MFM Presents Music Is Essential Webinar #9 with Banning Eyre – Expanding Our Conception of the Guitar in Africa
Report by Dawoud Kringle
Report by Dawoud Kringle
Date: Friday, April 29, 2022
Time: 5pm to 6:30pm (ET)
Venue: ZOOM
Ticket: free
Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qd-CqrzsrE9XkuNm0a0uXZtzO8WkHO4Pu
Artist: VOYAGERS
Title: Chasing Light
Label: Lion Songs Rec
Music Genre: West African trad music
CD Review by Dawoud Kringle
MFM members are familiar with our brother Banning Eyre. (In July 2021, Eyre was the guest on an MFM webinar on bringing African music to the American music scene: https://musiciansformusicians.
Date: Thursday, July 15, 2021
Time: 6pm to 7:30pm (ET)
Venue: ZOOM
Ticket: free
Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYud-GtpzorEtU2zBhZA4kaF2uOecvtk13c
Webinar description:
Text by Banning Eyre
As reported last time, there is plenty of music going being played publically in Malian cities, especially Bamako, despite a State of Emergency. But the impression is deceptive. Crowds at nightclubs are thin. There are almost no foreign visitors to support clubs, festivals and concerts.
While street weddings are on, the families who sponsor them have less to spend, and are more and more inclined to cut costs by hiring lower-rung artists, often not griots as they would have been in the past, and there is less money changing hands. For musicians, there is hardly any point in recording, unless you are one of the lucky few to have an international career. Cellphone technology has made swapping music files so easy that even the pirates who used to undermine artistic careers with cheap cassettes and CDs have a hard time making sales.