Читать книгу Strange Things Happen: A life with The Police, polo and pygmies - Stewart Copeland - Страница 18

Far up the Congo River, in the heart of Africa, is atributary called the Sangha, on the banks of whichwe’re shooting a movie.

Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the mad Belgian explorer, is shouting at me through the clattering drums and chanting natives. The jungle is alive with music.

“Go with the shaman!”

He’s pointing to a dark hut across the clearing. I scramble through the dancing frenzy of the massed Pygmies and duck into the tribal Holy of Holies. The shaman is there, suiting up for the big party.

Outside the hut, two or three hundred Pygmies are cutting it up on the dance floor, singing their swaying melodies and banging their elephant skin drums. There are more Pygmies gathered than have ever been seen before—even by Pygmies. The scene is lit by bonfires and by big klieg lights that we have borrowed from the French logging crew whose camp has been our base down here in the deep jungle of northern Congo.

It’s dark in the hut, but light from the fire is streaming through the leafy walls. The shaman is rustling his relics as I stumble in. I’m crouching under the low roof and mumbling some supportive incantations of my own. Just to put him at ease, you understand. We’re in the same business, after all.

“Jesus loves you, this I know,” I venture.

He peers at me without much expression and then returns to his preparations. I’m about as relevant to his business as a man from Mars. He dons a grass cape that covers his head and drapes down to cover his feet. Brushing past me, he steps out into the clearing.

As one, the voices rise to a higher-pitched fever as the shaman twirls among them. The strands of his headdress splay around him as he spins. Behind him your correspondent is grooving along for the ride, trying to fit in and dancing up a little improvised frenzy of my own. The throng is so dense that most of my gyrations are confined to waving my arms above their heads.

JP and the crew are there with the cameras, but I can see over the bobbing heads of the natives that he has lost our love interest. The scene we are trying to shoot calls for her to be discovered, at last, by the Rhythmatist in the deep jungle. She is found among the lost Mboroo tribe and has been entranced by their strange music. Our heroine is played by JP’s fiancée, Tisch.

But the shot is not going as planned. These are real Fourth World natives, and they really are entranced by their strange music. Tisch, daubed with paint and festooned with feathers, has been adopted by the women of the tribe. They have surrounded her and are wailing at her, imbibing of her outlandish blond pallor. She too is wailing.

“JayPeeeee! They won’t let me through!” she beseeches, struggling to get to the men’s circle, where she can be discovered by the intrepid Rhythmatist. Pygmy social rules are very strict about this, as it happens. Women only dance with the women.

JP is in more of a frenzy than anyone. He’s a director who wants his shot. He clears a path through the womenfolk and drags Tish over to the men’s side—where I’m still thrashing away.

Actually by now I’ve got kind of a groove going with my new brothers in music. The rhythm is tricky but the pulse is clear, and I have pretty much got the hang of it. The melody is otherworldly and rhythmically harder to fathom. Somehow their voices fuse in choral waves and spirals, swirling up to peaks and swooping down to deep earth tones. I’m just chanting Beach Boy songs and swooping along with them.

“Ooooweeeoooweeeoooooo!”

The story we are trying to tell in this odd movie we are making is kind of improvised. And JP is improvising now, inflamed no doubt by the general hubbub.

“OK, now ravish her!” he shouts to me.

“Whuh?”

I was midswoop, but now I have paused, trying to hear him through the din.

“Keep dancing! And then ravish her!”

“JayPeeee!” wails Tisch.

“Radish?”

JP is on a mission, and he won’t quit until he has me transgressing upon his babe in front of the astonished Pygmies. The music abates momentarily while the natives process this new information about the White Giants; but then they get the drift and are back into full swing as I perform my thespian duty on the director’s girlfriend.

I’m sure if we had any idea what we were doing before we got to Africa this movie would probably make more sense, but I’m also sure that we wouldn’t be having anything like this amount of fun shooting it. We’re just making this up as we go along. There are just five of us in two Land Rovers. JP and I are in front, trailblazing and searching out locations for our ever more flimsy “plot”; behind us are Richard, Paul, and Lorne on sound, camera, and everything else. In the first vehicle our story conferences are becoming ever more feverish as we struggle to imagineer all of the cool stuff that’s happening around us into some kind of plausible “story.” The only plot point that we can agree on is that the love interest is lost and can’t be found.

Neither of us knows a thing about plot development or denouement or epiphany, but JP sure does know how to sniff out adventure. This intrepid Belgian is the real Indiana Jones—even though I’m not sure if it’s a case of art imitating life or vice versa. He’s got the leather jacket and the indefatigable hat (just like the movie) and even sometimes uses a long whip for flicking mosquitoes and tarantulas; but when you are carving your way through the deep jungle, JP is the real thing. He can sidle up to anyone, Samburu chief or customs agent, and work something out. With his Babel of languages and patois he can cajole and barter us into (or out of) anywhere. It’s his easy tongue and tight fist on the wallet that is stretching our twoweek budget into two months across the Dark Continent.

And we are arguing the whole way. I’m after musical/cultural truth, and he wants to shoot a Hollywood blockbuster. That’s because he has spent his life documenting the cultural truths of the vanishing Fourth World beyond the last frontiers of the planet. The Holy Grail for most of his life has been contact with the last and most remote tribes. He’s been hit by every form of tropical disease, snake, tsetse fly, and scorpion in the swamps and jungles of his day job. Now he’s ready for the comforts of show business, and I’m his ticket.

Off the east coast of Africa we have found a scenic little slaver island called Lamu. From this spot Arab traders would venture into the heartland to spread Islam and capture humans. Of course that’s all forgotten now and the modern islanders are a cheerfully roguish mix of Africa and Islam. The wealth from the bad old days is still evident in the fine Arab architecture with its lavish filigree, but the sandy streets have never seen cars.

While the crew hunker down in Mombasa to clean their gear, JP and I catch a boat out there and discover that it’s the perfect location for a chase scene. We figure that the black-clad Rhythmatist arrives with his sampling equipment and is just about to discover…(we’ll think up something) but the natives become agitated by the strange ritual music emanating from his black-clad traveling lab.

Which gives you a pretty good idea of how thinly we spread the logic as we built this cinematic masterpiece. Never mind how we got here, this locale is perfect for a chase, so let’s have a chase. When the crew arrives we hire some donkeys and start rolling. It’s Ramadan, when faithful Muslims fast by day and feast by night, so the local extras are photogenically grumpy as they wave scimitars and swarm after me on a horde of donkeys. Of course the wily black-clad Rhythmatist is too slick for them and his donkey is the sleekest. He gives them the slip before we lose the light and then go feasting with the erstwhile bad guys. Deep into the night we laugh as we languish on the lamplit streets of Lamu.

In the bar of the Nairobi Sheraton, JP sniffs out a huge game reserve and ranch owned by the billionaire Khashoggi family. In no time at all he has sidled up to young Khalid Khashoggi and scored an invitation to shoot there. It’s perfect for our story—whatever that might be—so we load up the Rovers and head out there. One of the toys at the ranch is an excellent black ex-polo horse that Kahlid offers as a prop. It’s certainly an improvement on the donkeys. We devise a scheme to shoot an establishing shot of the black-clad Rhythmatist traveling across Africa on his quest for…we’re still arguing about that. Anyway he’s traveling, and as he travels he comes alongside a herd of giraffe and rides along poetically with them.

Before sunrise the trackers are out over the savannah, and they have located the perfect herd. The giant herbivores are deep in

acacia cover for the night, but the beaters gently coax them toward an open plain where the black-clad horse groover is waiting. As the gray dawn grows I’m astride this dark mare with my ears stretched out to the sounds of the wild. Over yonder in the mist, JP is yelling something from his perch on top of one of the Land Rovers. He wants the giraffe to emerge from the thicket and majestically caravan in front of the camera with the far-seeking Rhythmatist sojourning scenically alongside.

My horse hears the giraffes before I do, and she’s not wild about it. By the time I can see them towering through the early light, the mare is spooked out of her skin and is trotting and prancing with fear. Horses don’t safari for pleasure. They aren’t interested in anything that might come crashing through the bush. But I’ve got her more or less steady when the giraffes appear. My attempts to persuade the horse to snuggle up to the herd, however, are not anything you would see in a cowboy movie. The black mare is struggling to trot backward away from the wild giraffes or, if I can get her to move forward, is making a tight circle. She has no interest in the giraffes at all. And I’m not looking that sage myself.

I’m technically the boss in this relationship, so I get her moving toward the tall ones. But she’s so full of fear that if she’s going to do anything for me, it’s going to be at a gallop. So now we are charging toward the gentle giants. As soon as they catch sight of us, they are off across the open plain—with me and my steed in pursuit. Wow, this is fun! Now that the horse is at a flat-out gallop, she’s much calmer and soon catches up with our quarry. The giraffes are huge and beautiful. As the horse gallops alongside, they appear to be in slow motion. I have to be careful not to get too close, though. One kick from Jimmy Giraffe would take me out of the saddle and turn my skull into peanut butter and jelly.

Man, I’m in heaven. We are charging right along the equator where the dawn happens very quickly. The sun is bursting over the edge of the Maasai Mara as the posse of giraffes, horse, and Rhythmatist takes flight across the open savannah. Now this is the real cowboy movie. The brilliant golden side lighting of the rising sun against the dull blue awakening sky finds me galloping free over the distant African plain with the theme to Bonanza ringing in my ears. This is truly one of the Great Designer’s more intelligent moments. Sometimes the concentrated beauty of a moment can make even the craftiest professional shaman stop and thank.

My rapture is interrupted suddenly by the advent of an acacia thicket, into which the giraffes continue their canter without breaking stride. End of adventure. The prickles on those acacia tree are like nails. The giraffes don’t seem to mind and can plow right through, but for me on my horse those needles are at face level. “Whoa, Nelly!” I cry, tugging the reins and leaning back against the stirrups. My agile little mare puts four hoofs in front of her and stops like a polo pro. She would have bounced me right out the front door if I hadn’t been ready.

Problem is that the giraffes broke cover and headed off totally in the wrong direction, away from the cameras. So while I was freebirding with my tall giraffe brethren, JP was over the horizon, howling profanities. Later, when I return sheepishly to HQ we arrange to try again tomorrow morning.

It actually takes us two more glorious mornings before we are able to line up the giraffes, horse, and camera. We end up with twenty-three seconds of wild ride on film. It doesn’t look much like a traveling shot, so we’ll have to think up another dubious plot point to explain the Rhythmatist’s relationship with the galloping giraffes. Maybe something to do with rhythm and the herding instinct…gimme a minute.

Another of the Khashoggi toys is a pride of lion who live in a large compound surrounded by fourteen-foot-high chain-link fencing. The whole animal thing is a little distracting for us since the Rhythmatist is a musicologist not a biologist, but we are broad-minded when it comes to dumb plot turns that put our hero next to photogenic stuff. Lions? Um…OK, he’s got to commune with the lions who are the last mammals to have seen the girl who has disappeared (or has been kidnapped, or who has gone on a spiritual quest, or…something).

Young Khalid also has, in one of the air-conditioned sheds at the ranch, a full set of band equipment—guitars, amps, PA system, and drums. Those Saudi kids love to jam! The drums are a little obvious, but what the heck. We load them up, drag them out to the lions, and set up a shot.

Now lions are best avoided but aren’t usually a problem out in the bush. For some reason they regard humans as superior predators, or at least one or two rungs up the food chain. If you are in a vehicle they pay no attention at all, but if you are on foot they will generally move away with majestic caution, unless you surprise or corner them. Cubs are less cautious, more playful, and way scarier than the adults. Lions actually become more dangerous when they have greater contact with humans because they lose their fear. Perhaps they start noticing ours.

Within the lion’s enclosure is another area sectioned off with a ten-foot-high wall of chain-link. In this area a chicken wire cage has been constructed in which my drums are set for me to serenade the lions. I’m sure JP actually thinks that we’re going to get the lions grooving to the beat. We have both studiously avoided any talk of what relevance any of this might have to our film.

I notice that there is no top to my little chicken wire cage. This amuses both our crew and the Khashoggi ranchers.

“Show no fear!” they chortle.

I insist that I want full chicken wire coverage, and they start rigging while still snickering about the scaredy-cat black-clad guy. The wranglers are dubious that the big cats will come anywhere near the noisy drums, so the feed truck arrives full of fresh kill with which to festoon the cage. It is hoped that the meat show will inspire the beasts to enjoy the music. Or at least to get close enough for us to get our shot.

As soon as the lions get a whiff of the meat truck they are over the ten-foot fence in a twinkling. They have to be shouted at and coaxed to back off while I climb into my cage and the wranglers festoon it with fresh gazelle. The lions retreat snarling as the guys wave sticks and throw rocks at them. As the ranchers finish their set dressing and clear the shot, the lions come right up for dinner. But when I hit my drums they stop dead in their tracks. They do not like my music. JP can shout “Action!” till he’s blue in the face but Simba ain’t coming anywhere near my racket. Their ears are back, and they’re cowering. So I have to stop hitting the drums and just pretend to play. The deep culture of this transports me. Just like a Britney Spears video. After waving my arms for a while in the direction of my drums, being very careful not to hit them, the wild beasts pluck up courage and begin to approach the cage. Soon they are swiping at the treats and JP has the cameras rolling happily.

One lion has discovered that he can reach under the cage. In fact, as his forearm advances under the chicken wire toward my bass drum the whole side of the cage is coming adrift! Just as the consequence of this is dawning on me there is a huge crash next to my head where one of the tawny brutes is climbing onto the roof! The totally inadequate-to-bear-the-weight-of-a-lion roof of my chicken wire cage is just beginning to sag when, faster than thought I’m the loudest drummer on the planet blazing away with terrified fury on the Khashoggi drums. I think it’s the only drum solo that I’ve ever played in my life—can’t stand drum solos—but I’m hammering now! The lions back off with an expression on their faces that reminds me of a certain singer that I know…

I’ll have to tell the Maasai about this trick. All they have to do is carry a chrome snare drum with them when out in the bush protecting (or rustling) the cattle. For myself, I’m relieved at the lions’ poor taste in music.

WE SQUABBLE ENDLESSLY OVER the finer points of the plot as we cross Africa but we are of one mind as we grab every opportunity to interact with the music that is everywhere. Africans apply rhythm to life as if it were flavoring. Any physical activity has a groove, particularly if it’s a coordinated team activity like handling a boat, loading a truck, or enjoying life.

My theory is that I should be able to find the antecedents of American music here on this continent. By American music I mean modern popular music that is in four-four rhythm with a backbeat and uses the flattened seventh, or “blue note.” I’m looking for the ingredients of our music that don’t come from Mozart. It’s a useful thing for me to know about since I make a living as a purveyor of this uniquely American mix of Africa and Mozart and which we Americans export all over the world. It’s my (far from unique) Out of Africa theory of why American music rules.

We generally steer clear of the cities in our quest, mostly because JP is too cheap (with my money) to pay city prices. Airconditioning is for pussies. For JP drinkable water is for pussies. Out in the villages there is music everywhere. The first thing about Africa is that it’s not one place. It’s a giant continent with huge diversity and many different places. The urgently tight polyrhythms of the coastal Giriama, the throaty war music of the Maasai, the heavy drums of Burundi, and the transcendental chanting of the Pygmies are just some of the wildly contrasting styles that cross our path as we follow the equator from east to west. But none of them sound like Chuck Berry.

One city that we can’t avoid is Kinshasa, Zaire. This town is the wildest rodeo in Africa. There is a splendid dictator holding the country together while his cohorts help themselves to everything in sight. The guys with guns are running everything, that is, if anything is being run at all. Getting into Zaire is easy. Just pay the Man and keep walking. Getting out is more of a problem.

We’re on our way to Gabon, where JP knows a guy who is tight with President Bongo. Before us is the Congo River, fast flowing and croc-infested. On the other side is the sleepy little Belgianflavored Brazzaville. On this side is bedlam at the quayside. A large riverboat—more like a city on a raft—is disembarking, and the men with guns are in charge of threatening, herding, obstructing, and abusing the river people. This entrepôt is where the wealth of the hinterland comes down the river to the capital and the goons get to tax it. The multitudes are heaving this way and that under the lash of the bosses.

We manage to thread the throng and get aboard the crowded ferry. As the ship pulls out into the current we can see a chain gang of criminals being off-loaded from the river raft. They are herded onto trucks, and we shudder at their fate for a moment before turning our gaze to the approaching shore. Brazzaville. We can see tree-lined boulevards and cheerful-looking citizens as the vessel nears the quiet little harbor.

With glad hearts we’re soon down the ramp and JP is head-to-head with the customs guy. But it’s not going well. For some reason he’s not responding to our blandishments. Soon there are several uniforms leaning over our passports with furrowed disapproval on their brows. This is bad because now any bribery has to be public, which totally takes the savoir faire out of it. You just don’t know how the group will respond. So we learn, with heavy hearts, that we must cross back to Kinshasa and get proper Zairian exit visas.

And the ship is now casting off. We need to be aboard, so JP zips up his silver tongue, and we’re on our way back to crazy Kinshasa. Around us the river air is thickening and with equatorial speed, night is falling in darkest Congo. This is the last boat before the crocodiles take over. We’ll spend the night in Zaire.

At the customs shed the last of the river people are being processed, scolded, and fleeced as we get to our turn with the Man. He’s just plain pissed off. His has not been a good day. Our documents are just the final and worst insult after a day of river scum.

We have just come from Brazza? But we couldn’t enter Brazza? What was our problem in Brazza? As he considers the weight of our implausible story, other passports and documents are being thrust at him from every angle. The African customs official is a multitasker. Standing in line must be a European invention because you don’t see it much here. Any dealing with officialdom is shared with other supplicants who are weaker than you. Stronger ones are ahead of you. When the official hits a problem document, he merely bats it away and plucks another from the multitude that bobs before him.

He has batted ours away several times now, and the throng around us can smell our weakness. They clamor over and around us. JP is raging through his repertoire of Gallic persuasions, temptations, and damnations. But Kinshasa Man is not having it. Suddenly his eyes slacken and he hunches forward.

“Go sit over there!” he commands.

Foolishly, we’re not having it either, dammit. We’re still talking.

“Over THERE!” he shouts. Then he’s standing up and shouting as he bangs the desk with his power stick. Now we are dancing cheek to cheek with the men with guns as they drag us over to the side of the room. Our buddy is still shouting orders, so the heavies take us outside and handcuff us to a bench. Just like that, we are fucked. Chained to a bench pending further review, at the pleasure of our new friend. The soldiers wander off, but we’re still chained to the bench. The crowds have begun to thin, and the dimly lit quayside is slowing down.

The human traffic is just a trickle when we spy a skinny white man and manage to catch his attention. He nods but keeps moving. Not much he can do on his own. JP is shouting “Belgique!” to the back of his head as the stranger fades off into the night.

Soon it’s just JP and me, chained to a bench and deep into our usual “story conference.” He’s got me convinced that ours is an “elliptical” film, whatever that means. The evening around us has become dark and quiet. But not completely quiet. During a pause in our debate, while I consider the magnitude of his concept, I hear music.

It’s a lilting, throbbing, bouncing, laughing, dancing, and romancing kind of music. It’s nothing like the stuff we have been hearing out in the bush; this is city music. It has those ingredients that I have been looking for. Of course it does, because it’s the return voyage of Chuck Berry. I’m hearing guitar, bass, and drums—American instruments, rhythms, and harmony—having traveled back to Africa.

It’s coming from a radio inside the building. It dawns on us that we’ve actually been forgotten. About an hour ago there was a changing of the guard, with a lowering of flags and a clanging of gates. Our friend never came for us. Heck, he’s probably got people who pissed him off chained up all over town. The night shift probably doesn’t even know we’re here.

In our most dulcet tones we start shouting out to the guys in the building.

“Hel-LO, oh,” we call, with friendly charm.

Soon the night guys are peering at us from behind their flashlights. It seems boorish to go into details of our misunderstanding with the day shift. With these guys we feel that we can make a fresh start. What’s that music? I inquire in my lame French.

“Ahh , Franco Franco!” they reply, and one of them goes back inside to turn it up.

Just when we have the Bantu chiefs more or less mollified, we get a welcome visitor. The Belgian embassy was contacted by the passing stranger, and this is the ambassador himself coming over to investigate the report of two of his compatriots chained by goons down at the dock. The guards are impressed by his stature as he drops names of the most senior and most heinous thugs in government. Best of all, he brought beer.

Soon we are all grooving to the Lingala music. The party has moved inside the building and we are unleashed, with cheerful apologies all around.

Things are a lot more comfy, and we’re out of bondage, but the soldiers can’t exactly let us go. If Ahab locked us up, he had better see us there in the morning or the night guys might get trouble. Regretfully, we must stay.

Well, we’re here among friends now, and the hotels we stay at generally aren’t much better than this anyway, so sure, this is good. And I could listen to this music all night.

Next morning the ambassador returns. Phone calls have been made, and now Ahab is all smiles as he stamps our passports and waves us on. Once more our hearts are glad as we pull into Brazzaville, although JP is sniffing with disapproval as I drag him straight to the Sofitel Hotel and, for the first time in weeks, slap out my plastic. After our night with the mosquitoes in the shed I need a shower, hard liquor, and soft sheets.

JP, the mad Belgian explorer, is already down at the bar. He has sidled up to some guy who’s got a plane flying upcountry to bring supplies to the logging companies near Ouésso. That’s right in the middle of Pygmy country…