Allan Levenberg is the guy who made things happen
I met Allan on the dance floor. He, like me, feels music and it moves him. The music I love enters my body through my skin, courses through my bloodstream, and exits through my feet. Not every music does this, of course. The music that reaches my soul are the Celtic rhythms and the West African beats. In Virginia and Kentucky, in Tennessee and New Orleans, I found the fusion of these two traditions, and in Allan Levenberg I found a man who plays that quintessential African and American instrument, the banjo.
Allan was the first Friend of Mali, and when we created the association it was Allan who volunteered to be Treasurer. That is not a very arduous task, since we never have any money. Once or twice a year he writes to thank some kind person who has sent us $200 or $1200 as a donation. He tells us in Board meetings how many pennies we have left, and how much we owe the printer or the restaurant where we had our last party. And if there is no money, Allan or Robin or Michelle or some other kind person pays the debt. It was Allan who did the work to get us the tax-free status as an IRS-approved 501.c.3 association, charming on the telephone some Federal agent in Texas who very kindly expedited the process before the next Annual Meeting so that Ana, our President, could report the good news!
Allan has set the tone for VFoM. “He who plays the music sets the tune” as the old proverb puts it (not really, but close enough) and so we vibrate to the sound of Allan’s Old Tyme banjo. We believe in parties more than we believe in meetings, so we make every meeting into a party. Our Executive Committee meetings usually include an African stew with rice, so the meetings are perfumed with peppery peanut sauce, or the onion and lemon scents of chicken yassa. Our Board meetings consume more wine than effort, and our Annual General Meeting fits speeches and necessary reports between music and dancing. Allan once told us: “I have had an easy life in business, coming in early in the I.T. revolution and being able to make a difference at a time when CEOs knew nothing about computers. So I sort of feel that I skimmed the surface. Now, with the Sister City relationship and the Virginia Friends of Mali, I feel that I am working with things that are deeper and more meaningful than at any other time in my professional life. For me, this is truly inspirational.”
Allan understood that we needed the Richmond Sister City Commission
Allan Levenberg and Patricia Cummins of the Richmond Sister City Commission visiting UniSég
It was Allan who told us we must transform the Segou relationship into an official Sister City relationship. That was no easy task, for Richmond had no Sister City Commission at the time. It was a period Richmond did not even have a Mayor – until Douglas Wilder was elected in 2005 the first direct mayoral election. Mr Wilder was mayor from 2005-2009; he had previously 1990-1994 been the first African-American governor of Virginia, and indeed the first in U.S. history. In 2006 we had to persuade the City to create a Commission (the old one had been disbanded and forgotten). Then we had to get City Council to select a Chairman and appoint members. Madame My Lan Tran was the first Chairperson and Allan Levenberg was the first Commissioner. During their second meeting, the Commission recommended that Segou should become Richmond’s sister city and City Council duly agreed. All of that happened thanks to Allan and his banjo!
Later Patricia Cummins became RSCC Chair, and our activities accelerated because Pat is a professor of French. 60 million people speak French in France, of course; but five times more people speak French outside France as their first or second or third language, and Pat Cummins is professionally interested in La Francophonie. Mali is a French-speaking country in West Africa, as well as a country that has 400 years of intimate history with Virginia. For Professor Cummins of VCU School of World Studies, Ségou was a wonderful educational opportunity.
Africans played the banjo on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation (though he spelled it ‘banjar’ in his diaries). It is the American descendent of the Malian ngoni, which has five strings stretched across a piece of carved wood covered with tight goatskin. There are three- and four-stringed versions as well and the famous Ngoniba Orchestra from Segou is led by Bassekou Kouyaté who has created a seven-stringed ngoni to give himself more flexibility. Bassekou and his band regularly play at the Segou Festival, and they were the stars of the 2011 Richmond Folk Festival.
Allan plays with various jam-groups around Richmond, and one Monday night he took me along to the Oregon Hill Old-Tyme group that meets at the house of Michael Gahan, the owner of the Pine St Barber Shop. Michael strums the guitar, James plays the fiddle, Bill plays everything… and I these days play simple riffs on the djembe, the drum that Michael brought home from Segou. But in those days, he had not yet been to Segou and I was content to listen, or to beat time on the spoons or beer bottle.
Allan is also a positive thinker. In no time at all, he had decided that he would come with me to visit Mali and discover the origins of the banjo. So, between playing versions of John Henry and Country Roads, we discussed traveling to join the Segou Festival that had started just after the turn of the millennium. Michael and James decided to join us. We had a plan!
With our friend Carol Warner, the Richmond Oregon Hill Old-Tyme Players attended the 2007 Ségou Festival as the first official delegation from Virginia Friends of Mali, and the first Virginian musicians to play the Ségou Festival. Thereafter we have sent a delegation every year – and sometimes other bands from Virginia have joined us, notably Heather Maxwell’s Afrika Soul and Cheick Hamala Diabaté, the VFoM official griot.