{"id":80956,"date":"2021-05-27T12:08:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T10:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=80956"},"modified":"2021-08-17T12:34:39","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T10:34:39","slug":"francis-bebey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/francis-bebey-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell Bebey, your children salute you #2 : Toups Bebey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>This week, three of Francis Bebey\u2019s children will talk about a song or an album by their late father. Today it\u2019s Toups\u2019 turn \u2013 a musician like Francis. He has sent us \u201cTumu Pakara: the concept of a positively affirmative slap\u201d.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p> That bass  <br> That particular phrasing <br> The introduction of the piece with one stanza, and then a second   <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The general atmosphere of the song, which may bring to mind so many recordings made by &#8220;[his] friend Duvelle&#8221;, that is Charles Duvelle, the man to whom I owe the childhood travels I made all over the world \u2013 in my head. (Of course this ethnomusicologist with thousands of recordings and co-founder of the OCORA label was friends with the author of the first reference book on the music of the African continent. Especially as they both shared the same passion for J.S. Bach. Thank you Charles for the Javan gamelans! And thanks also to Alain Damasio for having known how to talk about and keep time with the music in a magnificent moment of appeasement and open-mindedness on your work \u201cFurtifs\u201d&#8230;but I think it\u2019s probably time I closed these brackets). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p> This powerful &#8220;majestic pain&#8221; as the other Charles would say <br>This power <br>The voice enters the scene. <br>Strange, I hear two of them. Diphonic singing, an ancestral technique. <br>This feeling of the strange and the intangible  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the tuning is at 432Hz, the &#8220;happiness frequency&#8221; to which all music intended to do good in nature \u2013 to mammals, to plants \u2013 is tuned and therefore, incidentally, chases away human disorder? The entrance of the murky, hoarse voice doubled up derails me: is it reasonable to summon the spirits in such an overpowering way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Francis Bebey - Tumu pakara\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/V43vdNbcfDE?feature=oembed&#038;autoplay=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Francis Bebey &#8211; Tumu Pakara<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The piece flows, moves, unfolds with a relentless groove that nothing can stop, despite being made up of almost nothing (in my memories at least, and there\u2019s no question of listening to it again, it would be too simple, the instrumentation is rudimentary). It has a wicked groove \u2013 what the Americans might call &#8220;bad&#8221; <em>(or the Brits \u2018sick\u2019<\/em>&#8211; <em>I\u2019ve changed the French slang to British to make it make sense in English &#8211; translator\u2019s note)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tumu Pakara was a blind and rather old beggar. He would set himself up in a strategic place along the street where, to make a living, he would sing a capella. Well almost \u2013 he would shake the coins he\u2019d collected to make a beat. Without rhythm, there is no music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is Francis\u2019 tribute to childhood memories. A Francis who never cut his ties with childhood, as we can see in his final novel \u2013 which also won a literary award \u2013 <em>Rain Child<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we hear a Francis who never cut ties with anyone here on earth. It\u2019s is a fact that has been explained perfectly well by Michio Kaku (the American astrophysicist of Japanese origins) through quantum physics, while the veteran poet Birago Diop came to the same conclusion long before him: once and for all, &#8220;the dead are not dead&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTumu Pakara\u201d is a memory from my post-adolescence, from the album <em>Sanza Nocturne<\/em>. It came as a complete surprise, of the kind I would have with the album <em>Lambar\u00e9n\u00e9 Schweitzer.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Due to its stupifying effect the song is comparable to the slaps administered by Lino Ventura in the film <em>Let\u2019s Not Get Angry<\/em>. It would be a mistake to not turn the other cheek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And it is comparable above all to the last sunny images of Souleymane Ciss\u00e9\u2019s film <em>Yeelen \/ La Lumi\u00e8re<\/em> for it\u2019s sense that it is guiding you with complete confidence, and the confirmation of the poet\u2019s simple observation: \u2018Wherever you come from, that\u2019s where you come from\u2019. Francis always had a fascination, admiration and deep respect for the sun, god of the ancient Egypt.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"385\" height=\"385\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-80859\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey.jpg 385w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey-375x375.jpg 375w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey-85x85.jpg 85w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ac6dd8e3-bebey-73x73.jpg 73w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption> Tumu Pakara was initially release on the album <em>Sanza Nocturne<\/em> in 1984 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, three of Francis Bebey\u2019s children will talk about a song or an album by their late father. Today it\u2019s Toups\u2019 turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":80858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7833,9398],"tags":[314],"location":[7914],"yst_prominent_words":[39347,8403,39337,39336,39335,8414,8933,9163,39342,8435,8508,39346,39344,8512,8438,39253,39345,39338,8848,39343],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80956"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=80956"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=80956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}