Little Things and more little things

A little time has gone by and it seemed like nothing really was happening, but now I realize that's totally untrue. Lots of little things leading up to, well, other little things.

Recorded again with Matona. This time at my nyumbani. I turned one of the coconut cord meshed, wood bed frames and coconut fiber mattresses (for all the techno geeks reading this. This is good sound. ;-) ) on their sides and angled in a sort of alcove with some cushions that I grabbed from the chairs in corridor. It deadened the space a little, but it's still pretty reverberant. Thinking about it now, I'm not sure that I've even been in a space here that wasn't constructed of concrete or coral bricks. I'm trying to utilize it in at least an interesting way. Mic placement. The other difficulty is noise from outside. Even if I close all my windows, there is a construction site going on next door. it's all manual, but there are a lot of men working. and banging and shouting. Then in the evening it's the little kids playing foot ball and the neighbors shouting at each other. Somehow, in between all of that (Matona would translate some of the stuff people were saying while we waited for them to shut up to do a take. Ancient woman on the opposite doorway yelling at the kids that it's not the time or place to play football, etc.), we got some good takes of ud and violin. Setup the basic framework for 2 tracks that'll have female vocals and did a guide vocal track. I've been quadruple tracking the violin and it sounds pretty nice with this lovely concrete room. It a traditional taraab tune that you'd most definitely hear at almost any wedding according to Matona. he calls it beni style. From my end it's ragga dub wise. But, they go right together. He likes to sing his ideas of the effects and even will spit a few rhymes (he talked about going down to Forodhani and buying some chicken and mishkaki and chapati and chips and sitting down and eating all of it and then burst out laughing).



Tonight, we were to record, but I was 10 min. late arriving at the school and he had already left. Strange, considering that usually he comes about 45 minutes late. :-) Oh well, i'll go track him down at the academy. he doesn't have a phone and is famous for it. He told me that his one year old daughter dropped it in the toilet. Then he just laughed and shook his head. Anyway, he's just around....

Haven't heard back from Fid Q aside from him calling to say that he couldn't open them on his computer. I emailed them to him and checked the links. Seems like all is fine.

I'm starting to think that I need even more beats for folks in Dar es Salaam and Bagamoyo. Gotta do that.....

Oh yeah, I wanted to explain that Bongo Flava or Flavor or Flavour is hip hop ragga zouk even soukous reggaeton made and/or played in Dar es Salaam aka Bongo. Zenj flava is the same thing, but from Zanzibar aka Zenj. I probably won't be posting any of this stuff until I get back to Rio. Bandwidth here is limited.

Sweet Ray came over and listened to some of my beats. We had a nice time trying to communicate. Her English is about as good as my Kiswahili, but we managed just fine. She is sweet (like her name) and enthusiastic. I think she's from the mainland, but I'm not sure. I do know that she has 4 brothers, though. and is qualified and works as a hair dresser. She was really feeling the ragga 95 to 105 stuff. i think she has an attitude for it. I gave her a cd of mnazi. She asked for a week to figure something out.......

I dropped a CD with BTB - Brown Town Boys and hung out in their "Cup is Broken" room. They don't have a carpet there. Other cryptic slogans are scrawled on the wall and there is a dead animal's head in the corner. They are pretty excited about these 2 bases that I did in Senegal that never ended up getting voiced. They were already rapping on top of it working how to fit on the track. Today, I asked them what they planned on doing after I left. They were pretty (not really) confident in saying that they would find another producer and continue. I gave them a bit of a rundown on stuff they should have if they want to learn, progress and evolve in music and music business. I explained a one sheet, a photo, their CD (they'll have 4 recorded songs), cell phone, email. Be diligent, disciplined and just keep at it. I guess i was saying some obvious things, but I think they were somehow glad to hear it that way. We scheduled to record on tuesday next week.

I met with Khamis, who works just a couple doors down and is the owner/director of Kizoro presents as well as the husband of Halda who is the secretary at the music academy. They deal with recycled art. Actually, it is 2 kinds of art. One is their line of boxes and little objects made of newspaper papier mache (that's kind of redundant) and the other is their CD shop. the CDs are about 80% pirated CDs of stuff ranging from putumayo presents (they represent pretty heavily) to Misty in Roots to local zanizibar hip hop. they have about 40 CDs total. They design the covers. In most cases, they simply scan the original CD cover and then add Kizoro presents on the front. Samid is really very cool. He is "releasing" Matona's CD as well as 2Berry's and B-Z-Broo (Zanzibar hip hop) and really wants to help the scene. I haven't asked him yet about the recycling music trade yet.

I've been contacted by a guy named David who works at, or is, Akhenaton productions. I've yet to meet him, but I've heard that he is from Uganda, really into the Zenj and bongo flava scenes and he has a studio where a number of people work. he asked me to come and talk to them about software, editing and music production. I'm very happy - I've been wanting to pass on some knowledge if possible. We spoke on the phone and he sounds very welcoming and enthusiastic.

Finally, the other big event is that I rented a vespa scooter and took off. Wow. It was fine to be out in the countryside! I went Mangapwani, about 26 km north of Stone Town, and looked at a cave where illegal slaves were hidden (by the arabs against the British who had declared slavery abolished) and then took a look at nearby building built before the abolition specifically for holding slaves before they were shipped off from the nearby beach. I learned that many of the these slaves (which came from as far away as Uganda and the Congo) were sent specifically to Rio de Janeiro. The placard also assured me that the treatment of the slaves during their "shipping" wasn't indicative of their living conditions upon arrival at their destination. I walked to the cliffs which overlook the beach and checked out the view up and down the coast.