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By
Published: Oct 19, 2011
Category: World [4]
The Doctor & The Butler: A reader reports: My dermatologist greeted me last week with this: ‘Your face glows, you have beautiful skin, so smooth, and I should know --- I look at skin for a living. What are you doing to keep it so healthy?’ I said: ‘A miracle product I just started using, Clarins Baume Beaute Éclair [5], recommended to me by the wife of a trusted source, Head Butler, and of course my daily sunscreen, LaRoche Posay Anthelios [6]. The dermatologist said: ‘Your butler is giving you good service. Give him a raise!’ No need, doctor. But thanks.
I know why the caged bird sings.
Mali once controlled much of the African gold trade; now it's the world's fifth poorest nation. If you've read Peace Corps volunteer Kris Holloway's great memoir, Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali [7], you know the grim realities for Mali's women. Most marry by 18 and have 7 children. Mortality rate for pregnant women: about 1 in 12, among the 10 highest in the world. Genital cutting? In Mali, it's almost universal.
And yet the culture of Mali permits --- even encourages --- women to sing.
This CD, featuring eleven of Mali's best-known female singers, reminds us that people can and do transcend their situations. They may be poor, badly compensated, unknown outside their villages --- as musicians, they're triumphant. Are they esoteric, to be enjoyed solely by devotees of African music? Only if you insist. [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here [3].]
Although you may not know of these women, you have only to hear them once to want to hear them again and again. For this is spirited music, subtle and sophisticated and rich with unexpected harmonies and rhythms. It's backed by instruments that sound, at first, wondrous strange --- a modified harp and a xylophone, for example --- and then just wondrous. These divas are Q-tips for the imagination.
I've gleaned a few of the musicians' stories, and they go beyond the classic American success story of a hardscrabble youth, a church choir and a chance meeting with a talent scout. Nahawa Doumbia, for one. Shortly after her birth, her mother predicted that Nahawa would be a singer. Then she died, leaving her to be raised by a grandmother who consulted blacksmiths, hoping that their alleged magical powers would change the girl's fate. In 1980, over her father's objections, she entered a national contest and won.
Listening to “Divas of Mali” reminds me of the myth of the terrible emperor, who threw his victims into a giant copper pot --- and then heated the pot. But the vessel was so shaped that, as the heat became more and more intense, the screams of the victims sounded more and more like beautiful music. So it is here. Out of terrible poverty and centuries of oppression, these singers find great energy, strength and joy. You won't understand the words and there's no lyric sheet to give you a clue, but it won't matter --- you can't mistake the exuberance of these far too low-profile divas.