A Journey into Music, BBC4

The Nigerian singer Nneka was on stage in the middle of a women’s market on Lagos Island. She was staging a pop-up gig playing highlife and reggae-inflected pop, and we were capturing it.

Soon the women selling vegetables and pounding sugarcane were swinging their hips. It was perfect footage for our series, in which we wanted to get to the heart of a musical culture that has influenced artists and musical genres worldwide.

Nneka had only been playing for a few minutes when a group of ‘area boys’ appeared. They control the streets of Lagos, so you need to work at speed (and have a good fixer) if you want to film there.

We quickly wrapped and began setting up for an interview, when our fixer, Idowu, rushed over and said that if we didn’t leave, we would have all our sound gear taken. I discovered later it was only his street smarts that had enabled him to hold off the boys for so long. It wouldn’t be the last close call we’d face in Africa.

I knew when I signed up for this series that it would be an unforgettable experience. I’ve collected African records for more than a decade and have a long love affair with the continent.

It was my dream job. My first task was deciding where to go – the music of Africa is as vast and varied as the continent itself.

An initial treatment had us travelling across eight countries, but the realities of a BBC4 budget meant that was impossible. My solution was to break the journey into three musical elements: rhythm, harmony and melody, with an episode for each.

Together with our brilliant first-time presenter Rita Ray – an endless source of expertise and contacts – I focused in on three countries.

When exploring the beat in Africa, Nigeria cannot be ignored. Home to Fela Kuti and his afrobeat, the country and its music are unique, but it’s hard to film there. Lagos is hot, humid, noisy and dangerous and the whole country relies on generators. We stuck to recording artists in their homes or studios, well away from the area boys.

For harmony, we chose South Africa. It is a key aspect of the music of this huge and beautiful country, whose artists include Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba. The voice also played a special role in the fight against apartheid.

Filming an Isicathamiya competition in Durban, in which large groups perform traditional Zulu vocal music, our intrepid South Africa director, Tanzanian Ruhi Hamid, found herself having to get clearances for 17 groups, each with 20 members.

Our production co-ordinator, Rosie Colman, sat at the registration table getting release forms signed and collating information about each group and their songs.

The show began at 10.30pm when the fi rst group came on stage in sharp matching suits and shiny shoes for a dramatic, emotional performance.

As they left the stage, we decided to interview the lead singer. Five minutes in, our fixer Zamo and Rosie came running, looking panicked.

The second group were angry we were not filming their performance and the audience was incensed. Some even threatened to torch our crew van if we didn’t return immediately.

The crew spent the next six hours filming every performance and finally staggered out, just in time to film the sun coming up.

The final episode was a quest to uncover the ancient roots of African melodies in Mali, a desert country that best encapsulates the range and virtuosity of African music. The griots, the country’s musician caste, have an unbroken musical tradition and Mali is also the home of famous musicians such as Salif Keita and Ali Farka Touré.

Kidnap risk

Jihadi war meant music was banned across vast swathes of the north of the country. We had to undertake specialist training and plan our filming trips carefully to minimise the risk of kidnap as we travelled, so most of the episode was filmed in the capital, Bamako, a safe haven for musicians escaping Sharia law.

Despite the risks, we filmed some truly magical moments: Grammy winner Toumani Diabaté duetting on the Kora with his eldest son Sidike – who is Mali’s biggest pop star; a spine-tingling performance by 12-yearold griot singer Ami Diabaté; and a blistering performance by Bassekou Kouyate at an impromptu party.

It was an amazing experience, made possible by a remarkable team of people. We self-shot on C300 cameras, which often keeled over in the 40°C heat, and spent our evenings patching kit together while trying to wrangle musicians for the next day’s schedule.

Some readers may be familiar with ‘Africa time’. Factor in ‘musician time’ and you get an idea of the scale of the achievement.