African VooDoo Downpour

I've seen some interesting shit in my day, but yesterday was
exceptional by any standard. It was summertime in the park, hot,
sweating, sun-burning summer and I had to work in it. Typical. Not
that I wasn't having fun from time to time. The event was summer stage
in Central Park, a nice little affair, if you don't have to lug
hundred pound spools of audio cable across astroturf lawns that seem
to bleed clay into rain puddles.

Incase you're not familiar with Summer-stage, its a grand tradition of
free concerts by artists so obscure only the snobby-est of the snob-o-
legensia, the intellectual high priests of whatever art they happen to
worship - in this case of course, it would be music - only they would
know who they were actually listening to. In other words, classic New
York.

This Saturday, June 28th, the acts were billed as Afro-beat, which is
unfortunate since those of us who were once proto-snobs turned cynics
will tend to hear a term such as Afro-Beat and think in terms of white
suburbanites in Afrika Boombata costumes playing the djembe. But this
was genuine at least. Real Africans from real African countries. And
this is where it got weird, man - real weird. These cats were the real
deal, born and bread in a land so old even their ghosts have lost
count of the ages. The place where voodoo comes from, if you dig my
jive. Not that I believe in any of that. However, cynic or not, I make
it a policy to respect the super-natural, because, as the saying goes,
you never know.

The acts were fine, lots of dancing and the sound man laid on the hand
drums a little too hot in my humble opinion, but they were otherwise
good. Then it came, the last act. The act from Mali. There wasn't
anything too special about them it seemed, aside from the skies
momentarily clearing when they too the stage. Strange, too be sure,
but not too strange. And they went through their act with little to
nothing of interest to note. Until the last song that is.

It was typical of what you'd expect if you knew nothing of African
popular music, as I did and do. Lots of rhythm and poly-layered
voices, singing only god (and people who speak Mali) knew what. As
they got to the end, the rhythm picked up, more beats, more dancing.
One of the men launched into the sort of gyrating routine that must
have scared the pantaloons off old Europeans. It built - more drums,
more dancing. The kind of free-form musical experience hippies across
the white world have been trying to emulate without success. Then it
it hits a crescendo, the men's face look entranced and fierce, two
women take the stage to join them and the sky opens up. Wind whips at
the tent I am working under. The rain falls in sheets on the dancing
men, the dancing crowd and picks up intensity with the music and it
occurs to me that this must be what they meant by voodoo.

It takes a while for the rain to stop after the music ends. I figure
maybe there was an element in that dance that was meant to bring on
the rains in lands where there is none. To do it in New York was
simply overkill.