I went to the hospital for a blood test, then had more than an hour to spare before my clinic appointment. Hung around in the ground floor concourse, doing nothing in particular—observing, scribbling a few notes. I wondered why I feel so happy and free there, in such a concentration of illness and decrepitude. It’s how I used to feel from the second mile onwards, on a wayfaring expedition: free of care, absorbed completely into the landscape, merged and embraced. A reason came to me: this is a temple of compassion. No money changes hands, only this common currency, exchanged freely without haggling. Everyone here comes to give and receive. Just an impression of course. I don’t want to look at it critically; only to observe that in those places not publicly funded, where you must show your credit card or paid-up health insurance, the well of human kindness must be a bit tainted. I shall confess that seeing myself in better shape than many of the other patients & staff was gratifying; yet sobering too. Hobbling bent on two sticks: will that be me a few years down the road?
Whichever way you look at it, there was a warm sense of belonging. I have no church to go to, I live in a street where English is a minority language, I don’t understand the religion of my neighbours who go to the mosque a few yards away. Nor, come to that, those who come by car on Sunday to the Baptist Church adjoining the mosque, sometimes assuming that I’m one of theirs, on grounds of age & skin colour. A congregation of South Indian Christians hires their hall sometimes. Many look like Tamils.
This sense of being on the outside looking in is familiar to me. All of my life, or perhaps starting at being sent to boarding school at the age of six,
I stood
Among them, but not of them—in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts
(from Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
I don’t wander far these days, so it becomes all the more important to feel embraced by the neighbourhood, as an extension of my own tiny backyard, part of home’s ambit. It takes a little more effort than in the hospital to feel enveloped by that common currency of compassion. I have to take the initiative, not necessarily in smiles or greetings, for I feel barriers, but in an inward movement of the heart. It works. It makes a huge difference. And if I don’t feel compassion towards me, there is a way to be enwrapped in God’s compassion. I hesitate to use the word God, having no belief attached. God is simply the ultimate target for my thanks, as in saying grace before eating (aloud or otherwise). One is thankful to the food and the cook, but both are agents of one source of love. The best way I know to be enwrapped in God’s love is disinterest. I get the word from a translation of Meister Eckhart’s old German. I understand that it means to stop wanting and to embrace what’s given. I guess it helps to have the sense of being on the outside (of any given community) looking in.
I’ve been wondering also why I feel so uplifted and so deeply involved in traditional West African music. It goes back a long way, but that’s not a tale for now. The countries involved – Senegal, Gambia and Mali – are among those where slaves were acquired for transportation to the Americas, including Jamaica in the Caribbean.
There’s a passage in a book I’ve recently reviewed: ten short stories about Jamaica. The narrator says that
the songwriter was a very shadowy figure in Jamaican music . . . something to do with an absence of regard for the creativity of the individual in the country’s history and culture.
a culture which originates in Africa. Sona Jobarteh and her kora see this interview.
The disinterest lies in this: that the instrument imposes its own conditions. it takes her heart and soul You don’t simply have to learn how to play it (like any instrument): you have to learn its traditions over many years. You have to learn the music from an oral tradition. It isn’t written. You have to spend years studying with your elders. But here’s the thing. Sona was born in England and lives here too. She keeps in touch with family in Gambia. Various of her talented relatives identify themselves as being from Senegal and Nigeria. The are within a griot tradition: a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, or musician. The griot is “a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a leader due to his or her position as an advisor to royal personages”. As Sona describes it, a tradition of the Malian Empire which goes back to the 13th century. It’s
music for people, for kings, for royalty
You have to be born into a Griot family take up the instrument. †
[This sceptical lone wolf needs a community, something beyond individuality, something beyond the myth of tragic passionate love that still devours the European mind and its diaspora.*]
I’m trying to recall how I first fell in love with African music. I’ve no doubt that it started with Paul Simon’s Graceland in 1986. But then there was Bernie Wise who lives down the road, who gave me some cassettes various bands of which the stand-out by far was Orchestra Baobab’s Pirate’s choice. blah, blah
Anyhow I ask myself what it is about West African music that so much appeals to me. I find an answer especially in the last track of the videos in my tracklist below—”Gambia (Live in Netherlands)”. It’s an African sense of being in a tribe . . .
| 1 | Mamamuso | 04:20 |
| 2 | Gambia (Official Video) | 06:09 |
| 3 | Jarabi | 05:37 |
| 4 | Kemet | 04:55 |
| 5 | Fasiya | 05:37 |
| 6 | Musow | 04:19 |
| 7 | Suma | 05:27 |
| 5 | Mamaké | 05:04 |
| 9 | Mali Ni Ce | 04:56 |
| 6 | Bannaya | 12:49 |
| 11 | Gambia (Live in Netherlands) | 11:22 |
* I was first confronted with L’Amour et l’Occident, by Denis de Rougemont, published as Love in the Western World in US; Passion & Society in UK.
† Sona Jobarteh, in an interview.