Toubabu

My experience in Mali has become, I think, nearly as varied as the people and cultures that spread across its vast territory. Every once in a while I experience a huge high, like last night at this huge world photography exhibition put on by the Centre Culturel Francais. There were four or five rooms of a warehouse with the kind of classy, artsy displays you would expect to see in Paris or Philadelphia or Seattle or something. The photos were mostly of Malian traditional life, some after dark of traditional religion and spirit worship and things, and others of women and children and just a lot of empathy for the way people live and experience life. Photographers from all around the world came to this exhibition; I met people from France, Italy, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco, South Africa, China, America, Brazil... I've decided that I like photographers.

So that was the setting for this fantastic concert that followed with the Super Rail Band, which is probably Bamako's oldest and best African jazz ensemble. They've been together since the 1970s and they rarely get back together to play unless they are on tour somewhere in the world. But they played last night and I played with them, along with Lina, the saxophonist from Sweden, and Michelle, a trumpet player and arts advocate from Boston(!) who was there for the exhibition. People danced and yelled and we were quite a sight, three white female horn players with an African jazz band. But we kicked that band. Michelle didn't bring her trumpet with her, so I used my connections with George and his friend Simione to borrow a trumpet from a Protestant school in Kalaban for her to play. (The school has a big closet full of instruments sent by Americans that none of the kids have time to play. Maybe one of the reasons we don't see a lot of brass players in Bamako...) We took off at the end to see a salsa band from Sweden that Lina told us about. George is really into salsa, so he wasn't going to miss this. I played some more with the salsa group, but I liked the Super Rail Band better. I'm supposed to get together with their guitarist tomorrow to trade stories and play a little bit.

Tourism is a grand, tumbling behemoth of an industry here, so most people are accustomed to seeing Westerners; but they are really only accustomed to seeing Westerners with money. For the past ten years or so, there has also been a robust stream of musicologist types pouring into the country to investigate, formally or otherwise, Mali's legendary blues and roots music. The result is that there is actually a highly developed market for research-facilitator-guides – people who are actually incredibly knowledgeable about Mali's history and culture who offer to arrange your comprehensive practical and theoretical needs for the duration of your stay. This made me uncomfortable at first, because I realized that this could easily have dramatic (possibly negative) effects on the direction and scope of my project. But I succumbed like all the rest. I suppose in retrospect I see it for what it is: a service for a price. It has been sort of relentlessly and willfully ignorant of the Western influence on Malian music, kind of as a constant defense of the authenticity of Mali's culture as a treasure that attracts tourists. Things do not change quickly here. These are very old, very strong cultures here.

In many ways, I am finding that the return of Afro-American music to Africa is a sort of neutral biproduct of the much more destructive effects of cultural colonization. This transition is strikingly less advanced in Mali, compared to the cities on the coast in Ghana and Benin, for one thing because the European colonists didn't really set up cities here; they just exported slaves. The result is that traditional music is even stronger in Mali than I found it was in Benin. This has gotten me thinking a lot about what is lost and what is gained with Westernization. They still have a genuine culture of preservation here, where old traditions are respected simply because of their age. This resonates with the philosophies of the world's oldest, most mystical civilizations, Egypt and Israel; the Saharan part of Mali carries connotations of an entirely different culture filled with turbans and Arabs and pharaohs and mummies and the movie Aladdin. Sometimes I sing “Arabian Nights” to myself before I fall asleep. I think Timbuktu, where the oldest Islamic university used to be, is really interesting monument to this historical intellectualism, and the connection with the Middle East. Thinking of the world with Africa as the center of it has totally changed the way I think about history. I spent a long time the other night just looking at the map of the world. It's amazing me to experience the reality of musical geography; it really is true that the further north you travel in Africa, the more the music begins to take on the characteristics of Middle Eastern and even Indian music.

One benefit of my research facilitator was that I got the entire history of Mali told to me in an afternoon. There are already 23 different musico-cultural traditions in Mali, the largest being the Mandingue in the south, the Wassoulou in the west, the Bambara and the Peuhl in the center, and the Tuareg and the Dogon in the north. Each has their own language, and a different relationship to diaspora music. The Mandingue have probably the closest associations with jazz – they have the griot tradition and they play instruments like the 21-stringed kora and the traditional African guitar. Ali Farka Toure's famous blues comes out of the music of the Peuhl. The Festival in the Desert in January (I'm coming back) is mainly a celebration of Tuareg groups. All of these groups and styles appear in some form in Bamako, so this city is already a complicated web of cultural recombination, even without foreign influences like jazz, rap, rock, reggae, and salsa. I think the Super Rail Band, which is where Salif Keita got his start, is probably my favorite example so far of a globally-minded Malian group.

I am continually astounded by the apparent hospitality of Malians. I went out late at night to try to buy cell phone credits so I could call Andy back. The only person on the street was a guy about my age hanging out on the steps of a closed storefront. He told me to wait there while he walked up the street to buy me credits, and I could just pay him back when he got back. This kind of help always makes me a little suspicious, and in the U.S. I would not be talking to strangers in the middle of the night. But there I was. And lo and behold he came back in five minutes with a phone card. Things like this happen routinely. I ask where the patisserie is; the guy I ask gives me a ride there and back. I experienced nothing like this in Ghana or Benin.

More frequently people see me as a walking bank, which makes me really uncomfortable. There is poverty here, and a lot of musicians are among the poorest. More than a few times, I have gotten mired in a web of suspicious and jealousy among struggling musicians. I am constantly fielding requests for money from musicians of all types who tell stories of sickness, unemployment, and homelessness. When I won't give them money, they demand, persistently that I stay in Mali and marry them. It is mentally and emotionally very tiring to weigh each situation with compassion and try to decide how my meager allotment of time and money can best make a difference here. Everyone wants a piece of what they imagine to be the grand and infinite well of wealth I have to offer, an attitude which has already started arguments among musicians as to who has the right to take advantage of me.

I came here wanting to explode my cultural stereotypes, to know people and things through direct experience; I walk when I can and take the minibuses instead of taxis to see more of people's lives. I am staying in a neighborhood far away from the touristy center of Bamako. I spend hours listening to people and learning to speak Bambara and learning about people's families. And yet I am often stereotyped myself as nothing but a toubabu - a white female - to exploit. How many of their stereotypes about me are true? Am I not being compassionate enough in my understanding of their situation? Is it too much to ask to be treated as an individual rather than a type? One result has been that I have become extremely careful about who I trust here. I am beginning to sense a kind of hardness in myself, something that has come from being self-reliant and on the move for so long. I think this is actually a kind of strength, but it is at the same time a little unnerving to watch myself change like that.

The Secret to Life is Written on Your Eyelids

In many ways, the story of my project in Benin was a very old story indeed: that of the Western researcher who goes into the forest to find the shaman to study his wisdom, only to find that the old man has died, or has transformed himself into a tree to evade his enemies, or has sought political asylum in an unkown location, or has taken a vow of silence, or has given up his practice altogether for the love of modern science... I think I experienced all of these things, in one form or another, at some point.

Mali is looking to be an entirely different endeavor. There is a well-traveled tourist trail here, and what's more, the trail is signposted for the musically inclined, thanks to a steady stream of folks anxious to experience the Malian blues phenomenon. So it my interest in the significance and history of the music here is most often seen as natural, perhaps even common. Which isn't to say I'm not receiving a fair amount of attention. I have been getting the star treatment since arriving in Bamako, for starters thanks to contact with George Miguelito, a guitarist from Benin who has been living in Mali for the past nine years. He has a salsa group that plays regularly at the French cultural center and at Le Cite des Flamboyants, a combination restaurant- performance space-hotel under construction, which is where I'm staying. There was a whole fiasco with negotiating the price of the room, because George is friends with the owner and the manager and everyone was trying to use their influence to get the best of the situation... Finally I put my foot down and made a written agreement with the owner myself. This was a good lesson for me, and I'm really glad I decided to stay here; I have air conditioning, good cheap food, a kind of limitless stream of interesting people coming through the restaurant from the surrounding Kalaban Coura, and a place to play every Saturday night.

Thursday night I went to the French cultural center with George to see his salsa group Los Maestros, and met SO many people. Bamako is progressively displaying itself like the opening petals of a flower, blooming continuously. For example, I met a Swedish woman who plays saxophone and has come here to work and marry her Malian fiance. She wants to do some gigs together while I'm here. There is an old man who plays some serious Latin flute and studied for several years at the conservatory in Cuba (another part of the story). One of the percussionist-singers toured with Salif Keita and says he will arrange for me to meet him.

There was also a soul singer who sat in, a Nigerian, and he threw the band into a sort of blues mode that stuck around for the rest of the night. That's music that I know really well, so I immediately felt comfortable. The strange thing is that there are no trombonists to be found on the scene in Bamako, so people really paid attention when I played. It's probably something to do with the white female thing, too. The manager of the cultural center basically explained my project to me (in English) before I could say two words to him. He said: “Yeah, what I see you doing is bringing this American jazz-blues sound, which is in your blood anyway, back to Africa to see what's going on with the interaction of the modern and the traditional.” Uh-huh.

Friday George was in the studio starting recording on his third album (we will add horns later), so Mohammed, the manager at Les Flamboyants, took charge of me for the day. We toured Bamako on his motorcycle, checking out the market in the center of town and finding cheap restaurants where I can buy rice when I'm hungry. I also got to see the Niger River, which has totally enthralled me with its beauty. It is so green, and so blue, and mostly just incredibly mystical. This thought occurred to me that it is so appropriate to have a river going through Bamako because it somehow parallels the way the Mississippi goes through New Orleans and the significance of rivers and river imagery in American (blues) culture. I think the Niger clinched it for me. Bamako has some things to show me, musically, spiritually, historically. Something good led me to this place.

Friday night Mohammed and I left Les Flamboyants late (it was his wife's birthday – we made milkshakes) to go see the master kora player Toumani Diabate play at Le Hogon, a greenly lit bar and cultural center on the edge of town. We arrived by motorcycle after midnight, and things were already in full swing, a mammoth traditional group (eight percussionists, four guitarists, kora, traditional Malian guitar, talking drum) playing for a crowd of all shapes, colors, and dispositions. Toumani was nowhere in sight, however. I played a few solos with the group, struggling to be heard in the middle of the saturated sound. It was not until two a.m. that Toumani arrived and took the stage. I stayed to play a long number with them – suddenly the balance got much better. The groove seemed to have limitless sections and variations on the same cyclical rhythm, starting and stopping, continuing for another person to take a solo. Everything was blues-ified pentatonic and I threw myself into the fray. After twenty minutes of this, I snuck out, exhausted, and decided to head home. Flying through the cold desert night, I buried my face in Mohammed's hood and stole occasional, conspiratorial glances at the Niger, brimful and drifting silently beneath us.

Sitting Here in Limbo (But I Know It Won't Be Long)

I left Benin on Friday morning, expecting to pass the night in Ouagadougou in a room at the Catholic Cathedral and leave Saturday for Bamako. All went as planned. Except it's Sunday, and I'm still in Ouaga.

So... Burkina Faso was not really on the itinerary. It turns out they are tearing up the runway in Mali, so they cancelled the flight. They promised it will be finished by the end of this week. Yesterday I spent five hours at the Ouaga airport trying to get them to give me another ticket and find me a hotel.

The up-side: I had company. The Ouagadougou airport is officially my new favorite place for meeting new and interesting people. My favorites included a playwright from Cape Town, South Africa, who was flying to Dakar for a film festival. He is working on a play about the life of Fela Kuti, the founder of the Afro-Beat phenomenon, and yes, hero of my Nigerian colleague Funsho who I worked with in Ghana. My new South African friend is running a performing arts festival in February, when I arrive in Cape Town. Things work in circles, I am discovering.

My other friend-in-waiting was a real godsend, an English guy (James) who has been living in Ouagadougou with his Portuguese wife (Anna) and two children (Sarah, 6, and Joanna [aka Joey], 4) for the past three years. When the airline wouldn't give me any help with a hotel, he said that I should come and stay with his family in Ouaga for the week until they finish the runway in Bamako. I can't make this stuff up. So I slept here last night and stayed up late talking to James about theology and volunteerism and the state of the world. We swam in their pool this morning. They have a driver and a maid and a guard. I took a hot shower. Praise the Lord. James works for an NGO in Ouaga, and Anna does something diplomatic here, I'm not quite sure what. In any case, I have officially been extraordinarily blessed and will enjoy the time to explore Ouaga, which is low-key and safe, especially compared to Cotonou. James left for Nairobi this morning, and asked me to stay just in case Anna needs help with something.

My last week in Benin was hectic and wonderful. It was hard to say goodbye to Rock and Didie. I realized that we went through a lot together and became really good friends. A farewell to Benin photo gallery:

Nathan, with alto trombone

Drummers at funeral in Porto Novo (visions of New Orleans)

Vodoun priest giving sacrifices to fetishes

Sign pointing the way to a Christianisme Celeste church

Fa devination ritual with kola nuts

The last king of Abomey is said to have turned himself into this tree to evade foreign intruders.

Statue of the last king of Abomey, who when the French arrived asking him to sign his territory over in a treaty, ordered his men to open fire. A symbol of Benin's resistance to European political and cultural control. In the photo are Rock, Jacques, and two local boys.

Closeup of inscription: "I will never accept to sign any treaty that could threaten independence in the land of my integrity." Cbehanzin King of Dahomey.

No Turning Back

Here are the photos I promised you. Above is the Door of No Return in Ouidah, which departing slaves walked through, maybe knowing that there was no going back - that slavery would change them, and their culture forever. This story made an impression on me, because it is also the story of jazz and Afro-American culture in their relation to Africa today. The resonance is always there. Down the road from the Door of No Return in Ouidah is the Door of Return, which commemorates the return of freed slaves to Africa, along with their culture (I'm thinking about James Brown, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, et al, plus all the Caribbean music and instruments that have made the return journey.)
Above are some of the musicians who show up at Le Repaire de Bacchus of a Thursday late-night. The saxophonist here is really interesting and spent a lot of time in Chicago playing jazz and speaks English like an American and French like a Parisian. So we picked each other's brains. He likes Poncho Sanchez a lot. He's also a really lean, mean sax player - he plays like there is no ceiling.

Something weird happened with my vodoun pictures - it's like they put a virus on my computer or something. I've heard people talk about stuff like this before, where their videos and photos of vodoun ceremonies don't record or won't transfer to the computer. My Western rationalism is looking kind of like Swiss cheese these days, shot full of holes.

Pictured below are Rock, my friend and all-purpose guide; yours truly; Bianca, who is one year old; and Latisha, Bianca's mom. We are eating lunch in the shade at Rock's family's compound.


This is me with my hair braided, the day after I turned 23.

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.

Pushing through

At least my lips are recovering, so thank God for that. I have been able to play for the past five days or so and things are rapidly improving. I have spent two days talking to the trombonist Aaron about life, the universe, and the trombone, and this has been immensely wonderful. We share a lot of angst. It is important to have someone to share angst with, I've found, especially on a trip like mine. There are Sisyphan aspects to the entire endeavor, and it's nice to have some company while pushing that rock up the mountain again and again.

I have found myself defending the holism of the Watson project a number of times since I have been in Benin. This is not a conversation I like having, because there are times when I'm not so convinced of the program's philosophy myself. Something of the absurdity of my situation hit home this week, I think. I have chosen to adopt some sort of internal cynicism that keeps me going. But I am not fully formed, they will tell me. I must stay in the fire longer before I am fully ready. The Watson is a riddle, like a Zen koan. The search for meaning in itself contains a lesson.

Sundays I go to two churches, one a Methodist church with hymns sung in the native language, Goun, but with familiar melodies, and the sermon in French. I had communion for the first time in a while this week. That was nice. They introduced me to the congregation and I explained why I am in Benin and told them that I like their church. After the service, they fed me some sweet white soup which was very good.

Then we move on to the Eglise Christianisme Celeste, which is a sort of cultish Christian church based on traditional Yoruba religion and a divine prophecy that was revealed in 1947. Everyone dresses in white and the women have to cover their heads to enter the church and everyone has to take off their shoes. They don't eat pork or drink alcohol. The music is fantastic. The drumming is constant. Worship is happening there, let there be no doubt about it.

Pictures next time. I found wireless internet. Score.

Porto Novo

A lot has happened in the past week. I moved into my apartment in Porto Novo, which has a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and two bedrooms, only one of which has me in it. I spent several days struggling with swollen and dry lips, and I stopped playing for a while and saw a doctor, who prescribed some heavy-duty anti-inflammatory meds that kind of scared me. So I self-medicated with vitamin E solution and ibuprofen. This seems to be working, but I still have a swollen lip and my embouchure is more than a little confused.

The Ahouandjinou brothers have been very kind to me since I have moved out to Porto. Rock has become my ever-present companion, and every day we undertake what he calls "la recherche culturelle," which generally entails finding traditional musicians who play vodoun music and listening to them play and talking to them. Today we saw a group called Sato play and dance and I danced with them which made them like me I think. I asked Rock about his journey from vodoun to Christianity in his life, and he said, "Vodoun is still part of my life as a Beninois, but that is not what saved my soul." I also had my first drum lesson today. I think the drum I bought is called the akaka, and it is related to the talking drums of Nigeria, but it will fit in my suitcase. You hold the drum sideways on your knee and play it with a fat stick and push your thumb on the skin to change the pitch. I will put up some videos as soon as I can figure out a way to get my computer hooked up to the Net.

My French is getting better and better, and it seems strange to write and talk in English when the occasion arises. As Andy put it, "It sounds like your mouth is used to making French sounds." That is true. Being caught between two languages, speaking neither so fluently at the moment, makes me feel farther away than ever. The only language that doesn't feel foreign is music. Often when I stop playing, I start speaking English, because that's the most natural language next to music, my instincts tell me, and am surprised to find no one understands me. So I look for opportunities to play and not speak, because then I can say what I mean.