{"id":432,"date":"2006-03-07T03:07:40","date_gmt":"2006-03-07T03:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=432"},"modified":"2021-10-11T17:16:26","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T21:16:26","slug":"tuesday-march-7-2006-thinking-of-timbuktu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=432","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, March 7, 2006 \u2014 Thinking of Timbuktu"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"06-03-07<\/a>Some\u00adthing made me think of Tim\u00adbuk\u00adtu, today. For a moment, I could smell the wind-blown sand, the aca\u00adcias, the dry\u00ading dung. For a moment I could hear snort\u00ading camels, the rapid\u00adfire street-talk in Chi\u00adi\u00adni, the wail\u00ading muezin<\/em>, the gri\u00adots<\/em> play\u00ading gurkels<\/em> and koras<\/em>, the slen\u00adder Fulani traders walk\u00ading like gods through the mar\u00adket place, jaun\u00adty in their con\u00adi\u00adcal hats. Fabled Tombouc\u00adtou, the name itself has come to mean \u201cfar away and unreach\u00adable\u201d. Sad Tim\u00adbuk\u00adtu, the fad\u00ading shad\u00adow of an ancient great\u00adness.\u2026\u201cSalt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the wealth of wis\u00addom comes from Tim\u00adbuk\u00adtu.<\/em>\u201d Few can now read the man\u00adu\u00adscripts from its cen\u00adturies-old libraries, and the chil\u00addren who tum\u00adble out of the Lyc\u00e9e<\/em> may not care about their loss. Out\u00adside the city, the mon\u00adstrous sand dunes march south\u00adward, threat\u00aden\u00ading to swal\u00adlow what\u2019s left of the city, like so many oth\u00aders that have sunk and drowned and van\u00adished into the sand sea. Years of war among the desert nomads, end\u00aded only by uneasy truce in the late nineties, did not do it any good. Nor did decades of exploita\u00adtion and bru\u00adtal\u00adi\u00adty by a par\u00ada\u00adsitic Marx\u00adist aris\u00adtoc\u00adra\u00adcy, before that. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Why do mem\u00ado\u00adries come flood\u00ading so strong\u00adly? Because I hear from the BBC<\/span> that Ali Far\u00adka Tour\u00e9 has died of can\u00adcer. Tour\u00e9 is Tim\u00adbuk\u00adtu\u2019s most famous mod\u00adern son, one of the great musi\u00adcians of the world. Though raised in the tra\u00addi\u00adtion of clas\u00adsi\u00adcal Malian music, he learned to play the gui\u00adtar at the age of six, and sub\u00adse\u00adquent\u00adly absorbed the influ\u00adences of Amer\u00adi\u00adcan blues\u00admen like Big Joe Williams, John Lee Hook\u00ader, and Light\u00adnin\u2019 Hop\u00adkins. Even Hen\u00addrix. With tremen\u00addous artistry and panache, he fold\u00aded these way\u00adward musi\u00adcal descen\u00addants of Mali back into their ances\u00adtral core, pro\u00adduc\u00ading a high\u00adly per\u00adson\u00adal kind of blues that is best described as \u201cserene\u201d. Blues with\u00adout suf\u00adfer\u00ading or self-pity.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was the last and only sur\u00adviv\u00ading of ten sons, from a small vil\u00adlage on the Niger. His par\u00adents nick\u00adnamed him Far\u00adka (don\u00adkey) because of his stub\u00adborn\u00adness. His fam\u00adi\u00adly mixed the uneasy eth\u00adnic fac\u00adtions of the region, and he took care to sing and record in Song\u00adhai, Temazhek, and Ful\u00adfulbe even at the time when the speak\u00aders of these lan\u00adguages where at war. He was a humane and sen\u00adsi\u00adtive man, as well as a great musi\u00adcian. He did not fol\u00adlow the well-worn path to suc\u00adcess and com\u00adfort in Lon\u00addon and Paris that has lured so many African stars. Instead, he stayed in Mali through hard times, and end\u00aded as may\u00ador of a small town, hop\u00ading that he could use his fame to bring some good to peo\u00adple on a vis\u00adi\u00adble, human scale.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"06-03-07<\/a>So tonight, I\u2019m play\u00ading through his albums, and let\u00adting the sights and sounds and smells blow over me, like the hot sands in the har\u00admatan<\/em> wind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why am I sit\u00adting in an apart\u00adment, my legs and wrists cramped from tedious\u00adly fill\u00ading out Excel tables, lick\u00ading my wounds from crap\u00adpy, vicious human beings, when I could be in the Sahara again? I could be. I\u2019m in bad shape, flab\u00adby, worn down by frus\u00adtra\u00adtion and betray\u00adals. But I could go back if I worked up the nerve.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some\u00adthing made me think of Tim\u00adbuk\u00adtu, today. For a moment, I could smell the wind-blown sand, the aca\u00adcias, the dry\u00ading dung. For a moment I could hear snort\u00ading camels, the rapid\u00adfire street-talk in Chi\u00adi\u00adni, the wail\u00ading muezin, the gri\u00adots play\u00ading gurkels and \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12,947,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-au-blog-2006","category-c-listening","category-cu-listening-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11246,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/11246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}