The Music Rarely Disappoints

I only got to catch one movie all weekend, the very disappointing comedy “Africa Paradis.” Taking place in 2033 after Europe has declined into poverty, colonialism and war while the recently created United States of Africa has become the center of global wealth, the movie follows the attempt of a French couple to illegally immigrate to Western Africa. It’s a wonderful premise, yet they blew it. The movie is low-budget, boring, and melodramatic.

I also only caught one session of the series of conferences on the history of slavery. Predictably, there were no Senegalese there, with more French people in the crowd than Africans born and still living in Africa. For inane reason most of the discussion ended up being about diversity training for teachers in France. Queen Mother Blakely brought up reparations and the response was underwhelming.

The concerts, however, didn’t disappoint.

The music was good and varied, even though the only representatives from the Diaspora were some Martinicans performing Martinican folkloric music and dance, and Netsayi, a black British “acoustic soul” singer who also sings in Shona. She gets credit for putting female instrumentalists on stage (a rare sight in Senegal, where the only women on stage are young, pretty “singers”) and for actually saying something in her songs. Still, it’s regrettable that there was only one non-Francophone artist. Then again she was sponsored by the British Embassy, and it’s not like the Brazilians or Cubans can afford to send someone or Senegal afford to bring them. Beyond that there were some tedious Mbalax bands, a gnawa band which made me really nostalgic for Morocco and the highlight of the weekend, the Senegalese hip hop, R&B, and dancehall trio Daara J. I had seen them perform on SummerStage in Central Park last year, and remembered how the crowd just wasn’t ready for them. This time though they came on at 3 AM on a Saturday playing before their core audience of young, working-class Dakarois men and they put on a great, high-energy show which woke everybody up. It made up for having to take the ferry at 4 AM and then having to waxale with cabdrivers while my teeth were chattering due to the cold.

Cheikh Lo

Friday I went to see one of the only two Senegalese musicians I had heard of before coming to Senegal, Cheikh Lo (the other being the ubiquitous Youssou Ndour). Cheikh Lo makes a much more toned down mbalax—i.e. more true to its roots in son and other Afro-Cuban rhythms of the 1950s and 60s—and adds some samba and flamenco for flavor. In other words, the man is an artist. He is a member of the Baye Fall a subset of the biggest Muslim brotherhood here, that (and I will explain it all when I understand it better) I can only describe as Muslim rastas. They wear locks and really colorful boubous, ignore all the fundamental rules of Islam—they don’t fast for Ramadan, don’t pray five times a day and drink lots of alcohol—and devote their lives to the marabouts—the magical/mystical/saintly clerical aristocrats that run the brotherhoods. They are supposed to work their marabouts’ field for free and you often see them begging for money and food at gas stations. Many of Cheikh’s songs are about being Baye Fall and his latest album is named after the founder of the order “Lamp Fall.” Point being I was excited to see the dude. I was disappointed, however. The music was good but for a mystic (Cheikh himself is rail-thin, wore a simple blue tunic, some typical “Muslim” amulets with inscriptions of the Koran and pictures of famous marabouts, and fewer than a dozen locks that ran down to his knees) he has some serious ego issues. Originally a percussionist he now focuses on the guitar and insisted on doing most of the solos, not letting any of the members of the band get any shine. The problem is that he approaches the guitar like a drummer would, and his percussive style gets jarring quickly. Still he has a beautiful voice, soft and inspiring—unlike the whiny, nasal falsetto people here seem to prefer in their male vocalists—so he’s definitely worth checking out.

Suleymane Faye Pt. 2

Last weekend we also went to see Suleymane Faye perform at Penn’Art again. He surprised me, however, when instead of doing an acoustic set with just him on guitar and someone on the drums, he had a full band with Senegalese drums, a drum kit, bass guitar, keyboards and him on lead guitar. He did a different and even better funk/jazz/rock set. It was cool cause he got really into it and started bouncing off-rhythm to the music with his eyes closed. He reminded me of the drunk rastas I had seen there last time.

SLAM!

Last Sunday night I went with Caitlin and her roommate Rachel to Just 4 U for a poetry slam. I guess it made sense that if hip hop was that big here, slam might have a following too. The event was called Slamicalement, and was headlined by a duo of young male poets born in Senegal but raised in France. I knew they weren’t raised in Senegal because I couldn’t understand their French at all. I hadn’t had a night where I just sat around smiling catching just a word or two in a while, I guess that’s progress. The links between hip hop and spoken word were further reaffirmed when several of the biggest names in Senegalese hip hop showed up and performed. Awadi, Xuman, BMG 44 and other rappers were there and some did a capella rap verses and apologized for not being poets while others did their songs with their beats. There was a random rap group that lip-synched their song for no apparent reason (it’s not like they were being filmed for television or something). The funniest thing about the whole evening is that the MCs kept puncturing the performances by screaming “slam” periodically. The poets tried to engage the audience in call-and-response where they said “slam” and expected the crowd to say the same. I am not a slam expert; but I have never heard of anyone doing that before.


I don’t speak French well enough to have understood all of the poems, but it seemed typical slam faire, some funny poems, some funny love poems, some cheesy love poems and some poems dealing with the politics of identity. Therefore there was a poem about the notorious French shooting of Senegalese WWII veterans that had fought for the Free French that were protesting peacefully for the pensions they had been denied. Then of course one of the MCs tried to hit on my friend. When that didn’t succeed he hit on the three French white girls behind me. It reminds me of the Little Brother song “Yo-Yo” where the underground hip hop rappers criticize the black coffee shop culture launching sexist and homophobic attacks on rappers “trying to battle me with sandals and capris on, come on dawg.” Yet they were completely right when they exposed the hypocrisy of male poets who “at the end of the night are just trying to fuck like me.”

Then it rained and we got rained on. A lot. No cab wanted to go to my neighborhood because the neighborhood before mine gets terrible flooding so it was difficult getting a cab. As soon as I mentioned the name of my neighborhood, and before I could try to explain in my broken Wolof and French that there was another non-flooded way to get there, the cab drivers would rudely drive off. Eventually I got one, and then the guy asked me if I was from Cote D’Ivoire. I said no, but it felt nice. It was the first time I had gotten something other white, and although African migrants get no love here I would rather be a ñak than a toubab. Slam!

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."

Bachata!

Over the weekend I had dinner at a restaurant by Ngor beach, La Madrague, with Caitlin and Alex two rising seniors at Harvard in Dakar for the summer doing research. I ordered some wack food ( I though I was buying fried calamari, but instead got some weird fish stick thing, the kind of "food" they hand out as public school lunches), but I loved the place because they were playing bachata. Somehow someone who works at the restaurant (I asked who) bought a bachata mix CD featuring Aventura, Frank Reyes, Luis Vargas and a couple of other famous bachateros, although the selection of songs seemed somewhat random. They played the CD several times, so somebody at the restaurant must be feeling it. I just couldn’t believe bachata in Senegal! How cosmopolitan are the people here? I could never imagine a fancy restaurant in the “Land of the Most Self-Hating Black People on the Planet” playing any music that was self-defined as African (merengue remember is Indian music, the Tainos were playing it when Columbus arrived). Actually I can’t even imagine a fancy Dominican restaurant playing bachata. Hooray for Senegal!

Platanos

• Tired of dealing with the Windows 98 computers at the internet place by my house I decided to venture out to one of the handful of places that the Lonely Planet guide claimed had wireless. My professor and I went to Penn Art, a jazz club and restaurant in Point E a wealthy neighborhood here. Things started off poorly. The bus was detoured because of a student demonstration (there were truckloads—literally—of police in the area), and dropped us off far from the restaurant. We then had to walk to through the streets in the late afternoon sun and by the time we got there were soaked in sweat and thirsty, only to find that there was no electricity meaning we couldn’t go online. I figured I may as well have a beer as I wait. I was disappointed because the beer was only mild. I have many criticisms of the “Land of the Most Self-Hating Black People on the Planet” but no matter how awful the blackouts become there you can always get a freezing cold beer. The government can’t guarantee you a job, a home, health care or education, but anyone with 50 pesos has the right to a beer so cold it will make your teeth chatter. Senegal, however, has been unable to deliver on cold beers; the beer is never as cold as it should be. It has also dropped the ball on plantains. I thought I was going to be eating plantains often here, instead I get teased every time I walk through the market and see mounds of platanos only to find out that Senegalese never eat them. Platanos, they say, are for the ñaks. We met some cool people and had dinner with them. It turned out to be my lucky night. I didn’t know but the restaurant serves platanos. After ordering we got into a discussion about platanos here, and one of my new friends was gracious enough to give me the platanos he ordered in return for my sandwich. The platanos made such sweet love to my stomach. I need to make tostones soon.
• After dinner we went next door, to the jazz club section and heard Suleymane Faye perform. He is an eccentric Senegalese folk/blues musician known for his storytelling ability. The jazz club is great, a much more intimate place than the others I have been to in Dakar. The music was awesome, although I wish I could understand the lyrics. Faye would periodically stop and set-up the story or tell jokes and the small crowd would chuckle at his witticisms. I was glad the day ended better than it started.

Viviane Ndour

• Saturday night I went to Yengoulene, a “cultural complex” in Dakar where one of my host sisters, Sophie, works. As we approached the place, the pattern for the neon lights made it look more like Chucky Cheese’s than a nightclub, or sorry “cultural complex.” I half expected to see a bunch of sugared up children playing arcade games chased by a man in a creepy-looking mouse outfit, and was disappointed that inside it just looked like a regular pretentious nightclub. We were there because Viviane Ndour performs there regularly on Saturdays. Viviane is the most famous female pop star in Senegal right now, and as you can guess is related to King of Senegalese Pop Youssou Ndour (see entry below, she recently divorced Youssou’s brother). She is like the Beyonce of Senegal. I usually hate it when people describe others as the “whatever of wherever” but in this case I think it’s apt because at least to me it is obvious that she is deliberately imitating Beyonce. She sings and dresses like American R&B singers. She wears a lot of fake hair like Beyonce, although I must admit that she had the best wig I have yet to see in Senegal, and considering that I see a good 25 wigs a day that is quite the accomplishment. Viviane has a Lebanese father and is therefore light-skinned like Beyonce. Granted she wouldn’t be light-skinned in the US but in Senegal she is positively “redbone.” She is lightest-skinned Senegalese-born woman I have seen so far. That the biggest female pop star in Senegal look nothing like the people of the country is scary, but don’t worry my fellow Dominicans our title as the “Most Self-Hating Group of Black People on the Planet” is still secure. One light-skinned female pop star in a country that is nearly uniformly black cannot beat centuries of self-hatred, anti-Haitianism and racial delusions.
• Unlike Beyonce, however, I got to see Viviane perform for US$6 (I imagine that the last time Beyonce performed for that little money it must have been a school play or something) and even got a chance to bump into her as she ran out of the restaurant after the show. The show itself consisted of the kind of pop mbalax songs that all sound the same (I don’t speak Wolof well enough yet to understand what the songs are about but they don’t sound much deeper than most of Beyonce’s catalog), only made interesting by the wildly energetic and acrobatic dancing. Viviane has a dancer that performs with her regularly, but about halfway through the show they started inviting people from the audience to come on stage and flash their stuff. There was also a brief interlude where various young women tried to sing some of Viviane’s songs, with some of them getting booed off-stage and one of them singing better than even Viviane. Check out her latest music video below.

Awadi

• Last Thursday night I went with a group of American volunteers to the Centre Cultural Francais for dinner and a concert. The food itself was decent if over-priced. I ordered Thai beef curry and instead got beef maffe (a Senegalese peanut sauce) but, it’s all good I like maffe. The service was horrendous. In countries where you don’t tip that is usually the case, but this time the waitress acted like we stank. She stayed away from our table the whole time, only to stand by the table after she brought the check looking annoyed as we tried to divvy up the bill.



• The concert, however, was excellent. The main act was Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and one-half of the eponymous Senegalese hip hop group, PBS (or Positive Black Soul). He was backed by a live band and had several guest artists share the stage with him. The band didn’t limit itself to hip hop either, Awadi sang as well as rapped to funk, coupe decale and mbalax backdrops. They even ended their set with a punk rock song criticizing political corruption in Senegal. There was a even a kora player/djembe drummer/rapper who was wearing one of those caps with a big, shiny dollar sign. Even though it was technically a Senegalese hip hop concert, with all of the locks, fatigues, and Red, Green & Gold on stage I could have sworn I was at a roots reggae concert in Brooklyn. The only give away was that Awadi had a white drummer and two white dudes on guitar (and the air was too clear for it to have been a reggae jam). The guests included a bunch of Senegalese rappers rapping in both French and Wolof, a couple of R&B-style singers, and even a singer from Congo-Brazzaville who sang whatever the music of Congo-Brazzaville is (someone please enlighten me, the music was good, I don’t mean to clown the Congolese) and who then played this instrument that looked like two small, glass milk bottles glued together. He sang beautifully and the bottles worked too, although it definitely looked like something bored schoolchildren would do during lunch than a professional instrument. My favorite part of the night was when Awadi criticized France, Belgium, the CIA, George Bush, Tony Blair, and Senegalese politicians of various crimes (my French is not good enough to know what exactly) and at some point he said something particularly incendiary that drove all the young Senegalese men in the crowd wild, but made all the French in the audience just squirm in embarrassment. Of course he finished his left-wing hip hop attack by thanking the concert’s corporate sponsors, Nokia, Orange, etc.
  Awadi was the rapper who made the great song protesting the terrible conditions that lead many Senegalese to risk dangerous sea voyages in fishing boats in order emigrate illegally to Europe. Some of you may have already seen the slide show that goes along with the song, but for those of you that haven’t click here for the song and here for the story.

Michael Jackson

• Forget Youssou Ndour, my host family has a nine-year-old boy named Alphonse (pictured above, and no I couldn't get a nicer picture of him) who just LOVES Michael Jackson. When he saw that my laptop played music he asked me for two artists. First of all, Akon, and after he hummed along to “I Wanna Fuck You” he asked to listen to Michael Sanders. Eventually I figured out he wanted to listen to Michael Jackson. So I played some songs for him and then he started describing music videos he has seen and asking me to play the song where Michael reaches out his hand and then yelps. Of course that is every Michael Jackson song, so I played him every Michael song in my collection. Next, he surprised me by coming back with a copy of the “The Essential Michael Jackson” a two-disc set of his greatest hits. Then he pulled out the CD booklet with song information and pictures and started pointing to various snapshots of Michael form his most famous music videos and demanding that I play “that” song. I, of course, would have preferred song titles rather than random gesticulations and him pointing insistently to the pictures hoping I would know what song that was.


• Then when I woke up last Saturday and walked into the living room for my daily bread, butter and tea, and it all made perfect sense. The TV was on and the whole family was watching a showing of all of Michael Jackson’s most famous music videos, “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Black or White,” “Do You Remember the Time,” etc. They just sat there for an hour (no commercial interruptions) and watched Michael Jackson. Could this happen with any other artist? Does any other human being on the planet have the kind of global reach Michael Jackson has? Michael Jordan? Bob Marley? Tupac? 50 Cent? I just wonder what would have happened if Michael hadn’t started fondling little boys and had instead continued churning out hits for the last decade. Would he have been crowned King of the World by now?


• Alphonse also asks me all kinds of random "little boy" questions. Today he asked me if where I was from we had trees and taxis. I had to assure him that we certainly did. He then reenacts movie scenes for me—complete with saliva-spewing sound effects—and asks me if I have seen the movie. Only once had I actually seen the film. The conversation went something like this:
  Alphonse: Do you know who the first president of Senegal was?
  Me: Of course, Leopold Sedhar Senghor.
  A: Why did they kill him?
  M: Senghor wasn’t killed. He died of natural causes in France like all the other sell-out African political leaders. (Ok, I don’t really speak enough French to say, “sell-out political leaders” but I did say that he died in France.)
  A: But I saw them kill him. Then they burned him.
  M: Are you sure it was Senghor?
  A: Yes, he had glasses like yours.
  M: They burned him right? Did they chop him up first?
  A: Yes.
  M: That was Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo. (I was hoping it was the film biography of Lumumba. I would feel happier knowing that between the crazy music videos and Latin American soap operas they actually show some educational content on Senegalese television.)
  A: Why did they do that?
  M: Uhhh…It was a coup d’etat. It is when they change the president violently because they don’t like him.
  A: Why didn’t they like him?
  M: Umm…where’s your ball?
  I felt bad for ducking the question, but how do I explain the CIA and imperialism to a nine-year-old African child in French? Any suggestions? Chimaobi?

Youssou Ndour

Youssou Ndour is basically the king of the Senegalese music scene. The tabloids are filled with news about his divorce, and even the divorces of his brothers (yes the man is so famous that even his brothers get shine). Everything he touches turns to gold. People here claim that even if he just shouts you out on a record you are going platinum. He released an album recently and not a day goes past that I don’t hear at least one of his songs. I think this is the song. Of course if I weren’t on a computer that was “built for Windows ‘98” I might be able to hear the song and let you know if this was really it. But it looks right. The other big craze down here is this song called “Bolokas” which is the Wolof-ized version “blocage.” It is accompanied by its own dance which you can hopefully see here.

Toubabs are not ugly either

• Although it is doesn’t seem quite as bad as the Dominican Republic (most self-hating group of black people on the planet remember?) it is obvious that white folks here get lots of love too. Last weekend I went back to Just 4 U to hear a Senegalese band, Ceddo (the Wolof word for the “traditional animist” religion that existed pre-Islam). They were really excellent, and I had a good time, but I felt bad because I was the only non-white dude without a white girl. There were around a dozen young white women all with what is essentially the same dude. If you have been to a beach in a tropical country with black people, you have met the dude. He is tall, lean, cut, has locks and is a musician and/or dancer. You have met the white girl too, she got her hair braided recently, she wears sandals, and is doing a documentary or volunteering at an orphanage or writing her thesis on rap music or maybe all three. Ok, I will stop stereotyping now. But seriously it was a segregationist’s nightmare there that night.
• I have also been asked four times now if Soizic, the Belgian volunteer, is my sister, and then they ask if she is my girlfriend and if they can hit on her.

Food Again

• First of all, the friend's name is Mounass, meaning I was not that off.

• Second, I have spent so much time writing about the food here (if you haven’t gotten that food is a big deal for me, it is. My life is organized around food, and I never skip meals.), but I have yet to write about the most distinctive aspect of eating here for most people raised in the US: how the Senegalese eat. Food is always served in a large tray and everyone eats together. There are no individual plates, so you have to share. I think it is a great antidote to the way many Americans eat, alone in front of the TV. Instead the Senegalese way of eating emphasizes eating as a social event, more than just mere necessary consumption as it is too often seen in the US. It requires a whole different approach to eating as we are all used to being to eat everything and anything on our plate. But what do you do when there is just one plate? My French teachers has told me funny stories of foreigners (always North Americans or Western Europeans, with the random Japanese thrown in) eating in Senegal where one hijacks the fish leaving everyone else with no fish to eat, and then another steals the carrot leaving no carrot for everyone else to eat, and so on until they all get the idea that they are supposed to share. How do you share? Usually one person—the most senior person in the circle—will distribute everything or you are in charge of distributing whatever ends up on your side of the plate. So for a plate like chebuyen where there is a base of rice topped with fried fish, lettuce, manioc, carrots, eggplants, sweet potatoes and peppers, if the carrot ends up on your side you dice it and distribute it to the other folks eating by tossing it to their side of the plate. It is always fun to be mowing down on rice and then having some random chunk of fish or potato just fly onto your spoon. That’s the other thing too, we eat with spoons. Traditionally (and I hear still in most villages) people used to eat with their right hands (the left hand is taboo, but more on that later) but now many people in Dakar eat with spoons. In my host family only the person who cooked the meal (invariably a woman) eats with her hand, in this case she will also distribute the food. I actually prefer it that way because as someone who is used to eating with fork AND knife I am not used to slicing food with only one utensil. I am always scared to cut items like the manioc because I am afraid the food is going to jump off the plate onto me or—more embarrassingly—onto one of the people closely sitting next to me. As a social event the meal also reflects many of the status hierarchies and customs characteristic of Senegalese culture. For instance, if there is a large party the adult men will eat separately from the women and children, and of course the women will serve them first and include the best of the fish or meat, while the women eat later and less. Visitors—even if they are female—also receive the “star” treatment, with the distributor launching the best parts of the fish or meat your way. You also get first crack at the peppers. They are also disappointed if you don’t clean up half the plate. And like I said the most senior person will often be the distributor, so that you can easily observe the hierarchy by noticing who distributes; the “man of the house” always distributes, but in his absence it will be his wife or brother and then onto his children starting with the oldest. I like how they eat here; I think I am going to force my family to all eat from one plate as I (as the man of the house) launch huge pieces of platanos their way.


• After three weeks in Senegal I have officially had more fried fish here than I had ever had in my life before coming here.


• It is ridiculously hot.


• No clubbing this weekend. I spent Friday and Saturday nights glued to my laptop watching all of Season One of the Greatest Show on Television, “The Wire.” If you have not seen it, you should; although, I warn you that it is highly-addictive.


• On an utterly random note, I was listening to the album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” by Public Enemy yesterday (I know it came out when I was 4 years old, but it is still better than lots of what passes for hip hop music nowadays) and heard the song “She Watch Channel Zero?!” where Flava Flav admonishes black women to "Yo baby, can't you that's nonsense you watchin'? Look, don'tnobody look like that, nobody even live that, you know what I'm sayin'? You watchin' garbage, not'in' but garbage. Straight up garbage. Yo, why don't you just back up from the TV, read a book or som'in. Read about yourself, learn your culture, you know what I'm sayin'?" Does anyone else see the great irony in this coming from the “Flava of Love” star?


• The little girl has now shortened "Good morning whitey" to just "whitey." Everytime I see her she just exclaims "whitey!" and I look around like "oh, shit where whitey at? I should probably hide." And then I remember that she is referring to me. It fucks with me every single time.

Fete de la Musique

Thursday night Soizic and I went to the Fete de la Musique downtown, an outdoor concert sponsored by Radio Nostalgie and presented over S2TV. Soizic’s boyfriend is a DJ for the radio station and was one of the MCs for the concert. The concert was interesting; it consisted of a bunch of second and third-tier musical acts each performing one song before a mostly bored and unimpressed audience. There was no entrance fee so the place was packed but people were not feeling it. Most of the acts were random Mbalax singers who came on stage and lip-synched their lyrics. I don’t speak Wolof (yet) but I get the feeling that all the songs are about the same shit. Mbalax is one of those “highly-infectious, irresistible rhythms” that “world music” magazines and travel guides always seem to describe, but it is hard to get into it when it is just a random singer singing some song no one knows. The singers that had back-up dancers were always much more entertaining because Mbalax dancing is just bad-ass. It is like a way cooler Chicken Noodle Soup Dance. The other acts were all terrible hip hop acts that imitate the worse of American hip hop. It is like they all watch too much of the “Made in USA” show and think that if they rap about guns, clothes, cars, women and jewelry all of these things will suddenly materialize. The performances consisted of the MC coming on and yelling “What’s up!” in heavily-accented English, with three of his boys flaying their arms to the beat and nodding their heads whenever the MC finished a punch-line. My favorite song was the one where the chorus was “shake your booty” but instead sounded like “check your booty.” This was followed by a trio of female MCs, which led me to think that there might be a respite from the ignorance, but instead they sang a song titled “Bounce.” I will give y’all a clue: it wasn’t about basketball. I also saw what claims to be the first reggaeton group from Gabon. I was frightened by what was about to come when the Soizic’s boyfriend—who is Gabonese—announced the act. I shuddered, and thought as an American hip hop fan I already have so much to atone for; I cannot bear to also shoulder the burden for the ignorance that can only result from the spread of reggaeton. Fortunately, the two MCs sounded like all of the other 50 cent clones I had heard that evening, and I can sleep well after concluding that the reggaeton thing is just a gimmick. The only good thing from the evening was that it looks like maybe Senegalese don’t insist that all of their women be super-skinny. Many of the performers (even two of the three MCs rapping in “Bounce”) were full-figured and natural-looking women.

More Cape Verde

• From left to right, Nas (or at least that is how I misinterpret her name); Odette, 25; Soizic, 24 and Nono, 26. Nono and Odette are my host sisters, and Nas is their friend.

• We all went to Club Melissa Sunday night. We ran into Ivan Paris (picture above, in case anyone was curious) , who performed for the small audience at the club. The girls were really excited, but I had had enough of cheesy love songs for the weekend. As we were leaving he hollered at Odette. I am glad to report that he was unsuccessful. I can also confirm—as the photo evidence corroborates—that people in Dakar just love dancing in front of the mirror.

• Every time I leave my house the little girls who live next door yell happily "bon jour toubab" or "good morning whitey." I reply good-naturedly "bon jour senegalais." But I must admit it is still weird every single time.