This is a piece of reportage I wrote for The Guardian Travel Writing Competition 2013. There were some very evocative pieces this year, and sadly my piece was not long listed. All the same, I hope it is faithful to the people and place for which I have so much affection and that it takes you on a journey.
“Ca va aller?” (How’s it going?) The Frenchman shouted over his shoulder,
the question just audible over the engine of his ancient mobylette and the blast
of Sahel wind as I followed nervously behind on an equally antique Peugeot. It was another day in Burkina Faso, and we
were on our way to meet a Griot.
The Frenchman lived here, and as particles of ochre dust danced
in the early sunlight, rising with the lullabies of women sweeping compounds
and exchanging greetings and blessings with neighbours, we joined the current
of of hawkers balancing basins of fruit atop their heads, and school children in
impossibly immaculate uniforms flowing into Bobo Dioulasso. We found Moussa waiting cheerfully for us in
a faded deckchair, and weaving between battered taxis and elders swinging beads
on their way to mosque, the Frenchman, the Griot, and I continued our journey.
Myself and Chris Peckham on the same mobylette 2009
Moussa’s band were warming up as we approached the `cabaret’. Competing with a chorus of sinewy cockerels
and goats, the sound drifted over the crumbling mud wall of the large yard with
the woody smoke of the millet beer known as chapalo
brewing in large red oil drums within. Inside,
a patient audience lined the walls on wobbly benches drinking the fruity brew
from half gourds, whilst Moussa’s apprentices played lightly on two large
xylophones. Elegantly dressed ladies in
vibrant cotton prints sat upright next to slouching men in bizarrely juxtaposed
outfits, including one man in a suit jacket three sizes too big, accessorised with a
pair of ski goggles. These second hand clothes known locally as“au revoir France”, were combined with unquestionable style.
With greetings
observed and a casual nod from Moussa, the band began as one. As the bleached light of day blushed rose and dissolved into
a deep indigo, Moussa and his band introduced me to the art of the griot. The custodians of an ancient tradition, the
griot are a lineage of musicians who for centuries have served their communities
as entertainers, bards and oral historians.
Accompanying their songs with the balafon, (a large xylophone amplified
by dried gourds placed under each key) a West African proverb laments the death
of a griot as comparable to a library burning down. Drawing on a vast repertoire, they are
virtuoso instrumentalists, the custodians of a rich oral culture and the
collective memory of West Africa.
That afternoon Moussa bought to life the great empire of
Mali predating the modern states of the Sahel. He listed genealogies, sung jokes and riddles,
and counselled his audience with proverbs and allegories that seemed to
resonate with them as immediately as the reverberation of the band’s organic
instruments. As the last song ended in
perfect syncopation and the last gourd of chapalo was emptied, we left the
cabaret and dropped Moussa home, where this time his young son was waiting in
the deckchair, feet barely touching the ground and cradling his own tiny
balafon ready to learn the family profession.
Moussa Pantio Diabaté and sons 2013
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