"Dry Guitar" vs March Madness

I'm reading about it on the Occidental Brothers description on the Cedar's web site, but what exactly is this elusive sound, so often mentioned in quotation marks?

Whoa! Halt the presses!! Mpls' own Dance Band is opening for the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International Friday night?!! Holy Cow! since I cannot use stronger language. There is now absolutely no excuse for any person in this entire city to be sitting on their butt Friday night. I mean it! The last basketball game starts at about 9:00, right? OK, it's Wisconsin vs. Florida State, but still! (I am not insensitive to March Madness needs at all, but people, we need to pace ourselves. Too much basketball that first weekend will wear you out. You will need some physical exercise beside thumbing the remote and penciling in those brackets!) If you stay in to watch the whole thing you may miss claiming your space on the dance floor. That's the recently refurbished dance floor, remember.


But back to that Dry Guitar thing. What is it anyway? Sifting through references about the wood on your guitar neck drying out, I found a little information. The National Geographic music article on Congo had this explanation.

In mining towns in the southeastern province of Katanga in the 1940s and '50s, Jean Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo and other singing guitarists invented a troubadour style out of local thumb-piano patterns, Cuban sones and American country music. This gentle Swahili sound spread from Katanga to Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya, where it was called "dry guitar."

Ok, according to some other sources, it just means an acoustic guitar sound. Well.

Hoo boy, look at this handy reference. While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of all definitions involved, it certainly is ... LARGE! It's the BBC Africa on Your Street Glossary! Go ahead, look something up!

Can a balance be established between hoops and the dance floor for one weekend? I sure hope so. I have basketball dates for Thursday (Northern Iowa @ 1:30 and Gopher Men @ 6:10 ), Saturday (High School Girls State tournament finals featuring Mpls SOUTH - I hope) and Sunday (Gopher Women @ 1:30.) I think that means I have about 8 hours worth of dancing to get in Friday night. OH yeah!

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I am little embarrassed to admit I did this, but we all do it some time, right? I Googled myself the other day. Not my real name; it's too common. I put in "Mama E Dub" and found amidst all the Cedarblog and Myspace type stuff, that I (via the Cedar Blog) am now a featured link on a music review website in Poland. What next?