Labah Soseh, a well-known musician from the Gambia who played old-school Cuban salsa, sadly died recently and there were various obituaries in the papers which remembered his rich musical career and life. I nearly saw him perform once, in a small popular bar in Ziguinchor, where I used to live.

It was late on a Saturday night, and I went along to see what was happening at the bar. At one end of the dark room, past crowded tables with their plastic place-mats, instruments were set up but no one playing them. The manager, a smart-looking lady with a fierce voice that she was never afraid to use when one of her hired musicians misbehaved or turned up late, was standing in the corner bellowing. Some men were standing around giggling. I tried to follow the conversations to find out what was going on, and Tapha translated for me.

The musician, by this time in his seventies, had arrived to play his set, and a large audience had turned out to see him play. He insisted that the manager of the bar pay him before he start, which she did, so he took the money and started to sing. Half way through the gig, he apparently took a break and went to his nearby home with one of the bar's many prostitutes, using the money he had been paid for this evening's work. He then returned twenty minutes later and the manager was horrified to see that he had changed out of his smart outfit and shiny shoes and was now wearing a pair of flip-flops on his feet. She fired him on the spot. One has to ask who is the loser in all of this.