New York, 1968
17. WHEN LIAM THINKS of that first album, he tries to only recall the good things, the way it all began: the used Hammond B3 they pushed up three flights of stairs to their walk-up and the way their voices, in strained unison, had called each lift like a football play. Their elation after getting the electric organ upright in the middle of the attic. How when the floorboards began to creak, their reaction had been to whisper as if their voices added weight to the room.
The album’s first practice session took place there, with a borrowed drum set they muffled with blankets, the landlord’s cat pruning the keyboard wires like yarn until Mansour clocked her with a shoe. They started with a gulp of whiskey, prayers in two religions, and a meatball sandwich with everything on it.
Upon arriving in America, something neither of them could name—maybe fear, maybe foreignness—had fused Mansour and Liam in a solid bond. During their time living in that attic apartment above the flower shop (rented to them by Liam’s uncle for next to nothing), every note, chord, or lick that one brother offered struck the other as a perfect suggestion, a divine directive that must be honored as they lived this answer to their childhood prayers. They had been planning this moment since they first met in Catholic school ten years ago in Switzerland, and they felt that they’d finally arrived.
But that night in late January, their first rehearsal after finally signing with Onyx Records, quickly descended into purgatory. Every note hummed or played was questioned, Liam repeating the label’s suggestions like a mantra. Mansour obsessively examining every musical idea for originality, flavor. At any hint of nostalgia or sameness to their idols, whole pages of sheet music were struck out, scrunched, doused in vodka, set on fire, flung from the window. You’re dead weight, Mansour accused Liam.
Ever since their arrival in New York, Liam’s aunt had refused to speak directly to Mansour. So he had quickly begun calling her the wrong name in retaliation. Her body would stiffen, her mouth releasing a huff or two, but due to some personal vow not to speak to him, she never had any words at her disposal. Over time, living in the same building softened their posture, and they soon found themselves engaged in a toothless quarrel, a kind of flirting, most of the time.
She was the opposite of Mansour’s aunt, Sokhna. Sokhna had introduced Mansour and Liam to American music, sneaking Four Tops and Temptations records into the school at the bottom of baskets of socks and jams. For Liam, Sokhna had bought good guitar strings, finally, a full steel set of six. She was the first of many women they would share a crush on. They’d idolized her to the point of myth, their teenaged admiration giving her a good laugh as she drove them across cities and farm towns for their first gigs. They’d started off playing acoustic covers of Motown in little barns that hosted dances for village youth. Mansour would sing in happy gibberish, mimicking Eddie Kendricks, routinely butchering the English lyrics until Liam—a proud Irishman—intervened. Through the lyrics, Liam taught Mansour English, but he still avoided speaking the language, always avoiding things he couldn’t do perfectly.
When Mansour and Liam had dreamed of America, they dreamed of it through these songs. Restless in the night, feigning for life, they’d studied the river that traveled through the school backyard, imagining it to be the river Sam Cooke was born beside: a blue and rolling thing, glistening like it carried gems.
One day, while she was visiting them, Sokhna had sent Mansour to bring her car around and pulled Liam aside. She’d adjusted Liam’s collar and looked back to Mansour. Excited to drive her car, even just around the bend, he was happily jogging away.
“Take care of him,” she’d said to Liam. She rested her hand on his shoulder and held it, giving him time to feel the weight of her grip, and words, before letting go.
He wouldn’t understand her plea until their gig a few months later.
18. MANSOUR HAD BEEN taking too long to join him onstage. Behind their two spectators (a drunk, a bartender), a broken beer tap had dripped into a bucket, making the only sound in the room. After several minutes of waiting, Liam had walked offstage and gone around back to see what had become of Mansour. He’d knocked hard on the bathroom door, before opening it and seeing that no one was inside. He’d gone next into the supply room. With its rotting floor planks and mildewed couch, it’s where they’d been told they could stack their few things. There, Liam had found Mansour face down on the couch, grunting quietly. His arms were straight and stiff at his side. When Liam had rolled him over, spittle rolled down the left corners of Mansour’s mouth. Liam had gotten him on his back and watched him. Panting, slower and slower, until his chest settled and he dosed off.
When he’d sat up sometime later, insisting he only needed five minutes to go onstage, worried, Liam had fought him, throwing him from the door with both hands, wrestling him with all his might. But Mansour had pulled off the shirt crusted with his spittle and persisted until he fought his way to the stage. He went out alone.
Liam heard the first note from the back—a cappella, wobbly, flat—and Mansour had held it this way, loud and wrong, until it brought itself, naturally, beautifully, into tune. His voice behaved like a bass string that had been plucked with excessive might and left to quake until it stilled itself. Relief. Liam heard it, and it made him exhale, like the relief was his own. And his brother went on this way, singing a cappella to the audience of two. A lot of humming, stopping and starting, trying things; he was singing for himself.
They had only been fourteen and fifteen, and would spend a week on suspension for fleeing the school grounds, but Liam would say that that was the day he first met his brother Mansour, a man at war with his terror, forever squirming from the clutches of his own fate.
19. ON THE NIGHT they’d arrived, Manhattan advertised its chaos the way the Swiss and Senegalese belabored their civility, and Mansour had known then that his flightiness—his inability to focus for the length of a television program, eat sitting down, or choose a god—would be welcomed here.
When their plane touched down in 1966, Mansour and Liam had fled their choir’s Christmas concert at Carnegie Hall and hopped on the subway to Brooklyn, carrying out their plan. From that night to today, a year and half later, Mansour has not seized, and, wide awake around 4:00 a.m. in Bay Ridge, he is rummaging through a table of things he believes to be the reason.
The table contains every kind of remedy. Western: some prescription pills (half bummed, half legitimate). Eastern: Chinese teas. Spiritual: some tonic procured from a séance in the Bronx. America cured me, Mansour mumbles to a half-awake Liam, lighting the cigarette in his mouth.
Liam’s aunt tells him that for what they’re paying, they can’t use the lights after midnight, so the young men argue over transitions, over bridges and lyrics, by the flashing red lights of the twenty-four-hour Irish-only (they learned this the hard way) strip club across the street. They throw one another from the grimy wall to the grimy couch.
Their shot with Onyx Records has come with extreme conditions: a signing of sorts (renewal contingent upon satisfactory album sales), payment from said album sales and gigs only (no advance), seven hours of professional studio time allotted for the whole record, and only a few weeks to bring it all together. This means that they must come to the first recording session prepared to lay things down. And given that the session is in two days and there is only a track and a half that the men agree on, they know better than to sleep.
They wait for five in the morning so they can flush the toilet, use the shower. If the aunt hears the water a second earlier, they will be fined five dollars, as they had been the week before, indicated by a note stuck with gum to the bedroom door. The aunt’s redeeming quality, in their eyes, is that she can cook: beef stews so rich with bones that chilling them always reveals several layers of fat, potatoes roasted in butter and rosemary, tiered cakes filled with fruit and soaked for nights in dark spirits. And the food, unlike her towels, her sheets, her soap, her liquor, her kindness, is given freely.
Mansour and Liam’s first meeting with a musician for the album—a keyboardist from the Onyx roster—isn’t until 9:00 a.m., but they head out around seven. For Mansour’s sake, it is better to get out of the neighborhood early, before the streets begin to stir. He is the only dark-skinned person around and even at this quieter hour will still be called a nigger twice before they are on the subway. It’s something he pretends not to hear. Instead, he whistles the horn section, the bass line, the background, everything but the melody, of Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” pulling his hoodie down on his head, his passion for living seemingly indestructible.
Liam, who knows Mansour as well as anyone could, still doesn’t know how it burns him. The way it disorients him. Not the word itself, for which he has no former knowledge or cultural precedent, but its aftermath: the cyphers of unbelonging that range in passion from curious gawks to physical blows and drag him so far out of his daydreaming it is becoming harder to fight his way back in. But Mansour knows to expect some estrangement in a foreign city, and New York, for all its strangeness, is delivering on its promises of manifesting dreams.
As they ride to Manhattan from Bay Ridge for the meeting, Mansour finds the city familiar. He is no longer shocked by the jolting of the subway, the sound like the sharpening of knives the train car makes on the tracks. Nor the homeless man brazenly gawking at their exchange in rapid French. As the gray sky turns white with daylight, the men’s yearning for the warmth of their beds finally leaves them.
They make it to the café where they are scheduled to meet the keyboardist—but he never shows.
They talk through the label’s other referrals and make their way to a phone booth on West Fourth Street, where they start making calls. Liam’s accent is no help on the phone, and Mansour’s limited English makes him too shy to help. He’s staring into the alley, trying to tell the difference between the rats and squirrels. Liam presses on.
The first on their list of musicians is woken up by the call.
“How you get this number?” Click.
The next is flattered but can’t do the gig for what they’re offering.
“I’ve got kids, man.”
Their momentum begins to drain out with their sweat on the crowded street. Dodging the misty rain, they stand under the checkered awning of a restaurant, briefly seduced by fried mozzarella and steaks grilled at a thousand degrees. They are starving but know they ought to wait to get home and save what little money they have.
“We have to find our own people,” Mansour says. “Ask the girl about the clubs around here.” He gestures to a pretty waitress looking bored in the corner.
“No way, on y va,” Liam says. He is terrified of pretty women. Mansour pushes him in the girl’s direction.
Liam walks briskly toward the subway instead. Hoping, though not really expecting, Mansour to follow, he turns to see him approach the waitress, trying his hand at English.
“Uhhh, excuse me …”
“Yeah?”
“We are music peoples?”
“I’m sorry?”
“We are to … go see the music where?”
“What?”
Mansour can hear Liam laughing, loud and cruel. He turns, laughing at himself as he curses Liam in French, then begs him to save his ass.
“Alors, tu vas m’aider ou quoi?!”
The woman has some suggestions. She uses a coffee-stained city map, circling with a pen the areas where they can find what they seek. The nearest thing will be jazz music, though the clubs won’t be open for another few hours. But she tells them to take their chances.
The door is wide open at the Blue Note. A jazz trio is in rehearsal. Mansour is transfixed. The Irishman watches the African approach the stage as if under a spell, sliding down the back wall into a squat without blinking.
Even now, when Liam remembers that day, he still wonders why they were not questioned, not immediately thrown out. It was the first place in the world that they, the orphaned misfits, seemed to simply belong.
20. LATER THAT EVENING, after their first set, Liam catches up to the drummer. The man is easygoing and kind. In his early sixties, he walks awkwardly on tiny feet that seem ill-suited to his large frame. He tells Liam to walk with him as he makes his way to the bar, where a milkshake waits for him on the counter.
“This vanilla?” the drummer asks the bartender.
“Yessir.”
“Well, you plan on puttin’ any ice cream in it? Add a couple more scoops in there.”
“I’m sorry, sir, right away.”
The bartender pulls back the glass, and the drummer keeps his eyes on the milkshake as the man drops in the new scoops. Then he turns his attention to Liam. His eyes are small and tired. He picks up a napkin and swipes sweat from his face.
“Go on, sid’down.”
Liam takes the seat beside him.
“When’s the session?”
Liam is shocked that this man, who has drawn a crowd that is already wrapping around the building for the second set, is actually considering his request.
“It’s tomorrow night.”
The man shakes his head. “I’ll be trapped here all week.” He sips on his new milkshake, lets out a sigh of relief. “That cold’s so good,” he says, observing the glass with reverence.
“What do you really need? Somebody to keep time, or somebody who can really play?”
“Really play.”
“Really play, yeah.” He fiddles with his ear. “I’m thinking of somebody.”
A young white man approaches from behind, tells the drummer to get ready for the next performance.
The drummer stands, puts his hat on. “Carl Keifer,” he says to Liam. “He’s not easy to get along with, but he’s damn good.”
The man walks away, milkshake in hand. Liam stammers, thanking the man profusely, but the old man only throws a hand behind his back as he walks on, as if to say, it’s nothing.
Liam calls after him, “Where do I find him?”
“Uptown somewhere. He’s shootin’ a movie. One of those karate things. And tell him … tell him Gil sent you.”
He says this without turning around.
“Karate thing” is the hint that leads them to Harlem, a place where Mansour keeps looking over his shoulder. He hasn’t seen this many Black folks in one place since he left Senegal as a child.
Certain details pull his attention. It is the way a man on Lenox Avenue stands against a streetlight with one leg crossed over the other, and a newspaper in his hand, staring out into the chaos of the road with a smile, like he is seeing another scene entirely. A throwback to Mansour’s grandfather, leaning against their courtyard door. His grandfather was the first daydreamer Mansour had ever known, a man with a mind like his: ever elsewhere, ever imagining more beauty from the world than what it was willing to give.
They were breathless, reeking with sweat, but once they got to St. Nicholas Avenue it was finally easy. Under an early evening sky, tinted the color of mud from the smog, the Harlem folks guided them, stepping down from dominos games on their brownstone stoops to point their fans in the direction of the bridge. To the left, to the left. Until when? Until they could see the river.
The shooting location is a Shotokan school near the Harlem River. As they approach the water, the breeze gets strong and cold against Mansour’s scalp. Inspired by his once-cited resemblance to Jimi Hendrix (If Hendrix were darker and prettier, his first favorable review had begun), he feels the world differently since he got his hair processed. Not just the cool air, but everything—even sounds seem closer, and his mind seems to be thinking fewer thoughts, as if the chemicals have simplified him and destroyed some barrier between him and the world.
In front of the dojo doors, Mansour stumbles on cords, thick as snakes at his feet. His throat itches from the smoke of the haze machines. A small group of men are filming, the set is quiet, he swallows the pain. A brunette in glasses approaches the chatty men and grabs Liam by the edge of his shirt with one hand, a red fingernail pressed to her lips with the other, silencing them.
“Who are you?” she mouths.
“Musicians. We’re—” Liam begins.
“Go that way,” she mouths and points toward an open basement door, releasing Liam with a wink. He looks back over his shoulder, but she swiftly disappears.
As they descend the steps, a little jazz club of fifteen tables (made for the movie) reveals itself by a few dim ceiling lights. A HI-FI system, the kind of model Liam dreams about, is mounted on the wall. It plays Judy Garland with an uncanny fidelity, capturing, even, her gasps for breath between notes. A Black woman in her sixties, seemingly still in character, smokes and polishes glasses behind the counter, and a young white man, a member of the film crew by his casual jeans and torn T-shirt, sits at the far end of the bar playing checkers alone.
The crew member looks up from his checkers game and speaks to Liam like a savior, the only white man he’s seen in hours.
“Is it finally over? Are we wrapping for the day?”
“I couldn’t tell you. We’re just musicians,” Liam says.
“More musicians?” Overhearing Liam, a man interjects from the stage at the center of the room. “So what the hell are we doin’ here? We’ve been waiting for the director to come shoot this damn scene for seven hours, man!”
Balancing a trumpet on his bouncing knee, he is the largest of four Black men in expensive suits on the stage. Behind a drum set, a shiny Baldwin, and a towering double bass, they have wilted into weary poses. Liam and Mansour study the men, trying to decide which one is Carl Keifer.
“May as well dip out of here then,” the large man continues.
“Don’t you leave, Aristotle. Don’t give them any reason to play with your check,” the actress warns, shaking the glass in her hand.
The musicians groan, but they turn over again in their seats, shifting their tired bodies and staying put.
“Who y’all with?” Aristotle asks Mansour, who’s understood the question but is too timid to fumble around in English with all these eyes in his direction.
Liam answers, “Nobody, we’re a duo.”
Aristotle mimics his thick accent. “We’re a duo. That’s Irish-Irish. When’d you get here, man?”
The other men onstage begin to laugh passively. Liam yells over their mimicry, his voice loud and firm. It echoes.
“We were told that we could find Carl Keifer here.”
“Sure thing, he’s right there.” Aristotle points out the young brown man sitting silently at the piano. Distinctively gaunt, the brim of his hat casts a dark shadow over the silhouette of his pointy nose and full lips. He’s playing different triads, moody, dark things that illustrate the room’s atmosphere. He’s pretending to mind his business while listening to all the banter with a careful ear.
“You play drums?” Liam asks, cutting into the pianist’s chords. The men snicker.
“That’s Carl Keifer, fool. Talkin’ about does he play drums? You really did just get here, didn’t you?” the actress answers for him. Liam wonders why the room seems to revere this man, seems to be protecting him. It makes him push harder. He approaches the stage. Keifer’s using the piano peddle now, making the sound louder, more robust. Liam shouts over Keifer’s playing.
“Carl, we have a deal with Onyx Records—we have a recording session tomorrow night, me and my friend over there—and Mr. Gil thought you might be available to play drums for us.”
“Oh, Gil sent you,” the man says and stops playing.
Liam continues, “We hardly have any time to record, and the music isn’t easy—”
“There’s nothing but musicians in this town—”
“But we really need somebody of your caliber, so if you name your price—”
“Mais arrêtes de le supplier comme ça.” Stop begging him, Mansour chastises from across the room with a bitterness, a brashness that makes the men perk up and look in his direction.
“Wha’d he say?” Carl Keifer asks.
“Let’s go, man,” Mansour says in French, firm and exhausted as he moves toward the door. And the two of them continue in French as Keifer and the others watch quizzically.
“Mansour! We’re out of time!” Liam explodes. “We have to talk to him!”
“They all think they’re better than us! Let’s just go.”
Keifer stands. “Wha’d he say?”
“That you think you’re better than us,” Liam replies, resigned.
Keifer speaks directly to Mansour. “Am I wrong?”
The Black men exchange a glance, their frustration—though for different reasons—equal in measure. They recognize this and feel a passing kinship before turning again, in opposite directions. Mansour has reached the door by the time Keifer speaks again.
“Let me hear you, let me hear the music,” he says.
Liam picks up the idle guitar on the stage and starts the chords of “Mende,” the only track they’ve agreed on. Mansour walks back toward him.
He sings the room silent. Awed, the eyes of his audience change in the way that Mansour’s change when he sings: sparkling, widened, suspended in space. The performance earns them the respect of the actress, and her referral to a regular weekly gig at a nearby club.
But most importantly, on the platform of the 1 train, Keifer agrees to join them on the record, under certain conditions.
“Three things,” Keifer says, not raising his voice to accommodate the noise of the train. “One: I’m not playing drums. I’ll get you a drummer, but I’m playing piano. Two: We can’t record yet. We need to work on it for a while with the band.” Mansour and Liam nod. “And three: Don’t ever mention Gil Rodney again.”
Maybe because he sees the strange look on Liam’s face, Keifer elaborates.
“Just don’t bring him around what we’re doing here—not around me, the band. Just steer clear of him.” They can hear the downtown train approaching. “See you at rehearsal.” He speaks eye to eye with Mansour but shakes both their hands.
Had they seen the smile on Keifer’s face all the way down from 153rd to 135th, through the stop at the bodega, and the brisk walk home to 139th, the look of reverence that lingered after showering, the joy that still stirred in him, still hearing their song, “Mende,” in his ears, after tucking in his stepdaughters and snuggling up to his wife, Mansour and Liam might have envisioned a glint of everything that followed.