Drive for Several Hours and What do you find? A Full-on Rock concert
Following our numerous activities in Keur Soce and making our way up to Podor in the north of Senegal, West Africa, we had some more work to do. However, we found time to actually enjoy ourselves with a concert there on the banks of the Senegal River.
There is a nice hotel where we stay in Podor, which is quite a surprise considering the remoteness of the village. It's a long way from anywhere.
But we knew in advance that there was going to be a concert there, actually a music festival that would last for over three days. And we were able to watch the first days events from the rooftop of our hotel.
The star of the show (and native son of Podor) is Baaba Maal, a world famous musician and singer. His picture is at the top of this blog post. He might not be well known in America, but he is very famous world wide. His influence is considerable and when he shows up here at his hometown, things get busy and exciting.
He invites several other musicians to perform during the festival, among them Orchestra Baobab, other international stars, and some local talent that he is helping to develop. It's an amazing event, with top quality sound and lights, and is probably 250 miles from the nearest city of any size.
The event started on Friday night, not long after we arrived in town. There were a bunch of speeches and other ceremony. One of our favorite things was the fancy boat races on the river. And there was a flag ceremony and dancers and all kinds of entertainment.
Eventually the opening ceremony concluded and they prepared for the music to start. Only it didn't start on time. In fact, it was really late, like super late, like "what the heck is taking so long?" Hey, this is Africa, time is not that important to these guys. The music that was supposed to start at 10:00 ... started at 2:00 AM! Yikes!
At least we were semi-prepared for this and had taken a nap earlier in the evening. But four hours late is hard to adjust to. The Africans seemed to take it in stride. Once it started it was a lot of fun.
The next night was the same, even with some effort to start earlier. Of course, by the time they finish it's 5:00 am, and everyone goes home to sleep.
By the third night of this, we are getting used to it, and it's the night for the headliner Baaba Maal to do his show. He is an amazing musician and performer, and the show was wild and wonderful. At one point they even brought out a couple of horses to present to him. They were right in front of the stage!
The fans go completely nuts for him, and by the end of the hour and a half session, it's like a riot going on, people throwing chairs and stampeding the stage! Dude!
There were a couple different venues, with acts performing all night long. You have to catch up on your sleep during the day if you can, or not at all if you're busy. When we left there, we were "plenty tired" in African parlance.
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