In the streets, children are kicking
newspaper soccer balls bound with twine, looking forward to Sunday’s football
match in Antananarivo’s Stade Municipal de Mahamasina. I stand at my window and watch their
street-story unfold below me. In the
distance, the colossal stadium looms, an enormous open horseshoe surrounding a
worn field of grass. In just under a
week, after the soccer match, I’ll be playing there.
My band:
q Me – guitars, vocals, harmonica.
q Akiba - electric guitar, kaboasa
(a guitar-like instrument), vocals, tavo (flute of Madagascar).
q Denis Tsivitsoke – He will play the
bass and sing.
q Rasolofonirina Khadri – apongo,
marovany, drums, percussion, singing.
q Niko Tsivitsoke – the higher singing.
I hail a cab and direct the driver to
the Araben ny Fahaleovantena and the Blanche Neige where I’ve
been eating breakfast the past few days.
The air sizzles with sound. I eat at a shaded table and watch the people
dancing like colourful spirits through the streets. Afterwards, in the shade of an ylang-ylang
tree, I sit and dream. A warm breeze
kicks dust. I feel so at home, a vazaha
(foreigner) in name only.
We practice in Denis’ bedroom. It is a bit cramped but the view of the City
gives us good feeling. His windows catch
the breeze and the sun and inspire us.
I’ve learned a few words and phrases in Malagasy and several in French. In English Akiba knows to say “Too long,” and
makes twirling motions with his fingers when I get lost in a solo, but he
laughs when he says it. I say “Maika
aho!” – I’m in a hurry – in gentle mockery, and everybody laughs. We sit after practice on the porch and drink
bitter tea and watch the sun burnish the ancient city.
Denis’ wife Niko prepares mounds of
rice and simmering vegetable broth for us.
We tell stories after dinner.
I’ve been staying at the Hilton, the
tallest building in Madagascar. I’ve a
great view of the middle city and the distant Kianja ny Fahaleovantena
(Palace of Independence) and leaf-strewn Lac Anosy. The French have erected a towering monolith
in the middle of the lake, accessible by causeway, in honour of their World War
I dead.
Our band, which we’ve called Tromba
(meaning spirit in Malagasy), has been practicing for about two weeks. Everyday I wake to the cacophony of morning
and the thrill of the zoma (market) and write for an hour or so. I shower (in an unpredictable - often tepid -
trickle) and then hail a cab and breakfast at the Blanche Niege where
I’ll snooze or read in the shade until the noonhour. I walk over to Denis and Niko’s house and
meet the band at about one. We sit on
the porch and tell stories or just watch the city until three or so and then we
practice. We start with a slow
improvisation that Akiba calls “Gathering the Spirits.” Sometimes it falls flat in laughter. Sometimes we fill the room with glorious
noise. “We shall make the city dance,”
Rasolofonirina yelled on one occasion; Denis translated for me.
Rasolofonirina’s laughter sounds like music and makes me smile.
These three men have taken songs that
I’ve played for years and breathed a yearning new life into them, and Akiba’s tavo
has more than once made my hair stand on its ends. This, I’ve thought often, was the whole
reason for coming.
Sometimes we play into the twilight,
watching the lights of the city sputter on.
One evening, as the thunder rumbled
like a sullen god, Denis told a story.
He told it first in Malagasy, making pictures with his hands, his voice
melodious, full of sparkling humor. I
was told that his English translation was drier, but the story thrilled me
nonetheless.
As best I can recall it went as
follows:
In the time before our father’s
father’s fathers there lived a cruel and wicked king. This king refused to respect any fady (taboo) and turned his back
on Zanahary Himself. He would
stand on the edge of his village’s sacred lake and proclaim that he was greater
than God, that he was greater than the rain and the mountains and the thunder
that came from the mountains. “The wind
blows only to grovel at my feet,” he said, “and the ocean waves sing my praises
from far distant coasts!”
This king lived in a palace with ten
thousand windows. It stood on a hill and
sparkled like glistening gold. He
demanded outrageous tributes from his people and they were made very poor. They lived in miserable huts down in a muddy
valley, shaking and starving through their short days in the shadow of his
castle.
The king often walked the streets of
town in golden boots, surrounded by his armed soldiers, collecting
tributes. If he saw a beautiful woman,
he would order his soldiers to bind her and take her to his castle. If the woman had a husband, the king offered
a small payment for her; if the husband refused this payment, he was
killed. At the end of each of his trips
through the town, the king would stop at the lake, which the elders considered
the hallowed home of the ancestors that watched over them, and, as a final
insult, piss into it and order his soldiers to do the same.
After many years the king had taken
all of the town’s beautiful women - except for one. Her name was Monika. She had hair that shone like water in the
moonlight. Her husband, who was called
Rola, had managed to keep her hidden from the king in a secret crawlway that he
had dug beneath his shanty.
Rola worked very hard, but the king’s
high tributes kept him poor. He asked
Monika why she didn’t go to live with the king in his palace with ten thousand
windows. She told him that her love was
stronger than any hardship. “I’d rather
shiver in your arms than sleep warm in that palace. I’d know a million hungry moonrises before I
knew one gorged morning without you.” Rola took her in his arms and kissed her
shining hair.
In the springtime, Rola accompanied
the village hunters into the highlands in search of game. Monika was left to work her loom and sell
what she could in the village market. Before
he left, he told her to watch for the king and his men. “If you see them, hide yourself quickly. I could not bear to face my life without
you.”
They said their good-byes on the edge
of town. The wind swept in from the
north, bringing the fragrance of new life.
The moon twinkled in her hair.
She led him down to the river and there she held him close. They said goodbye as the first of the
shorebirds rose to the dawn.
The king heard rumors of a beautiful
maiden that still lived in the village.
“Impossible!” he said. “Every
woman, except for the hags, lives here with me.” But he was curious enough to venture down
from his palace on the montagne
to see.
Late at night, he passed through the
main street; all of the village’s hearths had long gone cold. The moon shone full and bright on the town
and the lake.
When he reached Monika’s paillote he stopped. Something flashed in the moonlight and caught
his eye. He hurried to the doorsill and
looked in – a beautiful woman, asleep at her loom! The moon poured through the window and
gleamed in her hair, turning it from black to silver. The king stood, so taken by her beauty that
he could only stare until the moon had moved down the western sky and hid her
sleeping form in shadow. He walked back
to his castle in a daze.
He immediately roused his guards and
bid them summon Monika to him.
Monika heard them coming in a
dream. She woke and moved quickly to the
crawlway, but the men caught the shimmer of the new dawn on her hair, and they
dragged her from the crawlway and bound her.
The king bid the servants prepare a feast. “She shall be the queen of all the land!” he
said.
Rola returned from his hunting in the
mountains that very night. His neighbors
told him what had happened. They told
him that the king would send his payment by week’s end. “And no small one at that. You are rich, Rola!” they said and danced and
made fires all around his cabin. But
Rola, beset by grief, set out immediately for the palace of ten thousand
windows. The cries of his neighbors
followed him out of the valley. “Come
back!” they called. For to march to the
castle was to march to one’s death.
He reached the palace just as the
moon rose over the hills. Hearing the
sound of music through the open windows and smelling the rich food of the
banquet, he uttered a brief prayer to Zanahary and then called for the king. “Come out, coward!” he bellowed at the castle
walls. “You have stolen my love and I
have come for her.”
The king, holding Monika by the arm,
stepped out into the courtyard, flanked by his guards. “Dare you raise your voice to your lord and
master?” he asked.
“I raise my voice to a coward!” Rola
yelled, clenching his fists. “I
challenge you. Will you fight like a man
or will you have your guards do your work for you?”
The king laughed. “You are either very brave or very foolish,
man. But either way, you have taught me
something tonight. I’ve been blind.”
“Yes you have,” Rola said, “blind to
the ways of love.”
“No,” the king said. “I was talking about the approach to the
palace. I shall have to post more
guards. I can’t have peasants walking up
to my door like this.” He turned to his
guards. “Kill him and feed him to the
crocodiles.”
Rola fought valiantly, but the guards
eventually overwhelmed him. He died
without a sound.
Monika, on the other hand, shrieked
so loudly that the villagers down in the valley heard her. And when the king went to comfort her, she
spat upon him. He raised his hand to strike
her, thought better of it, and made his way back inside. In the doorway, he stopped and addressed his
guards again. “Feed her to the
crocodiles as well. But…” he looked at
her with contempt, “don’t kill her first.”
As she was being led away, Monika
turned to the king. “I shall return,”
she said in a voice as low as the wind.
“And I shall taste the bitterness of your flesh and the contamination of
your blood. The child that I carry in me
shall taste you and spit you out in disgust! So too shall my descendants and
those that spring from their loins. We
will nourish ourselves with your anguish!”
The king only laughed and turned away.
From inside the castle walls the sounds of the gala recommenced.
The story of Monika and Rola spread
quickly through the village, where it incited in the long-suffering people a
full-scale revolt, and after many moons of bloody battle, the king was banished
to the spiny deserts - where legend has it he wandered until he fell to
insanity and died. The villagers moved
into the palace and set to work spending their tribute money on things they
could use.
After many years of communal rule,
the kingdom spread all the way to the sea.
Monika became a legend. They say that her screams reecho over the
valley whenever the planting moon is full.
It is said that she and Rola were reborn as crocodiles in the sacred
lake, along with her child and all the children that he bore.
It is said that the king, whose reign
was swallowed by time, returned as well – as a sacrificial zebu. He was slaughtered, his blood and flesh fed
to the grinning crocodiles. Some even
say that he returns every year to the lake and is sacrificed each time. A lone jacaranda tree grows where the
palace of ten thousand windows once stood.
*
The next day, I arrive at Denis’ house
before three. Niko is bent over a fire,
wrapped in a ruffled lamba of gold and green, frying rice cakes. The day is warm and thunder rumbles to the
west. A black veil of clouds has sprung
up over the fields and hills.
I hear Denis from inside. He is playing his guitar and singing one of
my songs in his thin but strangely affective tenor. The sun shines on the wall of clouds, turning
it coal black.
“You’re just in time for a snack,”
Niko says in her rich and happy voice.
“These are my specialty.”
“Misaotra – thank you,” I
say. We sit and drink cool tea and
nibble on the cakes. The wind smells of
rain and lifts my hair and plays with Niko’s lamba. I fall into a thin sleep. In my dream it is the day of the
concert. I look out on an expanse of
empty seats. No one has come. The music makes a sad echo on the empty
stadium.
I awake to thunder and
Rasolofonirina’s warm hand on my arm.
“It is time to gather the spirits,” he says. I stand and walk into the house. Akiba has just arrived. He is in the doorsill, smoking a cigarette
and looking at the sky.
We play a slow minor chord
progression accompanied by Akiba’s tavo.
It rises and rises; I close my eyes just as the sun disappears from the
window. There is thunder but I hear only
music. I feel myself rising with it,
dancing over a plain of flooded rice paddies and steep hills and houses – there
is lightning then and my eyelids redden, but I no longer see from my eyes. People are moving in from the rain. I make a shadow on the green and muddy valleys. The music goes on and on. The tavo rises higher and
Rasolofonirina thunders beside it.
At once we stop and look at each
other. I feel unsteady on my feet. “Wow,” I say in a small voice. “That was amazing. We will make the city dance.”
We stand in the middle of the small
room and join hands. There is rain on
the windows now. Niko brings a tray of
candles and puts it in the middle of the room.
She lights them and nods.
“The spirits are here – we have
gathered them,” Denis says. He strikes a
note on his bass and we all join in.
*
We practice until the storm has spent
itself down to a sad drizzle. The air
through the windows comes cool and refreshing, filled with the sound of
crickets.
Niko suggests we go into the city for
dinner, and Akiba suggests the Chez Le Palmier.
We decide to walk. The night is splendid. Stars appear in the spaces between
clouds. The workday traffic has thinned
and the muddy roads are nearly empty. We
descend down into the main part of the city on massive stone staircases, and
snake through twisting streets and alleys, some of which are so narrow that I
can touch the houses on both sides.
We pass Lac Anosy into Haute-Ville,
skirting the Palace of Independence.
Everywhere there is laughter and the smell of food. “It’s like a festival,” I tell Denis. “Every night,” he says and rolls his eyes
amiably.
The Chez Le Palmier is not
crowded. The tables are covered with a
wide awning, which is ringed with coloured bulbs that swing in the breeze. Candles flicker on the tables.
We sit near the street. I order rice cakes and frites and a
Coca-Cola, and Denis looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “I forgot that you do not drink,” he says. “I’ll just have to drink yours for you.” He orders frites and two beers.
We talk about the practice and the
upcoming concert. We are playing next
Sunday evening, after the soccer match, just before dark. “The fliers are up in the city and my friend
has put the word on the radio,” Denis says.
I ask him how tickets are selling and he shrugs.
“I can’t imagine that too many people
have heard of me here,” I say. “I don’t
think anyone will stay to hear us.”
“The tickets are very cheap. And people here don’t get to hear western
music very often. It will be an
event. I’m sure it will sell out – and
the people will stay.”
“How many does the stadium hold?”
“Many thousands,” he says. I feel a twinge of nervousness at this.
Our food comes and we eat in happy
silence listening to the faint city music and the wind ruffling the canopy. I order another Coca-Cola.
“We are really coming together as a
band,” I say. “It feels like I’ve played
with you for years. I feel like we’ve
known each other for years.”
“Maybe we have,” Denis says. Rasolofonirina looks up from his plate and
smiles. He puts his hand on my
shoulder. “Welcome back,” he says in
English.
We finish the meal with a pot of
bitter coffee. It is after ten when we
leave and make our way through the Palace of Independence. We walk by Lac Anosy under the jacaranda
trees. I see my hotel but don’t really
want to go back alone. “Let’s walk by
the stadium,” I say.
We head south down the Lalana
Mohamed y. The stadium looms in the
starry darkness, looking bigger than I had imagined up close. Are we really going to play there?” I ask.
“Eny,” Rasolofonirina says and
smiles. “Yes.” I see a flier advertising the show. The word Tromba is written in balloon
letters over a picture of the band.
“What does Alahady mean?” I
ask.
“It
means Sunday,” Denis says. “Sunday at 6
o’clock.”
We
climb out of the heart of the city, back towards Denis’ house. The stairs are steep but it feels good to
work off my greasy dinner. We sing as we
climb, the words to a song we wrote together.
Niko sings highest. I am amazed
that she is not out of breath.
November
26-December 1, 2003
Millsville, Antananarivo
