12 February 2012

Week 7: ‘Under the mango tree … everything did start from here, it’s a great place to be.’

Wonder spawned in: 2010
Wondered into being by: Baaba Maal and friends; Playing for Change
Wonderspan: 9 min
To experience this wonder at its best: Click on the full screen icon and make sure you can hear the sound

For this week's way of loving we're travelling to Kirina in Mali, where we ask Baaba Maal and his musician friends to suffuse our north European February with a little warmth.

The setting for this musical wonder is the shade of the local mango tree.   Thanks to its hardiness and dense canopy, a large mango tree forms a natural space for important meetings in many an African village.  Baaba Maal begins by giving thanks to the village elders for inviting the musicians to join them under the tree, before beginning his song, Dreams of Kirina.

Femi H suggested this clip.  She wrote:
'Jan 2010.  I had been depressed.  Not feeling able to live creatively... and the message that my African ancestors (i.e all of our ancestors) had no vision, no creativity before Europeans came, was troubling me.  Miraculously, I  picked up Ben Okri's book, A Tale of Regeneration and Love, that had been lying in my room for years unopened.
'He wrote in a magical way — of a 'fabled' West African forest village, of an enchantment and beauty that inspired the thing that destroyed it and the creative regeneration that would take place.  Extraordinarily, the forest people in the village he wrote of were all gifted and devoted artists.  Astoundingly magnificent sculptures would be found in different parts of the forest. These were left overnight anonymously.   Each sculpture would resound and carry a deep meaning for the whole village and thus would guide the people — personally, social or spiritually.
'Reading this inspired my sense of possibility. Then just as I finished the book, a friend sent me this YouTube, which would show that Okri's fabled place was alive in the village of Kirina in Mali.  We see the famous Malian singer, Baaba Maal, who himself had assumed that the village of Artists he'd heard of as a boy was a myth, until he was brought there to sing (by Playing for Change) and meet the people.  Here he is in the village wearing the most beautiful  flowing gold robe and performing this wonderful song, surrounded by the village elders and all.'
So here they are: Baaba Maal and friends...
Extra...

Street musicians around the world sing and play Ben E King's Stand By Me for Playing for Change.
In this audio clip, Ben Okri talks about the 'Ife Head', an ancient artwork whose rarefied beauty and subtlety of form proved to Europeans that cultures in pre-colonial Africa had been at least as complex and sophisticated as those of Europe.

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