(Crider) Africa in Dublin

Saturday the 14^th, I wove through the tourists of Grafton Street, eager to see the light at the edge of the crowd where Stephen’s Green offered much welcomed contrast to the bellowing department stores and trampled red bricks.  That evening, however, I was not seeking solace in ponds and trees, but in music.  Ever since my brother completed his senior project in Mali and introduced me to West African music about six years ago, I have had a growing interest in artists such as Vieux Farka Touré and his father Ali, Toumani Diabaté, and Nuru Kane.  My passion for blues developed as soon as I discovered my father’s record collection as a young teenager, and hearing the styles from the Delta fused with the earthy rhythms and inflections of traditional African song created an instant euphoria.  At any record store that I venture into, as soon as I am finished ravaging the blues section, I will immediately wander to shelves of world music, and since the titles are generally in a foreign language undecipherable by me, the most intriguing cover art and longest song list usually decide which artists I will try out.  My method hasn’t failed yet, but my discovery of Boubacar Traoré was not instigated by random chance in a record store, but by a concert poster that led me to a church of all places.

Outside of Stephen’s Green, the Unitarian Church of Dublin welcomes people from all ages and backgrounds, and as a demonstration of their appeal for solidarity, they host “steeple sessions”, live concerts open to the public.  These concerts are held within the church itself, so on the 14^th, after paying €12 and waiting in line for thirty minutes, I entered the foyer, climbed a flight of stairs to the main chamber, and sat in a pew.  I looked around in admiration of the intricate stained glass and two storey high pipe organ that occupied the otherwise modest interior.  The overhead lights were out and a purple glow was cast on the walls by lighting around the stage, where microphones, a guitar, and an African calabash (a bottle gourd dried, hollowed, and used as a percussion instrument) were set up in place of the altar. 

Not long after 8 p.m. the evening’s act emerged from the sacristy: Boubacar Traoré from Mali and his companions, Lousenni Kone and Vincent Bucher.  For the next hour and a half the “congregation” sat enthralled by the performance.  Though he had been performing professionally since the 1960s when Malian independence was young, Boubacar Traoré handled his guitar with such vitality that the youth within his heart was as evident as his passion for the music.  Lousenni Kone, the youngest of the three, leaned over his calabash like a beatnik over a podium, tapping the rhythm with his fist or a ring on his finger.  The French musician, Vincent Bucher, wailed through his harmonica with such speed and virtuosity that would be heard from Blues Traveller’s John Popper.  They were certainly a dynamic trio, and their delivery of African blues had the entire audience dancing in the pews or clapping the tempo, regardless of whether they understood the lyrics or not.  Boubacar Traoré and his fellow musicians poured out so much soul and emotion from their instruments that the lyrics could practically be felt and understood in the notes alone.  Everyone in the church felt their music, so much that a few patrons ran to the exit to snatch the last posters hanging on the corridor walls as keepsakes from the night.