East Coast Home Stretch

November 17, 2002

Malian guitarist Djelimady Tounkara made his first U.S. tour this fall as the head of his own acoustic group. Banning Eyre road managed the tour. This is the final installment of Banning's account of the experience.

Hear Djelimady Tounkara, Bamba Dembele and Banning Eyre on KEXP, Seattle

Back on Campus

For Djelimady and his five musicians, Bradley Airport outside Hartford, Connecticut, was just another American airline terminus, Route 91 south to Middletown another American highway, Middletown itself another American town, and Wesleyan University another American campus. But for me, all of this was home. For the final week of the Djelimady Acoustic Project's first U.S. tour, my house on the Wesleyan campus would be our base of operations. I had arranged for friends in the area to provide rooms for three of the musicians and me. Djelimady, Bamba, and Samba Sissoko (Samba 1) would stay at my house. In part, this was a cost-cutting move, to ensure that our tour stayed in the black. But as the group soon realized, it would also mean a level of hospitality and comfort not to be found in any hotel.

The first benefit came in the form of refrigerators, ovens and stoves. All through the tour, the band had been economizing, and suiting their dietary tastes, by buying rotisserie chickens. Often they would simply keep the chickens in their plastic casings in the van, or in their rooms. In some hotels, they would bring the chickens to the desk from time to time and request that they be microwaved. Where that was not possible, the musicians would just eat cold, leftover chicken. Keen to demonstrate the benefits of home living, I immediately took everyone to Super Stop and Shop, and encouraged them to buy to their hearts' content. This was as jolly a visit to a supermarket as every I have made, but it would be the last. Given the hospitality we would soon find in Middletown and then in Boston, nobody would need to buy any more food after that.

There was just time for a short rest before the gig at Crowell Concert Hall, but it hit the spot. After a busy week in the Midwest, with not a single good night of sleep, we were all running on fumes. But between rotisserie chicken, the knowledge that a good rest was just around the corner, and the thrill of seeing certain old friends the musicians knew from Mali, fumes did the trick.

First among those old friends was Eric Charry, a Wesleyan professor and author of the book Mande Music (Chicago University Press), the definitive English-language text on the subject. Eric was largely responsible for bringing the group to Wesleyan for a concert, a workshop and--something new--a master class. The other important Friend-of-Djelimady was Dirck Westervelt who came to live with the Tounkara family during my 1995-96 stay there. As readers of In Griot Time will know, Dirck has long pursued a project of playing Manding music on the banjo, descendent of the ngoni spike lute. Dirck got along famously with Djelimady and his family, and made a subsequent visit to Bamako in 1997. Djelimady was very much looking forward to their Middletown reunion.

When we arrived at Crowell for the sound check, the organizers were excited. "There's a buzz on campus about this concert," one told me. "We've been getting calls all day." Eric and three of his students had asked to play a couple of opening numbers on four acoustic guitars, and while the sound crew set up the stage, there was a good deal of guitar jamming, and chatter in Bambara, which Eric speaks quite well. Djelimady was impressed with the students, but of course, they were more impressed with him.

By showtime, the hall was respectably full and sizzling with anticipation. There were lots of folks who've been exposed to Malian music through studying with Eric Charry, and some who came to it through local performances by myself, Dirck, and American kora player, David Gilden, who until recently lived in Hartford. There were also a number of Ghanaian music students who work with master drummer and longtime Wesleyan professor Abraham Adzenyah, also in the house that night. And along with a nice cross section of the Middletown and Wesleyan community, some folks had come from out of town to see the show, including Afropop Worldwide's producer Sean Barlow, who made the trip up from New York.

Crowell is a warm, beautiful hall, and although the sound mix was less than perfect that night--an inevitable result of having to work with a different sound man at each performance--the show went over beautifully. During the second set, Wesleyan students showed their legendary willingness to dance, responding to Bamba's drum and storming the stage for a rousing finale. It never ceased to amaze me that no matter how exhausted Djelimady and his musicians were--and this was the low ebb of sleep for the entire tour--once the music started, nothing else seemed to matter, and the performance was excellent every time.

After the show, the group had been invited to stop by Malcolm X House, a Wesleyan institution created during the 1970s, when African American studies was a relatively new concept on university campuses. There was food and soft drinks, and a gathering of students. The Dean of the College, Freddye Hill, came as well, and was very keen to communicate to the musicians something of Wesleyan's history of social activism, particularly where African Americans are concerned. She explained the history of Malcolm X house, with a Wesleyan graduate student translating into French, and then Bamba translating into Bambara so that the musicians would understand clearly.

It was a long process, but as it went on, I could see that Djelimady and Bamba in particular were deeply impressed by what was being said. Soon, Bamba began responding back to Dean Hill, expressing his ongoing puzzlement that everyone he met in the United States seemed so open, engaged, and enlightened, while the actions of the country in the international arena seemed mostly the opposite. The subject turned to AIDS, and here an intriguing conceptual rift emerged. Many Malians, including some in this group, are not sure they believe in AIDS. There's a common notion that the disease is an invention of the West designed to oppress Africans. Bamba did not say this, but he did express the belief that if America really wanted to, it could easily eliminate this disease. He said, in essence, "Why should we bother with condoms? Why doesn't the United States with all its power just find a cure for AIDS?"

The condom line definitely got peoples' attention, and the discussion became very lively, although I wasn't sure that all the passions being expressed exactly lined up. Dean Hill's progressive American perspective and Bamba's disenchanted African one shared many of the same sentiments, but did not operate from the same set of assumptions about HIV-AIDS itself.

As the thread of the conversation grew more and more complex, I could see the eyes of some of the musicians glazing over. Djelimady turned to me and whispered his favorite exit line, "Cojugu,"--Bambara for "over the top"--and I knew it was time to step in and let the beleaguered Malians make their way to their beds, where they would have the first uninterrupted night of sleep in a week.

For most, Saturday, November 9, was a day of resting and partying. I, however, was at last reunited with my computer and had long hours of accounting, emailing, and reporting to do. It was nice to sit in my own home, working, surrounded by people cooking, talking, laughing, making phone calls to relatives in New York and Mali (hopefully, with phone cards!) playing music, watching videos (Titanic aired twice in its entirety!), and generally enjoying themselves in the company of old and new friends who dropped by all day and night.

Samba Diabaté, the group's extremely talented rhythm guitarist, liked to rib me about my work. "Still calculating?" he kept asking me, and when I wasn't the computer, he would ask, "Isn't there more calculating to do?" To him, this was very funny. To math-challenged me, it was less so, and it made me realize that the amount of work involved in accounting for all the CDs, sales figures, cash and checks, tour cash, per-diem money, pay from gigs and workshops, expenses, receipts, and so on, was mystifying to these musicians. The amount of time I spent counting CDs, counting money, using the computer and the calculator, and scribbling on envelopes looked almost suspicious to them. I sensed in Samba's joking a hint of worry, as if anyone who spent that much time accounting must be up to something. Suffice it to say, that this was for me the most thankless part of being a road manager.

The party wound up in a veritable feast, and a rambling jam session in the living room. Eric Charry came with two balafons, and he and Samba Diabaté played balla duets for a while. Dirck brought his bass and banjo and there were the requisite 30-minute rendition of the Malian wedding warhorse "Diaoura." Linda Gardner, a friend of mine who had also visited Mali and was putting Mariam Tounkara up at her house, brought out her violin and got some coaching from Djelimady, who resisted the jam for as long as he could, but wound up teaching the jammers to play a long lost Rail Band song called "Wali Numa Lomballa," ("Ingratitude"), which he had first recorded with Mory Kante in 1981. At the end, Djelimady surrendered his guitar and exited with the line, "That's my gift." And a great gift it was.

As always, Bamba capped the evening by holding forth about the graciousness and hospitality the group had found in Middletown. I had been concerned that the musicians might miss the anonymous tranquility of hotel rooms, but they assured me that this was much better, and who could argue with that? The one unwelcome guest was my dog, who happens to be named Samba, after the Brazilian music style. As the group already had two Sambas, I dubbed her "Samba-3." But her high-spiritedness was basically terrifying to the younger musicians. "Elle est trop rapide!," said Fode, begging me to restrain her, so Samba-3 spent the party tied up in the kitchen and went to stay elsewhere for the duration of the tour.

First New York Spin

Sunday, November 10, we went to New York for a show presented by the World Music Institute, at Symphony Space on the upper west side. During previous tours by the Super Rail Band, musicians had been unhappy that their New York visits had meant staying at a hotel in Nyack, well north of the city. "We have relatives in New York," Bamba protested. "We need to buy things there. We have to be in the city." So as we were saving on hotels in Middletown, I had booked two suites at the Off Soho Suites hotel downtown. It was a good distance from the venue, but it was close to good shopping, and very much a New York experience.

Our first stop was Dirck's place in Woodbury, CT, where Samba and Fode were staying. All was well there. Fode had struck up a nice friendship with Dirck's five-year-old son, Eli, who would produce his toy ukulele each time he saw Fode's ngoni. Before we left, Dirck invited the entire group to come out to the house for dinner the following week. Djelimady was pleased to accept, and with that, we were off to Manhattan.

On Bamba's request, I had left plenty of time. The plan was to proceed directly to Broadway and 29th St, where a Malian businessman named Magassa had a shipping business. Magassa was a friend of Bamba's and a master in the art of packing and shipping all manner of goods en route to West Africa. This block of Broadway is packed with West African run businesses. Magassa's office is on the third floor of 1205 Broadway, where aside from the homeboys handing out flyers in front, and the Chinese elevator operator, the only languages you're likely to hear are Wolof, Bambara, and French. We made good time, but on arrival, I realized that I had a problem. There was nowhere to park a 15-seater van, and the few lots I found that would take it wanted $30.00 for the first half-hour. That was too rich for this tour's blood.

"Just circle the block," someone from Magassa said. "As long as you stay in the car, they won't ticket you." So I did. Each time I'd get shooed away by a cop, I'd crawl around the traffic-jammed block once again, and each time I'd arrive at the teeming storefront of 1205 Broadway, one of the musicians would throw open the door of the van, toss in a shopping bag full of clothing or electronics, slam the door, and disappear into the crowd again. After about an-hour-and-a-half of this, it was time to go to the hotel. There wasn't much time to rest before the show by then, but I found a place to sit with the van and caught a few winks.

The Symphony Space gig was probably the high water mark of the tour. The city's African music community was there in force, not with as many Malians as the presenters had hoped for, but given the early hour of the show--7:00--and the fact that it was a Sunday night, this wasn't a big surprise. The show had had good advance notice, including the New Yorker--"Djelimady Tounkara is a guitarist on the order of Eric Clapton or B.B. King…some of the most sweetly melodious music to be found on any continent."--and the New York Times. There were not one but two Times music writers there, and also Times photographer Jack Vartoogian, who took a sensational shot of Djelimady smiling as he is showered with cash by his cousin Fanta Tounkara, dressed regally in a sky blue robe, which ran next to Ban Ratilff's review of the show the following Tuesday.

The sound and lightning were also spectacular. Compared with other bands I've known, Djelimady and his crew were flexible and forgiving with less than perfect monitor arrangements, but here, with each instrumentalist having a separate mix, they were in heaven, and it showed in the performance. The presence of African friends--Bamba's four children, kora master Yacouba Sissoko from Djelimady's home town, Fanta Tounkara, and others--also helped to boost the energy level of the musicians. Djelimady was particularly thrilled to find an old friend from Cote D'Ivoire there. Back in the late 1970s, Kalilou Camara had rescued the Rail Band, arranging for them to get a complete set of amplifiers and P.A. gear at a time when they were down and out. Kalilou had been in an African restaurant earlier that evening when he'd happened to notice a poster for the concert. "I jumped in a taxi and came straight over," he told me. So the World Music Institute's outreach to New York's African community did yield results.

By the end of the concert, people were dancing in the aisles. The presenters themselves--Robert and Helene Browning--were dancing. A further measure of success, the band sold nearly twice as many CDs as at any other show on the tour. As I walked through the hall after the show, I was greeted by many a friend and acquaintance, all with the same overjoyed expression on their faces. Djelimady's show, for all the flashy guitar and ngoni work and strong rhythm, is a gentle experience. Somehow the balance between sweet and hot had come out perfectly that night, and before this distinguished audience in the Afropop capital of America, it couldn't have felt better.

Back at the Off Soho Suites, things didn't feel so good. The band hadn't eaten a proper dinner. It was raining. I was going to stay at a friend's place in Brooklyn, and was keen to sleep as Djelimady and I had a workshop at the Lycée Française all the way uptown at 8:00 the next morning. I managed to find some suitable sandwich food and left Djelimady and Bamba with Bamba's kids. Bamba had been carrying a heavy suitcase full of gifts for them for the entire tour. Now, at last, he could off-load it.

My 7:00 rendez-vous with Djelimady the next morning was grim. We grabbed a coffee and croissant and rode silently uptown. Neither he nor I had really focused on the Lycée Française. Certainly, we did not expect to find ourselves in a gilded, chandeliered auditorium before some 200 bilingual children at 8:00 on Monday morning. I know from many experiences that Djelimady is a natural with children, but oddly, in this setting, he began stiffly, telling his story just as he would for college students. These kids may have spoken better French than I ever will, but they did not know who Mory Kante or Salif Keita was. Normally, my role at these events is to translate, but now I found myself trying to bridge the gap between a suddenly professorial Djelimady and a hoard of kids, verging on sleep.

All this changed dramatically when Djelimady began to play guitar. The kids came to life, clapping eagerly--and near deafeningly--after his every foray with the guitar. We took the cue and hit them with an extended Cuban pachanga and a lively round of "Diaoura." Then came question and answer time. It seemed that every one of those kids had a question for Djelimady, and I could see him withering as child after child stood to ask: "Why do you play guitar?" "Why are you a musician?"and, my favorite, "Are you a drugeur?" I have rarely known a musician--let alone one of Djelimady's caliber--with so few vices. Djelimady takes no intoxicants, unless you count weak coffee. He quit cigarettes in 1993, and watches his diet carefully, all explaining why he looks about 45, although he's 57. We walked out of there a little dazed, but with no time to linger. We had to collect the musicians and hightail it back to Wesleyan for yet another new experience: teaching a master class.

Talking about his life and showing off his chops is one thing. But for Djelimady, teaching guitar is another matter. I knew this well, having negotiated my way to becoming his student for seven months in Mali. When Eric Charry told Djelimady he wanted him to actually teach a group of guitarists to play something, a little extra negotiating was required. Once past that hurdle, Djelimady outdid himself. He had that group of guitarists--also Linda on violin and Dirck on banjo--sounding like the Rail Band. He taught them to play "Wali Numa Lomballa," the Rail Band song he had sprung during the jam at my house. There were a few very good players there--some of them able to pick up the parts faster than I can, despite my years of experience. I came away convinced that master classes should be an integral part of Djelimady's next tour.

Tuesday was rainy and cold, and the workshop Djelimady and I gave at the Buttonwood Tree in Middletown was sparsely attended. This was the last bit of real down time for the tour, and I encouraged everyone to rest well, which we mostly did until heading off to Dirck's for another feast and jam session in Woodbury on Wednesday night. Dirck's wife Gina and Linda Gardner headed up a team of chefs who pulled together a spread of marinated chicken, peanut soup, breads, salads, pies, cakes and all manner of drinks, including a ginger drink much like the piquant gimbré everyone drinks in Mali.

As we left the party that night after a hearty couple of hours of music, Bamba asked if there were bears in those woods. "Yes," said Dirck.
"Do they eat people?" asked Bamba.
"Not very often," said Dirck, relishing the uncomfortable silence that followed.
"But if they see Bamba," speculated Djelimady. "He does resemble them a little."
"Ooo-la-la," said Bamba scurrying into the van.

With Balla in Boston

We had made contact with Djelimady's nephew in Boston, kora player and bandleader Balla Tounkara. Balla had been badly stung the one time the Rail Band came to Boston in 2000. As in this case, Boston had been the last date of the tour, and Balla had prepared a grand reception for his uncle. Unfortunately, the band had had to leave directly from the show, and the loyal nephew was angry and crestfallen. Eager to avoid that scenario, I suggested that we come to Boston on Thursday, the day before the show at the Somerville Theatre. This way, there would be time to shop, and to visit. Balla agreed, assuring us that he would find suitable lodging for everyone for Thursday night.

For more background on Balla Tounkara, see the Afropop feature Balla Tounkara: The Griot of Boston

Our first stop in Boston was Mr. Music, a music store in my old neighborhood on Harvard St. in Allston. Back in the early '90s, I brought the late mbira player, Ephat Mujuru, there to buy a complete P.A. system before he returned to Zimbabwe at the end of the tour, and I've shopped there ever since, always getting deals. This is why I had been telling the musicians to wait for Boston to buy music gear. My friend at Mr. Music is Steve, and I had called him let him know we'd be coming. As it turned out, Balla is also a friend of his, and he met us there.

Steve did not realize what he'd got in for. Nice guy that he is, he looked at what each person wanted to buy and named the lowest price he thought he could get away with. Of course, from the Malians' point of view, that was the starting price. Then the real bargaining begun. With all the musicians hitting him at once, he found himself raw meat at a feeding frenzy. "I'm going to get fired!" he exclaimed at one point.

For me, this was more than an amusing spectacle. There was a poignant note to the whole shopping ritual. The sad fact is, when all was said and done, these musicians weren't making the kind of money one might think they should. There's no villain in the story. Nobody, from the tour producer, to the record company, to the presenters, to the musicians, or me for that matter, was making much on the tour, and I suspect it's not much different for most African musicians on tour in America. This tour wouldn't have happened at all had the French government not paid for the bulk of the plane fares from Africa. Even still, there was barely enough money to go around.

The end result is that these musicians, fully paid at the end of their tour, found themselves in places like Mr. Music, and later Guitar Center and other urban music vendors, confronted with tantalizing opportunities to buy gear they covet badly. But they had to make tough choices. The problem of taking all this gear on an airplane aside--we'll come to that--there just wasn't much money to be spent on such things.

Djelimady's own case was particularly difficult. He had the most money to play with of everyone, but to see him scrapping over the price of a guitar strap or capo, you might have imagined him flat broke. His nephew Balla had already given him an amplifier, which was waiting at Magassa for him. Djelimady really wanted to buy another, and to buy pedals, and strings, and cords, and of course, a great acoustic guitar. But in the end, he bought almost nothing, returning to what he had told me at the start of the tour. "I have 47 dependants now, almost twice what I had when you visited me."

Bamba took a different approach, although Djelimady assured me he too had many dependents in Mali. He certainly works with many bands. He bought a complete P.A. system, and enough strings, cables, straps and so on to equip five bands. He obviously saw ways to make money with these things in Mali. For Djelimady, the cash that would buy food for his family came first, and he took almost all the cash he received from any source on the tour home with him. I thought about something Fode had told me in Middletown. He was telling me how difficult life is now for griots in Bamako. "People have no money," he said. "Sumows (street parties) are way down. I can go two months without playing one. People are afraid of griots now." Afraid, because the griot's power to extract money from a person with the beauty of his or her music or praise can literally be a danger to a person's livelihood.

Whenever I asked after peoples' families in Mali, the etiquette was to say, "They're fine." But in a moment of panic, Fode gave me a truer picture. Like so much of Africa and the world, the country is being squeezed by the difficult circumstances of today, and these musicians may be stars, but they are caught in that squeeze.

The Boston stay was wonderful. Balla fed everyone fabulous African food, with help from many friends, and put everyone up in style. On Friday, Djelimady and I gave our best workshop of the tour at the New England Conservatory. The event had been well publicized and close to 200 people (adults this time) showed up and gave their rapt attention. Rising to the occasion, Djelimady stretched out, doing his Django Reinhart and Chuck Berry guitar impressions and laying it on thick with the solos when we played together. It was a thrill for me, and for everyone present.

The concert was also a high-spirited affair. Balla had been scheduled to begin the show and to sit in for one song. That song, "Diaoura," stretched on for a good 20-minutes, causing others to be struck from the set for lack of time. But it was worth it. Something happened. At the height, Djelimady and his nephew stood at the front of the stage, trading riffs with fiery, familial intimacy in a grand and fitting finale to the tour.

After the show, we lingered at Balla's place, and then drove through the night to Middletown. Most of us slept for just about two hours before mounting the van once again for New York, the second spin. We went straight to Magassa, and unloaded everything. While I waited outside--I lucked into a parking spot this time--the musicians carefully weighed all their baggage, shrink wrapping amplifiers, speakers and other items into bundles to arrive at twelve items weighing exactly 32 kilograms (70 pounds), the legal limit for checked baggage. It was a final virtuoso performance, carried off with expert guidance from Master Magassa.

Then it was on to JFK airport. Bamba laid the charm on thick for the lovely Haitian woman at the Delta Airlines check in, but she cut him no slack in the end. Magassa's packing strategy worked beautifully, but when the woman saw all the baggage they planned to carry on to the plane, she protested loudly. "They won't let you on with all that. They'll make you check it and you'll have to pay!" By then, the musicians had their boarding passes and were on the way to security. They would take their chances.

When I last saw Djelimady, Bamba, Mariam, Samba 1, Samba 2, and Fode, they were hefting boxes, bags and guitars through the security checkpoint, heading home with the spoils of a magnificent tour. I wished they were taking more, but damn if it wasn't better than staying home. Djelimady's parting words to me were that wanted to come back to America, but only if the money were better. Everyone behind this tour hopes it will be, and will work to make it so. My guess is we'll be seeing the greatest guitarist in Mali in our cities again.

First tour dispatch

Second tour dispatch

Third tour dispatch

Fourth tour dispatch























































































Contributed by: Banning Eyre