Heady emotion filters through the still air, thick with the scent of eucalyptus-he hasn’t put out the stove. An original tune painfully prepares to make its entrance into the world. A long silence settles in while Marvane-that’s what I call him-aligns and adjusts the chunks of calabash gourd under the strings of his instrument.
I’ve stopped greeting him, at least while he’s playing, so as not to frighten away, like birdsong, the music my ears drink in from the street.īut today, he breaks off. On this morning, the old musician stops playing the moment I bend my lanky bag of bones and squeeze through the tiny doorframe of his home.
