".....welding and regeneration will be the pattern for African art. Many of the foreign influences that have penetrated Africa will be incorporated into a new form of black African art. This form of initiation may be deplored by those with deep-seated conservative or racialist tendencies, but far from resulting in a bastardised and damaging modernism, we believe this mutation will breathe new life into African art and will demonstrate the triumph of humanism and universality over esoteric sterility." Francis Bebey.
In July 1993 I took a Techno Sound-system to West Africa and made a documentary. We weren't necessarily the first to pull off this "stunt", to this day I hear (what might be urban myths) of raves in Ethiopia, parties in smashed up Mosques, and also more "bread'n'butter" reports of Fatboy Slim touring South Africa. Not forgetting to omit stories of Africa's own Acid-house parties, mention of which we came across in Dakar. But this project was orientated by a thorough concept AND we filmed it. The trip was supposed to be a means of exploring a whole host of ideas. Was there any connection between African music and Techno? How far had the diaspora travelled from it's source? Was African music always going to be viewed in the West's eyes as traditional? Could African youth identify with the machinic alienation of Techno? How would Techno be appropriated outside of it's usual Socio-cultural structures? Would the music wither without a context? Was "electronic technology" viable in a hot and humid climate? Was there a future for a (poly-rhythmic) West African electronic music? A Would it matter that we were a bunch of white kids? Would the venture degenerate into a "Heart of Darkness" style nightmare? Of course lurking behind these questions more important ones.
The transatlantic ping-pong game is well documented. Check Paul Gilroy's hard-thought text "The Black Atlantic." From Malian Griots to Delta Bluesmen. From Blue Note Jazz to figures like 1950's Senegal's Dexter Johnson. From West African Drum patterns to James Brown's locked groove back to Fela's top-heavy horn sections. From Manu Dibango's disproportionally massive influence on Disco to Africa's own sea of Disco. From Sunny Ade's shimmering Juju to Talking Heads' echoated funk. From Bob Marley's afro-centric posturings to Sonny Okosuns. In fact, in the 80's more Reggae records were sold in West Africa than anywhere else in the world. The signal splitting and refracting each time, becoming engulfed in a noise impossible to divine. We're not even touching on the Latin-to-African continuum which was strong in Senegal with Etoile de Dakar's pioneering Mbalax, an Africanised spin-off of Cuban music. The current becoming more one-way in recent years as Africa absorbs Dancehall and Hip-Hop while less artists from the West look to it for inspiration (though Ibadan and The Masters at Work?). Not that there isn't a bounty of forms ripe for transfiguration. It was possible to view the cod-primitive posturing of Techno (see Hardfloor's "Yeke Yeke" remix), and in the case of Detroit it's rhythmic pizzazzz as having subtle echoes of African music, but was the connection tenuous?
Tenuous? Not that it mattered if it was! Part of the fun was the stark polarity of what we were suggesting and it's heretical element. How dare we sully African music? Nowadays in the West the worlds of Techno and African music are not as distant as they once were. Carl Craig is remixing all kinds of world music. Talking Loud are producing boxes of Fela Kuti. The African reissue project has been spearheaded by (er...now defunkt) labels like Nuphonic and Strut with their roots in Acid House. In fact Techno is pretty acceptable qua "music", whereas back in 1993 it was still struggling to separate itself from its hooligan brother Ardkore, still saddled with the drug-noise tag (wink). When it came to arguing for Techno's artistry (we don't consider this...once we did) with the World music community, you should have witnessed the pitched battles fought, hour long bloody phone calls with intransigent World music academics.
I'll give all credit to David Toop. His Post-Colonial Fourth-World Hybrid Techno-Pagan Global Futurist Top 20 Chart in The Wire, Issue February 1992, planted the seed. He was also incredibly generous to this deeply obnoxious 22 year-old, and opened his address book to help us getting the ball rolling. Toop had been down this road before himself, having released ethnographic music on his Quartz label and having produced with Musa Kalamulah music by "African Connexion", who dabbled with similar notions. In the very involved pre-production stage I spoke with: Sue Steward (horrified by the idea); Lucy Duran at SOAS (even MORE horrified by the idea); Ricky Steens, Fela Kuti's awesomely laid-back manager (no problem BUT don't go to Nigeria you'll wind up dead); Jumbo Vanrennan, head honcho of Earthworks, the genius behind "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto" compilations (go to Senegal they're open to outside influence there); Simon Booth, fresh from producing Baaba Maal (hey we played some musicians The Orb and they really dug it...); Journalist Richard Scott, an authority on World Music just back from a field trip in West Africa (sceptical and confused as to what I was up to, but not forbidding). Under my own steam I contacted The British Council in Senegal (cough, spies), The Prince's Trust (who gave me a hundred quid!), Real World (who told us to bugger off), and Simon Frith (who said the "traditional" construction of African pop was a straw-man which people didn't really believe in any more, fair cop guv). No-one would give us any money for the project, so I had to fund it myself.
The logistics of the documentary were incredibly involved. On top of coordinating interviews with Manu Dibango, +8, Baaba Maal and Derrick May (the first time I interviewed him, I said thanks, left and on the motorway home, decided to check the tape, "OH NO! NO SOUND!" and had to crawl back and beg for another audience which I eventually gained a week later).....on top of coordinating interviews I had to organise clearance with The Senegalese Minister of Information, find a "Fixer" in Dakar (the eminent Salif Ba), get together a Sound-system and generator (rented on false pretences from various Hire Shops) crate them up and send off. In Senegal we had to wrestle with 3rd World beauracracy, me imploring the Head Customs Officer on my knees, after three days of being turned away from our impounded system, to let us have it for (ahem) the good of mankind. I had to get us on Dakar FM too.
The crew! Think I'm nuts? You don't know this lot. The core two were Kieron Cresswell, here starring as "Dancer" (Bez-style-role) and some combination of Guru and cheerleader. Kiki had just been released from prison in Norway for importing a suitcase full of Qat into that country, a mildly intoxicating stalk you chew which my mates were all mad keen on for a while. As for Dr."Mike" Lever, who is my wife's brother-in-law, we'll have to skirt closer to a politic silence seeing as how he's now a well-respected GP. Mike is a larger-than-life character, a one-man party, stalwart of the legendary Edinburgh club "Pure" and sometime DJ at "Wave" (Pure's ambient room) and blessed with a supernatural third ear, a true feeling for sound. Mike was our DJ, I would occasionally pick up the slack. People laughed at me when I told them who was coming. Joining us mid-way through this boys-own adventure came my very close friend Ed (just in time to stop the whole thing falling apart if I remember; DJ Mike about to marry a Gambian woman), a more balanced kind of lunatic and now working to help Immigrants settle in the UK. You'd conclude that he had a serious emotional investment in seeing the project worked fairly for our African mates. An artist of the highest calibre on Wednesday you'll see Ed's beautiful photos of the trip.
We linked up with artists Bouba Diarra and Waya Badji very early on. These two mavericks came to our first club night in Dakar, and swept consecutive events behind them. Bouba was a charismatic pugnacious singer, now living in Denmark, who had looked after Vanessa Paradis on her visit to Dakar. Waya his lovely gentle side-kick. These two steered us through the whole project, took us to EXACTLY the right places. It wasn't all plain sailing, Bouba was as big a hot-head as me. When we'd reached the Casamance region, a week in, we had the most enormous falling-out, I can't even remember what it was about. We said we wanted rid of them, they demanded we destroy our footage. We ended up down the police station industrial-tribunal-stylee, swearing and cursing at eachother (me in fractured nonsensical French). The senior police-officer listened patiently to them and us. He sat back and told us in the calmest friendliest manner imaginable that we were just kids, and we should go forth and have fun. The air cleared instantly, best-of-mates!
Bouba and Waya took us to stay with their family in Ziguinchor, and there we played a youth club (under-10s go totally mad to Steve Poindexter), a marsh in the day-time (in the middle of nowhere, a crowd gathered, we're shut down by the army in a Tank, apparently in a war-zone) and best of all in the tiny village of Adeane (lit by our van's lights the whole village raving). Back in Dakar we threw a street rave which we flyered (two days spent sitting in the Police Station waiting to be granted permission, live people brought in in millet sacks). In fact we sailed fairly close to the law ourselves, endlessly puffing on African bush (struggling to get high on it ha ha!), at one Gambian border-post Bouba was arrested and mid-scuffle he slipped me the gang's weed, cue heavy breathing on my part and much ham-acting as I dumped it behind their building. At the next customs barrier Ed stole a Baaba Maal matchbox right from under the guard's noses. A night broken-up at rifle-point in a Dakar Night-club. What were we thinking! The street-rave was storming too. Nuff mind-bogglingly-great Michael Jackson dancing from the locals, who ALWAYS formed a ring and took it in turns to dance in the middle. That's African-style, none of this mob frenzy, tremendously well-organised, cleanly re-appropriating our events.
The feeling of sheer ecstacy I had when I had everything in the can, words cannot describe. The thing was I knew precious little about making a documentary. There's no lights, no set-ups, any POVs are purely fortuitous. If you knew how mannered the art of making a documentary is you'd laud anyone EVER making them seem fresh. It was shot on Hi-8 (pre DV) and edited on a linear SVHS suite (linear editing an art-form to work, you grasp the added dimensions of the genius of Lee Perry, all that punching levels in and out, twisting knobs with your teeth etc.) In short it's woefully amateur. I'm a Broadcast Graphics Professional these days (ooh!) and was toying with the idea of re-editing the source footage, putting on slick graphics, tinkering, but there's no getting away from the fact that you can't see Baaba Maal properly, or that with Manu Dibango we only had a C90 tape-recorder or that all the tripod-shots wobble etc etc etc. But I think it stands up fine (Dogme-ahoy!), and the encoded version which you'll see on Tuesday works really well, you have to imagine how poly-dimensional the dancing was, but that's no bad thing. There's SO MUCH sheer joy and youthful up-and-at-em in-your-face spirit to it. It only cost $4,000 to make. That's NOTHING in the grand scheme. And while only about 20 people have ever seen it and MTV practically laughed in my face when I showed it to them and The Wire resolutely ignored me (story of my life), it got me a job for 2 years working for Ridley Scott (Jake his son loved it), Alex Knight of Fat Cat bowed to me in a street once, and it was a total gas to do. I hope you enjoy it.
Posted by Woebot at September 28, 2003 09:12 PM