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.