Pam & Melie

In my first post I mentioned we’re staying with family. It’s time to introduce everybody. 


There’s Melie, Monique’s favorite sister. We have a special bond forged through our respective adventures in chemotherapy during 2010. I’ve been very glad to see her in good health. Normally Melie lives in the hot and dusty city of Tulear, where her husband Christian still holds down the fort with youngest daughter Pam. But for the past couple of years she’s spent a lot of time here in the capital shepherding a quartet of young women – the nieces – through their studies. “Irrepressible” does not quite do them justice. Liable to break into song at any moment, they fill the house with laughter and motion.

Melie’s oldest daughter Corine will get her bachelor’s degree this year and head off to France for further studies in the fall. A few years ago we tried to get her into a Belgian university. It had worked for her cousin Dada. But in the meantime the xenophobic tide had turned and we were unsuccessful in our endeavor, much to everyone’s disappointment and Belgium’s loss.

You will recognize the next daughter from the Ravola clip. The real cellist Monique had lined up was a no-show. So Sarah was drafted at the last minute. After a 10-minute cello lesson the camera started rolling. The result was instant celebrity for Sarah.

Laetitia, Gerald, Patty, Corine, Sarah

Laetitia is a cousin on their father’s side. I’m told that when she first showed up at the house in Tana she was silent and withdrawn. Her home environment had not been too salubrious. But now she’s, well, irrepressible, with a subtle sense of humor. Currently in school studying something useless like marketing & communications, Laetitia and Sarah both aim to become stewardesses. That’s a high-status job here with great travel opportunities – worth a lot on a poor, remote island. Note that unlike at US Airways, the cabin crews at Air Madagascar are expected to be multilingual.

When their sister Pirette died, Monique and Melie rescued her daughter Patty from an impoverished life in a nowhere town. Patty’s got a couple more years of high school to get through. Then she wants to become a midwife.

The last member of the household is Gerald, Monique’s youngest son. He grew up in Tulear with his paternal grandparents. As a cadet studying to be an airplane pilot he lives on campus. But he’s here every weekend and, as now, during holidays. This morning Gerald kindly let me tag along with him as he did the daily shopping.

Add to this a dozen musicians and assorted hangers-on we’re not able to get rid of, and you can see that during our afternoon rehearsals there’s quite a crowd here.

A week and a half before the first concert and the “voice of Madagascar” has grown silent. At the breakfast table Monique is reduced to whispering. Interestingly, this has the effect of causing everyone else to whisper too, making us sound like a cabal of conspirators.

A combination of factors has led to this precipitous drop in volume. Chiefly Monique’s non-stop talking: on the radio and to her various assistants and myriad family members. Add to this her singing over an excessively noisy band at our first rehearsal, lack of sleep, and the illness we both have. Unfortunately for the narrative, it isn’t an exotic tropical malady like beriberi or dengue fever. Just the flu we contracted from our three grandsons right before departure. (Two of the culprits – Adrian, 19 months, and Arthur, five months – arrived in the country yesterday with our daughter-in-law Hanta.)

At our second rehearsal, yesterday, I managed to get the volume down.

 * * *

I find myself in an uncertain role. In my experience, there are two kinds of bands. One coalesces more or less organically around a common quest to do something cool. Although there are always one or more dominant personalities, the hierarchy is ostensibly flat. The other consists of hired guns. Even in a collegial musical atmosphere the workers of the world instinctively unite in opposition to the boss. I’ve always felt more comfortable on the factory floor. Here, I’m in the band but not of it. I’m married to the boss. Or maybe it’s me who’s the boss. Not to mention the other socio-economic factors at play.

The band showed up with pretty-much functioning instruments. And the players are very good. If anything a little too good. A bass with five strings is a dead giveaway. (For you non-musicians, a bass typically has but four strings, reflecting its original, humble role.) These guys are jazzers with the maxim, Why use two notes when ten will do? A little reining in is proving necessary.

They deal with this by, at rehearsal’s end, launching into a high-speed, early-70s Chick Corea song. The musical equivalent of opening up the Maserati on the autobahn after spending the afternoon stalled in city traffic. I know this song because I was playing it on the other side of the planet when I was seventeen. Now I’m a grandpa in Madagascar. What a strange world.

Post number 1

To blog or not to blog, that has been the question. But I finally decided it would be the easiest way to keep everyone up to date who wants to be.

So down to business. If you’re not already up to speed, check out the Haizina website to get the back-story.

It’s late Sunday morning here in Antanananrivo, capital of Madagascar. At over 4,000 feet, the weather here is quite comfortable, t-shirt and sandals, a bit overcast with a light breeze. Monique and I arrived in the country just after midnight on Saturday morning. The 18-hour train and plane trip, which would normally have been merely gruelling, was rendered heroic due to the dozen pieces of luggage we were schlepping, to the great delight of Air France’s shareholders. We’d spent literally all Thursday night bent over the bathroom scale trying to stuff in yet another mic cable to get the most out of the 23 kg/bag limit.

Contained therein were not only my keyboard and amplifier, but an entire PA, one sufficient to make a 12-piece band rock a small venue. The only gear we need to source locally are mic stands, floor monitors and maybe a sub-woofer. For rehearsals, we have everything we need. Sorry for geeky details about musical gear, but I’ve been obsessing about this stuff for months. A little like Columbus, Amundsen or Armstrong planning their respective missions. You don’t want to show up in the East Indies, at the South Pole or on the Moon and find you’re missing that crucial female XLR to mono 1/4" patch.

We’re staying with family here in Tana. I’ll recount more about our domestic arrangements in a further post. Suffice it to say that the living room’s large enough to be used as a rehearsal space.

* * * 

Yesterday we had our first band meeting. Musical readers will know everything that implies; the rest will have to follow along as best they can. Monique laid down the law about punctuality and our strict rehearsal schedule for the next week and a half, and provided wardrobe guidelines. Unlike previous band meetings I’ve attended, this one also covered such topics as, does everyone have a functioning instrument? Forewarned, I had brought along strings, guitar cords, replacement pick-ups, bridge pins, tuners and capos. (Thanks to brother Chris for expert advice on this.) The drummer was out of luck. His stick request came too late. Welcome to Africa.

So far as I could tell, everyone seemed pretty cool. Way younger than me, of course. But fortunately, they still respect the elders here. I’d only met two of the musicians before. Once I get better acquainted – and learn their names properly – I’ll tell you more about them.

* * * 

Last evening after dinner – still our first day in town – Monique and I drove a short distance along the intermittently lit, shambolic third-world streets to meet up with Vovo. (Nicknames of this sort are universal here.) Vovo filmed the Ravola clip, which exploded onto Madagascar’s TV channels in December and, everyone tells me, set a new standard for music videos in the country. We were at his place to do the final editing on the next clip, Reolo.

But what I wanted to talk about was the refreshments. Vovo is from the northern part of Madagascar, known for both vanilla and rum. Sure enough, he came out with this recycled Johnnie Walker bottle containing three-year-aged rum in which a monster vanilla bean had been macerating. This hooch cannot be purchased in a liquor store near you. Nor anywhere else, for that matter.

Despite or because of the rum, we finished the clip. Reolo will hit the airwaves early this week. I’ll let you know when it’s online.

* * *

While I set up gear in the living room Monique headed off to do a radio interview. It was a phone-in. Apparently the only callers who could get through were from out in the provinces because the phone lines here in the capital were jammed. Monique was surprised and touched by all the provincial listeners asking when she would be performing in their city. They’ll have to wait, she told me. What fans in those towns can afford to pay for a ticket is so little that it’s complicated setting up shows for a twelve-piece band in those areas.

Rain this evening. There’s a cyclone heading down the east coast of the island. It’s small, not like the one a few weeks ago that did serious damage. But even 200 miles inland we feel it.