Daara J

So I'm going to jump ahead in a lot of my narrative to my night that just happened. To be specific this happened AFTER the l'Ile de Góree,  and Civil Disobedience posts. So keep your pants on, but this needs to come first, because I'm so excited about it.

So we have a friend here whose name is Sophie, she's an Austrian graduate student studying here and has been in Senegal for about a year. She has been telling us about a lot of the "in" places to be in Dakar as a young student, and tonight we went to Daara J's concert. And for the record... Senegalese pop culture is INFINITELY better than anywhere else in the world. Instead of singing about sex, women, and violence, they sing about political change, acceptance and living life to the best of you ability. The rap/hip-hop scene here is all about political revolution, and is seen as a youth movement for positive, non-violent change. So basically, it's a pool of bad ass people making some baller music.

So we left at 9:20 pm or so, and caught taxis downtown to the French Cultural Center. When we were about halfway there, the girl next to me (Courtney) was sitting by the window and she says the words that nobody wants to hear. Especially when they are sitting in the back of a crammed taxi with no evasive maneuvering possible, the taxi driver is playing chicken with on-coming traffic, and the overpowering smell of fish fills the cab as we pass the fish market on La Cornishe. The words...

"Guys.. I think I'm going to throw up.."

There was an extremely loud silence.. followed my all of us yelling, "Get your head out the window!!!" The problem was, though her head was out the window, her vomit kept getting caught in the wind and slung back into the cab. Luckily, for us, not for the owner of the car, most of it slapped itself across the back window. At the peak of the vomiting, I was patting her back, dodging her puke, and laughing so hard I think my stomach got mildly bruised. Because, come on, let's appreciate the grand image this creates--cab full of loud laughing Americans, one with her head out the window spewing the remains of her dinner across the street, hoping the "fresh" Dakarqoise air would make her feel better. Then we remembered that Courtney has a strange aversion to anything fishy, in a literal sense. So when we "helpfully" rolled down the widow to give her some "fresh" air, we timed it just right for the FISH market...Luckily she took it pretty well. As soon as she got some water, she was laughing with the rest of us. Parting lesson: don't take malaria pills without food.

Anyway. Back to the music.

We payed our driver extra as a form of an apology and headed over to the venue gates. We sat down inside the huge outdoor amphitheater, seeing a modern stage equipped with all the latest technological sound/lighting concert equipment. I didn't get the name of the two opening bands, but lets be real one never does. The first was a woman, which is pretty unusual, dressed in clothes that would make me look like a white girl in desperate need of a disco globe, but which looked absolutely amazing on her. When Daara J (pronounced Daah-rahh Jee) came on the crowd went ballistic. Their energy was amazing, and I have no idea how they sustained it for the two hour concert. Their lyrics were mostly Wolof, but incorporated enough French and English that we were able to understand most of the songs. We used this as a form of practice for Wolof, our teacher would be so proud! Dancers periodically came on stage and performed with the music, dancing a combination of local moves, break dancing, and modern. I really mean the modern part, they looked like they've studied it, because they used a lot of the signature positions and movements. Everyone was dancing and having a good time, and I didn't need to be fluent in Wolof to feel the emotion of the music. The guys who were sitting around us (Aloura and I broke off from our group) would encourage us to dance and were pretty happy that we weren't just sitting and watching like the rest of the tubaabs there. <--(I learned the correct spelling in class today. Ha.) It was absolutely amazing. I'm going to steal my friend's pictures and videos because I didn't bring my camera. I'll show those to you guys soon. And I bought their cd and another cd (Idrissa Diop) after the concert. By the time I left, I had seen one the best concerts of my life, met some awesome people in the local music scene, and deflected 3 interested men by telling them I was already married. Pro!!
All in all, a pretty awesome night. News on more important matters are to follow, but for now, I'm going to savor the song stuck in my head.