A musical extract from the 2012 Senegalese travelogue, in which your foreign correspondent talks about Joe Strummer and recalls a visit to legendary Dakar club, Just 4 U.
Joe Strummer was on a roll just before his untimely death in 2002. He and his band, The Mescaleros, had really hit their stride, playing music that perhaps actually deserved to be branded ‘world music’, a rough mix of influences and musical styles. A new kind of folk music for the 21st century perhaps. In their last few live sets the band was playing a new song Dakar Meantime. Sadly, or so I’ve heard, the band laid down the music for the song in the studio, so it could be included on their next album but Strummer never got to record the vocal track. Consequently the song, which was considered to be one of their best, did not appear on the posthumous Streetcore. I have never heard Dakar Meantime, only read about it, but know in my bones that had I been at one of those final joyous gigs, I would have been grinning from ear to ear. I don’t know whether Strummer ever visited Dakar or whether