Hardly Strictly

Warren Hellman was a bit of a hillbilly. He played the banjo in a group with his friends, his fingers dancing over the strings like they’d each thrown down a quick fire whiskey. He loved that bluegrass music; the twang of the banjo and the zip and zaw of the fiddle.

Warren loved a party, and every year he gave a party for his friends. He knew a thing or two about parties, so he knew the best place was San Francisco. In the Golden Gate Park where the grassy fields and the eucalypts and the pine trees give the room to breathe and spin. Where people could come and lay on the grass in the autumn sunshine and drink and smoke and jig to the tunes.

Because Warren was a billionaire, it would be a big party and everyone would be invited. He was a generous billionaire too, not one of those greedy ones, so he couldn’t ask the people to pay anything. The word went out and the people would come. The hobos of the city would come and sell beer from eskies and the hippies would come and sell homemade hash cookies and the families would drive from the corners of the country to spread picnic rugs and eat crackers with dip and smile at each other and at other people too.

He called his party the Strictly Bluegrass Festival because that’s what he loved the most, but he knew that other people liked other things too and he was generous, so he changed it to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and let them all come. 

I found myself in the city of San Francisco early October so I took Warren up on his invitation and made my way to Golden Gate Park. Off the bus at Haight-Ashbury and along the winding path to the heart of the park. It was going to be a big party, because Warren had some famous friends coming. There was Emmylou Harris and Robert Plant, Gillian Welch and Steve Earle, M Ward and Connor Oberst, and a long list of fiddle-bending, harmonica-blowing, guitar-twirling maestros howling in from across the land.

On each of the three days there were almost as many people at the festival, as in the entire city – around a quarter of a million so they say. Because it was Warren’s party and we had been specially invited to come, everyone was well behaved and happy. We said Thank You Warren and we looked after each other, making sure there was room for everyone to sit and food and drinks all round.

After an earlier hiking accident I was getting around on crutches and people smiled encouragement and said “You’re rockin’ it brother” or “Dedicated to the bluegrass, that’s dedicated.” A security guard saw me weaving through the crowd and said “Whyn’t you go sit yo’self in the disabled area up the front theya?”

On a sunny afternoon I found myself metres from the stage as Gillian Welch wandered out with David Rawlings and said “Gee whilly-oh, it’s hot”, and I turned around to see if the thousands of people in the field behind me were as happy as I was. For an hour I heard those two voices created to sing together and two guitars playing side by side as one. I won’t forget it.  

The people danced and cheered, they laughed and ate and drank, they slept on picnic blankets and climbed trees. Around sundown the festival halted and they walked out into the San Francisco evening together. For three days it continued like this – the park breathed the people in by day and breathed them out again at night.

That was the last time Warren would be able to come to his own party, because he died last year. He was seventy seven. But he’d planned for something like that happening and the party will go on every autumn without him. The people will still say Thank You Warren. 

View from the back of the crowd (not my photo, borrowed from google)

The crutches got me this view. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

Timbuktu Days, Part III

On the morning of festival day there was an exodus from Timbuktu. I negotiated a ride in the back of a truck out to Essakane, where it would all happen. It’s two hours from Timbuktu, further into the desert. My feet hung over the edge of the flatbed truck and they were whipped by low scrubby grass which grew in tussocks in our path. The track soon turned to sand and we cruised up and around dunes on the way to Essakane.

The place had an air of chaos. There were loose-robed Tuaregs riding camels here and there, the rugs and halters of the camels brightly decorated in coloured woven fabric. The riders sat on wooden seats and rested their feet comfortably at the camels’ neck.  A more modern variety of Tuareg was criss-crossing the site at breakneck speed in dusty landcruisers. Tents made of canvas and hessian were set up in rows, selling food, locally made jewellery, clothing, fabrics and artwork. I noticed one stall selling decorated swords and shields.

Tuaregs are no strangers to conflict; armed with broadswords and daggers they put up a fierce resistance to French colonisation early last century. And since independence there have been uprisings, as they have fought for recognition and justice for their nomadic way of life.

This festival is their celebration. The stage was at the base of a tall, curved dune, providing a natural amphitheatre. I sat at the top to take it all in. The aroma of spicy food wafted on the air, and I wandered amongst the softly lit tents in search of a meal. Inside crouched Berber men pouring glass after glass of sweet green tea, and women stirring large pots of hot food. I was beckoned in to one and was served a bowl of cous cous and spicy goat meat. 

As darkness fell, fires were lit in drums and the music began. The festival is a showcase for Tuareg music and there were traditional chants and dances. The stage was crowded with groups of twenty singers, swaying and clapping as they sang. There was also music from across Mali, Africa and around the world - blues, hip hop and jazz. Ouma Sangare’s bewitching voice, Toumani Diabate delicately plucking his kora – the African harp whose lilting notes drifted with the wood smoke into the night sky -  and Afel Boucomb appeared, but most anticipated was Tinariwen.

Comprised of former rebel soldiers trained by Colonel Gadaffi, the members of Tinariwen have traded their guns for guitars, and these desert poets have now captured imaginations across the world. With vocals switching between rapid-fire spoken word, harmonised haunting wails, and call and response between male and female singers, their music speaks of the struggle of the Tuaregs. Their battle for survival in harsh desert lands where they are oppressed from all sides but do not give up their spirit of resistance. Tinariwen do it all – they fight, they philosophise and they make music that breathes like wind in the dunes. The loping beat of their rhythmic electric blues is said to be based on the gait of a camel walking.  The night exploded in light and dancing.

At three I went to bed – a mosquito net hung from a branch with my sleeping bag rolled out on the sand beneath. At four the harmattan began blowing. It penetrated tents, bringing fine gritty sand into eyes, mouths and noses. People emerged in the morning brushing the sand from their hair and face, but with the wind still blowing, it was pointless. In a daze they walked around bent against the wind, turbans wrapped around heads, eyes squinted and wondering if this is what the end of the world looked like. It was grey and miserable and there was nowhere to hide. The wind blew until mid afternoon, when it finally eased. The night sky, when it came, was speckled with stars, the air was still and everyone was ready to celebrate the final night of the festival.

With the recent death of local legend Ali Farka Toure, the patron of the festival was now Habib Koite. He took to the stage with his band Bamada and played his joyous Malian griot music, with the talking drum and the harmonica, the balafon and the calabash, and the beautiful vocal harmonies brining the night to life again. The drums were beaten and the playful notes of the balafon (West African xylophone) rang out and the crowd responded with cheers and smiles. Atop a Saharan sand dune, beneath a glowing sky we danced to this music of the earth; a vibrant collection of people blown in from all corners of the globe to this desert enclave lit up in the African night.    

2007

Tinariwen

Habib Koite