Rastas

• I went back to Penn’Art with my French teacher for a reggae performance last Thursday. The band was good, the instrumentalists were good, and the singer did a good rendition of Bob Marley. The songs were mostly Bob and Alpha Blondy covers, and although they were well done I would have preferred more original material. In fact, the lead guitarist briefly exchanged roles with the lead singer, and I preferred his singing cause he sang in Wolof. The crowd and audience got even livelier. I also always enjoy seeing the various interpretations of Rastafarianism throughout the world. In Senegal apparently being a Rasta means having locks, swaying and bouncing to reggae music, smoking lots of cigarettes and then getting drunk on Gazelle and hitting on my friend repeatedly.
• The next time we heard music at Penn’Art, however, it was a different crowd. A traditional Pulaar (Peul? Fula? Toukolour? at same point the African Union should get together and decide on the names of the various ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, it can get confusing when the colonizers couldn’t agree on names) group was playing. The group featured a singer with a really nasal voice that he used wail like a Senegalized version of the muezzin calls that wake me up every day at 4:45 am for morning prayers. There was a man playing the xalam, the Pulaar banjo that ethnomusicologists claim is the inspiration for the American banjo, which sounds well, like a banjo. The music was really beautiful, but I just couldn’t get into it. It was just too calm, like something that I would want to listen to over dinner but not on a weekend night, like Senegalese "easy listening" or "elevator music."