Many, many years ago - okay, more than thirty years ago, I had a brief but interesting career as a disco singer. No need to go into all the twists and turns of that crazy part of my life now -- that'll have to wait for another blog. I'm bringing it up to mention that I had two talented, young, gay dancers who worked with me, and that, in a round-about way, is what this story is about. More specifically, how young gay people can often feel isolated, hopeless and alone, judged by hypocrites and intolerant people and therefore why what Dan Savage and friends are doing with the It Gets Better campaign is so important.

Back in those complicated 70s, there was a rich brew of alternatives entering the mainstream, and this stew wasn't limited solely to the music. It incorporated alternatives of all types. Obviously, some choices were easier for the status quo to accept than others, which is probably why some groups tended to stick together - remember the flower children? I fell into this group. Those were the days when alternatives to the strict mainstream lifestyle came out in droves - hippies, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, anti-establishment-intellectuals, -- an eclectic blend of sub-cultures had emerged from behind the scenes, with all their colors, choices of clothing, hairstyles, drug selections, and sexual preferences. I suppose many of us looked and acted like we had come from another planet to the previous generation, and they treated us that way too. In San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, cities I grew up and lived in, there was safety in numbers -- sort of. At least like-minded people gravitated together.

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The moment my friend Jesse sent me an early download of Tuareg musician Bombino, I fell in love. As I told him, I think I was Tuareg in a future life -- there's something about the scope of North African music, Gnawa and Tuareg to Malian blues and Nubian folk, that has dominated my music listening over the past few years. Thankfully Tinariwen pushed open a door few in America had acknowledged, thus beginning a swell of incredible Saharan artists to saunter through. Bombino's first international record, Agadez (Cumbancha), may be the best of this crop (though Tamikrest's newest, Toumastin, is giving it some heat). While lacking the textures of Tinariwen or Toumast, this is more appropriately to be seen as a one-man show, even considering that his backing band is tremendous. Given that the album has spent most of this week sitting atop the iTunes World Music charts, I'm not the only one feeling this way.

The nine-minute "Ivat Idounia Ayasahen" is the proper place to start. Bombino's animated guitar playing is enthralling. The predominant amount of this track is spent listening to him solo, a steady, easy rhythm creating a trance-like foundation indicative of many North African music forms. This combination -- a hypnotic percussion rhythm with a long history of ritual use along with a modern fascination for men like Jimi Hendrix and the electric guitar -- is what makes Tuareg music so hard to stop listening to. Long before the protests shaking up bordering countries like Egypt and Tunisia, Malian officials have fought wars with these indigenous nomads. Unromanticizing the situation: like Rom culture, Tuaregs are travelers as much (if not more so) by force than choice. Thus exists an old spirit to this music, with Bombino representing one of the most wizened. Suffering and hardship is known to produce beauty, and while he was a bit young to partake in the first revolution (in which Tinariwen members battled), his connection to the culture of resistance is strong and deep. Agadez is a spiritual and political masterpiece for his people.

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Twenty-one months ago almost to the day, three idealistic young Americans were enjoying a summer vacation hike in the safe and hospitable region of Iraqi Kurdistan when they wandered close to or across an unmarked mountain border and into the hands of Iranian forces. It is hard for any of us to appreciate the torment these individuals -- Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd -- and their families have suffered since that fateful day. It is harder still to fathom what Iran expects to gain by continuing to hold the two men in the group captive, with almost no contact with their families, and by putting them on trial on May 11 on the unfounded charge of espionage. Sarah, who is Shane's fiancé, was freed on humanitarian grounds last September yet the judiciary has summoned her back for the trial even though a senior Iranian official, Mohammad Javad Larijani, has said publicly that she is incapable of spying.

Sarah's release after 410 days of solitary confinement was the right thing to do. Iran must do the right thing again by allowing her companions to rejoin their families. Shane and Josh have already been detained for far longer than the 444 days that 52 American citizens spent as hostages in Tehran when the U.S. embassy was stormed following the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. If Iran's intention in holding Shane and Josh is to show that it can still thumb its nose at America by depriving its citizens of their freedom, it has surely proven the point. And, if the intention is to engineer some sort of prisoner swap, there is no indication that the U.S. government is willing to play ball, given the broader strategic considerations at play in the tense U.S.-Iranian relationship.

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Recent news from Africa has been brutally grim. In last week's Nigerian presidential elections, angry mobs in Kaduna, a mostly Muslim city in Northern Nigeria, hacked to death hundreds of Christians -- a reaction to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from Southern Nigeria. In the Cote d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo lost a 2010 presidential election to Alassane Ouattara. Citing voter fraud, he refused to cede power to his opponent. Gbagbo's refusal to transfer power to Ouattara prompted an escalation of a long simmering civil war. Since November 2010 thousands of people have died, and many more, fearing for their lives, have fled their homes. On April 11, forces loyal to Ouattara stormed Gbagbo's presidential bunker and arrested the former history teacher. In the wake of Gbagbo's arrest, however, militias continue to skirmish in the streets of Abidjan, the economic capital of Cote d'Ivoire.

So it goes for the news from Africa. Framed by media reports, the image of Africa for Americans -- and others, of course -- consists of tales of unending political riots, cases of fraudulent elections, and scenes of drug-crazed teenage soldiers burning villages, amputating the hands and feet of their foes and raping women, both young and old. There are, as well, the horrifying documentary images of the genocidal conflicts in Rwanda, Congo, and more recently in the Darfur region of Sudan. Add to this lethal mixture of human misery, the social tragedy of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, widespread hunger and the sometimes fatal presence of such diseases as malaria and meningitis and you get the picture: a hopeless continent plagued by intractable problems, a place no one would want to live or visit.

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