I saw the sexiest men in the world on stage recently. They are Etran Finatawa (“stars of tradition”), a band from Niger, and I saw them in Maputo, courtesy of the Alliance Française, which should be praised beaucoup for many years for bringing wonderful music from French-speaking Africa to Southern Africa.
Etran Finatawa are something else. Their nomad blues are electric. They riff like the harmattan blows. Their percussion — water calabash, dry calabash, drums and ankle bells — is as hypnotic as the intricate vocals.
As seductive as the music are the men. The paradox is that you don’t see much of their bodies. They conceal more than they show, contrary to conventional Western code, where you undress to be sexy.
Etran’s two guitar players are Tuareg and wear the Tuareg boubou and Taguelmoust headdress: only their kohl-lined eyes and cinnamon-coloured feet in leather sandals are visible. The rest is a meringue of tenuous cotton (indigo, maroon, white or black) whipped on stage as they sway like dervishes.
The other three are Wodaabe. You must have seen the photos of tall, lean, bejewelled, handsome men in fanciful make-up, dancing for women at the annual Geerewol festival. That’s them.
You don’t see much of the Wodaabe half of Etran either because they wear Wodaabe dress: an ankle-length embroidered tunic with just-over-the-shoulders sleeves, white turbans with black ostrich feathers and lots of jangling metal ankle and arm bracelets.
This is why I find Etran so sexy: finally, some mystery in this age of bare-it-all. Show your belly ring and tanga. Display your pecs. Shower in Big Brother. Tell Oprah about your incest. Blog about your penile extension. Twitter from the dental hygienist. Post your colonoscopy on YouTube. Apologise for your marital infidelities on your website. Does everything have to be shown and shared?
Etran men only allude to sex — totally unlike the interchangeable boy toys with high muscle definition of Hollywood chick films.
Seriously, outside a Paul Bowles novel, when do men dressed in billowing tents get to be sexy? Maybe it’s the headdress that does it. Last month I was in the sacred town of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia, getting lost and mystical in its rock-hewn churches. Every church has a resident priest — turbaned and robed, handsome and sexy, yet the only flesh visible is their cinnamon-coloured hands and feet.
Etran Finatawa’s dancing is as seductive as the music. Desert people economise energy — as they should, living in that Sahara oven of 49°C in winter. Their dance is not an outburst of leg-kicking and floor-rolling. It’s powerful, but reserved. The percussionists — a gold stripe from forehead to nose and a Mona Lisa smile on kohl-black lips — dance with their arms only.
Now and then the lead singer turns sideways, arms up in the air. His tunic slits to the waist — you catch a glimpse of chest and waist, for about 60 seconds. I wanted to lick his armpit.
Another paradox: anywhere in what I call the Swahili cultural space, from northern Mozambique to Somalia, men are athletic, proportioned, with well-muscled chests, thin waists, tight bums and strong legs, the product of a life of physical work and not overeating on fast food.
They have bodies that Western men would die for — or spend costly gym subscriptions and endless hours of weight lifting to achieve. Yet at the Virgin Active gym in Pretoria, male users basically come in two kinds: Mr Flabby and Mr Steroids, both in short shorts and tank tops, showing hairy flesh, far from the effortless grace of a Lamu dhow captain or an Ibo fisherman.
After the concert a lot of women hung out at the bar. We waited and we were rewarded: we saw Etran in civvies. Out of their boubous, the Tuareg Etran had long dreadlocks and moustaches and wore diaphanous white cotton shirts and trousers. The Wodaabe, who sported elaborate hairstyles on stage, wore turbans.
I went up to one and thanked him for the fab music. He demurred, looked down modestly and offered his hand, soft and moist, not in a shake but in a two-second hold. I wanted to curl in his hand like a dove and nestle there forever.
In Niger’s culture men are objects of desire, valued for their beauty, poise, modesty and charm (and so are women). Women choose their men and exercise a certain amount of sexual freedom, albeit codified by rules and taboos. Unmarried and married women can take lovers. Sex out of wedlock is not frowned upon.
When I die, I wish to be reincarnated as a Wodaabe woman. I will gladly endure the sand in my goat stew for a taste of a culture where men are sensual and sexuality is enigmatic.