Coutounou, Benin
Last night was the part of the movie where the band arrives in Coutounou, Benin, for two gigs with the amazing Gangbe Brass Band, and they find there are no gigs, and the Gangbe is leaving the city for their dad’s funeral for a few days. Remember that part? I love that part. There’s no hotel, because the band hasn’t called ahead or anything because well, why would they, and they’re all by the side of the road in Coutounou getting sick from the exhaust fumes pouring from the thousands of moto scooters screaming around the streets like flies, and they’re getting tired and hungry and pissed off because this promoter has turned out to be a flake and the venue isn’t even open and no one there knows who they are and nothing here works and they’re all in one way or another whining to each other why didn’t we plan this better, this gig here and this whole trip to Africa or could we have anyway.
Remember that part? That’s a good part. Because then it all changes around so fast. Just when things seem to have hit rock bottom, the lanky guitar player suggests going to the big outdoor festival that they passed on their drive into town and seeing if they can get on stage there. Which only makes things worse initially, the bass player snapping at him come on David, you don’t just show up at a big music festival and get on stage, what a complete waste of time that we don’t have, let’s find a hotel, quick, and be done for the night, and some of the other band members and the posse with them nod their head, weary and tired of things not working out. But the band gives in, sure, why not, we’ll go by the festival and then find somewhere to sleep when they tell us to get lost. And so everyone piles back in the bus and drives back to the festival, and Panji, the eloquent British-accented film and music producer traveling with the three-man film crew, goes up to the festival director over by the sound board and says,
“Look, we have a 12 piece afrobeat band here from America. They are traveling to Lagos to play with Femi Kuti and they do not have a gig tonight. You must put them on stage.”
And the guy goes,
“Hmmm. Really? OK. How about 8 O’clock?”
“That’s no good, it’s almost 8 now.”
“OK. Nine?”
“No good either. Let’s do 10 o’clock. And you must put them on for one hour, they’re really quite spectacular.”
“Well…OK.”
And then the camera cuts to the band on stage, decked out in West African nation soccer jerseys, tearing through its most powerful set of the month yet, lit up like superstars on a huge stage in front of an outdoor park full of French Africans in the heart of Coutounou, Benin, with local boys and women climbing up onstage to paste small bills on the women singers’ foreheads in a sign of cross-cultural respect and admiration.
That was a good scene.
It may sound like the preceeding is rejected script for an ABC Afterschool special or a sitcom pilot rejected for being too unrealistic and sappy. In reality though, this is more or less what happened to us on our arrival in Coutounou, and among other things it confirmed for me the Second African Axiom of Nothing Will Ever Be As You Think It Should Unless You or Someone Who Works For You Meets With Someone Face to Face. The corollary to this axiom is a variation on the Anything is Possible Here theorem, so named because since nothing here is planned especially well (at least nothing we’ve encountered so far), it means no one else has planned things especially well either, meaning the door is open for all sorts of last-minute things you would never think you could pull off, like for example rolling into an African city where you’ve never been before and don’t know anyone and ending up headlining a big outdoor festival an hour or so later.
Remember that part? That’s a good part. Because then it all changes around so fast. Just when things seem to have hit rock bottom, the lanky guitar player suggests going to the big outdoor festival that they passed on their drive into town and seeing if they can get on stage there. Which only makes things worse initially, the bass player snapping at him come on David, you don’t just show up at a big music festival and get on stage, what a complete waste of time that we don’t have, let’s find a hotel, quick, and be done for the night, and some of the other band members and the posse with them nod their head, weary and tired of things not working out. But the band gives in, sure, why not, we’ll go by the festival and then find somewhere to sleep when they tell us to get lost. And so everyone piles back in the bus and drives back to the festival, and Panji, the eloquent British-accented film and music producer traveling with the three-man film crew, goes up to the festival director over by the sound board and says,
“Look, we have a 12 piece afrobeat band here from America. They are traveling to Lagos to play with Femi Kuti and they do not have a gig tonight. You must put them on stage.”
And the guy goes,
“Hmmm. Really? OK. How about 8 O’clock?”
“That’s no good, it’s almost 8 now.”
“OK. Nine?”
“No good either. Let’s do 10 o’clock. And you must put them on for one hour, they’re really quite spectacular.”
“Well…OK.”
And then the camera cuts to the band on stage, decked out in West African nation soccer jerseys, tearing through its most powerful set of the month yet, lit up like superstars on a huge stage in front of an outdoor park full of French Africans in the heart of Coutounou, Benin, with local boys and women climbing up onstage to paste small bills on the women singers’ foreheads in a sign of cross-cultural respect and admiration.
That was a good scene.
It may sound like the preceeding is rejected script for an ABC Afterschool special or a sitcom pilot rejected for being too unrealistic and sappy. In reality though, this is more or less what happened to us on our arrival in Coutounou, and among other things it confirmed for me the Second African Axiom of Nothing Will Ever Be As You Think It Should Unless You or Someone Who Works For You Meets With Someone Face to Face. The corollary to this axiom is a variation on the Anything is Possible Here theorem, so named because since nothing here is planned especially well (at least nothing we’ve encountered so far), it means no one else has planned things especially well either, meaning the door is open for all sorts of last-minute things you would never think you could pull off, like for example rolling into an African city where you’ve never been before and don’t know anyone and ending up headlining a big outdoor festival an hour or so later.
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