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My discussion of Camara Laye’s novel The Radiance of the King continues over at Words Without Borders. Here’s a snippet:

I want to start our discussion of The Radiance of the King by talking about the story itself. In the novel, Clarence, a white man of undefined origin and occupation, lands on the coast of Africa (which coast, you ask? We are not told) and in short order he loses all his money, in a gambling game, to a group of white men. He is evicted from his hotel, and the owner decides to keep Clarence’s trunk as collateral for the unpaid bill. Now Clarence is desperate; he wants to figure out a way to get his belongings, since his only possessions now are the clothes on his back, which are already showing signs of wear. He stumbles onto a street celebration for a local monarch, and immediately and rather arrogantly thinks that the king might hire him as an advisor, or at least vouch for him to the hotel owner, or, at any rate, know what to do to save Clarence from the misery in which he finds himself.

Do visit.

I love reading the profiles Maya Jaggi writes for the Guardian, don’t you? Her latest one is of Orhan Pamuk.

This past weekend, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted a conference on the work of Clifford Geertz, the famed anthropologist who wrote extensively about Morocco (and Indonesia.) The conference was organized by Susan Slyomovics and Lahouari Addi, and featured conversations between anthropologists from around the world. Unfortunately, I was working on a new piece, so I wasn’t able to attend any of the panels, but I managed to get away on Saturday night to attend the musical performance that took place at the Fowler museum.

The Aza music ensemble played Tamazight-language songs that fused indigenous Moroccan beats with modern sounds. They used the oud and qraqeb, but also the guitar, tabla, clarinet, and banjo. I don’t speak a word of Tamazight, but the music touched me and their rhythms made me want to get up and dance. I took a photo of them with my phone, but as you can see I was a bit far from the stage. You can listen to some excerpts from their music here. Aza was co-founded by two Moroccan-Americans from Santa Cruz, Fattah Abbou and Mohamed Aoualou, and includes four talented artists from the area as well.

Afterwards, the municipal orchestra of Sefrou took to the stage, accompanied by two guest artists from the Los Angeles area. The featured vocalist was the amazing Abderrahim Souiri, who performed an array of Andalusian songs; he was joined on stage by the equally amazing Raphael Skouri, who I believe is the cantor of the Baba Sale synagogue. Souiri and Skouri alternated singing verses in Arabic and in Hebrew, and their voices complemented each other beautifully, culminating in a rousing rendition of the late Abdessadek Cheqara‘s “Bent Bladi.” It was nice to have an evening in which so many different components of the Moroccan music scene were present. The lyrics were in Tamazight, Arabic, and Hebrew, and were sung by Arab and Berber, Muslim and Jewish, male and female musicians.

What happens when I try to cook.

Sad news this morning: Novelist and critic Elizabeth Hardwick, who co-founded the New York Review of Books, has died.