The Sounds of Sanji
LIKE RAIN BLOWN in on a West African wind and falling over a hopeful New Mexican desert. Like raindrops in the hips, the hands. The feet light as rain moving over sand to the
sound of the ngoni, the rhythmic harp of Mali, with its big round gourd base covered by goat hide and the fishing wire strings in full voice at the beckoning of Miles Anderson’s fingers.
Together he, Rob Usher (ngoni), Mitchell Olson (ngoni) and Adam Wall (djembe) make up Sanji (pronounced Sahn-jee; Bambana for “rain”), threading traditional west African rhythms made new into pulsing crowds at the Farmers Market and Parse Seco and High Frequency Loft.
Anderson, 29, grew up in Albuquerque with his cosmopolitan-eared
parents pushing Ali Farka Touré tunes through the speakers and regularly
going to Zimbabwean-influenced Wagogo shows. He loved the happy feel of the music, playing drums with
his Guinean friend. When a friend introduced Anderson and Olson (who also grew up in ABQ) to the ngoni at an open mic 10 years ago, a magic magnetism occurred.
“Once I started playing the it, feeling it, it took over my life,” says Anderson, who later lived with a family in Burkina Faso studying the instrument and its
improvisations, and the way music and celebration satiate the culture where everyone’s included in weddings or bar jams, even a white boy from the States.
Must’ve been February or March of this year when Usher met Anderson busking outside of Cid’s. Must’ve been
like walking up to a mirror — this darkhaired man playing the same strings that Usher, 30, had been playing back in the Bay for years under the guide of Mamadou Sidibe.
“[Sidibe] took me in when I barely knew any kind of music,” says Usher, who started his musical journey at 21 after hearing Michael Meade’s mix of djembe and storytelling, and went on to study drums. When Usher first
touched a ngoni, he decided, ‘This is the instrument I’m going to play
forever.’ They’d practice in Sibide’s tiny cottage lined with ngonis. Usher
learned how originally the songs he was learning were meant for specific trance-inducing rituals of the Donso, the hunters of the tribe.
Usher and Anderson became fast friends and would practice with Olson, exchanging what they’d learned. Usher would play his smaller kamale (meaning “young man’s heart”) ngoni in the Mali style, which is particularly percussive and repetitive. Funky. Jazzy.
It was all loose living room playing around until Wall, who’s been trying to bring musicians together since he
landed in Taos last August, suggesting that they could really do something with the bright, angelic-sounding
harps he’d been adding his drum beat to. He started arranging music for the group.
“I’ve been doing everything I can to harmonize all the bits and pieces of our songs,” says Wall, 33. Wall’s been drumming since the kid days of sneaking into the basement and shyly banging on the drum kit, and, older, on across the country touring
national parks, and even drumming down into Peru, where he made his small djembe. Lately he’s been enamored with the west African ternary rhythms, the beats of three creating a cyclical pattern, a spinning feeling. “Drumming is very much alive to me,” says Wall, who believes in the power of music to shape community. “I try to bring that understanding when I play. Different rhythms open people up. I can see it.”
On a cool morning in October, the Farmers Market is alive with Sanji. Kids shake and swirl in front of the band. An old woman grabs air in front of her and pulls it close. Long-skirted women
float and flutter. Men sway their hips. Anderson sings a traditional griot song about how there’s strength in not fighting, how the power is in restraint, peace,
forgiveness. The strings seem to rain. The drum heartbeats. Wall encourages people to join. There’s such a smiling
lightness in the air.
A classic N'goni instrument.