Where else to go but Mama Africa to find a Cultural Hero?

"Get in the canoe," says Baaba Maal. "We're crossing to Mauritania." It is getting on for midnight in the little town of Bakel, way out on the eastern borders of Senegal, and one of the great singers of Africa is on his way to a concert. We've already been driving for some 10 hours across flat, arid scrublands, and now, in the darkness, we have arrived on the banks of the Senegal river. The boatman launches us in the direction of what sounded like a riot on the far side; it turns out to be several hundred of Maal's followers who have been waiting hours for his arrival.

We fight through the crowds to scramble into a Land Cruiser, which blasts out well-worn cassettes of his songs as it bounces away. There seems to be no road and the driver swerves between bushes and the edges of dusty fields. There has been no sign of a border post, and I have no visa.

Great article read here.

Note the difference of his performance for his African fans and those for his fans in Western Europe and the handful in America. It seems like he is part of the audience back home in the motherland but just another black entertainer in the west. Also note how he uses his performance in Mauritania to teach the youth about the culture of the tribes of West Africa (where he come from Senegal in paticular).

Reminds of when I saw the Wailers in NYC expecting the audience to be full of super cool (very hungry and giggliy) open minded people from everywhere. That romantic vision was destroyed when some jerk off yelled out while the sax player was doing a solo and the band was doing one of their instrumental numbers "Shut the hell up, play some marley goddammit I payed my money for that, not for some Nigger to play some crap I never heard before" obivously he kept the Nigger part of the tirade at a lower volume than the rest of the sentence but the point was well made.

We are the paying customers you are the entertainer you do what I say. Step and fetch it, boy....CultureLess...