PRIVATE DANCER

I recently went to go see the incomparable Kel Tamashek (also called the Tuareg) band Tinariwen at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

For the uninitiated, Tinariwen sounds like not a whole lot else. Imagine traditional African and Middle Eastern music mixed with American surf guitar and you begin to get the idea. The members of Tinariwen were exiled from Mali for political reasons(my details get fuzzy here)and now play incredible music, along with a handful of other bands from the region- Group Bombino and Group Doueh among them.

Their most recent record, "Aman Iman," is absolutely phenomenal. It had been well over a year since they'd been stateside, so as you can imagine, I was pretty damn well psyched to have a shot at seeing them again. I can only imagine the logistics involved in getting such a band into the states and playing shows has got to be one monstrous pain in the ass (though admittedly, this most recent trip consisted of just four dates in the US.)

Now, the Old Town School of Folk Music is a wonderful place with a rich and fascinating history. John Prine was an early student, as was Steve Goodman (he whose music I was raised on, and who wrote "City of New Orleans" amongst about a billion other chestnuts) and it's about the only place in the world you can take traditional Celtic dance lessons and then learn how to play a zither or traditional Parisian accordion under the same roof.

The show room is fantastic- the acoustics rival any place I've been, and there truly isn't a bad seat in the house.

My only issue, which seems to rear its head nearly every time I visit, is the white people.

There are white people all over the place, which wouldn't be a problem, except that these particular white people always seem to be of either the arts endowment variety, or the trust fund hippie/professional student variety. It never seems to matter what show I visit- the seating is perfect, the sight line to the stage is perfect, the sound is impeccable, and I would be having a life-changing experience...if it weren't for the old dollar bill duffs and hackey sackers clustering about me.

I am the first to admit that I am not a people person. On every other visit, I can mostly ignore my fellow show-goers and become absorbed into the music. But at Tinariwen, what with it being bouncy, danceable music (and with the band more or less insisting they allow people to move as the sounds will them), OTS opted to clear a space for dancing.

It was nice to see people getting into it- for a time. But by the time I spotted a businessman in a three-piece suit and power tie cutting loose with some kind of hippie flag racing around the dance floor, I felt that it should be stopped. Why allow these people to shame themselves so?

Just then I noticed a woman jerking around frenetically to my left. Her motions were not wholly unlike that of the notorious "Elaine dancing" episode of Seinfeld. She had not a care in the world, nor a even the faintest half-note of rhythm. Her perfectly white violent thrusting and convulsing about was jarring and utterly terrifying. But its at these moments, when someone is making a perfect ass of themselves, that pure irony tends to show itself in its most natural state.

The foot-kickin', thumb-jabbing, hair tossing motions were taking place in front of an emergency exit, with a stop sign instructing people to use the next door. From my point of view, in the dimly lit room, all I saw was the picture above. And I laughed. I laughed a whole god damn lot.

Because I concur, irony. White people dancing SHOULD stop.