DESCRIPTION:
I took these pictures of an itinerant blind musician while a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. He was playing and singing across the street from my house in the town of Sansanné-Mango. Banjo scholar Shlomo Pestcoe has identified the musician's instrument as the "lawa". In an email to me, he writes that the lawa is a "gourd-bodied 2-string plucked spike lute of the Tem people. It has a semi-spike neck -- that is, the neck extends about 3/4 the length of the body stopping a little ways short of the body's tail-end. The lutenist is playing with a plectrum, probably a traditional one made of stiffened cowhide." In addition he is using a stick to stop the strings. In the audio portion of this clip I am playing the "Early Black Banjo Piece" as transcribed by Frank Converse, and which in no way tries to replicate what the Togolese musician was playing...