Casumy! (That's "Hi y'all!" in Jola)

Thanks to our hosts and fellow participants for a great time in Gambia and Senegal. Everything went pretty much according to plan these past two weeks.

This trip gave me a better sense of what needs to happen to help Mandinari-- Daniel Jatta's home village in Gambia and the site of The Akonting Center. My first project will be to start restoring the damaged parts of the primary school building-- e.g. replace missing roofing for $300, etc. Too many children still do not attend school as they should.

Of course, I will also see to it that The Akonting Center will be more firmly established. As a first step towards this end, some of us had a two hour meeting with the Gambian Minister for Tourism and Culture. She was very interested and at least she promised to help the center with moral support, e.g. by including a hyperlink to The Akonting Center's website on the official Gambian government site etc.

A major priority is helping master akonting player Remi Jatta, who was crippled in all his lower body by polio at the age of four. We will make sure he gets a new lightweight folding wheelchair. The doctor I sent him to said he could not continue to move on one knee like he does now. His body and knee will not stand that stress for too much longer. They will send me photos and a report detailing the specifics as to what size and type of chair will fit him. It will be great if he can get around without having to drag himself on the ground. Both Rhiannon Giddens and Paul Sedgwick can testify as to how great he is as a teacher. That skill will be put to good use in the future development of The Akonting Center where he will be the manager overseeing the making of instruments and instruction in traditional Jola music. I have also pointed out to Therese (Daniel Jatta's niece) and Daniel how important it is that the center's facilities be made wheelchair- accessible. We will also see to it that Remi learns how to communicate in English. The doctor claimed that Remi is extremely brilliant and could easily have been a high school graduate if it had not been for his disability and extremely poor background growing up in Mlomp, Casamance. We can really help him to a better future with very, very small sacrifice on our part, considering our Western overflow of resources.

From the research point of view, I had the opportunity to video record a lot of music. I was especially glad to be able record one of the best Fula fiddlers in Gambia, who performs on the single-string riti. I was also able to record, for the sake of comparison, a Wolof xalamkat (griot who specializes in the xalam lute) playing both the typical wooden-bodied xalam (i.e. a plucked lute exclusive to the griots) and the xalam gesere, a hitherto unknown griot lute recently discovered by Ben Nelson in Gambia which has a gourd body and an akonting-like bridge/string construction. I will make a report on this instrument at the next Banjo Collectors Gathering and share my thoughts on this new finding in the context of our ongoing search for the banjo's African roots. I see it as the missing link between the wooden-bodied griot lutes and the akonting-like gourd-bodied folk lutes.

When I was in Dakar (Senegal), I was able to purchase an old Mandinka balon bato harp-lute. Harp-lutes, also called bridge-harps, are instruments unique to West Africa. They are harps similar in construction to West African plucked lutes. The best known harp-lute is the 21 string kora of the Mandinka griots. The balon bato (also balon) is a harp with a huge 20" round gourd body, 3-4 rope strings, and a bent neck which is played in a percussive way. That was a great find for me, to be included in my collection of rare African string instruments.

In the traditional musical cultures of the Mandinka and Malinka peoples, the balon bato is primarily an instrument exclusive to the griot caste. However, in Bangul, Gambia, I met Souleymane Camara, a Manduga traditional musician from Guinea who played a version of the instrument called balon batu. Souleymane made it very clear that among his people, the Manduga, the balon batu is not a griot instrument, but, rather, a vernacular instrument used to accompany folk songs and dances.

To see my video documentation of Souleymane Camara playing the Manduga balon batu, please visit my YouTube site: Balon Batu Video

In Dakar, we also visited with British classic banjoist Nick Bamber and his Jola friends from Casamance (southern Senegal), the heartland of Jola culture and the birthplace of the ekonting (the French transliteration of akonting, which is the instrument's designation in Francophone Senegal). Nick seems to have really fallen in love the Jolas' "down-to-earth" approach to life which they carry with them wherever they go. One evening in Dakar, we visited with the ekonting-playing brothers Joe & Paul Diatta (Jatta) at their home. They performed a Jola folk song we never heard before, Ampa Youtou ("Child of Youtou"). Listening to this song, it reminded me of the American old-time tune, Sourwood Mountain. Coincidence? Yes... but how many such coincidences are there in the world?

(By the way, in Mandinka, the word "banjo" means to relax in a mild winter-season evening breeze. Can it have something to do with playing music at the same time? ;-)

In the museum in Banjul (Gambia) I could see for myself, take photos (which is not really allowed but.... ;-), and measure probably the only existing example of the Mandinka harp-lute called kurango. It has three strings, a bent neck, and wooden body, similar to that of a xalam, but with a bridge construction that was identical to that of the koliko, the 2-string gourd-bodied folk lute of the Frafra of Ghana. It was used for healing purposes. How it was tuned and played has yet to be revealed, if it ever will be. None of the Mandikas I have asked seemed to know anything about this instrument.

It was also fantastic to learn that young Jola girls sometimes use body-patting as rhythmic accompaniment when dancing for themselves, just like the use of "hambone" and "patting juba" in African American tradition. The Jola call it "pat-pat." Is this just another coincidence? Who knows? Rhiannon learned how they did it.

My research colleague Shlomo Pestcoe has posted the video I took of the Jola girls demonstrating pat-pat and dancing to hand-clapping on the Akonting MYSPACE MUSIC site along with an excellent anaylsis of these dances comparing them to traditional African American dance traditions.

Rhiannon Giddens and Paul Sedgwick worked hard learning how to play songs with akonting back-up, as well as several Jola dances and some drumming. When they return to the states, they will both use what they have learned in developing performance programs that will, hopefully, inspire greater interest in the African origin of today's popular music. Rhi plans to incorporate at least one akonting number in future performances of her band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Paul is getting up a complete one-man show of both traditional West African music and American banjo music that will stress their relationship to today's music. I think it is just great. I am very glad that both of them made the efforts to come to Gambia just for that.

Greg and Maggie Adams also worked hard to learn more Gambian music. Maggie, a teacher of music, had balafon (traditional West African xylophone) lessons everyday and Greg worked hard to learn more akonting playing. I hope that they all will inspire more people to come to Senegambia in the future. With a new American Airlines direct flight from Baltimore to Banjul it should be easer and less costly to make the trip. True, the service is not topnotch, but still....

After living in Gambia for six month young Ben Nelson left for home in the US. Ben has done a great job of learning not only how to speak fluent Wolof, but also how to play both the akonting and xalam, as well as studying Jola and Wolof dancing. I think this talented young banjo player will let us know more about his skills in future, although his old-time fiddling girlfriend, Jamie, now is moving to Ireland for a long time. I hope that will not end his interest in African music and dance in favor for Irish jigging.

Ben has made a great contribution to the history of the banjo by discovering the xhalam gesere griot lute as well as the kurango harp-lute in the museum in Banjul.

Ben, you've done a great job. Many thanks to you from the banjo community.

I came back home yesterday, Wednesday, July 26th, in one piece. It was a long trip home, 24 hour, as I had to wait 7 hours in Frankfurt for my flight up to Stockholm. I took a day room at the airport hotel and could catch up the sleeping a couple of hours. The flight from Banjul stopped over for an hour in the Cape Verde Islands, allowing me to buy a few CD´s of Cape Verde traditional fiddle, guitar, and cavaquinho (the Portuguese forbearer of the Hawaiian ukulele) music.

Our son Johan will come home tomorrow and stay the week with us. We'll have a gathering of old-time musicians on Saturday just outside Stockholm. It'll be nice to exercise the fingers a bit. My dog was overwhelmed to see me again and helped me to pack up by snatching one of my dirty socks smelling of Africa and Baltzar, the watch dog back in Mandinary. The weather here will change from extremely hot (95F) and dry to cooler and rain over the next couple of days. I do not mind....

--Ulf Jagfors

Ulf Jagfors is a Swedish banjo historian/collector who has been hooked on banjos since 1960. Over the last seven years, he has been working with Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Jatta documenting Senegambian and West African string instrument traditions, as well as pursuing his own research into the origins of lute-family instruments around the world. In 2000, Ulf introduced Daniel and his pioneering work researching the Jola akonting folk lute to the international banjo community at the 3rd Annual Banjo Collectors Gathering in Boston.