. That night we camped on the most beautiful sand dune overlooking the sunset on the river. Motorboats hummed by in the middle of the night. I could think only of the Mississippi.

We arrived mid-afternoon the next day in Timbuktu, with trombone fanfare as promised. By about 5 p.m. we were with Baba in two 4x4s on the road to Essakane. Night fell just as we left the paved road to follow a sign reading “Essakane 33 km” into the unmarked desert. Our driver, Peter, did a remarkable job of negotiating the dunes and taking us through one impossible pass after another. The other car was not as lucky. With tires almost completely bald, they must have gotten stuck at least 12 times during those 33 kilometers. And we had to stop every time and push them out.

So we arrived at about 10 p.m. at the festival, which had started in the afternoon. It immediately became clear that Baba had not planned ahead. It took him a good hour to obtain our tickets, explaining that he had given money to someone to arrange this but this man had recently been arrested and no one knew where the money went. The same with our meal tickets. And tents. There was a brief 15 minute shouting match between Baba and his customers, until he succeeded in borrowing four tents from another tourism agency, who also agreed to cook us meals, for a fee.

The next morning we met our neighbors, another interesting lot, including Florence, a British expat living in Kenya who recently left because of the violence there; two Belgian pilots living in the DR Congo; a very intelligent British guy who does international development consulting; and a great kid named Lane on break from New Mexico University, who came up to meet a friend and go on adventures in the desert on their rented motorcycle.

The festival itself was a really interesting experience, a complete media spectacle on the one hand. I had a press pass and got into most productive situations by showing it at the door. I attended all of the press conferences and posed my scholarly questions to Bassekou Kouyate and Abdoulaye Diabate about blues and Malian music and the influence of Western music. They vehemently defended the tradition. This is their profession, as griots. But you cannot listen to Bassekou's music and say that he has not listened to music from all over the world. Simply in the way he amplifies his ngoni there is a fundamental change in quality. But in a way, it doesn't matter what you call it, because the music speaks for itself. The dialectic that accompanies it is often only so much business strategy. Everyone will take what they want from it anyway.

I'm not sure I like this role of being purely a journalist. It did give me some privileges, like networking and free drinks and stuff, but I was constantly a self-declared outsider. That was my role. Marked by my press pass, I was never to be fully admitted, always to be smiled at, shaken hands with, diplomatically appeased. I much prefer taking my horn out and saying nothing at all.

The highlight of the festival for me was the performance of Electrica Dharma, a company from Catalonia, Spain, in which they collaborated with a Tuareg group called Tamashek. With every world music artist at the festival, whether from the Inuit lands in Canada or from Ireland or from Catalonia, there was always this discussion of cultural solidarity with the Tuareg people that really resonated with me. The Tuareg are nomads; they are traders who travel on long caravans all over northern Africa, have contact with many many different cultures, and speak many languages. They have the opportunity to interact with more different peoples in a year than most people in the world, I think. And yet their culture and their music are extremely insular; they do not readily admit change, and they are militantly determined to defend and validate their way of life to a Malian government that has historically neglected them both economically and culturally.

The Inuit are in a very similar position in Canada. They have a very insular culture, but are Canadian citizens, and are now moving into Western style homes, buying televisions, dealing with drug and gang culture, and struggling to mediate their relationship with the more developed world. Electrica Dharma has been using the innovative power of Catalonian folk music to reach out to marginalized cultures for over 20 years. There are bards in Ireland who are similarly persecuted for their nomadic lifestyle and are finding it difficult to survive in the modern era. How much of a the holistic Watson journey falls into this category as well? It is quite uncommon to validate such an unstructured, experiential project. As one of the Inuit singers said, the word “Inuit” means nothing more than “person”; we all walk on two feet, smile, laugh, clap hands, and seek alternately solace – and community.

It was Lane who on the last night of the festival connected me with my WATSON FELLOW SIGHTING #2: a dancer named Geoff from Reed College who had been in Burkina Faso for the past few months and came up to the festival for a short detour before flying to Rome to see his family and then to Brazil for the rest of the year. We talked about how you have to spend some time preparing mentally and physically for your next destination or else you go a little bit crazy. I think that's been pretty accurate in my case. I'm not really sure how to mentally prepare for South Africa; it's going to be such a big change on so many levels, culturally and personally.

The festival closed up with a great show by Tikan Jah, the outspoken reggae singer from the Ivory Coast. In an interview earlier that day, he had discussed his role as a gadfly in relation to the government in his home country and in places like Senegal. It struck me that in a nation like Mali, which is already so diverse, containing over 20 different cultural and language groups, and which has its own rebel groups, maybe someone like Tikan Jah can find a home. And maybe that explains in some ways the down-to-earth feeling I have whenever I come back to Bamako. There is already so much inter-cultural exchange going on in this country and its capital that they have no choice but to accept you as you are. The same will be true eventually for Western music here, I think. It is just one more spice in the pot; but Mali's native roots run so deep, I don't think there will ever be any danger of pulling them out.

Several months ago, my historian friend Dicko, who works with the BBC, gave me the analogy of the mango tree for the diversity of African-based music in the world: sometimes you are dealing with the roots, sometimes the trunk, sometimes the branches, sometimes the fruit. And sometimes the branches will mix with those of another tree and create a new kind of fruit. But the roots are always there, healthy and alive.

On the way back down, we went through Timbuktu and saw these ancient Koranic manuscripts that are being preserved by a South African team – really amazing, because if the scripts are left in the desert climate, they will decay very quickly – and it looks like their going to be able to save them. Something about it feels vaguely Borgesian... “The Library and the Books.”

I am spending one more week in Bamako, to finish up a television recording with German musicians Tony and Hannes, as well as a short Wassulu project with Paul Chandler, an American guitarist who has a studio here. Then I go back to Dakar for a few weeks to tie up loose ends there, try to track down Baaba Maal, touch base with Dr. Ibrahima Seck on the books he lent me, and play as much as I can. I'm looking for a different place to stay.

I spent yesterday and the day before sick in bed with what they thought was malaria but what turned out to be a throat infection aggravated by vomiting induced by the badly prescribed anti-malarial they gave me. Tony took me to a really nice doctor yesterday who straightened me out, gave me an injection to stop the vomiting and now I am almost normal, just a little weak and cautious around food.

Here's to the road and those who travel it. Here's also to home and love and a place to rest.

O Brother

One of my favorite Christmas sightings in Dakar included a young boy in the Christmas pageant at the church in Ouakam who was playing the part of one of the three Oriental kings. He was wearing: a head wrap made out of traditional Senegalese fabric, reflective sunglasses, a green felt cape, and a wrap-around pagne (traditional woman's skirt) made out of fabric with a recurring Jesus-print. He was very happy with himself.

So I went to church on Christmas and prayed Hail Mary's with the Catholics. There was a fantastic pageant put on by the youth group with an additional element to the story. After Jesus was born, people came from all around the world to see this new, mysterious event. Some said the new arrival was a bird, others said it was a sword, or a piece of coal. They started to argue. Finally a wise man came in and announced that everyone was right - it cries like a bird, is fast like a sword, and is hot like a piece of coal - but it was actually a baby. Then they explained that it is in this way that many people can see the same thing differently and still be right. It occurs to me that this must be a necessary attitude for a Christian living in a predominantly Muslim society like Senegal.

Before Joe arrived, I was considering changing my lodgings, where the screaming children and lack of personal space have begun to wear on me. After taking a week with Joe to declare myself on vacation, I think I can handle it for a little while longer. I will spend two weeks in Mali and then three more in Dakar before heading out of the region, so my plan is just to keep moving and pray that my head will stay screwed on straight.

Joe and I had a very nice time traveling up and down the coast of Senegal this past week. We went to the island of Saint-Louis, the old capital of French West Africa, a true jazz city and the mirror image of New Orleans culturally and historically. Much of the music was toned down while we were there, though, because a prominent marabout died in Dakar and the president declared a three-day public holiday, lasting until New Year's. This was ok, though, because Saint-Louis is full of quiet magic and bands of kids playing soccer and idle musicians and good food. I'm hoping to spend some more time there at some point.

We came back to Dakar to spend some time with my host family. We went to the beach, which is something I haven't really done since being in Africa, and disturbed me a little bit. I don't really relate to any of the Westerners who come here on vacation, no matter how much we may actually have in common. No longer interested in buying tourist goods, I find myself simply talking to the vendors. It seems like I don't fit into either group very well. What a strange trip this has been. I no longer know where I stand.

Yesterday we went to the island of Goree, off the coast of Dakar, which was another great adventure - our third island of the trip. The highlight by far was this guy Samba and his wife who showed us around their house - a huge, ruined cannon abandoned by the French over a hundred years ago. They are "renovating" it, by painting the inside with murals and patching up rust holes as they appear. We climbed up and up the crazy ladders leading to the top, finally emerging from the top of the cannon itself, where several surprised tourists were trying to take photos of their family.
I have leads on some of Baaba Maal's musicians, a jazz club in town, and a music producer friend of Karim's. Time to move, because Lord knows I can't sit still.

Joyeuse Tabaski

I have about two more months in West Africa, and they will be packed. Things are already beginning to accelerate. Last Sunday night was the peak of my Mali experience to date, I think. At a private dinner for the Ambassador of Denmark, Mali's best musicians, most of whom I've met or interviewed by now, were invited to play, and the director of the program asked if I wanted to come and play something, too. Egad. I was finally able to hear Bassekou Kouyate, the renowned blues ngoni player, perform. And I played two numbers with him and traded fours. It was kind of ridiculous and the whole trombone thing drove the elite European audience wild. I had a good time. Habib Koite was there, too, and won over the audience with a few solo pieces. Then there was Line Stern, the wife of jazz guitarist Mike Stern (who has played with Miles Davis), and she plays a mean, wailing blues guitar herself, complete with distortion and facial expressions. I spent a long time watching her, with her white-blond hair and knit cap and tattoos. She lives in New York. What a life. Also, Cheick Tidiane Seck, a wonderful blues-funk-jazz keyboard player came later on and announced with his bent synthesizer notes that the tradition was just a riff and he was going to change it up. I had met him a few weeks ago and we got along well, so another meeting long in the making came to pass that night. It was ridiculous: no ceiling on the interaction and volume and interpolations. As the crowd thinned out, Bassekou and Habib went home and Cheick, Line, an electric kora player, and I settled into the first serious jazz jam I have attended in months. So refreshing. Not just the style, but the attitude of possibility and freedom. I had really been craving that, I realized. Hallelujah strike up the jazz band and let it all hang out. I had delayed my flight to Dakar for this business, and it's a durned good thing I did. It gave me some rebellious closure on my stint in Bamako.

So I left Bamako on Tuesday afternoon, leaving some sad faces behind, and looking forward to meeting my host family in Bamako. Karim, a boyfriend of a Watson fellow who is currently in Morocco (!), picked me up from the airport. A portrait: chin-length blonding dreads, huge sunglasses, big rasta smile, slightly loping walk, puttering scooter. I think he's probably crazy. But he found me a lovely, welcoming family complete with children (aged 11, 6, and 3) who are alternately terrible and adorable. They eat together twice a day, rice and fish on the ground from a huge platter which everyone digs into with their own fork or spoon. This is my communal remedy for my isolation. Yesterday was the festival of Tabaski, the biggest Muslim holiday of the year, which commemorates God's gift of the ram to Abraham in place of Isaac; so each family buys a sheep and slaughters it on the morning of Tabaski and eats mutton until their eyes fall out. I think I've decided to become a vegetarian. But the kids look forward to it like it is Christmas and get all dressed up and parade around the neighborhood looking at everyone's outfits. It is a little like Halloween, what with the costumes and blood, but in what feels like springtime to me, and with a house that it seems will NEVER stop smelling like meat. Another result of Tabaski is that everything has been closed for the past three days. I found this internet cafe after a long, long walk.

But I've been dutifully going out to see music here, too. The scene in Dakar is enormous. It feels like Paris or New York or something. There is jazz and afro and salsa and reggae any night of the week, and this leads to some difficult choices. Thursday night I sat in with a reggae group called the Timshel Band. Normally I avoid reggae like tinned meat, but this was pretty funky and they had a really good trumpet player who teamed up with me to make some sweet horn backings. There are more horn players here than in Bamako, but mostly sax players. Last night I had the incredible fortune to go see the Orchestre Baobab live and play two tunes with them. Egad. They have tenor and alto saxes and we had a lot of fun together. Their tenor player seems especially steeped in avant jazz and waltzed amid the dancers playing fills and honking at people. This made me very happy. The guitarist - maybe Boubacar Traore, I'm not sure - is also really creative and always takes the long way around his melodies and is majorly into the chromatic possibilities of Latin music. There is salsa in Bamako, but it is not slick like it is here. I could have a good time here, I think, except that the taxi drivers don't speak French (only Wolof) and I get woken up in the morning by crying children. Joe is coming to visit after Christmas, and that will be a nice change of pace, I think. They have beautiful beaches here, and there are nice places to kayak and ride bikes... Life could be worse.

Something to Write Home About

Over the past few weeks, I have gotten to interview some of the best musicians in Bamako. This has been honestly quite an undertaking, as Mali's top tier musicians are in a social and economic class of their own. When I arrived, I started in the middle (or the bottom?) with the working musicians in Bamako, mostly salsa players from Guinea, Senegal, and Benin. They are living a tough life.

But with Toumani Diabate, it is a different story. He is a griot, meaning he was born into a family of 71 generations of kora players, just like him. In traditional Malian society, the griots are a social caste just below royalty. Toumani himself is a genius of a musician and has enjoyed international success. He speaks English like an American, slurring his consonants together casually; when he's ready to go he says, suprisingly, in the middle of a stream of Bambara, “Sarah, let's get out of here.” Two British journalists came to interview him to publicize the release of his two new albums, In the Heart of the Moon, which is a solo album, and Symmetric Orchestra Part Deux.

Toumani is, in so many ways, not your typical kora player. He is from a generation in Africa that grew up after independence. He explained listed the musical influences of his childhood: Pink Floyd, James Brown, The Super Rail Band, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company. And Malian traditional kora music. After independence, the president of the Republic of Mali charged Toumani's parents with the creation of a national orchestra to celebrate traditional music.

He explained that he sees the griot's job in the 21^st century as an extension of his traditional roles as communicator and peacemaker. The best thing, he said, that a griot can do today is to go out into the world and be a musical diplomat, making peace between Africa and the West. It struck me how comfortable Toumani is with talking about his music in a Western context; the market is different there, he said. He plans to introduce African music to Western audiences bit by bit. Otherwise, they will stop listening and put it in the world music bin. Toumani also told us about playing with Bjork live, in front of 100,000 people. Where no kora has gone before.

After playing with the Rail Band a few weeks ago, I finally had the chance to spend some time with their incredible guitarist, Djelimady Tounkara. He lives in a humble house in a central Bamako neighborhood with his entire extended family, which includes several grown sons and daughters and many more nephews – all griots in their own right. We got down to business right away with guitar and trombone, and he set me straight on a few things about Mandingue music. If you think about it, the history of Mali is written in the history of its music. People migrated from the north, across the Sahara, so the music in northern Mali is much older than the music in the south, which has more in common with the music in Guinea and Senegal. You could almost draw the sedimentary layers on a map, each increment of latitude marking the progression of another few centuries of music.

But the most amazing things Djelimady showed me addressed some of my projects big questions about the relationship between American jazz and traditional music in West Africa. He is the first person I've found in West Africa who has been able to explain this entire story to me, from the beginning of the 1200s, when the griot tradition rose in the Mandingue empire, until December 2007 with the Rail Band of Bamako playing rehashed blue-jazz a la malienne.

Warning: Music geek discussion follows. A lot of Mandingue music goes back and forth between two harmonic centers, a major third apart (Coltrane, anyone?), always landing back on the tonic, although sometimes with an unexpected or delayed rhythmic placement, which ends up sounding like a musical pun. The second tonal center, the major third above, means that they play a lot over the Phrygian mode, with b9 and b13. They will often add a flat five to this scale, which gives you a Locrian mode, based on the seventh degree of the major scale – which in this case is the four chord in the original tonality, which may be one way of hearing Mandingue music as quartally based. But that flat five on the Phrygian is also the b7 of the major tonality, a serious blue note and node of Afro-American culturo-tonal consciousness. So to play in the key of C, Mandingue musicians will often play in E Phrygian with a flat five, emphasizing the half step between E and F to give a kind of eastern sound to a line. But can you even call a line eastern? This is for another time.

It occurs to me that Djelimady is really unusual, as someone who is so talented musically, but more as someone who has traveled the world extensively and brought it all home to Mali, and knows this ancient story in its worldly context. That is his job, after all, as a griot musician: to know the tradition and to tell the stories. An American journalist-musician spent six months with Djelimady and wrote a book about him, called In Griot Time, which you should read, because it will be a healthy long while before I am in the neighborhood of a Borders outlet.

In between project activities, I have been living what seems now to be a relatively hum-drum life in my tiny quartier, practicing, reading, writing. Most of the (non-trivial) practical shocks of moving, sleeping, eating, breathing in West Africa have by now worn off. I watch soccer on TV with our whole block. I buy produce – bananas, oranges, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelons – on the side of the road and bring it home to my adopted family of bartenders and hoteliers where we wash it and eat it. There is always rice. Or fried bananas, called loko, which is one of my favorites. I have been getting a rush out of teaching English to my friend Maurice, who haunts this place when he has nowhere else to go. He is in his last year of university, but the professors are on strike at the moment, protesting their inadequate salaries and nonexistent benefits. So there are a lot of bored Malian students bumming around, along with several American SIT students who have just finished their semester. We have a good time.

Below, photographed, are my most trusted advisers, from left, Mohammed, Simione, and George Miguelito.

Outside my window, there was a plant watching the sun set. I caught him here.