musical interlude

Rungwe, southwestern Tanzania, near the seldom-visited Livingstone mountains. The countryside is green and lush and it rains all the time, like Ireland with palm trees. I walk through a maze of market stalls, and there's mud on my new khaki pants. I'm searching for the music I hear, uptempo afro-jazz with loud voices and blaring horns. It's coming from an ancient two-deck tape player in a forgotten stall in the back. The proprietor sells shoes, 80s Bollywood on VHS, and cassette tapes. He doesn't speak English, but his only other customer, a policeman from Arusha, does.

"You like this?"

"Yeah, it's good. Really good actually. What is it?"

"Nuta Jazz! This is that old-time music."

"Okay."

The song hits the bridge, and a weird, tinny-sounding electric guitar plays a discordant solo.

"Nuta! They were selected by Nyerere himself. This was the government's house band."

"Really?"

I buy a few tapes. They're third- or fourth-generation at best, with the song titles written in marker on the cover sleeve. Driving back to Dar, we listen to a few tracks, but the sound quality is awful, and we have to turn the volume to the max just to hear it.


It's Friday night at Maxland, a Kikuyu-dominated bar in the suburbs of Nairobi, and I'm the only mzungu there. I've been invited along by my friend Amousze, to provide "protection" from his female stalker, Judy. Amousze is garrulous and jovial, stands about 6'1", and is rarely found without a beer and a cigarette in hand. Judy is loud, obnoxious, frequently drunk, and so short that when we first met I thought she was a pygmy.

The band starts to play, a duo, drums and guitar, and they sing Kikuyu folk songs. Everybody but me knows the words, and they sing along with the chorus on every song, and dance clumsily. We drink and order dinner: stewed chicken with cassava.

"You're the guest of honor, so you get the best piece," says Judy. Then she drops a chicken neck on my plate. I can't tell if she's joking or not.

We go through four or five Tuskers apiece, then Judy excuses herself. While she's gone, Amousze grabs my hand.

"Judy is not my girlfriend. I just want you to know that." He seems to mean it.

Judy returns, then Amousze excuses himself.

"Amousze is my boyfriend. Did you know that?"

Much later, the band runs out of Kikuyu material, and starts playing covers. They close their set with a version of John Denver's "Country Roads", and, bizarrely, everyone in the bar seems to know every word.

"West Virginiaaaaaa, mountain mamaaaaaa," I croak in time with 45 native Africans.

In front of me, Judy casually tries to put her hand in Amousze's, and, just as casually, he swats it away.


Tofo, overlooking the Indian Ocean. We're in a restaurant run by Boers that caters to an upscale white clientele. The soundtrack is an insipid mash of "adult contemporary" standards, a genre of music for which Africans seem to have a special, possibly genetic, weakness. Whitney Houston (the song from The Bodyguard), Bryan Adams (the song from Robin Hood), Phil Collins (the song from Against All Odds [FULL DISCLOSURE: I kinda like this song]), and, inevitably, Celine. When she comes on I see our waiter, a Mozambican who's wearing what is essentially a bellhop's uniform, stiffen up and look out at the ocean. I walk over to him, and hear him singing softly.

"I'm your laaaaaaady, and you are my man..."

It was dark out, but I'd swear I saw tears in his eyes.


It's been a long two weeks of work-related travel. Kenya, then Uganda, then Tanzania, then back to Uganda. I'm in my hotel room, and all I want to do is sleep, but I'm too wired. I turn on UTV, which is playing some "Urban Jams", so I watch that for a while. It's the same old shit you'd see anywhere: Rihanna, Akon, Beyonce, etc. Interspersed with this is local music, most of it terrible. Except not, because, after three consecutive videos "featuring" Lil Wayne, comes GNL Zamba.

GNL stands for "Greatest of No Limits." He's a rapper, but he raps 95% of the time in Luganda, a language of which I speak not a single word. But you can just tell he's talented. The song is "Koyi Koyi Yah", and in the video his face is wrapped entirely in surgical cotton gauze, which makes him look like a recovering elective surgery candidate. Or a burn victim. Or a mummy. Behind him, his posse throws up the standard bling-bling hand gestures, but the effect is diminished and comical, since they're standing in front of a mud hut and a bunch of old bicycles, as opposed to, say, a tricked-out Escalade, or a million-dollar yacht.

At the end of the video, GNL Zamba removes the gauze, revealing his unscarred and strikingly handsome face.

Later, on facebook, I become his "fan."


Deep in Mozambique, 200 kilometers from the nearest paved road. My driver has been listening to an Alicia Keys CD on repeat for what seems like hours. We stop for a piss break, but leave the windows open with the music playing. A little kid, barefoot and in rags, comes running to the road. He hears the music, and starts dancing along, but after a while he starts to shake his head.

"What, you don't like this music?"

He shakes his head vigorously.

"So what do you like?"

"Well, lately I've been listening to a lot of early eighties No Wave stuff," he says, sounding bored and slightly irritated. "You know, Glenn Branca, James Chance, Sonic Youth before they signed with Geffen. That kinda thing." He crosses his arms and sniffs absently.

Just kidding.

"Fifty Cents!" he says, then gives me the thumbs-up.


Driving north through Rwanda, toward the Ugandan border. I'm scanning through the radio stations, and stop at random on an almost comically simple beat, a drum machine and a synthesized baseline that sounds like a demo tape. Then come the voices, beautiful and jarring, three, maybe four melodies, polyrhythmic, rambling and shrill but still managing to harmonize. You could make the beat in ProTools in about six minutes, but somehow it's the perfect counterpoint.

"What is this?" I ask the driver.

"Catholic radio. This is a hymn." He pronounces the "n" at the end of the word.

There's an open phone line, and occasionally someone will call in, and the deejay will turn down the music so they can broadcast their prayers. They're speaking and singing in Kinyarwanda, another language of which I understand not a single word. The road winds through gentle hills, and we're surrounded by verdant slopes, where subsistence farmers have carved terraced steps into the earth. Snaking through the valley is an alternating series of tea and flower plantations, forming a stuttered river of gold and green. The sun is shining, and the song goes on forever.