Segou Heat, and Recording Music Across Continents

Last time, I told you about the fateful moment Mariam and I first played music together. But, how could we possibly collaborate together? She lives in Mali, I live in California and there is so such a thing as immigration.  

I’ll tell you what happened next.

Now, (Time travelling back to Mali many years ago ..)

I tell Mariam that I have some songs I’ve recorded that I’d like her to sing on.

She comes out to Segou (2-3 hours from Bamako), where I’m staying, to record.

Being the anal retentive, OCD person I can be, I had painstakingly recorded all the parts for 5-7 songs already.

That meant that I had chosen the appropriate keys for the songs.

My plan was just to have her record vocals on top of everything.

Man, did I make a mistake! I never really took into account the fact that I didn’t know her vocal range.

We try to have her record the songs in the keys I selected. But, virtually none of them were recorded in keys which were the optimum range for her voice.

So, I have to scrap all of the 5-7 songs I brought with me, and re record everything from scratch in Mali.

It is a headache.

On the upshot, we have so much fun working together.

She keeps me laughing most of the days we were working together. And her singing sounded awesome.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BjKnkHbFE_x

We work together for about a week in Segou.

We start talking about her coming to the states to collaborate further.

I remember us having that conversation on her last day in Segou.

I didn’t really know what she would say.

I mean if it were most Malians, I could tell you that they were respond with yes.

But Madama is a different sort of person. She isn’t predictable in that way. She follows her own norms, and sometimes to others they may seem opaque.

I am kind of surprised to hear her seem excited about the idea.

But, I had never brought anyone to the states before and didn’t know the first thing about how it was done.

It feels like I am still at the bottom of the mountain, looking up at the peak which we are about to scale.

Do you want to hear how we managed to navigate the immigration complex and work together in the States? There are two ways do that: 

1)    Sign up for a free preview of one of Mariam’s courses:

https://courses.orchestragold.com/courses/bamananfoli

2)    Sign up for her membership:

https://courses.orchestragold.com/bundles/founders

Wishing you all good things,