Hey, I can get this thread back to folk music! The Gambian jali (griot) Al-Haji Papa Bunka Susso has been my guest a few times. Once, when he felt particularly well-received, he sang to his audience of American students (c. 1999) a song he'd composed in the traditional Mandikan way at the time of the moon landing. You have never heard the like, the completely non-ironic praise by a postcolonial gent whose knowledge of history is so vast he can take a genealogy back 1000 years. The song praised America and Americans for having wrought a marvel. Like a good court poet, he was diplomatically silent about little indiscretions like Vietnam, the race situation, etc. But his praise seemed like a thing worth having. The students found it merely puzzling, but they were polite.