For the past four years, the shores of Lake Malawi have hosted the Lake of Stars festival, a celebration of African and Western music. Last October, the organisers decided to preface it by sending a select band of musicians on a 4,000km (2,500mile) road trip from Johannesburg to the festival site near Chintheche, and invited The Knowledge along. As details are announced for Lake of Stars 2008, here are some highlights of a sleepless trip.
DAY 1: HEATHROW
Joe Driscoll attaches a protective sock to the end of his didgeridoo for the flight to South Africa. This will be the farthest the beatboxing one-man-band has been from his native Syracuse, New York. Trey Reames, his genial giant of a manager, remembers their first meeting: “Kid, I told him [adopts gravelly mentor tone], you got charisma!”
DAY 2: JOHANNESBURG
We were expecting blazing heat, but it’s pouring with rain. Full of dank concrete, Jo’burg looks like the title sequence from The Office. We join up with the rest of the party, which includes Pete Son, aka the Petebox, a former UK champion beatboxer whose mohican belies the sweetest of natures. With Joe and Pete, we have two beatboxers on the trip – could a battle be on the cards? “Nah, man,” Driscoll grins. “I’m the Ringo Starr of beatboxing.” Both are booked to perform at Arts Alive, a festival designed to tempt visitors into Johannesburg’s crime-ridden city centre. “Jo’burg’s got a terrible reputation, most of it well deserved,” admits the organiser Kevin Stuart. “But it’s also got an incredible creative edge.”
DAY 3: JOHANNESBURG
Thulane, our driver, gives us a tour of his native Soweto, whose fortunes are rising, judging by the stadium being built for the 2010 World Cup. Zulu warriors in full battle dress greet us outside Nelson Mandela’s former house, but Pete is more interested in jamming with a local rapper, who goes by the charming name of Torture Punishment. We approach the evening’s Arts Alive festival with gun-crime horror stories ringing in our ears. But the scariest weapon on display is the huge, phallic kora being plucked by the Guinean superstar Mory Kanté, who performs an ecstatic rendition of his million-selling Yeke Yeke. Elsewhere, thecharismatic local hero Zuluboy mixes hip-hop with jazz and the maskande guitar style, and Driscoll charms the crowd with his rabble-rousing brand of reggae, hip-hop and blue-eyed soul.
DAY 4: JOHANNESBURG
It’s a day-long drive to the Mozambique capital of Maputo, so we board our safari bus at a spirit-sapping 6am. Nobody has been to bed. But a still-bouncy Reames holds court as we descend from the veldt through lush green valleys towards the border, leading us in an Almost Famous-style singalong to Finlay Quaye. Fourteen years after a civil war that killed more than a million, Maputo still looks down-at-heel, all rusty tenement blocks and glowering security guards. But the Latin influence on the former Portuguese colony is palpable: some if its clubs have been described as “several pieces of clothing short of an orgy”. The atmosphere is less incendiary at Coconuts, the Club Tropicana-style venue where Joe and Pete are booked to play tonight. Our resident MC Kimba Mutanda – half Malawian, half Danish, currently residing in Guildford – urges the crowd to “move your body like an African!” But this apathetic lot seem keener on slumping like octogenarians. Things improve when Mabulu, one of Mozambique’s most successful musical exports, take to the stage. They mix the local guitar-led Marrabenta music with mellifluous vocals in four languages – five when Driscoll performs an English verse he has written to their song about Aids in Africa.
DAY 5: MAPUTO
To a backstreet studio, where Driscoll and his saxophonist, James “Hollywood” Moore, are due to record their parts to the Mabulu track. Moses the sound engineer falls off his chair when Pete adds some drum’n’ bass of his own. It’s safe to assume that beatboxing hasn’t reached Mozambique yet.
DAY 6: MAPUTO
A glance out of the hotel window reveals Maputo to be under several feet of water. It looks like a cross between Venice and Ilford.
Thankfully, it’s not on the scale of the floods that hit Mozambique in 2000 and we’re soon on our way. We stop off at Helene, a tiny village of straw huts roasting under the afternoon sun, to visit Venáncio Mbande, a maestro of the chopi timbila. The dignified sexagenarian has been playing and making the xylophone-like instrument from mwenje (sneezewood) trees for more than half a century, and played the Royal Albert Hall in 1992. On its own, the timbila sounds like a malfunctioning Teas-made, but several played together have an eerie beauty, as Mbande demonstrates with his two sons and grandson. Driscoll spoils the vibe slightly by offering to buy one. Later, in the Indian Ocean fishing village of Vilankolo, the New Yorker hefts his guitar and does his best impression of a human iPod, showing Rainman-like recall of the melodies and lyrics to everything from the Eagles’ Take it Easy to Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.
DAY 7: VILANKOLO
Disaster! After a run-in with a rogue beer can on the beach, Driscoll is nursing a cut on one of his chord-playing fingers. With the festival three days away, it’s touch-and-go whether he will be fit to play. His usual ebullience is lacking, even after a visit to a local church, where he sings with a choir of harmonising kiddies. It’s left to Pete to wow the crowd of locals and tourists who have assembled at our campsite. The way that they holler, it is as if they’ve never heard a lad from Nottingham create drums, synths – even Pink Panthertrumpets – with his mouth, then use a recording pedal to layer them over each other. It’s extraordinary, like a one-man ghetto orchestra. This kid’s got charisma, too.
DAY 8: VILANKOLO
Garland and Gerrard, our high-energy South African guides, order us from our tents with sergeant-major barks and we set off through an apocalyptic landscape of red earth, termite hills, twisted trees and forest fires. Mutanda attempts to elevate flagging spirits: “Joe Driscoll’s cut his finger and may not be able to play guitar. But Hollywood Moore’s in the house, so everything should turn out fine.” The saxophonist, who is swiftly acquiring cult status, smiles from under his greying moustache.
DAY 9: CHAMOI
Heat blasts through the open windows and kids chorus “Hello!” as we crawl north. “I must have waved to two hundred people today,” grins Reames. In preparation for Malawi, Mutanda teaches us phrases in Chewa, its most widely spoken language. “How are you?” is “ Muli bwanji?” and “thank you” is “ zicomo.” Driscoll asks what the Chewa is for: “I’m hung like a squirrel but I’m really passionate.” The finger is healing, evidently.
DAY 10: CHINTHECHE
We turn a corner and get our first glimpse of Lake Malawi, a 680km-long (422mile) inland sea that was dubbed “the lake of stars” by David Livingstone. The festival site is breathtaking, with the two stages only yards away from a palm-fringed white beach and the turquoise lake stretching as far as the eye can see. Playing over the coming weekend are the cream of Malawian artists and British dance acts, including Annie Mac and Ben Westbeech. “ Muli bwanji!” booms Driscoll as he takes the stage several hours later, handily ingratiating himself with the smattering of Malawians in the crowd. The finger holds up admirably during the gig, and on into the early hours as he jams by a beach bonfire with Elias Kadwala, a 19-year-old local guitar prodigy. “This is where the real magic happens,” Driscoll grins, as the lights of fishing boats glint under the orange moon.
DAY 11: LAKE OF STARS FESTIVAL
As the Makambale Brothers band sit under a palm tree beating out harmonies on instruments made out of oil cans and leather suitcases, locals flock on to the site to join the Western backpackers and NGO workers. Pearson Malisau, 22, raised the £20 entrance fee by selling homemade bracelets and postcards: “They charge a lot, but I love the mixture of people, black and white,” he says. That was key, insists Will Jameson, who set up the festival after falling in love with Malawi during his gap year. “We didn’t just want to rock up with loads of Western DJs and have a big rave. We wanted it to be a collaboration with local people.” One of these is Lucius Banda, an ursine crooner who takes to the stage with a troupe of dancers clad in satin military uniforms. It’s like Barry White fronting the Village People – in a good way. One of Malawi’s biggest stars, Banda is going to be a tough act to follow but Petebox not only keeps the Africans interested but brings the house down, concluding his set with a rapturously received cover of Basement Jaxx’s Where’s Your Head At? “That guy has talent!” beams Malisau.
DAY 12
A refreshed-looking Malawian gentleman balancing a pint of beer on his head passes by offering sips from his carton of Chibuku Shake Shake – the local firewater, after which Jameson named his Liverpool club night. It tastes like sour milk and sawdust. Pete, now something of a celebrity, tutors a posse of young acolytes at an impromptu beatboxing workshop. The Beatlife Drummers march down the beach to entertain the locals who can’t afford tickets. And after sunset, the very British drum’n’bass of Rodney P and Skitz has a posse of twinkle-toed local lads kicking up clouds of dust. Jameson is chuffed. With 1,200 paying customers, £100,000 contributed to the local economy and more than £4,000 raised for Unicef, the festival is bigger than it’s ever been, and even more ambitious plans are already afoot for 2008. “ Zicomo!” yells the DJ as the last record grinds to a halt. “Africa’s time is coming!”
This year’s festival is on October 10-12 (www.lakeofstars.co.uk). There is a fundraising event at Fabric, Charterhouse Street, London (www.fabriclondon.com), on Feb 7
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