Content by Mike
“It’s the rhythm”
Factual or lyrical? (Hmm, what will the reader be looking for?)\\\\\\\ [Sorry, just squished a teensy little critter who danced crossed the keyboard to hide under that \\\\\ key.]
OK, you get lyrical…
It’s the song in my head – it just won’t go away. Actually it’s two songs, no it’s the same song, done two ways. For me it’s two ways of thinking that are going around together in my head –I guess it’s one way from where I’ve come from & one way from where I am right now.
The song starts out “You shift sixteen tons, & what do you get, another day older & deeper in debt”. It’s the old working song ‘Sixteen Tons’. And on the work site, it’s apt.
From the bottom of the sand pile at the work site, through to the mixing of the masa, I’m revelling in the notion that I’ve come all this way to work, well, harder than I do at my own house – it’s a Habitat thing, I guess. And you know what? I couldn’t be happier right now! I’m not reflecting, I’m digging. I’m not philosophizing, I’m sweating. The song, in the iconic Tennessee Ernie Ford version, starts out & carries through with fingers a-snappin’ - you don’t need a lot of instruments for a working song, just that drumming rhythm that gets your pile of sand from pit to mixing station, from mixing station to wheel barrow, from barrow to tin platform for the assembly into walls. As the music winds through my head, the beat is strong and the rhythm is there: dig, sift, mix, mix – dig, sift, mix, mix – snap, snap, three, four……
Take it to Africa – the rhythm is there, but not the one I brought: hard, sharp, staccato. No, here there’s a glide in the beat, a smoothing out of the harsher tone I arrived with. The bright sun dulls your sight & the falling rain readjusts your tempo away from the rush-rush you got off the plane with. It’s the same song, but this time with a soft hitch in your step. This version is the samba one, re-worked as ‘Dezasseis toneladas’ – still ‘Sixteen Tons’, but re-created in my version by the Brazilian funk band Funk Como La Gusta. (OK so it’s from Brazil and it’s a samba, but bear with me – it’s in Portuguese, a language unlike others I’ve tasted, but with its own charms – and it’s what we’re a-speakin’ here in Xai-Xai, or trying to.)
That twangy work song now has an infectious groove, it dips & sways from the original snap. It’s not hung up on the original song, but creates its own space in your head. From the refrain:
Por isso vem, vem,
Embale la nossa
Este balanço
Tira qualquer um da fossa
Ele é um barato e é da pesada
Esse é o famoso 16 toneladas.
Give a listen to the two versions – my God I can’t get the samba out of my head!! The rhythm is ever so slightly off beat, and it fits this place we’re in.
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| The Rhythm of the mortar and pestle for food... |
I’m slowly wandering away from the tap-tap world I came from, and with the spirit of the team around me, I getting a tap-tap-slide as I go around the work site. The rhythm is softer, more expressive. The kids at work dancing in their bare feet in the soft sand, the grace of the women sashaying about while balancing every imaginable item up on their heads.
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| The rhythm of walking with bricks (and not dropping them) |
It’s the pace of the street life as it unfolds from my balcony window above the main drag: mini-busses starting & stopping, riders getting in & getting out, street vendors working their wares along the block, pairs of guards strolling down the street stopping for a hand-shake and a greeting. It all re-adjusts my inner beat – the sun & the smiles & the heat & the local dialect that I can’t hope to grasp yet fills my ear with its own fitting percussion. I’m more laid back, more in the groove. The song’s in my head and I can’t let go. It’s the rhythm of this place that’s getting to me.
(Sadly, the bugs don’t seem to have that rhythm – ha! – they just walk around looking bigger than usual and looking disconcerting….)
Out - Mike
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| ...and we're all still happy. A bit dirty perhaps, but happy. |
