Music and Lyrics

Due to a national holiday I got to spend this Wednesday relaxing, which by all measures is a nice little break in a work week that usually offers around 60 hours of fun at the office. Besides, this allowed me to take a night of darts, drinks and fun with the guys Tuesday which is always fun. Apart from Jordan displaying his until now hidden excellence within the fine art of show wrestling we also had the pleasure of meeting Jamie, an American guy who has been bicycling around the world the last 5 years to promote peace. I must admit that I was very impressed with his mission, and my adventurous side certainly dreams of doing something similar, though that will have to wait. But check out his webpage at www.peacepedalers.org.

Well, normally reading, watching episodes of 'The Office', chilling out by the pool or spotting suitable German mansions to purchase once funds permit are my embarrassingly ordinary top priorities when it comes to spending time outside of the office. Today was no different, and going to the pool at the Marina Hotel with a psychology book was picked as the main event of the day. Before going to the watering hole we did however swing by the Ganhi Market in the vain hope that a copy of Depeche Modes' greatest hits CD could be bought at a reasonable price (I have lately been haunted by the desire to hunt down "Enjoy the silence" which quite frankly is one of the best pieces of music I have ever listened to (you can turn the Patrick Bateman accent off now)). Besides, this past month I have had this unreasonably good French African song on my mind. The only time I heard the song was in a club in Lomé (the capital of Togo) where circumstances and my alcohol inflicted memory didn't permit me to get the name of the song, thus the only memory of it has been a quite inaccurate humming. Yet, due to my mediocre musical skills and my very well developed dislike for public humility I never managed to hum it for Jean, my driver and commercial hitman - the only person who could possibly have found that song for me. So given the circumstances I had pretty much given up on ever finding it.

As expected the guys in the market could not find any Depeche Mode, and since they asked if it was American (please!) I strongly doubt there is a big market for this divine band in Benin. Besides people are too happy here, so the occasional 'yovo' who has a melancholic urge to feed is forced to rely on the internet. Yeah, and to answer your question then take the fact that I even look for physical CDs instead of downloading the music from the internet as a proof of my old age. Aaanyway, as the folks at the market could smell money and had all the time in the world to try to talk me into a purchase it didn't take long before I was going through piles of completely unrecognisable Beninese pop and hip hop CDs, the unavoidable Angelique Kidjo came into my bag... and then it happened, one of the vendors put on a CD with a band called Espoir 2000, and the first track was that song from Lomé! The joy, the relief, I was speechless, especially since I got a CD with their pimped music video on for a little more than 2 USD. Yeah, the small wonders of existence.

But in all events, I thought sharing this great song with all of you would be the least I could do to thank the voodoo Gods or whoever brought this circumstance about, so here you go (besides, the more people watch it the bigger are the chances that it will actually be a commercial hit in the western world):

http://www.kewego.co.uk/player/?csig=iLyROoaftwBU&sig=iLyROoafteXg

The song is from Ivory Coast and is called "Abidjan Farot", the video that they display on this page is rather dull compared to the Sean Paul style video that I've seen, but the music is the same. One could ask why I would spend a blog rambling about a random piece of music, and the answer is equally obvious - I think so far this song really captures my west African adventure – the joy of life, the optimism in spite of challenges, the great smiles of people, the warmth of the place, it's hard to come up with adequate words, but I think this song will be closely tied to my memories of Benin when it's all over, and hell, with such a song they will be good. So listen to it, then you know how it is to be down here :).