Abidjan Bound!

Another huge day for Zieti! Cherif and his good friend Shaka (pictured at left) came over today with Shaka’s van to collect our next installment in this Abidjan Live! project. They took almost half of what we have to send, and will have it on a fast boat to Abidjan in the next few days. This container ship takes only 28 days to cross, so Narcisse should have everything in hand by mid-late March.

Included in this shipment is a laptop, webcam and digital camera, to better document things in Abidjan and hugely increase the ease and quality of communications across the pond. Skype is already loaded, along with a massive trove of funky music from Africa and all over the globe.

Beyond those elements, we focused this shipment on infrastructure for a small club. 16-channel mixer & snake, power amp, speakers, mics, mic stands, cables, keyboard and voltage converters will all make this trip.

Cherif has another container shipping out this Spring, and continues to offer us free space and invaluable help negotiating customs, without which this almost certainly couldn’t happen. Our next installment will include bass and guitar amps, guitars, trombone, stereo components, monitors, spare drums, bigger power amp and speakers to match, all boxed and labeled and just awaiting the tides.

That would pretty much cover everything Zieti needs to equip a boomin’ live music spot in Abidjan. Narcisse is ready, excited and more than able to make this work. Laurent is still reportedly making his way to the city, and will hopefully rejoin Narcisse soon.

To those of you who have donated gear or money, or bought an advanced copy of Zieti’s debut CD, thank you! thank you! You are what makes this possible.

We’ll keep the updates coming, along with details of Zieti’s CD Release Party March 8th in DC…stay tuned…