On Location Video A Learning Experience

Higher Energy Diet On Menu

I was on my bike riding towards the Uxi Duxi, it was a Saturday evening, usually a can't miss busking night, but this one had light rain falling on and off.

[My first attempt to shoot a video on location, produced audio ruined by wind hitting the microphone (it's very sensitive) and, for some reason, video that looked like this still shot from it (above). It was as if the outdoor light overwhelmed the web cam]

I had woken up around 6 PM in such a stupor that I had just about written off the idea of going out to do anything. I put my FM radio on and heard the "roots music" show on NPR playing old blues stuff.

A cup of coffee revived me enough that I decided to try to make it to the Uxi Duxi for a shot of kratom, thinking that if I had to stay in because of the weather, it would keep me in a productive mode. And, if I decided to go out, which seemed like a long-shot as the cold drizzle hit my face, then it would keep me in a productive mode.


At one point, I could hear some very loud blues music that sounded like it was coming from not too far ahead of me, it was ricocheting around, making it sound like it was perhaps coming out of a building about 100 feet ahead on my left, and perhaps echoing off the school building to my right. I wouldn't find out until after leaving the Uxi Duxi that it was emanating from about 2 miles away at Delgado College.

It felt like a bit of a coincidence how much it sounded like the blues that I had just been listening to on FM radio.

From the Uxi Duxi the music seemed to be coming from one direction, and as I pedaled towards it, the immense volume of it became apparent.

I couldn't believe how well the vocalist sang. I could tell that it was a black lady.
As I approached Delgado College, I could see the stadium lights coming through the trees and I imagined that at any point I would come to some kind of gate leading to a stadium full of people and would get no further. I also imagined that the singer would be Patty Labelle or someone equally famous. She was hitting every note perfectly and kind of effortlessly, the way I have only heard Christina Friis do in New Orleans, and the way Isaac Stern played the violin. You couldn't find a mistake if you listened for one.

Her band sounded very proficient.

So, much was my surprise when, after rounding what turned out to be one final bend in the road which lead away from the lit up stadium, I saw ahead of me, across about 300 yards of flat terrain, the large black lady in a yellow and white pastel dress, and her band, apparently playing for nobody at all.

I wondered if they were shooting a scened for a movie or something about a band from Australia that practiced on the back porch of a hacienda for nothing but cayote's and Tasmanian devils.

I listened from that distance as the lady belted out what she said was going to be her last song and then mentioned that she usually "preached," but wasn't going to, most likely because it was the Delgado Music festival and not a church function. But then, she kind of preached before singing the song.

I had no idea who she was, but as I rode closer I could see that there were indeed about 20 people braving the cold and intermittent rain whom I couldn't see before because they were in a veritable pit about 12 feet lower than the stage.

I really debated upon whether I should tell her that she sang perfectly. I figured she didn't need to hear that from a guy riding up on a bicycle, but then imagined that, maybe she might.

She had bounded off the stage immediately upon finishing the last song and was standing just a few feet ahead of me, posing for pictures with a few older looking black ladies.

All of their chatter was about the weather; how it had rained but then stopped but then started again.

Then I realized that I wasn't humble enough to go up and compliment a musician and leave myself open to some kind of slight. She didn't seem like the type who would return: "Did I ask you for your opinion of my singing?!" but, one never knows what kind of mood a singer who, by sole virtue of her voice alone has invariably played for hundreds if not thousands of people; might feel after having sung her heart out for 20 people. The volume of her sound system was another clue about the hundreds or thousands that she might normally play for.
I had her pegged as being one of the "international" acts that some of the festivals around here boast about. I had read somewhere that the best, and most sensational band in The Gambia was to appear at one such festival, and wasn't sure if it was this one or not, but I was sure that the lady was probably a huge star somewhere.

I pedaled closer to her to give her the opportunity to acknowledge me, but she didn't. She actually squared her back to me as soon as I was within 15 feet and began an animated discussion with the last two ladies that she had posed for pictures with. They, in turn, never took their eyes off her face, as if doing their part to block me out.

The rest of her band were just walking past, on their ways to somewhere, one of them carrying his trumpet in its case, so there was nothing really "big time" about them in that regard -no limousine waiting backstage to whisk them away.
I just turned and left, never having had the chance to tell her whatever it was that I was going to; probably that I had heard her from 2 miles away and had only pedaled that far because she was that good a singer, and I might have told her that I fully expected her to be in a sold out stadium and not on a scaffold set up in front of the student union building.

"I guess I won't get the chance to tell her she sounded good," I mused out loud to a tall thin young lady with long curly black hair who either had on a lot of eye shadow or just has shadowy eyes, whom I found myself riding alongside for a few seconds.

She only looked at me suspiciously with some fright in her shadowy eyes. I realized that I was wearing my black hat that kind of looks like the thing Muslims wear, and maybe that was spooking them, since the lady usually preached. I was fishing for something, while at the same time trying not to identify with the thoughts I was having, ala Eckhart Tolle.

"It's probably better that I didn't. I'm a musician myself and, if people keep telling you you sound good, eventually you start to doubt it," I couldn't help adding. She looked like she was thinking about running.

I rode down the street a ways and found that it came out onto Carrolton Street not very far from the Rouses Market that I go to all the time. Cool, a college less than 2 miles from home, maybe I can start to become a hanger-outer around the music department, befriending instructors and students and finding ways to use the studio space and the pianos...

Weird how the night had gone, I thought.

I remembered the lady telling one of the people that she was posing for pictures with where she could find her on Facebook and where to buy her music, etc. and one of the things I caught was her saying: "With a 'Q'," and so I am sure that I have found the right singer, by Googling the Delgado Music Festival and seeing who was slated to perform on that particular stage at that time and that her first name indeed started with a "Q."




And, so, I give you Quiana Lynell, winner of last year's (2017) Sarah Vaughan award for best female jazz singer or whatever, given in New Jersey every year.

I have never heard a better singer*; I've heard her equal, maybe Cheryl Gamble (S.W.V.) but, you can't get any better than this lady, who was singing for 20 people and could be heard 2 miles away.

*Those Sopranos that sing Handel arias with symphony orchestras would be neutralized by having to put their renditions of "Going Down Slow," by St. Louis Jimmy Oden up against Quiana's.

And I say that, even though she turned her back away from me.

This has been done to me so often, and for so long, by people who preach or sing gospel music that I am used to it.

It used to truly bother me, back when I was impressionable and naive and thought they they, by the light of the Holy Spirit, could see evil in me and were turning their backs upon that.
I either had to believe that, or believe that it was the light of the Holy Spirit in me that they could see and were afraid of.