Jail in Japan: Tales of Pocket Knives, Bathtub Antics, and Utter Cluelessness
I am being ordered to strip down to my birthday suit. Every experience is a good experience, I tell myself, trying to believe my traveling credence with the same passion it usually warrants.
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Gala Soiree at the Sorano
Last night I had the good fortune to attend a concert in honor of one of percussion’s living legends, Doudou N’Diaye Rose, born in Dakar in 1928. The celebration was to honor 50 years of musicianship, as he has invented new kinds of drums, allegedly created no fewer than 500 rhythms, and has played with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis to Peter Gabriel. Though many men did not train female percussionists, he did – in fact, he leads an all-female drum group called Les Rosettes, which is apparently made up entirely of his own daughters and granddaughters (!). Phenomenal women, they were, and incredibly expressive, powerful artists, at one point even playing an art ‘musical drums,’ running from one drum to play the next person’s, all without missing a beat (of course). So multicultural is Rose, too, that last night he teamed up with fabulous Taiko drummers from Japan, and so we were treated to a mixture of African and Asian rhythms that had some people getting up from their seats to dance and leaving others simply spellbound with admiration.
