Kayes-Ba by Boubacar Traoré

Brian moved in with me after he came back from Africa. He had a Fulbright in Ghana and when that ended he came to New York. In our weird storefront apartment he would look for a job and log his hours of African rap interviews. He’d come home from Ghana and elsewhere with a small plethora of cassettes; all colorful colors, bad recordings and hand-me-down flannels. I used a Walkman at the time and, though he told me not to, I would borrow the tape this song comes from and listen to it on the train. Boubacar Traore, I later found out, was a former Malian rock star, singing revolutionary songs in leather jackets in the late sixties. Then he got poor and sold everything, working unsuccessfully as a street vendor until a friend became his patron and bought him equipment. Older, he softened and sang in Malian French, bemoaning everything. I watched a short movie about him, watched him walk around in orange sands and sit on stumps, always carrying a guitar and singing with his voice mild and head down. It’s a lamenter’s music, either about his hometown or dead wife, unpurposefully and ineffably lush and miserable, sort of how I try to live.

La Ritournelle by Sebastien Tellier

My friend told me this song sounds like the Party of Five theme song. That is why I like it. When it played in yoga class I pressed my ear to the mat and tried not to lip synch French broken English; quick snare and corrected posture. Slipping on someone else’s sweat isn’t so bad when I listen to this. Tonight we listened to Lion King soundtrack music and I struggled with the core exercises, lost grip on my binds. I could have used a broken-hearted Parisian.