SOUNDTRACK: LABESS-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #133/139 (January 11, 2021).
GlobalFEST is an annual even, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience. I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.
The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world.
Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.
The second band on the first night is Labess.
This Algerian and Canadian band proves that music has no boundaries even in times of isolation. Recording its set from France and Colombia, Labess blends flamenco and Gypsy jazz-influenced North African chaabi into energetic soul music with a nonstop beat. Singing in Arabic, French and Spanish, lead vocalist Nedjim Bouizzoul mixes realism and hope, gentleness and fury, in stories about exile that illustrate the joys and the distress that pave the road from the native countries to new homes and back again. Through his poetry, he proposes we reflect on cultural diversity and the necessity to unite, no matter our differences.
“Yal Maknin” opens with Rabah Khalfa playing the derbouka hand drum and a great riff on the banjo from Simon Demouveaux. Nedjim Bouizzoul sings lead. As the song move on, Demouveaux plays a solo along with strings from Simon Lannoy (cello) and Loran Bozic (violin). It’s a lot of different sounds that work well together.
“Yemma” is a much quieter ballad. Bouizzoul plays acoustic guitar and sings. Khalfa plays the derbouka and Demouveauz plays a grougious melody on the oud.
They end with “La Vida Es Un Carnaval.” Mike Rajamahendra opens with drums accompanied by François Taillefer and Julio Frias on percussion. Pierre Bonnet played some excellent bass in the first song. It sounds even better in this song. Bouizzol sings in Spanish on this one. The middle of the sing shifts gears and sounds very Spanish, with great horns from Javier Villa (trombone), Rafael “Pachalo” Gavilan (trumpet) and Moises Marquez Leyva (saxophone). Then comes a drum and percussion section (including Bouizzoul playing percussive guitar. Finally, along comes the star of the song–Miche Molina plays a wonderful button accordion solo.
[READ: January 2, 2021] A Poor Season for Whales
After having not had much exposure to South African writers (or really much of anything South African), I’m now on my second book. This one is fiction.
My ignorance of South Africa is pretty vast, so I had to do a bunch of looking things up while I was reading. Race plays a pretty big role in this book, so i wante dto look up some information about that.
About 80% of South Africans are of Black African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different African languages. The remaining population consists of communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry.
According to the 2011 census, the two most spoken first languages are Zulu (22.7%) and Xhosa (16.0%). The two next ones are of European origin: Afrikaans (13.5%) developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most coloured and white South Africans; English (9.6%) reflects the legacy of British colonialism, and is commonly used in public and commercial life.
The vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994.
So South Africa has a pretty intense history. This story addresses that history in some ways–it seems almost unavoidable frankly–but it’s more about an older white woman and the relationship she forms with a younger colored man.
The book starts on November 20, 2018 and runs through the new year.
Margaret Crowley a white fifty-something woman. She is an architect, is clever and rich and has just moved into a home she designed for herself in Hermanus. She used to live in Cape Town but left all of her friends and family to find some space in the more bucolic suburbs. The only living creature she brings with her to Hermanus is her dog Benjy, a fun and loyal Doberman.
There’s some more fascinating things I learned about South Africa. This story is set at Christmas time and in South Africa, Christmas is warm. There are also whales who come to calve outside of Hermanus, making it a very popular tourist destination. The title “a poor season for whales” refers to the fact that not many whales came to calve this year.
Margaret has recently had more upheaval than just a new house. After twenty-six years of marriage, her husband has left her for a younger man. She is not angry about it–she’s coping rather well, but she is still disappointed in the way things turned out.
The back of the book draws you in with this
After nearly fifty six years in the world with very little to stress or vex her, it was therefore hardly to be foreseen that in her fifty-sixth year she would kill a man with a kitchen knife.
Things get exciting at the very start of the book. Margaret is walking Benjy along the sea front when he spots some dassies and charges after them.
Okay, so what the hell are dassies? That was the first thing I had to look up (they are an African rodent found among rocky outcroppings.) They were several meters down the cliff. Benjy went after them he had no way to get back up. And if he went further over the cliff he would clearly plummet to his death.
As she is freaking out a young man calms her down. He says he will help. He rappels down the side of the cliff an helps poor Benjy up and back to safety. Benjy has made a new friend for life. The man is a twenty four year old named Jimmy Prinslii-Mazibuko.
He is very handsome with gray green eyes and caramel skin. Jimmy is what is known as “colored” in Africa–
In early 20th-century South Africa, the word “Coloured” was a social category rather than a legal designation and typically indicated a status intermediate between those who were identified as “white” and those who were identified as “black.” The classification was largely arbitrary, based on family background and cultural practices as well as physical features. Most South Africans who identified themselves as Coloured spoke Afrikaans and English, were Christians, lived in a European manner, and affiliated with whites
Margaret is obviously very grateful to Jimmy for saving Benjy. She asks how she can repay him and Jimmy basically asks if he can stop by her house for coffee and maybe a clean up (he’s cut in a few places). Margaret is hesitant obviously–she doesnt know this man at all–but Jimmy is persuasive and seems sincere enough. She agrees.
As she puts the ointment on his leg (at his insistence), she finds the whole scene erotcialy charged–but what could a 24 year old want with a fifty-six year old woman?
Jimmy stays for a time and is completely irritating to her. He loves to argue and enjoys giving her grief about pedantic issues. Their conversations are wonderful–funny and very believable. Jimmy is clearly smart and knows how to turn convention on its head to get what he wants.
Jimmy has really left an impression on her, but she assumes she’ll never see him again. But the next morning when she goes to the grocery store, she sees him hitchhiking. He flags her down and she takes him in to town. She assumes that’s the end of it but he’s waiting at the car when she is dione shopping. She gives him a ride back home and he helps unload the groceries and then offers to make a meal for her. (She is a terrible cook and he studied to be a chef).
She really doesn’t know what to make of this young man.
One of the most wonderful things (and timely for today–ITMFA) about this book is how much their discussion revolves around eviscerating donald trump.
The ANC was off the wall, Brexit had been a colossal blunder and donald trump was a buffoon, albeit an extremely dangerous buffon.
Even better is Jimmy assessment of how trump won
“I know I’m not saying anything original, said Margaret, but it remains a mystery how a developed, prosperous country like America could have elected a vulgar huckster as its president”
He laughed, “What is democracy but vulgar hucksterism dressed up as the will of the people?
“But democracy is the will of the people,” she objected. “At least of a majority of the people.”
“Okay fair enough, yea but what determines the will of the people?” Most people wouldn’t know what to have for breakfast if their TV didn’t tell them. It’s all showbiz, reality TV, and Trump wasn’t on reality TV for chicken shit. His deal is selling himself to people who like to believe hey too can live in gold-plated skyscraper and screw supermodels”
“But he’s so unappetising.”
… “Sure he’s unappetising but that’s part of his appeal. Most of the people who vote for him aren’t that appetising either–you’ve seen them on TV, men with paunches, brassy blonde women with too many teeth. It’s the Revenge of the Uncool, the people left behind in Gun-and-God Gulch, who at the snobbery of the cool, with their trigger warnings and their safe spaces and their gay marriages and their abortions, the people who fly over what they call flyover country and cannot understand how anybody can actually live there…and electing Donald fucking Trump doesn’t make them any more cool, but it sure makes the cool eat a lot of shit. Because the last revenge of the uncool is to annoy the cool.
The story also deals with race issues in an unexpected way.
Jimmy introduces margaret to his friend Thuthukile.
She says to Margaret, “as a black person, I feel unsafe in Sea Point, I feel my identity threatened by the rising tide of whiteness.”
“Excuse me,” Margaret could not help but saying, “but did you say ‘as a black person?'”
“Yes, sure I did, I mean just because I was born with a white skin that doesn’t mean I’m white, Right?”
“Oh, I thought that was exactly what it did mean.”
“No, that’s the old essentialist argument. I have a while skin but I self-identify as black. I mean, you have people born with penises who self-identify as women, and people born with vaginas who self-identify as men, right?”
When she talks to her friends and family back home about Jimmy, they have amusing reactions. Her best friend Frieda is scandalized (but fascinated) by this young man and wants all of the salacious details. Her daughter Celia is actually too interested in her own life to care all that much, but her son Carl is concerned. He is the same age (almost) as Jimmy and goes to the same school that Jimmy did. He finds out some things about Jimmy that Margaret is not too pleased about.
As Christmas approaches, Margaret get st the unwelcome news that her former cleaning lady Rebecca needs to move in with her. When Margaret moved to this smaller place, she no longer needed Rebecca who went to live with her own daughter. But now the cleaning lady finds her living situation unbearable and insists that Margaret allow her to live with her. Margaret can’t say no largely out of guilt.
There was an earlier comment from Jimmy that I found interesting. When Margaret told him that she no longer employed a cleaning lady he was offended that she had money and wouldn’t give a needy person a job. She had felt a little guilty about employing someone to clean for her, but he says it’s better that she an income, right?
Rebecca lives in a sketchy area and Margaret is nervous to go there, but Jimmy offers to drive. He also speaks isiXhosa which impresses Rebecca and her neighbors very much.
Another wonderful subplot comes when Maraget goes to her daughter’s engagement party. No one is looking forward to it because no one really likes her fiancee. But everyone has a pretty good time. Margaret also runs into her ex-husband’s sister Felicity. Felicity is a large brash woman–the exact opposite of her brother. She is flirtatious (even with her nephew) and tells some wonderfully scandalous stories (she believes that her father killed her mother).
This all leads to a big event on Christmas Eve at Margaret’s house. She invites Miriam, her children and Felicity. Jimmy agrees to cook and serve.
The party is a disaster with Felicity getting drunk and offending everyone: “when did young people get so humourless.” At the talk of politics, Felicity grew animated
with trump the troll in the white house, Timid Theresa in Number 10 and Balls-over-Brains Vlad in the Kremlin, we’re fucked. America is fucked, of course, it goes without saying, but where America goes the planet goes, so the planet is fucked. And you know why? Because fifty-two percent of white American women want their pussies grabbed. That’s the percentage of white America women who voted for trump, right? In the full knowledge of his pussy-grabbing propensities.
Aunt Felicity are you saying women want to be sexually assaulted?
No love I’m saying that a politically significant number of white women, fifty two wpercent,to be exact don’t regard pussy grabbing as sexual assault otherwise they wouldn’t vote for that tangerine troll, would they?
They may think that trump’s other virtues cancel ot his less admirable propensities
What other virtues love? His humility? His honesty?
At this point Celia stormed off. Felicity was too drunk to drive home. Her son was too drunk to drive home. Carl and Jimmy hit it off and Jimmy wound up spending the night, with Carl. Margaret is not sure what to think of this.
Things get very intense after this. Margaret finds out that Jimmy’s secretive past is quite bad–he is mixed up with some very bad people She can’t decide if she wants him gone for ever or wants him around all the time. Two big unexpected events happen–one with Jimmy and one with Jimmy’s associates.
And yes, she does stab someone with a kitchen knife.
I really enjoyed this story a lot and it has led me to other South african authors who I have also liked a lot.
Incidentally, this book has a blurb: “Pitch Perfect. Aclever, bitingly funny novel. It had me riveted,” from Finuala Dowling and I just happen to have a book by her with a blurb from Heyns: “Alive with wit and intelligence and beautifully written, this novel will keep people talking and arguing for a long time.”
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SOUNDTRACK: SOFIA REI-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #133/140 (January 11, 2021).
GlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience. I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.
I Just Read About That... 