First Kora Festival of the Gambia
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We get back to the 10am Kora Festival at about 3:30 and it’s as if they were waiting for us to begin. Greetings greetings greetings from all all all as we walk into Maali Music School, first place in Gambia to teach kora to non-griot families (the caste system is breaking down – see Salif Keita, talk to Papa’s daughters). Evidently there were some kids’ workshops after Papa and I left for our Banjul jaunt, so we’re actually back in time for the first performance, and the room – well, courtyard – is energized. Hey wait – what’s this? Familiar face? Unbelievably, I actually know people here! From hanging with Papa at the Bowery Poetry Club and in the Bronx, saltations from Gambian griots now back home in Banjul. I love being on their turf! Guess I’m home, too.
Here’s the voluble griot Djelimadi Kanuteh with his endless smile taking the mic and introducing (griots are always introducing, it’s the monologue version of the call-and-response hello). Djelamadi holds a well-thumbed hardcover of Tom Hale’s book, in which he’s mentioned – the one that has Papa Susso’s picture in it! On top of the book is a portable CD player cued up to his solo griot CD, which I remember being recorded in NY in 2004. And here, dressed in the same gray boubou he was wearing last time I saw him, the wild-eyed, sharp-tongued and sharp-witted marabout Manjacko Susso, who had been a major player at the concert at the Gambian Cultural Center in the Bronx just a couple months ago. Sponsored by the Center and Bowery Arts & Science (co-producers of On the Road with YT, thank you very much!). Manjacko is a wild card, mischievous, an expert at grabbing the mic and getting jibes in edgewise. There are others, too – education is remembering names here –it’s Old Home Week! Papa and I settle in, right up front, and the music begins.
Mandinke greetings are minutes-long rituals, contain the essence and origins of call and response, and I’ve learned to just respond in English (acceptable here in Gambia which was a British colony, so English is the “common tongue,” unlike Francophone Senegal and Mali) to keep the rhythm flowing: Soomalay How are you? Eebaday OK Thanks Torraceeta Hope you’re having no problems? Tacita No problems and then on to the family and the job, etc., etc. We’re doing the whole thing now, and it’s real – I never expected to make it all the way here and discover I’m just another part of the family. On the griot trail indeed. Boisterous, jovial, touching, jeliya. In Wolof, guewel. In Fula, Nyamakala.
Where is the First Kora Festival held? Not at the big concert hall downtown because – there is no big concert hall downtown.!There are no large venues in the Gambia at all – the notion of going to a concert, play, poetry reading is not in the vocabulary. This I learn from one of the Festival coordinators, Uisadou Ndjie, who is the only woman on stage. She favors an academic approach, felt the Festival would be more successful were it held indoors with planned breakout groups and discussions. The griots come to your house for ceremonies, and the upper crust makes it to events at hotels. So this Festival truly is an experiment – halfway between folk and academy, art and history, popular and classic. Thus it’s held out in the boonies for an audience of maybe a hundred. And the result is a party unlike any other. The norm for the life of the griot….
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
Here’s the voluble griot Djelimadi Kanuteh with his endless smile taking the mic and introducing (griots are always introducing, it’s the monologue version of the call-and-response hello). Djelamadi holds a well-thumbed hardcover of Tom Hale’s book, in which he’s mentioned – the one that has Papa Susso’s picture in it! On top of the book is a portable CD player cued up to his solo griot CD, which I remember being recorded in NY in 2004. And here, dressed in the same gray boubou he was wearing last time I saw him, the wild-eyed, sharp-tongued and sharp-witted marabout Manjacko Susso, who had been a major player at the concert at the Gambian Cultural Center in the Bronx just a couple months ago. Sponsored by the Center and Bowery Arts & Science (co-producers of On the Road with YT, thank you very much!). Manjacko is a wild card, mischievous, an expert at grabbing the mic and getting jibes in edgewise. There are others, too – education is remembering names here –it’s Old Home Week! Papa and I settle in, right up front, and the music begins.
Mandinke greetings are minutes-long rituals, contain the essence and origins of call and response, and I’ve learned to just respond in English (acceptable here in Gambia which was a British colony, so English is the “common tongue,” unlike Francophone Senegal and Mali) to keep the rhythm flowing: Soomalay How are you? Eebaday OK Thanks Torraceeta Hope you’re having no problems? Tacita No problems and then on to the family and the job, etc., etc. We’re doing the whole thing now, and it’s real – I never expected to make it all the way here and discover I’m just another part of the family. On the griot trail indeed. Boisterous, jovial, touching, jeliya. In Wolof, guewel. In Fula, Nyamakala.
Where is the First Kora Festival held? Not at the big concert hall downtown because – there is no big concert hall downtown.!There are no large venues in the Gambia at all – the notion of going to a concert, play, poetry reading is not in the vocabulary. This I learn from one of the Festival coordinators, Uisadou Ndjie, who is the only woman on stage. She favors an academic approach, felt the Festival would be more successful were it held indoors with planned breakout groups and discussions. The griots come to your house for ceremonies, and the upper crust makes it to events at hotels. So this Festival truly is an experiment – halfway between folk and academy, art and history, popular and classic. Thus it’s held out in the boonies for an audience of maybe a hundred. And the result is a party unlike any other. The norm for the life of the griot….
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/
