My theory is that I should be able to find the antecedents of American music here on this continent. By American music I mean modern popular music that is in four-four rhythm with a backbeat and uses the flattened seventh, or “blue note.” I’m looking for the ingredients of our music that don’t come from Mozart. It’s a useful thing for me to know about since I make a living as a purveyor of this uniquely American mix of Africa and Mozart and which we Americans export all over the world. It’s my (far from unique) Out of Africa theory of why American music rules.
We generally steer clear of the cities in our quest, mostly because JP is too cheap (with my money) to pay city prices. Airconditioning is for pussies. For JP drinkable water is for pussies. Out in the villages there is music everywhere. The first thing about Africa is that it’s not one place. It’s a giant continent with huge diversity and many different places. The urgently tight polyrhythms of the coastal Giriama, the throaty war music of the Maasai, the heavy drums of Burundi, and the transcendental chanting of the Pygmies are just some of the wildly contrasting styles that cross our path as we follow the equator from east to west. But none of them sound like Chuck Berry.
One city that we can’t avoid is Kinshasa, Zaire. This town is the wildest rodeo in Africa. There is a splendid dictator holding the country together while his cohorts help themselves to everything in sight. The guys with guns are running everything, that is, if anything is being run at all. Getting into Zaire is easy. Just pay the Man and keep walking. Getting out is more of a problem.
We’re on our way to Gabon, where JP knows a guy who is tight with President Bongo. Before us is the Congo River, fast flowing and croc-infested. On the other side is the sleepy little Belgianflavored Brazzaville. On this side is bedlam at the quayside. A large riverboat—more like a city on a raft—is disembarking, and the men with guns are in charge of threatening, herding, obstructing, and abusing the river people. This entrepôt is where the wealth of the hinterland comes down the river to the capital and the goons get to tax it. The multitudes are heaving this way and that under the lash of the bosses.
We manage to thread the throng and get aboard the crowded ferry. As the ship pulls out into the current we can see a chain gang of criminals being off-loaded from the river raft. They are herded onto trucks, and we shudder at their fate for a moment before turning our gaze to the approaching shore. Brazzaville. We can see tree-lined boulevards and cheerful-looking citizens as the vessel nears the quiet little harbor.
With glad hearts we’re soon down the ramp and JP is head-to-head with the customs guy. But it’s not going well. For some reason he’s not responding to our blandishments. Soon there are several uniforms leaning over our passports with furrowed disapproval on their brows. This is bad because now any bribery has to be public, which totally takes the savoir faire out of it. You just don’t know how the group will respond. So we learn, with heavy hearts, that we must cross back to Kinshasa and get proper Zairian exit visas.
And the ship is now casting off. We need to be aboard, so JP zips up his silver tongue, and we’re on our way back to crazy Kinshasa. Around us the river air is thickening and with equatorial speed, night is falling in darkest Congo. This is the last boat before the crocodiles take over. We’ll spend the night in Zaire.
At the customs shed the last of the river people are being processed, scolded, and fleeced as we get to our turn with the Man. He’s just plain pissed off. His has not been a good day. Our documents are just the final and worst insult after a day of river scum.
We have just come from Brazza? But we couldn’t enter Brazza? What was our problem in Brazza? As he considers the weight of our implausible story, other passports and documents are being thrust at him from every angle. The African customs official is a multitasker. Standing in line must be a European invention because you don’t see it much here. Any dealing with officialdom is shared with other supplicants who are weaker than you. Stronger ones are ahead of you. When the official hits a problem document, he merely bats it away and plucks another from the multitude that bobs before him.
He has batted ours away several times now, and the throng around us can smell our weakness. They clamor over and around us. JP is raging through his repertoire of Gallic persuasions, temptations, and damnations. But Kinshasa Man is not having it. Suddenly his eyes slacken and he hunches forward.
“Go sit over there!” he commands.
Foolishly, we’re not having it either, dammit. We’re still talking.
“Over THERE!” he shouts. Then he’s standing up and shouting as he bangs the desk with his power stick. Now we are dancing cheek to cheek with the men with guns as they drag us over to the side of the room. Our buddy is still shouting orders, so the heavies take us outside and handcuff us to a bench. Just like that, we are fucked. Chained to a bench pending further review, at the pleasure of our new friend. The soldiers wander off, but we’re still chained to the bench. The crowds have begun to thin, and the dimly lit quayside is slowing down.
The human traffic is just a trickle when we spy a skinny white man and manage to catch his attention. He nods but keeps moving. Not much he can do on his own. JP is shouting “Belgique!” to the back of his head as the stranger fades off into the night.
Soon it’s just JP and me, chained to a bench and deep into our usual “story conference.” He’s got me convinced that ours is an “elliptical” film, whatever that means. The evening around us has become dark and quiet. But not completely quiet. During a pause in our debate, while I consider the magnitude of his concept, I hear music.
It’s a lilting, throbbing, bouncing, laughing, dancing, and romancing kind of music. It’s nothing like the stuff we have been hearing out in the bush; this is city music. It has those ingredients that I have been looking for. Of course it does, because it’s the return voyage of Chuck Berry. I’m hearing guitar, bass, and drums—American instruments, rhythms, and harmony—having traveled back to Africa.
It’s coming from a radio inside the building. It dawns on us that we’ve actually been forgotten. About an hour ago there was a changing of the guard, with a lowering of flags and a clanging of gates. Our friend never came for us. Heck, he’s probably got people who pissed him off chained up all over town. The night shift probably doesn’t even know we’re here.
In our most dulcet tones we start shouting out to the guys in the building.
“Hel-LO, oh,” we call, with friendly charm.
Soon the night guys are peering at us from behind their flashlights. It seems boorish to go into details of our misunderstanding with the day shift. With these guys we feel that we can make a fresh start. What’s that music? I inquire in my lame French.
“Ahh , Franco Franco!” they reply, and one of them goes back inside to turn it up.
Just when we have the Bantu chiefs more or less mollified, we get a welcome visitor. The Belgian embassy was contacted by the passing stranger, and this is the ambassador himself coming over to investigate the report of two of his compatriots chained by goons down at the dock. The guards are impressed by his stature as he drops names of the most senior and most heinous thugs in government. Best of all, he brought beer.
Soon we are all grooving to the Lingala music. The party has moved inside the building and we are unleashed, with cheerful apologies all around.
Things are a lot more comfy, and we’re out of bondage, but the soldiers can’t exactly let us go. If Ahab locked us up, he had better see us there in the morning or the night guys might get trouble. Regretfully, we must stay.
Well, we’re here among friends now, and the hotels we stay at generally aren’t much better than this anyway, so sure, this is good. And I could listen to this music all night.
Next morning the ambassador returns. Phone calls have been made, and now Ahab is all smiles as he stamps our passports and waves us on. Once