Bamako Balani Shows: Streetside Music, Theater and Dance

Please read this post if you haven’t already. I’m about to talk about block parties in Bamako, but there is still a refugee crisis in the Sahel. A few weeks ago I spent an evening on the most crowded street corner of the quinzambougou neighborhood in...

Brief Recap of 2012 Festival in the Desert

I’ll have a more substantial post up in the next week. For now.. As of two weeks ago, I didn’t know whether or not I would be attending festival in the desert. Security concerns and cost weighed heavily. But a week or so before the festival, I found myself...

Traveling from Accra to Bamako by Sound

Last year, on a bus from Abidjan to Bamako, I fell asleep on the morning of our second travel day. The sun was coming up and coupe-decale was still squeezing its way through tired speakers. I woke up at noon and the coupe decale had been replaced by Coumba Sidibe, a...

Sound Memories

I travel with a canon s90 and a flip cam. I do most of my reflection with a notepad; some amount of that writing ends up on this site. I also travel with a digital field recorder, currently an Edirol R-09. I record a bit of everything with it. Music from car stereos...