musical journey

When I was twelve years old, I bought my first radio. I had saved for a year; electronics weren't cheap where I grew up. The radio was a small grey brick with a telescopic antenna and a tinny speaker. I loved it. Every Thursday night I stashed it underneath my pillow, set the volume as low as possible, lay down in my bed and secretly listened to the charts, way past bedtime. I discovered East-German rock and alternative tunes that I would now pay dearly to re-experience.

From there on, my taste in music developed predictably – off the mainstream but away from any sort of experimentation. I did punk and Queen and The Doors, and had no idea what else there was. The first time my eyes were really opened to what music could do was when my then-girlfriend gave me Congo to Cuba, which is one of my all-time favorites. It started an unhealthy habit of buying every Putumayo CD I got my hands on, an addiction that was only broken four years later when I test-listened to two in the store and didn't think much of either. I haven't bought another one since.

Putumayo opened my ears to the world of music, quite literally, but Congo to Cuba did more. It showed me what can happen when music is transplanted from one culture into another and how the fusion of different musical understandings makes the tunes more interesting. The fusion can be facilitated by trade (even as contemptible as the slave trade), by war or simply by proximity.

Geographical nearness and cultural interchange are the forces behind Radio Tarifa. When I got that CD a few months ago, I didn't think much of it at first. It was just another recording of North African music with a slight hint of fusion to it. Only on the third listening did I realized that the lyrics were sung in Spanish not Arabic as I had assumed, and my appreciation changed. I can't wait to see Tarifa, the harbor town in the south of Andalucía that's close enough to Morocco to receive radio signals from across the Strait of Gibraltar.

The name Gibraltar, by the way, is a bastardization of the Arabic term Jebel Tariq, which means Tariq's mountain and refers to Tariq ibn-Ziyad, the Berber conqueror who, in 711, crossed the 14 kilometers of salty water between Africa and Europe and proceeded to turn the Iberian peninsula from a benighted medieval jungle into a prospering haven of civilization. People started washing and life expectancy rose by ten years. Maybe that's why the Arabic name for the Strait is Bab az-Zakat, the Gate of Charity.

From the other side of the Straight, from Algeria, comes Rachid Taha, the drunken master of Rai. A few months ago he shook the Royal Festival Hall in its foundations and brought the house to its feet. For Rock the Casbah, it was a wild homecoming. Blending North African and Western influences is one thing, but the main act was supported by Vieux Farka Touré, and thus Malian melodies were thrown into the mix as a third ingredient. When Taha and Touré manned the stage together, the sounds they cooked up, drawing deep from their respective histories, traditions and musical identities, were for eternity.

Ali Farke Touré was a bigger star in Mali than his son, Vieux Farka, now is. Before he passed away four years ago, he recorded a killer album with his compatriot Toumani Diabaté, pairing his clarity on the guitar with Diabaté's technical brilliance on the kora. The result is sublime, and also a bit haunting, given vocals full of sadness and melancholy. When that record was made, I had no idea what a kora is. I only found out two years ago when a visibly unsettled street musician in Bristol drew incredible melodies from his 21-stringed instrument despite his frozen fingers.

The kora deserves a bigger exposure, and maybe that's coming. Diabaté and a bunch of other Malian musicians finally made the trip to Cuba that was foiled thirteen years ago when they were supposed to record some crazy off-the-beaten-path project that an American producer had come up with. Legend has it that their passports got lost or tangled up in Caribbean bureaucracy. When the Malians didn't travel, the producers recruited the aging luminaries of Cuban son to fill the gap. The result, the Buena Vista Social Club, brought world music into the mainstream and late fame to some amazing musicians.

For all its success, I never liked Buena Vista much. It is too simple, too straightforward, free of surprises, twists or unexpected turns. Would Diabaté et al. be able to remedy that by adding the spice of distance and difference? I had high hopes for Afrocubism, the collaboration between them and some of the remaining members of the Buena Vista Social Club that has just come out. Mali to Cuba, I was thinking, and imagining greatness.

I was disappointed; the record is lousy. It purls along placidly, the tunes flow smoothly, and the solos show what the musicians are capable of. But there is no excitement, no zest. The differences are allowed to exist, but they don't react to create something special. And despite the incantations of all participants that their hearts were driving them, that they discovered spiritual brothers they didn't know they had, the music sounds too much like business. I've only listened to the CD twice, but it appears to me as a missed opportunity.