Timbuktu or Bust

The Festival au Desert at Essakane, Mali, outside Timbuktu, is over now. I imagine it was good, but probably nothing like its early years. There’s no Tinariwen, no Ali Farka Toure’, and no Robert Plant. Robert’s gone on to other things, like a hit album with Alison Krauss and a reunion with the Zeppelin boys that got good reviews. I was never that much of a LedZep fan, but I can certainly appreciate what he’s doing these days. Tinariwen’s hotter than the Sahara in July, so hot that they’re spawning imitators like junkies on grunge. The movement is even crossing borders with impunity, as Tuaregs do, Niger now getting in on the act. Ali Farka’s gone on to that jam session in the sky, of course, but his son’s carrying on the tradition at Essakane, looking a little bit more Tuareg a la mode every day. I wanted to make it but just couldn’t justify the high expense, especially since there’s no way to avoid traveling during the holiday season. Flights fill up on Air Mali (Air Maybe) and the overland route takes time. So I had to content myself with GlobalFest in New York last Sunday, a single evening of twelve acts playing on three stages, giving new meaning to the term ‘cluster-f**k. This is the way showcases work, of course, but for some reason world music promoters like it special, as if the confusion adds currency to the cause. While that may be fine for a bunch of unknowns looking to be listened to, I’m not sure if that’s the best use of resources for established acts. Obviously you can’t listen to them all at once, so magic moments get missed. Not only that, but what might seem quirkily fun, running around the plaza in Albuquerque catching snatches of locals mixing and matching licks with foreigners from all over the world, becomes downright burdensome running up and down stairs in Manhattan’s Webster Hall, causing some tired legs and a general cluster-flock. GlobalFest has to compete with itself also, trying to live up to last year’s line-up which consisted of such luminaries as Andy Palacio, Lila Downs, and Dengue Fever, hard acts to follow.

The show started slowly with the typical European acts one must suffer through, violin, accordion, tuba, etc., to get to the good stuff. I mean it’s all GOOD, of course; it’s just that some is better than others, but the Europeans invest heavily, so they get equal treatment. I saw four or five acts before I heard anyone sing, so you get the picture. Of course it doesn’t help that no one has ever really defined what ‘world music’ really is, so acts having a slow go of it in their traditional genre might try to market themselves as ‘world music’ for better results. This might be the case with Crooked Still, an American bluegrass band at the show. Bluegrass is a pretty solid genre on its own, so I suspect a conscious marketing maneuver and/or a conscious effort to include North Americans in the mix. That’s fair, I guess, though the lines get fuzzy with all the ‘slash’ bands that occupy the turf, that is, US/Mexico/India/Morocco/whereverstan. There are many ex-pat foreigners in the world-music field, i.e. Africans in Paris, Mexicans in the US, Indians in the UK, etc. This not only gives them an English-speaking connection to their audience, but also an adaptation in taste, whether conscious or not. World music is like world food, derived from its country of origin(s), yet somehow different, often better. I’ve certainly had South American food and Asian food in the original and its hybrid forms. They’re both legitimate, as long as it doesn’t come out of a can. You can’t claim that Chinese food in the US is unauthentic when they use broccoli, if the cooks and the customers are both Chinese in the vast majority. To adhere to rigid rules would be the unauthentic path. Of course the ‘tsunami special’ and the ‘Rambo favorite’ on a Thai food menu is another question.

So a mostly-female group called ‘Pistolera’ finally got the show rockin’ with some Mexican-style rock-and-polka that kicked some surprisingly real ass, especially considering the matronly appearance of the chief protagonists in their vintage clothes and scarce make-up. If they had a looker like Lila Downs out front, they’d have real potential as some novelty rancheras. Mexican corridas are usually sung by men, leaving women the slow stuff and booty-twitching. It’s a shame, but sex, and its illusions and false promises, sells. It wasn’t a big deal back when you’d listen to a faceless radio, but these days you got to look and sound, not just good, but USDA prime rib good. It’s disgusting. I’d like to think music is better than that, but much of it really isn’t. Problem was, you could barely get in to see the little rancheritas because of the cluster-flock at the downstairs stage, so I almost missed some rockin’ good stuff. A Senegalese band got things hopping upstairs, good enough to maybe make me do a detour on my upcoming West African trip. The leader himself was about seven feet tall and it seems they could all do little flip-up tricks with their crotches. I looked for signs of drooping wood with no luck, so the effect may have been genuine. They were followed by the obligatory Saharan blues group Toumast, which was playing a bit crippled without their female signer, so I’ll fudge my faint praise. Suffice it to say that Grunge has got its Cobain and reggae its Marley; you can’t expect equal brilliance from every corner. It’s still good, and got the Senegalese hopping on the floor, so that speaks well. Bands usually play their set then head for their bottles and pipes first thing, not the dance floor. I can’t blame ‘em. Other than that the venerable 84-year-old Dominican Puerto Plata, after the city of the same name, played some nice Caribbean rhythms, again enough for me to revisit there at some point.

For better or worse I don’t have any songs stuck in my head the morning after GlobalFest, for what that’s worth. Like love, the best music sticks in your head the next day. I hate to reduce music to that, but that’s what ‘hooks’ are, the words and music still playing in your head, begging you to buy them. A lot of ‘world music’ doesn’t have that, but some does. It’s not about language. It’s about a minor key making you sad, and a major key picking you back up, all done with style and grace, and a catchy rhythm getting you up on your feet whether you like it or not. The first revelation with my forays into world music was that the lyrics really don’t matter that much, not always, certainly. When they’re stellar, then so much the better. They’re usually not. That’s writing. So ‘world music’ limps on, a million musicians in search of a genre. Its promoters don’t help much, with their quirkiness and laughable invocations of authenticity and ‘indigenous.’ Everybody’s got their little marketing schtick, whether it’s Putumayo, Real Guide, or Sublime Frequencies, and certainly there are good musicologists doing good work, but I can’t help but think people are making something overly complex out of something really very simple, i.e. the boogie factor.

So it wasn’t Timbuktu, but it wasn’t bad. I’m still holding out hope for some other ‘festival in the desert’. Essouk is still possible. I’ll head straight to Gao and see what’s shaking. If the homies say “let’s go,” then I just might. I WILL make it to Segou, but that’s different, jungle and urban music, whatever, but not desert. This is the most complicated trip I’ve ever planned. It not only requires a visa, but a yellow fever shot, and a hotel reservation, and countless festival searches. At least I got a family to stay with in Segou. That’ll be good, and cheap. Cheap country doesn’t mean cheap hotels, after all. I’ll just hope for the best, and try to groove on the music. At least I called off the week in Norway (a week of cold and darkness, great idea!). One night in Reykjavik was plenty. At least my feet won’t be cold in Mali. I’ve got fifty countries down and a hundred fifty to go. Planes crisscross the runways at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle international airport like they don’t know where they’re going, but I do. Timbuktu or bust! And as the plane touches down in Bamako, I knew, just as I expected, that ‘this is not Kansas anymore’. For better or worse, this is the real thing, warts and all.