Dirtmusic in the desert
Essakane, Timbuktu, Bamako, Mali, Afrika
Travel jottings by HtH
The following are a few notes I jotted down during my trip with Dirt Music to the Sahara. My remarks are not written very professionally, they are just intended as a personal reminiscence. I hope the reader will have fun reading them and can afterwards understand my enthusiasm for this unusual trip.
To view fullsize images just click on them.
Saturday, 05.01.2008, Stuttgart – Paris
At last, the long-awaited moment has come! For the past 3 days, I’ve been packing and checking whether everything I’m taking with me is in working order. I’m on my way to the desert!!!
This is surely going to be the greatest adventure I’ve ever been through.
But now the sequence of events:
In a way, the whole affair started about 4 or 5 years ago. My friend Nobby sent me a DVD asking me to have a look at it. “You’ll find it very interesting!!!", it said on the note. It was a London BBC documentation about the “Festival in the Desert” in Essakane, Timbuktu, Mali, Africa. I was full of enthusiasm when I saw that. A music festival in the middle of the desert, far from anything akin to “civilisation”.
Besides Chris Eckman, Dirt Music includes singer/song-writer Chris Brokaw (Come, Codeine, Eleventh Dream Day, Steve Wynn and many more) and Hugo Race (True Spirit, Nick Cave, to name but a few). All these musicians are very versatile, open-minded and prepared to let themselves in for an adventure into the unknown. What more could one ask for.
Without further ado, we decided to risk the trip. However, we soon noticed that in Africa things are different to what we are accustomed to here. A quick positive answer on the part of the organisers was followed, at short notice, by a refusal and finally at the end of October, surprisingly, we received the much longed-for invitation.
Visas had to be applied for, the necessary injections got and, once flights, jeeps and hotels had been organised, things could get underway on 07.01.2008.
We all met at the airport in Paris. I was in Paris two days earlier, Chris Brokaw arrived from New York, Hugo Race from Melbourne via Berlin and Chris Eckman from Ljubljana.Monday, 07.01.2008 Paris – Bamako
After a 5 ½-hour flight, we arrived in Bamako, the capital of Mali in the evening, where we had booked a hotel for 3 nights. We wanted to acclimatise ourselves a little first, and the band wanted to “warm up”.
Our first contact with Africa was chaotic, hectic and somewhat disconcerting:
After a bout of hefty jostling at the baggage conveyor belt, we were besieged by countless taxi drivers. With one of them, I negotiated a fare of EUR 20.00 – originally he wanted EUR 80.00. The people there obviously take advantage of one’s initial lack of orientation (at night all cats are grey, and to me all the local people looked the same) because when we arrived at the hotel he demanded the originally-quoted EUR 80.00. His argument: You didn’t agree on EUR 20.00 with me, that must have been somebody else. My price is EUR 80.00! Finally, we agreed on EUR 40.00. We live, we learn, and at the end of our trip I paid just under EUR 15.00 for the same route from the hotel back to the airport, and even that was probably still double the usual price...
tuesday, 08.01.2008, Bamako
One after the other, they all ‘crawled’ out of their rooms. Simple breakfast (good coffee), and then I went for a walk with Hugo down the main street in front of the hotel.
Africa, as I know it from previous visits: dirty, dusty, noisy, everyone working on the street, people accosting you to sell you something, or just beg … in other words, the usual. 
Mali is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. The average income is about EUR 40.00 per month, which means that 95 % of the population earn less than EUR 5.00. Incidentally, a beer costs 1,000 Malian francs, which is equivalent to about EUR 1.50.
A complete lunch of our ‘standard’ costs about EUR 40. Of course, for the Malians that’s pure luxury, but I have never experienced any sign of envy, resentment or even an occasion of theft. Nor have I ever heard of the likes from anyone else. Here, people have other ways and means of relieving you of your money. “Well, that’s Africa!” accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders became our guiding motto, as well as “You know: in the end everything will be fine”, which also turned out to be true.
Back in the hotel, we all assembled on the “terrace”. The Dirt Musicians decide to jam a bit. I get my recording equipment together and start recording. Technology (I obviously took too much with me) slowly, but surely, lets me down. My video camera has given up the ghost (soiled video head) and one of my cables breaks. Damn!! But I enjoy the music all the same. Some “locals” hear the music and stop by out of curiosity. Great praise from them.
The Dirt Musicians first rehearse just about all the songs on their CD and then decide on 8 songs to be played at the festival. I enjoy listening to the excellent musicians, sitting in the pleasant shade and look forward to more music in the desert.
Towards evening, we all meet on the terrace. I go and get a bottle of red wine and we decide to go to a club with live music this evening. But before doing so, we go to the discotheque on the opposite side of the street to have something to eat. The fish is delicious (brochette capitaine) and I almost forgot that one shouldn’t eat any salad. Yesterday evening, when brushing my teeth, I rinsed my mouth with tap water by mistake. Afterwards I had a very unpleasant feeling. It would be a tragic turn of events if “Allah’s revenge” caught up with me and I in the middle of the Sahara.
Come to think of it: I’m constantly on my guard here trying to make sure I don’t make a mistake. No water, so I restrict myself to beer and wine ;-) No fruit and vegetables. And always watching out for mosquitoes. I have no protection against malaria so I have to be extra careful. Somehow, the whole lifestyle here boils down to eating, drinking, watching out and basic organisational things such as changing money, recharging batteries, etc.
For example, I haven’t got a single socket in my room and have to go out onto the terrace every time I need to recharge my akkus.
We take a taxi to a music club, far away from our hotel. On the way, I get the shudders imagining what will happen if we don't get a taxi to take us back: It’s most likely too far to walk, that is if we were able to find our way back at all …… The solution is typically African: the taxi driver offers to wait in front of the hotel until we want to go back. We gratefully accept his offer, particularly on seeing what a down-and-out quarter we have landed in.
In the club, we get a friendly reception from a lot of people, some of them even shaking hands with us. However, the friendship had its price, too: “Will you stand me to a beer? Would you have a cigarette?” The music is great and the atmosphere very free and easy. A band consisting of a mainstay rhythm section (drum, el.git., bass), alternating percussions and singers. You are free to carry on a conversation over beer, but you can also just listen to the music. Some get up and dance. The communication between the band and the audience is amazing. I don’t understand a word of what they are singing, but I get the impression they improvise a lot. Sometimes it seems to be antiphony between the audience and the singers.
Happy and carried away by the music, we go to our taxi that takes us back through the eerie streets of Bamako.
Bamako seems to be a huge village. Only once do I see anything that could be termed a main street. Most of the time, the taxi speeds through dark, dusty alleys. Once, a stop sign looms up out of the blue. The driver doesn't appear to perceive it and just speeds ahead.
Wednesday, 09.01.2008 Bamako
Today, we first went to Studio „K7“. There’s a CD shop there and Ali Farka Toure’s studio, which, since his death, has been run by his sons. These lads buy cassettes (yes, really … genuine tapes!), but unfortunately it is closed as the whole family are already on their way to „their“ festival in the desert.
We visit the “Grand marche artisane”, a market for artists’ requisites, thus including musical instruments. Chris E. and I already have a little experience of Africa and know what to expect. Chris B. and Hugo seem to be unsuspectingly getting involved in the fierce and endless haggling. Each buys as many musical instruments as he can carry (Cora, Balafon, …).
The longest and most favourable deal lasted two hours and yielded an African guitar ( „Ngoni“) which originally was to cost 65,000.00 francs and which we finally got for 7,500.00.
Back on the terrace, the 8 selected songs, i.e. the complete set, is rehearsed twice. The boys are improving from rehearsal to rehearsal.
I washed another pair of socks to be on the safe side, and we want to get off to an early start tomorrow morning.
Flight to Timbuktu, and from there by Jeep a few hours through the desert to our destination: Festival au desert, near Essakane, in the middle of the Sahara.
Thursday, 10.01.2008, Bamako – Timbuktu - Essakane
… 04:00 h out of bed, 04:30 h taxi ordered, 04:50 h set off at last, the taxi first has to tank up, then through red traffic lights, the taxi has no lights … 06:00 h takeoff
Heading for Timbuktu, below us the desert. And that’s where we want to go???.
Arrival – chaotic as usual. Where, who is our driver? Where to, how? But as always: in the end, everything works out.
I’m oscillating between ups and downs. Last toilet at the airport. Luckily, I have paper with me.
That was some journey on the jeep!! Crazy! The four of us were sitting on the back seat and were thoroughly shaken up. Once, my head hit the roof with a terrible force and another time my face came in contact with the front head rests.
Shortly after our arrival at the festival grounds, we were assigned a tent in the tent village for
the artists. Our driver went off somewhere with the jeep, including our baggage. We find him also “somewhere” in the dunes. The vehicle is stuck in the sand, which means we have to lug our cases through the hot desert sand.
The heat here is almost unbearable. You can only walk in wading boots, the feet swell up and hurt. Tuareg dealers are everywhere and chat us up all the time. I have just one thing on my mind: a shaded spot, maybe something cool to drink and a meal wouldn’t go amiss, either.
The artists have a “café” of their own, a wooden hut with plastic chairs in front of it. Here, we get couscous with flat bread and fanta. While in Europe food for bands is usually poor and monotonous, in Africa everything is different: every day there was couscous with flat bread for lunch. Then, in the evening there was always couscous with flat bread. But for breakfast, there was flat bread without couscous ;-)
It’s 15:00 h. Really crazy!!!! The sun beating down from the sky. I’m absolutely parched. I’ve just bought a bottle of water. Within half an hour the water can be used for a warm shower.
I’m sitting under one of the few trees and watch two boys gutting a slaughtered goat.
Next door, the “Le jeune Farka Toure” musicians. They offer me tea and, for politeness’ sake, I accept it. After the first drop of tea, I get a fright. I hope the water has been boiled enough. So I unobtrusively pour it into the sand.
Like the others, I lay down in the tent for a while and took a siesta. Strange background sounds, mixed with music and braying camels wake us up.
In the tent opposite us, a group of Tuaregs are playing their instruments and a female model (a bag of bones with a beautiful face) is trying to dance to it. Cameras click and I discover that it’s a photo-shooting session (by Vogue … and maybe the model was even famous). In any case, the music is great and what followed next was the beginning of a fantastic story.
When the hubbub is over, the Dirt Musicians join in with their instruments and the American/Australian/Malian jams begin. It turns out that it is the Tuareg Band Tamakrist that will be performing this evening.
It was the starting signal for a very special friendship between musicians.