TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument

Subject: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: GUEST,SB
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 11:40 AM

Look what the TSA b'stards did ...

https://afropop.org/articles/ballak%C3%A9-sissokos-kora-dismantled-by-american-tsa

SB

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Charmion
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 12:06 PM

Vandalism in the service of security theatre.

Black music matters, too.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Vic Smith
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 12:28 PM

This happened in February of this year and the kora was totally unplayable afterwards. In March, I was in the Gambia and my friend Lamin Suso was building a replacement for Ballaké.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 12:38 PM

US Customs and Immigration have made life difficult for musicians for many years.

2014; A Canadian artist had more than a dozen of priceless instruments smashed to pieces by US customs after officials ruled they posed an ‘ecological threat’.

Virtuoso flutist Boujemaa Razgui only discovered that his instruments had been destroyed when his luggage never arrived at his final destination in Boston and he was told customs in New York had confiscated the flutes. Mr Razgui’s luggage contained 13 rare hand-crafted instruments - 11 nay flutes and two kawalas – as well as dried bamboo to use when building more instruments.

Mr Razgui, a Canadian national living in Boston, was travelling from Madrid to his home town via JFK Airport in New York. Upon arrival, he found that his bags were missing. When he returned to the airport the following day, staff in Boston said the bags had been searched at JFK and his ‘agricultural products’ destroyed.

US customs are refusing to apologise to Mr Razgui, claiming they were acting in the interests of American agriculture.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 12:45 PM

That kind of destructive nonsense makes my heart hurt.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: GUEST,CJB666
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 02:36 PM

I went to a hammered dulcimer gathering in LA many years ago. I had a chessmen bridges dulcimer - that is each bridge was separate - it was fully chromatic - made by Geoff Giddings. Each note had 4 strings. It was a sod to keep in tune.

Anyway I caught a BA direct flight to LA from LHR. All was OK and I was allowed to carry it on board. The crew stowed it in the 'secret' cubby hole used their own personal effects.

It arrived carried by hand into the arrivals hall. It only required a little retuning when I got to my room.

The gathering at UCLA was great. American dulcimer players had not seen the East Anglian chessmen type before.

However the journey home was a nightmare. Firstly it had to be x-rayed. US scum TSA wouldn't listen that it was a delicate musical instrument, despite Fragile labels on the case. They banged it around. Dropped it. Wouldn't believe there was nothing inside the body. They wanted to take the strings off and take the sound board off. Eventually they accepted it as was, but then BA check-in staff refused to allow me to carry it onboard. They put it on the luggage belt - where despite the Fragile labels on the case - it must have bumped and banged around the luggage belt system to be loaded with all the cases and God know what into the hold.

So we arrived back at Heathrow. Again it was put onto the baggage belts. B'stards. Anyway when it eventually resurfaced into the arrivals luggage hall I opened the case and every f'ing string was displaced, and all the chessman bridges had moved. And some of the bass strings were broken.

It never went travelling again.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: GUEST,lou
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 11:40 PM

I often wonder if it wuld be safer to ship valuable fragile instruments by FedEx or something. Would it be more likely to survive?

I wonder where Sissoko played in Berkeley? I work(ed) at Freight and Salvage and we have lots of African players, and Koras are very wonderful instruments!

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 01:21 PM

You don't mention that the instrument wasn't wrecked, it was dismantled and that it had electronics in it.

I wouldn't check a nice guitar, much less an instrument like that one.

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Greum
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 01:33 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:10 PM

I have a nice Martin guitar that has never been aboard an aircraft and won't ever be as long as it belongs to me. If I can't drive there, carrying the guitar with me into restaurants along the way as if it were a small child, it stays at home and I play somebody else's if I really want to play guitar.

One reason to play the mandolin, the fiddle, the flute or the whistle is that, even in its case, it usually passes the small-box test at the boarding gate. But security can be nauseating even with a "normal" instrument most people can identify in a police line-up.

At Dorval Airport, the security agent took the mandolin away to test it for "substances" (no explanation of what kind, of course) and of course found nothing but house dust and cat hair. At Pearson Airport in Toronto, the security agent told me to play it to prove it was mine. (I favoured him with eight bars of "The Rights of Man", while wondering why nobody else had to prove they owned their property.) At Heathrow, after we stood in line for hours and hours because it was about three weeks since the "liquid bomb" attempt of 2006, the security agent said he didn't care how small a mandolin is or where it would fit, it wasn't going in the cabin. (I wondered, but did not ask, whether he thought it was eight tiny garrottes travelling in disguise.)

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 02:16 PM

It's not long ago one of the American airlines seriously damaged Martin Carthy' vintage Martin guitar.

They really ought to be treated as hand luggage.

Dave Hh

Subject: RE: TSA Wrecks Valuable Instrument
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 20 - 03:29 PM

I have heard of musicians who tour regularly actually keeping duplicate instruments on each side of the Atlantic.