not a moment of silence
Aug. 21st, 2018 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944I don't believe this particular musician would want her death to be marked by silence...
Rest in peace and power, Khaira Arby.
This brings back all the memories of college, staying up half the night listening to Radio 3 and Afropop Worldwide's archives and becoming thoroughly enchanted with the desert blues. Please don't go looking for references to any of her music in my entries of a decade and a half ago; they're there, but I couldn't spell her name, and it embarrasses me to this day. I wonder if Andy Kershaw ever did hear one particular song again... Performed in a Timbuktu hotel lobby, I believe it was, with the little-known Arby knocking Kershaw's (and my!) socks right off on vocals, Ali Farka Touré himself (having been the one to make introductions in the first place) on guitar, and somebody rapping out the beat on an improvised drum - a BBC equipment case, but you'd never have known it. He tried to find that song again, years later at the Festival In The Desert, but evidently named a different one by mistake, which Arby sang flawlessly and without accompaniment, go figure and of course. I wonder if anyone else ever rediscovered it?
I only wish I'd seen her perform when she was in the States, but I had no idea she was even over here. I only wish she'd had twenty more years. 59? What happened?
What a loss. What a sharding loss.
Rest in peace and power, Khaira Arby.
This brings back all the memories of college, staying up half the night listening to Radio 3 and Afropop Worldwide's archives and becoming thoroughly enchanted with the desert blues. Please don't go looking for references to any of her music in my entries of a decade and a half ago; they're there, but I couldn't spell her name, and it embarrasses me to this day. I wonder if Andy Kershaw ever did hear one particular song again... Performed in a Timbuktu hotel lobby, I believe it was, with the little-known Arby knocking Kershaw's (and my!) socks right off on vocals, Ali Farka Touré himself (having been the one to make introductions in the first place) on guitar, and somebody rapping out the beat on an improvised drum - a BBC equipment case, but you'd never have known it. He tried to find that song again, years later at the Festival In The Desert, but evidently named a different one by mistake, which Arby sang flawlessly and without accompaniment, go figure and of course. I wonder if anyone else ever rediscovered it?
I only wish I'd seen her perform when she was in the States, but I had no idea she was even over here. I only wish she'd had twenty more years. 59? What happened?
What a loss. What a sharding loss.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-22 02:27 pm (UTC)Poor woman. :(
-Fallon~