Sunday, December 9, 2007

3 day catch up...





Hey all! The last couple of days have been very nice. On Friday, our day off, Andrew, Mark and I went to Rome Island. I'm not sure if thats the correct spelling, but it's pronounced "room". Wow! What a place. It's a very secluded island about 5 miles from the mainland in the center of what appears to be a very old volcano. There are a couple of restaurants and a hotel that seems to be in decent shape. It didn't even dawn on me to bring my swim-suit. Mark thought ahead though... I rolled up my jeans and waded into the surf which was quite warm. I think it may have been even warmer than Hawaii's water. It's quite the paradise that's literally around the corner from the exact opposite. That night we went to a party put on by some of the local US Marines. Everyone there knew about our band and seemed to be excited to see us at the Jazz Festival on Monday. After that, we went to a jazz club called "La Forchette Magic". It was the opening night of the festival and we saw "Gombo Jazz", one of the top bands in Conakry. We had a workshop on Saturday morning with another local band that played traditional African instruments. It was really interesting to hear the explanations for what each instrument was created for. One of the drums was used to communicate specific events such as weddings or funerals to nearby villages.
We played at the Ambassador's residence Saturday night... our soundcheck was plagued with power problems. Everything here is run on generators and the sound crew had the whole sound system on one circuit. Needless to say, it didn't last long. Speaking of the system... they had a setup that could have rivaled a major rock concert in an arena. There were about ten huge speakers on either side of the stage and this was all for an audience of about 150 people. Ha! No wonder the system kept crashing.
Today we had a workshop at the Higher Arts Institute in Dubreka, which is about 30 miles east of Conakry. It was a very good workshop... I think it may have been the most appreciated workshop from the students so far. Although... we have Lincoln Center compilation CDs that we give away after our workshops and we have plenty enough for everybody. Mark started to give them out and it instantly became a mob of people rushing towards him... people were climbing over the drums to get to him. It became a bit dangerous and we quickly exited to the van... wow!
Anyway, tomorrow is our last day in Conakry. We have a workshop in the morning and then we play the closing concert of the 3rd Annual Guinea Jazz Festival. After that, we go back to the hotel, only to leave a couple of hours later for the airport. We fly out at 3:30 am for Brazzaville, Congo via Casablanca, Morocco. It'll be another long day of traveling, but completely worth it! Hopefully our instruments will make it this time... at the same time as us that is.
Talk to you later.

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