Week 484: “Oscarine” by Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Segal

In my 20s, I was in the early days of a relationship with a woman when she said something shocking. Almost sacrilegious.

We were on a camping trip together. It was the first time we had done anything out-of-the-city as a couple, and we were probably both aware of the relationship truism that travelling with someone is the best way to know what they’re really like. If they’ve got some kind of weird, deal-breaking character flaw, chances are good that it will come out on a camping trip.

On the first night, sitting around the campfire with several other people who were sharing the site with us, the ingredients for s’mores inevitably came out. Everyone passed around their graham crackers and marshmallows and chocolate; the mood was very communal and share-ish.

But my girlfriend turned down the graham crackers. With a polite but firmly raised hand, she announced, “I don’t do it that way.”

She then picked up a grocery bag and, with the flair of a magician freeing a rabbit from a hat, took out a box of Ritz crackers.

Ritz vs. Graham: a battle for s’mores supremacy.

The ensuing silence around the circle made the crackling of the campfire sound as loud as gunshots. I wondered how I might explain to the shocked, fire-lit faces that I didn’t know this girl all that well, and that her views didn’t necessarily reflect my own.

But I was also intrigued. With gleaming eyes that seemed to relish the chance to convert people, she explained to the mystified group that, “it’s the contrast! It’s the salty and sweet combination that makes it perfect!”

And so, there was a s’more-off. The traditional graham cracker versus this new and subversive Ritz cracker recipe.

She didn’t win everyone over, but several campers agreed that the Ritz s’more was at least as good as, if not better than, the graham. And I got the sense that others held on to their old beliefs simply out of habit, out of an unwillingness to admit that a significant part of their childhood didn’t taste as good as it should have.

As for me, I knew the Ritz girl was on to something.

She was right: the contrast is key. The sweet and salty together make the difference. I ended up marrying her, and I wasn’t surprised when she recommended this song to me recently, because it features another unusual combination: the cello and the African kora.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The two musicians, Mali’s Ballaké Sissoko and French cellist Vincent Segal, don’t treat their collaboration as a competition. They don’t try to outdo each other with virtuosity or tricks, but blend in a way that makes each instrument stronger.

2. The unchanging chord structure hypnotizes the listener a little, in the same way that staring into a campfire can slip the unsuspecting camper into a semi-sleep.

3. Although both instruments have range, the kora tends to occupy higher frequencies, with a timbre less abrasive than a banjo’s, but more assertive than a harp’s. The cello, meanwhile, occupies a lower frequency range, and provides a richness that the 21-stringed kora cannot. I don’t know which one is the Ritz cracker and which is the chocolate, but they sure work well together.

Recommended listening activity:

Lying in bed, but with your head at the end where your feet would normally be.

Buy it here.