Mes Souhaites

mood: groggy

music: Guster - Barrel of a Gun

About a week ago I went to a concert for Malouma (from Mauritania) and Ragheb Allama (from Lebanon). The concert was pretty good. I didn't understand a word of it, but I liked Allama a bit more than Malouma. The Arabic music is just a bit more melodic.

While I was there I chatted with a few different people. One of them was a Cameroonian who told me about how he converted to Christianity and his father disowned him and then he moved here and his father died while he was here. But, "ç'est ls vie," he said. He then went on a little mini-tirade about the demon of Islam being poured down children's throats when they are little and they can never be rid of it. It sounded pretty similar to stuff I've heard before in the States except I was hearing people bemoaning unexamined Christianity.

I sat for a while and talked music with a couple Mauritanians working security and they told me they didn't like the Maure music. They liked rap. American rap was good, especially Busta Rhymes and Tupac. There are also some good local rappers though, both Hassaniya and Wolof. I'm going to head over to one of their houses tomorrow to listen to some stuff. I wanted to take a little present and have been putting together a rap CD out of my music collection for the last hour.

mood: content

music: Violent Femmes - American Music

We're going to throw a beach bash in a couple weeks when everyone is getting ready to COS. There's a good live band that has been performing at the bar and they've said they're up for coming out and performing for us. My group has a couple guitar players and I'm looking for acoustic guitar songs that are good for playing so everyone can sing and dance along. I got a CDs worth of suggestions at the party in Boghé a couple days ago, but does anyone have any others?