First evening session with Malamini/Bush taxi to Serrekunda

Hello again,
I decided to post for a second straight day in a row because last night was such an amazing night. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Malamini Jobarteh, my other Kora teacher. He is the father of Moriba, my main teacher. I started to play a song called "Kelefaba" which is pretty much the first piece that everyone learns on Kora here. Only a few seconds into playing, he was inspired to get up. He grabbed his tape recorder, and was fiddling around with it, trying to find a good spot to start without erasing anything important on the tape. After about a minute of this, I stopped playing and offered to go to my room to fetch a blank tape that I brought. I did this, sat down next to him, and proceeded to play again. He was all smiles, as he started recording, and within a few seconds into my playing, he began to sing along. Needless to say, he was quite pleased, and I played another three songs for him that night. He sang along to each one, and I told him at the end of the session that he could keep the tape. I will definitely bring home another recording of the two of us before I return. I felt quite honored to receive such praise from him this early into my stay. Moriba and Tata, another son of Malamini both told me that as they sat under the mango tree as I played for Malamini inside the house, they thought it was Malamini playing and not me. There will hopefully be another session tonight.
I can't remember if I mentioned that one of my main objectives for this trip is to learn a fair amount of singing to the pieces that I am already familiar with. This has been primarily all that I have been doing with Moriba. I think I've learned two new songs, and singing to about 4 or 5 thus far. I'm excited to be able to present these songs in performance upon my return.
One of the songs, called "Tiramakan" has a call and response sort of feel to the lyrics. As I sat under the mango tree at the compound yesterday afternoon, I would sing a line "A muru yebang, Tiramakan yebang" (The first knife try to pierce Tiramakan) and three young girls would answer "Susa rejo Tiramakan" (but it fails to pierce Tiramakan). They were a bit behind the tempo in their singing, and Tata thoroughly corrected them with numerous words that I did not understand. I need to be more fluent in Mandinka....that is for sure.
I decided to go ahead and start the process of getting a second Kora built today. Moriba and I agreed on a price last night, and this afternoon, we took the bush taxi up to Serrekunda to get a few calabashes. I think there's a pretty good explanation somewhere in one of my posts from 2008 about riding bush taxis (feel free to read any of the posts from then) so I will be brief. Bush taxis are about the size of a Volkswagen van, maybe a bit bigger, and they can seat about fifteen passengers plus the driver and door boy. As the vehicle is moving, the door boy is yelling out the window of the sliding door at people standing at roadside, announcing the destination of the bush taxi. In our case it was "Serrekunda Serrekunda!" this afternoon and "Brikama Brikama!" Early this evening. It took about 40 minutes each way, and the charge was 15 dalasi per person. Quite the experience.

We'll leave it there for now.....

Sean