DESCRIPTION:
Performance - 7 July 2012
"Ah, the spirits are near," Gambian griot Juldeh Camara told British rock guitarist Justin Adams as they finished a spontaneous song one night in Adams' small garage studio. "It came from nowhere, went on an entire journey. I looked at him, astonished," Adams recalls.

Adams is no newcomer to what some Westerners call "luck" or "coincidence" and some Africans call spirits, having alternated time in the Sahara with Tuareg bluesmen with time onstage as British rocker Robert Plant's guitarist. The past decade has seen a convergence of the unnameable forces that guide the soul of rock and roll and the essence of Western African music forms. Camara's evocative playing on the riti—a Gambian, one-string spike fiddle that evokes a diversity of sonorities—is unexpectedly compatible with Adam's signature Clash-meets-desert trance guitar sound. The feel for the music Adams and Camara share runs deep. The duo rarely bothers with plotting out set arrangements or managing strict rehearsals, but explores melodies and vocal lines intuitively, exchanging gestures and musical signals to craft and refine their songs. "I'll play a riff, and Juldeh will say, 'Keep that, keep that!', record it on his mobile phone, and start singing," Adams recounts. "I've never worked with a musician where we've talked so little, and played so much."