Guinée rocks the rue de Logelbach

It was a hot, humid early evening in June. Denis had come home a bit early, changed immediately into a robe, and was sprawled on our bed, papers everywhere, figuring out something for his taxes. I, enjoying having him home for once at an early hour, was perched on a narrow, paper-free edge of the bed reading. The French doors leading onto our 6th floor terrace were wide open to admit any hope of a passing breeze. (Most Paris buildings have no air conditioning.)

Suddenly, the sound of music penetrated my consciousness--gentle, yet lively, tinkling notes. Piano? I went back to my book. But before long, a percussion note made me look up. Now the unmistakable voice of a djembe--the classic drum of West Africa--had joined the melody of what I now realized was not a piano at all but had to be a balafon--the West African xylophone. What? "Denis, can you hear that music?" I asked. The answer was only an inarticulate preoccupied "Mmmm," meaning, "Let me finish what I'm doing and I am not having fun."

The music definitely sounded live. I walked out on the terrace, standing on tiptoe and craning my neck to peer over the trellis work which screens us from prying, sixth-floor eyes across the street. But since our Haussmannian building rises straight up from the sidewalk, I couldn't see much of the street. I'd thought maybe one our neighboring bistros had been reserved for a private party, but oddly, the music seemed to come from the right--the opposite direction from the bistros. Out on the terrace, I could hear more clearly. This music was neither Malian nor Senegalese, both of which I'm intimately familiar with. Yet, it seemed related. As I was puzzling, the song ended to the sound of wildly enthusiastic applause. What was happening on our oh-so-conservative, strait-laced block? A friendly African invasion? A new song, even livelier than the last, drowned out the clapping.

I went in and flopped back down on the bed. Denis was no longer riveted by his paperwork. He looked at me questioningly. "I can't see where it's coming from, but it's not the bistro," I told him. "But it's definitely African." By the end of this song, both of us were tapping our feet and bobbing our heads. Another started up. Denis couldn't stand it any longer. He got up gingerly, careful not to disturb his various piles of papers, and started getting dressed in a haphazard way. Shirttail hanging and in slippers, he grabbed my hand. "Come on! We're going to go see what this is!"

The illustrious but rumpled doctor of Logelbach and I descended to the street. We followed the music, which was growing ever wilder, until we stood before number 14 (we are number 10). A second-story window was open, and several people were perched on the sill, bobbing and jiggling the way people do when they really wish they had the courage to get up and dance. Denis and I were simply standing on the sidewalk opposite, also just short of dancing, when a woman in the window happened to look over her shoulder at us. "Who are the artists?" called Denis. "A group from Guinée," she informed us before turning back to the spectacle wihin. We were still jiggling enthusiastically on the sidewalk everytime she glanced our way. Finally, "Would you like to buy a disc? 10 euros." she offered. Sure! She said she'd send her son down with one, while Denis asked me to run back home for the ten euros.

When I got back, Denis grabbed my hand. "We're invited!" he said excitedly, ready to indulge gloriously in trading tax preparation for Guinéan mandingue. What a deal! The kind windowsill lady came down to let us in. This was her parents' apartment, she informed us as she ran up the stairs, and her younger brother, a musicologist, had brought this group back from Guinée where he'd been playing with them. This was their first time in France.

We were led to a living room not unlike our own, where 8 or 9 musicians, sitting among their audience on the floor, were playing this wonderful music. They were the Espoirs de Coronthie, Coronthie being the neighborhood of Conokry they called home. All the instruments--balafon, gongoma, bolon, krin--looked homemade, or at least as if they had been fabricated in some backwoods atelier. But how they did sing! Denis hesitated only about 30 seconds before bursting out dancing. I and most of the rest of the audience were close behind him. We forgot our books and taxes, drowning everything in the vibrant chorus of voices, in the multi-layered thrum of the music. Antoine Amigue, the young musicologist, played a marvelous guitar and was obviously in seventh heaven to be sharing his Guinéan and French friends and family. A shy little girl jumped into the dancing crowd and, eyes riveted on Kassa, the group's dancer, began mimicking his moves. Even Antoine's father--a gentleman of around 70--joined in. The French salon pulsed with good vibes and great music. I'll bet Haussman never imagined this happening in one of his buildings!

Several sweat-drenched songs later, we took a break. A young girl approached us. "This certainly livens up the neighborhood, doesn't it?" she offered. "And how!" we affirmd enthusiastically. The rue de Logelbach had never rocked like this. We thanked our hosts, exchanged phone numbers, embraced the musicians, and filed out after them. Our eyes followed their departing van as it disappeared around the corner, taking with it all the warmth of Africa which had briefly lit up our now silent street.

Check our the wonderful music of Les Espoirs de Coronthie here.

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