Happy New Year!

Billy is having an amazing trip in Africa! He said, there is amazing beauty and life is rich, music is everywhere.  His drum teacher has taken him to visit several local weddings, which means 3 to 5 hour semi-public, semi-strictly ritualized drum and griot jamborees (they even let me play in one  a little...).

I looked up griot  a West African singer/storyteller who recites oral history, usually accompanied by a stringed instrument  sounds right up Billys alley!!

He is also learning to play the kamelngoni, which is a six-string cello-like harp.  Billy went to a couple donsongoni ritual performances where 800 people sit quietly in a circle watching hunters and hunter bards dancing and singing in a slow grooving, circular forward and backwards barefoot soul train ... shakers and scrapers and low low gourd-bass ... punctuated by 10 minute ritual declarations of prowess and dependability by a hunter/medicine man/spell caster (a hunter is all 3 of these cuz of their intimate knowledge of and communion with animals/animal fetishes, medicinal plants, and nature in general.

I cant wait to hear the music Billy composes when he comes home!

Wishing you bright blessings in 2006!
~ Shifra Nerenberg
office@billyjonas.com