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Banning Eyre -- a welcome new voice in travel literature

 If you love travelogues and adventures in exotic lands, if reading about Africa travel intrigues you, if you love nonfiction literature, if you have enjoyed V.S. Naipaul's travel books, you'll want to read In Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali--if you can find it.

Read what one reviewer has to say about Banning Eyre's In Griot Time:

"Banning Eyre's "In Griot Time"-- A MAJOR TRAVEL LITERATURE EVENT!  Lovers of V. S. Naipaul's nonfiction will delight in a new book on travel in Africa, In Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali. Written by a former student of Naipaul, Banning Eyre of National Public Radio and Boston Phoenix fame, this astonishingly good book rivals and even surpasses Naipaul in the very areas Naipaul excels. 

The writing recalls Naipaul's best, with a fresh new vibrance, yet mature with a quiet, intelligent masculinity, reflecting Eyre's years of magazine and newspaper work. The Canadian Eyre masterfully takes the best of his teacher's legacy, then expands it, using his relative youth and considerable musical skills to show us a fascinating view of travel not as a writer or tourist but as a working musician and student of Malian styles, a view requiring a stamina and persona more reminiscent of Hemingway than Naipaul.  

The author lived seven months in Mali, studying native guitar styles with the nation's greatest guitarists. His vivid prose will carry you deep into Africa, where you will live those months along with him, seeing the land, learning its history, getting to know its people, and, with the companion CD available soon, even hearing its music. 

The author is truly an exciting and important new voice in travel literature. The first printing is already on backorder from Temple University Press; one can only hope that the publisher quickly produces a second printing. Read it if you can."-- Bliss Sloan, OneTahiti@aol.com

The author has been writing professionally for magazines and newspapers since the mid '80s, mostly about African music. He has played guitar professionally since the mid '70s. For the past ten years, he has specialized in guitar styles from Africa, playing or recording with many African and African-style bands ranging from Southern Africa (e.g., Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, Ephat Mujuru, and Glamour Boys de Mbare) to Central Africa (e.g., Sankai), to West Africa (e.g., Cora Connection, The Super Rail Band of Bamako, Sali Sidibe in Mali). A song he created with Mapfumo and his band in 1998 became a hit on Zimbabwean radio. He also played on a track on Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate's Kulanjan (Hannibal 1999), which was voted Folk Roots "Album of the Year" in the UK.

In January 2000, he brought Bonnie Raitt to Mali for three weeks to introduce her to musicians and the musical scene he wrote about in his book, In Griot Time.