The Neville Brothers
Yellow Moon

THE REVIEW

This album was introduced to me by a German, in Kenya, during one of my countless trips to Africa between the late Eighties and early Nineties. He was responsible for the boats and yachts at the hotel where I was staying, as well as for a yacht owned by President Kenyatta, the president who managed to make his country independent. In the past, Volker, that was his name, had been a career military man, he was in the German Navy's diver unit, a sergeant or something like that, I don't remember exactly. Then in Kenya, after leaving the army, he opened a diving school for tourists that worked well. An enterprising type, therefore. And he married a beautiful French woman. But then tragedy struck. Also a motorcycle enthusiast, he had a Harley and always traveled with it on the rugged roads of Mombasa. A head-on collision with a matatu, the typical colorful buses teeming with people, nearly sent him to the other side, but luckily he had an excellent Kenyan surgeon in Nairobi on his side who managed to fix all the damages, particularly to his face and chest. Volker came out of it, he a big strong blond German, with seventy-two pins and plates in the skull and facial bones, and I don't know how many more in his chest. He came out with a mangled face, completely disfigured, dozens and dozens of scars, a crooked nose, deformed lips. And then, after a couple of years of convalescence, he decided to stop with cosmetic surgeries, and reinvented himself with boat maintenance, taking on the responsibility.
When I met him, it was a shock, he was really a "monster", his face deformed, one arm crooked, him all skinny. But he radiated a strength that was almost absurd, despite everything. I met him at a disco, I was 25, he was around 40. A colossal crush for both of us. I was in Kenya with my mother and her partner and when I introduced him, she said, you are crazy.
Volker was respected by everyone, white and black, he was German to the core, but not racist, he was methodical, cared about work, and also knew how to have fun. But he had one flaw: terrible musical taste.
He was divorced, so free. He took me everywhere, with him I saw Amboseli Park and we climbed quite high on Kilimanjaro. These were not trips organized by some agency, but just him and me alone in his jeep. "Out of Africa" style, you could say. And we always listened to this album, on tape. He had terrible musical taste, but he had this tape. So, imagine this New Orleans music, a mix of soul and deep bayou, celestial voices, and driving rhythms... How can I even review this album—perfect disc, emotional and spiritual, a superb sound, and an amazing band, a musical depth like few others—when it brings such a personal story to me? Listening to this album still takes me into the savannah, the giraffes swinging their necks, the elephants flaring their ears, the zebras staring at us serenely. A combination that didn't fit at all, music and environment were at odds. But I was in love, and this album reminds me of beautiful moments at the dawn of time.
Now, today I am an old woman, the memory of how this story ended has faded, he had the idea to leave Kenya, to take me to Madagascar, to open a hotel and I was supposed to take care of the tourist office being multilingual. Uhm, the detail was he had no capital, and the plan was that I, being Swiss, could find it in Swiss banks, between loans on my account.
It ended like that, a fulfilled dream killed by another unachievable dream.
However, I have this album left, the soundtrack of a love that lasted a few months and paradoxically the African fever that always, afterward, I carried with me.