 |
Current mood:  fabulous
EXPOSITORY
In early August 2007, AMMO Music Company sent met to Greeley, Colorado, to produce the recording of Boubacar Diébaté's new album, The Upshot. I was one of five people participating in the sessions, including an engineer, assistant engineer, documentary filmmaker, and the artist. The sessions were tense, contentious, and on occasion, tormenting. But the music was sincere and powerful. After two weeks, the recording concluded. It had been grueling work, but our achievement was laudable. On October 31, I succeeded in putting the finishing touches on the album before the midnight deadline, but it's completion came at a disconcerting cost.
Among the four technical contributors, three shifted their lives in a startling manner, shortly following the recording. Head engineer, Greg Heimbecker, plagued by existential despair, found comfort in mystic readings, and became an itinerant healer. The assistant engineer, whose name I never learned, disavowed any association with the album, and went on a first and final religious mission to inner city Detroit. Knut Feckless, the documentarian, convinced that he saw the presence of ghostly images in the film from the sessions, destroyed the evidence and was institutionalized indefinitely.
The recording left me frazzled and disturbed. Still, I placed the final masters in the hands of an AMMO executive, not quite sure that I wasn't committing an ancient taboo. Friends and colleagues had admonished me that by working with Boubacar Diébaté I would produce breakthrough music, but there would be a price to pay. Although the advice went unheeded, I did not approach the recording lightly. I attended many performances to gauge his artistry, and each time it was tremendous. It was clear when watching Diébaté perform solo, that he was not alone on stage. He seemed to harness an invisible energy that manifested itself through his frenetic singing and conjuring kora play. I couldn't pass on this project.
By late December 2007, a short time after The Upshot's release, my life took a turn for the worse. I found myself ill, and bed ridden. Rest was fitful and medicines had no effect. I began to shun family and friends, and became reclusive. One morning I awoke, and wished I hadn't. It was on this day that I received a visit from Boubacar Diébaté. He arrived with his kora and my wife showed him into the bedroom. Without a word he sat down and gently plucked a confused pattern of notes from his harp-like instrument. The melody spiraled in my mind, always at tension, never a release. I was beset by vertigo, gasping for air and clutching at the headboard. I lost consciousness.
When I awoke, I heard faint bleeps. The air smelled of ammonia. Unaccustomed to the bright light, I made out only stark white surroundings. Then, I saw my wife and a doctor, looking down at me. "Oh my God, he's awake," she cried out. The doctor shined a penlight from eye to eye; he stated stolidly, "you gave us a little scare." "Where am I?" "You're at St. Joseph's," he calmly replied and continued: "you had a stroke and have been comatose for three days." I let it all sink in and relayed: "the last thing I remember, was Boubacar coming into our bedroom and playing his kora." A glance at the doctor, betrayed my wife's worry. The doctor brushed it off, "this type of thing isn't unusual." "What's wrong?" I asked nervously. "Boubacar was never at our house," she explained eerily. "He left for Senegal, right after the recording."
-WH, February 2008
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|