A trumpet animated with the voice of a messenger. Electronic beats that speak of sad days gone by. Powerful statements from a man with a mission and wandering songs that leave you wanting more.
A man, his trumpet, and electronic alchemy call down lightning on Fra_ctured. Gabriel Johnson’s creation calculates a new bearing in the world of jazz and electronic music, a fractured triangulation past the Islands of Electronica and into the open sea. This album—appearing on the label run by Carmen Rizzo, known for his work with Seal, Jem, Coldplay, and Paul Oakenfold, and as co-founding member of global electronica band Niyaz—is a new direction for serious trumpet music, a genre too long confined to the stolid hallways of special schools and jazz clubs. That’s about where Gabriel Johnson, virtuoso trumpet player turned ascendant electronica demigod, found himself a few years ago. He was this conservatory prodigy, a golden boy acolyte in the temple of commercial jazz groomed for the life of a high priest. The Wunderkind began playing the trumpet when he was eleven years old, giving up baseball practice for the life of a musician, and had hardly turned back on his quick climb up the mountain. After graduation from the Conservatory, he moved to Los Angeles, and soon Clint Eastwood was calling him up to play original music for his movies. “Clint would be right in the room,” recalls Johnson matter-of-factly. “If he likes something, he just nods his head.” (Gabriel’s powerful trumpet playing appeared in both Eastwood’s Changeling and Invictus.)
Then one of Gabriel’s friends turned him on to the heresy of electronic music, and his promethean journey began. The substance is what surprised him. “The mystery was in how they were coming up with those sounds,” he recalls. He spent long mornings poking around the acoustic world, sampling his trumpet and playing it back, reaching for something just beyond his training. The turning point came when a close friend with a mixing board and a copy of ProTools initiated Gabriel into the secrets of a new brotherhood. Suddenly, the man who played his saintly melodies on soundtracks for films was clicking on a screen, playing with something called “samples.”
But electronica was only a catalyst for Gabriel Johnson’s unique sorcery, a “fractured jazz” where streams of musical electricity dance on shards of mirrors. “Electronica led me down a path – it didn’t become the path,” insists Johnson. Broken beats and bleeps were there to guide him into a room full of unopened doors. Not all of them led to the glossy digital future. In fact, Johnson is “pretty hardcore about doing it old-school.” Johnson records the trumpet tracks the same way Miles Davis did, sitting on a stool in front of a microphone in one uninterrupted take. “For the trumpet lines, there is no faking it,” he explains, “or studio trickery.” On every track, Johnson proves that, in the end, he plays trumpet music. “This is about breaking free from that jazz status quo,” says Johnson, “where you put out an album with ten standards and hope Wynton Marsalis notices.”
Gabriel Johnson makes music in the space between the party and the furrowed, thoughtful brow. Take “Be Serious,” a tune that he calls “tweaked-out dance music.” In the end, this is all one trumpet line, an off-center riff spliced up and strung back together. That secret formula is the key to a new electro-acoustic experience. Gabriel gets you nodding your head in five-four time and grooving on twelve-tone scales. The man who studied Schoenberg has brought his secret science to a new land of listeners ready for a Pied Piper. Before you can notice that your feet are moving, Gabriel Johnson has you stepping your way out of the land of clichés and into a different dimension where his sound is everywhere.
That’s Gabriel Johnson’s trick: this bite-sized album runs through eight permutations of his digital acoustic equation. “Be Serious” was christened after some mainstream musicians heard it and warned him, “You’ve got to be more serious about making traditional jazz.” Actually, Johnson could not be more sober. Even where his music blends seamlessly into a DJ’s late-night remix, most of the creations have a melancholy, contemplative streak. Indeed, Gabriel was not always so comfortable in the spotlight. When he was young and at conservatory, he contacted his birth father. They hadn’t spoken in thirteen years. His father wasn’t interested in talking. “When you’ve grown up, and you’re talking to this person who’s supposed to be grown-up, and you see that they haven’t changed, it’s hard to figure out,” recalls Gabriel. “My natural reaction was to get pissed off.” That anger turned into “Confusion,” a club banger that huffs and shuffles around in the back of the dancehall.
Later, Gabriel’s adopted father, the man he calls Dad, underwent treatment for lymphoma and had a stem cell transplant. For a while, he lived in a glass bubble. Gabriel, who had always possessed an athlete’s discipline, turned to the trumpet to labor and distracted himself with work. He would visit his father often. Gabriel remembers peering in through the thick glass at his mother’s side. That experience inspired him to write “View from the Outside,” a reflection on his mother’s pain as she looked through a window at the man she loved. “I’m married,” says Gabriel, “but I haven’t been for very long. The thought of looking at the person you love most through this glass bubble…,” he trails off. “I played the song for my mother, and she thought I was crazy.”
Gabriel Johnson’s obsessive and disciplined approach turned the numbing pain of illness and isolation into stimulation and beauty.
His earliest memory of musical inspiration bring back a twinge of longing: his grandmother took him to see Dizzy Gillespie play when he was eight years old. Gabriel thought, “I’ll never be able to do that.” He had given up before he even started. But over time he came back to this early attraction to the trumpet and applied himself in the only way he knows how. Just as Johnson practices to run annual races that raise money for lymphoma research, he leads a methodical artist’s life: up at 6:30, off to the gym, and then work on music all day. Johnson delivers an orderly and careful brand of music. His songs are fine-tuned for the active listener with an open ear and the disc jockey looking for a new track to remix. In fact, he is making the elements of his music available for remixers on his website.
That’s right: Gabriel Johnson, conservatory altar boy, wants you to cut up his Bible. He is releasing tracks, one by one, so the DJ devils can come out and play. That will recontextualize the trumpet and make it the elephant in another room. Clubgoers cannot help but notice Johnson’s melodic trumpet lines, blueblood and highbrow. There is a wake-up call in this music, one that can be as obvious as the rude and boisterous trumpet blast in “And Then It Was Over” or as unresolved as the tension of “You Get What You Deserve” or “Lullabye.” “A really strong sound,” Johnson tells us, “or a really strong atmosphere gives them no choice but to pay attention.”
Gabriel Johnson is slashing back the frontiers of trumpet music. This is awakening music for a genre that, Johnson tells us, “hasn’t moved on since 1965.” He has lived in a world of formulae, beautiful but uninteresting. When he was starting out, he recalls, “they said, ‘If it’s not jazz, it’s smooth jazz.’ And I said that that doesn’t make any sense.” Free jazz, he found, was too isolating to the listener. That’s when Gabriel Johnson wrote in “none of the above” and burst right through a brick wall.
On the other side, Gabriel Johnson says, “I’m giving electronic music a proper go.” The electronica alternative gives him the freedom to transpose the trumpet into a fresh arena, away from its usual accompaniments, the piano and saxophone. Fra_ctured features jazz almost stripped of its obligations to improvisation and restocked with deeply listenable electronic music. This solo enterprise took almost three years to create, through endless hours of cuts and retakes and learn-as-you-go lessons about the computer. The next one, Johnson hopes, will be quicker in the coming – but he won’t release it until it’s perfect.
Brazilian Transplants in Unexpected Places: SambaDá Reveres and Reinvents Samba and Surf-Rock
There’s a beach where one sunny afternoon you may witness an offering to an Afro-Brazilian Orixa spirit of the ocean, the next day watch master capoeristas practicing Brazil’s martial art dance form, and still another day join a gathering of thousands of surfers-cum-dancers rocking out to hybrid musical sounds informed by bloco afro (Afro-Brazilian percussion music), samba-reggae, surf-rock, and California funk. No, these are not the shores of Bahia, Brazil. This is Santa Cruz, California, home of the surf-and-skate, capoeira-kicking, scene-busting phenomenon known as SambaDá. This smoldering and soldering band is a magnet of unexpected particles shaved from Brazilian and American sources. This community of people—their local fanbase and their Brazilian ancestors, their people—are honored in the title of SambaDá’s new album Gente!
While SambaDá emerged from a Brazilian dance group, founder Papiba Godinho has not let his status of capoeira master dominate the band’s sound. Since the beginning, when some of his students started jamming on their evenings off, the motley members have always brought in their own styles and ideas. The new album features Dandha da Hora, a powerful singer steeped in the life and lessons of samba culture and the Brazilian black pride movement. When Dandha arrived in Santa Cruz, drawn by love from her home in the hills and shanties of Salvador, Brazil, she brought with her an ethos that charges the band’s music with an energy born of veneration. Every September, Dandha proceeds to the beach to lead the ritual in honor of Yemanja, the Yoruba Orixa of the ocean revered in Candomblé, her native religion. Here, the traditions of West Africa, carried halfway around the world, washed up in Santa Cruz like so much flotsam before finding a new home in the eclectic bricolage of SambaDá. One track on Gente!, “Mare,” contemplates the immensity of the ocean, how the rise and fall of the tides reflect our lives, and ends with an old Yoruba salutation to Yemanja. Yemanja takes the offering, but returns a gift in kind: driftwood from Brazil, still green at the core, takes root once again where the sand meets the hills. Dancing feet in a hundred-strong samba pat down the soil, and the strains of surf rock, alive and well, raise the tree up to be a new-culture organism, all Amazon jungle wood and funky Cali fruits. But this is not the band’s only ritual. Guitarist and drum machine wizard Will Kahn likes to jump in the water between sets during SambaDá’s beachfront shows, which draw thousands of stomping, jumping fans. “The beach is really where our music is supposed to be,” he reflects. Will, who joined the band in its early days, is from Bolinas, that famously private hamlet in the hills near Santa Cruz. Growing up with artists, poets, and the intellectually curious, Will found it natural to mix music from around the tropical world, but mostly reggae, with the passionately laid-back culture of surfing. He is responsible for the tight, intense tsunami of a surf guitar that inflects SambaDá’s Afro-Brazilian dance tunes. That sound rides the crest of a tall wave until it crashes into a turbocharged Jamaican rhythm on “Iguana,” the first track, which also features band member Anne Stafford on saxophone. Anne’s klezmer music roots sidle up alongside the Middle Eastern inflections that Dick Dale first introduced into surf rock.
Papiba wrote “Iguana” a decade ago but revived it with the band’s fresh sound, now infused with new life and a surf-and-skate spirit. It is a fitting beginning to Gente!, an album that stands as the culmination of the band’s long evolution. Papiba, who originally came to America to study, found himself drawn to Santa Cruz by surf culture. There, he began teaching capoeira, which he began practicing when he was very young, growing up in the ultra-modern Brazilian capital of Brasilia, where Afro-Brazilian culture was ubiquitous. His teachers inspired him to show capoeira to the world. Today, four members of the band play capoeira. “Capoeira is my inspiration for everything in life,” says Papiba. “Everything I see.” This athletic awareness of the self and of the world epitomizes the jungle-cat spirit of SambaDá, whose music is always on a tightrope, reined in by an acrobat’s poise. This is the idea of the album’s second track, “Balançou.” In Portuguese, this is a special kind of swing or “balance,” a smooth pocket that keeps SambaDá’s music spinning between Brazilian and American magnetic fields. It is no wonder, then, that members of SambaDá surf and skateboard, prompting an unusual sponsorship deal with the renowned skateboard manufacturer Santa Cruz Skateboards.
Dandha da Hora, as the newest member of SambaDá, has brought an ethic to the excitement. Dandha was born in 1975 to a family involved in the founding of Ilê Aiyê, the first exclusively Afro-Brazilian bloco. Blocos organize samba dances with hundreds of drummers for Carnival processions, and Ilê Aiyê is no exception, but the group mainly promotes awareness of and pride in Afro-Brazilian culture. Dandha spent her life, from ages six to twenty-nine, learning, singing, and dancing in this “House of Life” before a charismatic filmmaker and activist for Brazilian traditional music, now her husband, convinced her to come to Santa Cruz. At first, she went to visit for a month, which turned into two months, then three, then a career.
When Dandha came to Santa Cruz, she began to teach Brazilian dance to private students. Dandha attracted plenty of devotees drawn to Santa Cruz and San Francisco Bay’s vibrant Brazilian music scene, but she soon found that her lessons challenged the mainstream idea of Brazilian dance – “all about bikinis and feathers.” Through her husband, she met Papiba, who invited her to be a guest singer for SambaDá. The band quickly asked her to become a permanent member. “That was a scary moment for me!” Dandha remembers. She is the embodiment, it seems, of the boundless energy that typifies a SambaDá band member. “It was a big transition in my life. And when I said ‘yes,’ it was too late to come back!” Now, she says, “I have my third family with SambaDá. Every time we go on the road, for several hours in a van, we know we are a big family: we shop together, we eat together, we cry together. We all crash in the same room together!”
Family is also a theme in Papiba Godinho’s songwriting. “Meu Pai” records the moment when Papiba realized his father was ill. Normally Papiba’s trips back home to Brasilia for capoeria events are short and fast, leaving not enough time to spend with his family. “My father,” he laments, “I came only to see you. I arrive early in the morning and leave by nightfall.” SambaDá asks, which is better? To be close to the ones you love, or to make a new community your own? These multicultural rovers find their answer in both.
Dandha’s extended family had a long-awaited reunion on SambaDá’s recent pilgrimage to Brazil and Ilê Aiyê. For years, the band, which is mostly American, had labored for authenticity under the guidance of Papiba. One day, a friend of a friend of a friend of Dandha’s convinced the mayor of São Paulo to hire them for the city’s annual festivities. The Brazilophiles in the hard-working, hard-playing band practiced and refined their act for the “authentic” audience that awaited them. Even Papiba and Dandha were hesitant about playing Brazilian music to Brazilians. “I was afraid of the reaction of the people,” recalls Dandha. “We had played for Americans. It’s different when you go back to Brazil, where everybody speaks Portuguese.”
Instead, SambaDá’s salvation came in the form of personal authenticity, a balanced and blended sound that they owe both to musical camaraderie and to the guidance of Greg Landau, who also produced their previous album, Salve a Bahia. For years, the band had maintained a following with its rough-and-ready mix of funk, surf, and capoeira sounds. “But once we started working with Greg,” recounts Will Kahn, “we realized that he was holding us accountable for the American styles that we claimed.” Instead of letting the people of São Paulo down, SambaDá’s hybrid groove kept them dancing in the rain. They might have said that the Americans had dende, the “palm oil” flavor that stands for excellent capoeira moves. The band chose that name for the third track on Gente!, a rollicking evocation of Brazilian Carnival ready for the club DJ. As SambaDá played on, several members of Dandha’s second family showed up to dance. Will, looking back, calls that moment “a real affirmation. This was a dream come true.”
SambaDá also traveled into the hills, to Salvador and the House of Ilê Aiyê. They were the first American band to play at Ilê Aiyê, perched on a hill in the neighborhood of Liberdade, a mostly Afro-Brazilian neighborhood of Salvador. There, they were reassured that authenticity is not the measure of creative success. “I showed my community what else I could do!” remembers Dandha, Ilê Aiyê’s prodigal daughter, with a hint of pride. These truly were the gente, the “people.” The band wrote “Casa de Mãeinha,” meaning “my mother’s house,” as a tribute to the people there, who showed a kind reluctance to let them leave. The song is a counterpoint to the distance of “Meu Pai” and a celebration of closeness and the discovery of family affection.
SambaDá are careful to stick to their musical roots even as they innovate. “Sangue Africano Remix,” samples a song sung by Graca Onasile, the first female singer in an Afro-Brazilian bloco. The song praises Exu, the messenger Orixa, but Will Kahn’s hip-hop remix gives it a new vibration for a global audience. All the same, the band has found that it is their uniqueness, their newness to all audiences, that makes them stand out. One night at Ilê Aiyê, Will Kahn brought his drum machine to back up the band with hybrid hip-hop/Afro-Brazilian beats. The children in the house were wide-eyed with enchantment, as excited and enraptured as the crowds of Californians who take in SambaDá’s twist on Braziliana.
Will provides the moral of the journey: “If you bring who you are and represent where you come from, people go crazy over it.” The palm of Salvador, planted on Californian soil, has borne SambaDá, a band of its own with something for any crowd. They make music with flexible muscles, ready for action, but tempered by respect for the forces of nature and the love of good friends.
Brazilian Transplants in Unexpected Places: SambaDá Reveres and Reinvents Samba and Surf-Rock
There’s a beach where one sunny afternoon you may witness an offering to an Afro-Brazilian Orixa spirit of the ocean, the next day watch master capoeristas practicing Brazil’s martial art dance form, and still another day join a gathering of thousands of surfers-cum-dancers rocking out to hybrid musical sounds informed by bloco afro (Afro-Brazilian percussion music), samba-reggae, surf-rock, and California funk. No, these are not the shores of Bahia, Brazil. This is Santa Cruz, California, home of the surf-and-skate, capoeira-kicking, scene-busting phenomenon known as SambaDá. This smoldering and soldering band is a magnet of unexpected particles shaved from Brazilian and American sources. This community of people—their local fanbase and their Brazilian ancestors, their people—are honored in the title of SambaDá’s new album Gente!
While SambaDá emerged from a Brazilian dance group, founder Papiba Godinho has not let his status of capoeira master dominate the band’s sound. Since the beginning, when some of his students started jamming on their evenings off, the motley members have always brought in their own styles and ideas. The new album features Dandha da Hora, a powerful singer steeped in the life and lessons of samba culture and the Brazilian black pride movement. When Dandha arrived in Santa Cruz, drawn by love from her home in the hills and shanties of Salvador, Brazil, she brought with her an ethos that charges the band’s music with an energy born of veneration. Every September, Dandha proceeds to the beach to lead the ritual in honor of Yemanja, the Yoruba Orixa of the ocean revered in Candomblé, her native religion. Here, the traditions of West Africa, carried halfway around the world, washed up in Santa Cruz like so much flotsam before finding a new home in the eclectic bricolage of SambaDá. One track on Gente!, “Mare,” contemplates the immensity of the ocean, how the rise and fall of the tides reflect our lives, and ends with an old Yoruba salutation to Yemanja. Yemanja takes the offering, but returns a gift in kind: driftwood from Brazil, still green at the core, takes root once again where the sand meets the hills. Dancing feet in a hundred-strong samba pat down the soil, and the strains of surf rock, alive and well, raise the tree up to be a new-culture organism, all Amazon jungle wood and funky Cali fruits. But this is not the band’s only ritual. Guitarist and drum machine wizard Will Kahn likes to jump in the water between sets during SambaDá’s beachfront shows, which draw thousands of stomping, jumping fans. “The beach is really where our music is supposed to be,” he reflects. Will, who joined the band in its early days, is from Bolinas, that famously private hamlet in the hills near Santa Cruz. Growing up with artists, poets, and the intellectually curious, Will found it natural to mix music from around the tropical world, but mostly reggae, with the passionately laid-back culture of surfing. He is responsible for the tight, intense tsunami of a surf guitar that inflects SambaDá’s Afro-Brazilian dance tunes. That sound rides the crest of a tall wave until it crashes into a turbocharged Jamaican rhythm on “Iguana,” the first track, which also features band member Anne Stafford on saxophone. Anne’s klezmer music roots sidle up alongside the Middle Eastern inflections that Dick Dale first introduced into surf rock.
Papiba wrote “Iguana” a decade ago but revived it with the band’s fresh sound, now infused with new life and a surf-and-skate spirit. It is a fitting beginning to Gente!, an album that stands as the culmination of the band’s long evolution. Papiba, who originally came to America to study, found himself drawn to Santa Cruz by surf culture. There, he began teaching capoeira, which he began practicing when he was very young, growing up in the ultra-modern Brazilian capital of Brasilia, where Afro-Brazilian culture was ubiquitous. His teachers inspired him to show capoeira to the world. Today, four members of the band play capoeira. “Capoeira is my inspiration for everything in life,” says Papiba. “Everything I see.” This athletic awareness of the self and of the world epitomizes the jungle-cat spirit of SambaDá, whose music is always on a tightrope, reined in by an acrobat’s poise. This is the idea of the album’s second track, “Balançou.” In Portuguese, this is a special kind of swing or “balance,” a smooth pocket that keeps SambaDá’s music spinning between Brazilian and American magnetic fields. It is no wonder, then, that members of SambaDá surf and skateboard, prompting an unusual sponsorship deal with the renowned skateboard manufacturer Santa Cruz Skateboards.
Dandha da Hora, as the newest member of SambaDá, has brought an ethic to the excitement. Dandha was born in 1975 to a family involved in the founding of Ilê Aiyê, the first exclusively Afro-Brazilian bloco. Blocos organize samba dances with hundreds of drummers for Carnival processions, and Ilê Aiyê is no exception, but the group mainly promotes awareness of and pride in Afro-Brazilian culture. Dandha spent her life, from ages six to twenty-nine, learning, singing, and dancing in this “House of Life” before a charismatic filmmaker and activist for Brazilian traditional music, now her husband, convinced her to come to Santa Cruz. At first, she went to visit for a month, which turned into two months, then three, then a career.
When Dandha came to Santa Cruz, she began to teach Brazilian dance to private students. Dandha attracted plenty of devotees drawn to Santa Cruz and San Francisco Bay’s vibrant Brazilian music scene, but she soon found that her lessons challenged the mainstream idea of Brazilian dance – “all about bikinis and feathers.” Through her husband, she met Papiba, who invited her to be a guest singer for SambaDá. The band quickly asked her to become a permanent member. “That was a scary moment for me!” Dandha remembers. She is the embodiment, it seems, of the boundless energy that typifies a SambaDá band member. “It was a big transition in my life. And when I said ‘yes,’ it was too late to come back!” Now, she says, “I have my third family with SambaDá. Every time we go on the road, for several hours in a van, we know we are a big family: we shop together, we eat together, we cry together. We all crash in the same room together!”
Family is also a theme in Papiba Godinho’s songwriting. “Meu Pai” records the moment when Papiba realized his father was ill. Normally Papiba’s trips back home to Brasilia for capoeria events are short and fast, leaving not enough time to spend with his family. “My father,” he laments, “I came only to see you. I arrive early in the morning and leave by nightfall.” SambaDá asks, which is better? To be close to the ones you love, or to make a new community your own? These multicultural rovers find their answer in both.
Dandha’s extended family had a long-awaited reunion on SambaDá’s recent pilgrimage to Brazil and Ilê Aiyê. For years, the band, which is mostly American, had labored for authenticity under the guidance of Papiba. One day, a friend of a friend of a friend of Dandha’s convinced the mayor of São Paulo to hire them for the city’s annual festivities. The Brazilophiles in the hard-working, hard-playing band practiced and refined their act for the “authentic” audience that awaited them. Even Papiba and Dandha were hesitant about playing Brazilian music to Brazilians. “I was afraid of the reaction of the people,” recalls Dandha. “We had played for Americans. It’s different when you go back to Brazil, where everybody speaks Portuguese.”
Instead, SambaDá’s salvation came in the form of personal authenticity, a balanced and blended sound that they owe both to musical camaraderie and to the guidance of Greg Landau, who also produced their previous album, Salve a Bahia. For years, the band had maintained a following with its rough-and-ready mix of funk, surf, and capoeira sounds. “But once we started working with Greg,” recounts Will Kahn, “we realized that he was holding us accountable for the American styles that we claimed.” Instead of letting the people of São Paulo down, SambaDá’s hybrid groove kept them dancing in the rain. They might have said that the Americans had dende, the “palm oil” flavor that stands for excellent capoeira moves. The band chose that name for the third track on Gente!, a rollicking evocation of Brazilian Carnival ready for the club DJ. As SambaDá played on, several members of Dandha’s second family showed up to dance. Will, looking back, calls that moment “a real affirmation. This was a dream come true.”
SambaDá also traveled into the hills, to Salvador and the House of Ilê Aiyê. They were the first American band to play at Ilê Aiyê, perched on a hill in the neighborhood of Liberdade, a mostly Afro-Brazilian neighborhood of Salvador. There, they were reassured that authenticity is not the measure of creative success. “I showed my community what else I could do!” remembers Dandha, Ilê Aiyê’s prodigal daughter, with a hint of pride. These truly were the gente, the “people.” The band wrote “Casa de Mãeinha,” meaning “my mother’s house,” as a tribute to the people there, who showed a kind reluctance to let them leave. The song is a counterpoint to the distance of “Meu Pai” and a celebration of closeness and the discovery of family affection.
SambaDá are careful to stick to their musical roots even as they innovate. “Sangue Africano Remix,” samples a song sung by Graca Onasile, the first female singer in an Afro-Brazilian bloco. The song praises Exu, the messenger Orixa, but Will Kahn’s hip-hop remix gives it a new vibration for a global audience. All the same, the band has found that it is their uniqueness, their newness to all audiences, that makes them stand out. One night at Ilê Aiyê, Will Kahn brought his drum machine to back up the band with hybrid hip-hop/Afro-Brazilian beats. The children in the house were wide-eyed with enchantment, as excited and enraptured as the crowds of Californians who take in SambaDá’s twist on Braziliana.
Will provides the moral of the journey: “If you bring who you are and represent where you come from, people go crazy over it.” The palm of Salvador, planted on Californian soil, has borne SambaDá, a band of its own with something for any crowd. They make music with flexible muscles, ready for action, but tempered by respect for the forces of nature and the love of good friends.
From Sahara Trance Bluegrass to Re-Imagined Brazilian Choros: The Un-Chamber Music of Real Vocal String Quartet
The classically-trained players of the Real Vocal String Quartet have lost it. As can be witnessed on their debut eponymous recording and in concert, they bang on their violins, stomp their feet, and allow African trance music to influence their take on old timey standards. It's not their sanity that's missing; what RVSQ has lost is the ability to abide the constraints of either the old school classical world, where musicians must frequently forsake their creativity for the overall sound of the orchestra, or the often unapproachable reaches of the contemporary classical world. “There is a perception that ‘new music’ for classically trained musicians needs to be difficult or inaccessible,” says Dina Maccabee, a violist in the group. “We are all totally into challenging ideas but we also like pop music. And we feel like just because you have a highly trained skill set doesn’t mean you need to play obscure music.” Their simultaneous singing and stringing—a barrier buster in itself—may just be the perfect combination for straddling these musical worlds.
Irene Sazer—an original member of the acclaimed, genre-bending Turtle Island String Quartet—founded Real Vocal String Quartet, but is swiftly moving to make the new endeavor a collective one, a mode that flies in the face of the soloist- and conductor-centric classical world as well as the frontman-centric rock band universe. “There are many neuroses that come with being a classical violinist; perfectionism among them.” explains Sazer, who’s a regular fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area’s classical, jazz, and American roots music scenes. “Often in the pedagogy, there’s a real meanness. There’s a good and a bad, a right and a wrong. You succeeded, you failed. It’s a very restrictive box that I’ve been working on breaking out of my whole life. One of my goals and needs in life is to create an ensemble where there is room for everybody both personally and creatively. Key to that is ample room for exploration.” Inside that space the all-female Quartet embraces the influences of four radically diverse musicians, who've cut their teeth individually on every kind of string playing from Balkan and circus-klezmer to West African and bluegrass. The Quartet is rounded out by Alisa Rose, violinist and fiddler extraordinaire, from49 Special and Picasso Quartet, and cellist Jessica Ivry who has been heard on a hip-hop retelling of Dante’s Inferno and playing with jazz vocalist Nneena Freelon among other things. Sounds and songs inspire the Quartet from every which way. All four players add their mad improvisation skills and vocals to the mix.
The diversity of the four players’ experiences reverberates through their new album. For instance, “Talking Strings, Talking Drum” imitates on Western strings the totally unique sound of the African talking drum. “I find myself most fascinated and soothed by rhythmic texture these days,” said Sazer. “I was listening to these intricate rhythmic sections and the scintillating vocals of African music.” “Talking String, Talking Drum” exemplifies the breadth of influence in the group as well as their desire to work outside the norm. The Quartet makes use of the talking drum in an undeniably unconventional way and it works beautifully.
“Kothbiro,” the jaw-dropping first song on the album was composed by Ayub Ogada, a Kenyan artist who’s known for entrancing vocal melodies accompanied on his nyatiti, plucked lute, on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records. In Irene Sazer’s meticulous arrangement, the Quartet sings Ogada’s lyrics phonetically—just as his cult following audiences did on his rare U.S. performances—without speaking the language, and their violins, viola, and cello transform as they take on the swirling and rhythmical melody of his lyre.
The Quartet’s global influences run through their music, often sneaking into unexpected places like the group’s take on the bluegrass standard “Kitchen Girls.” Dina Maccabee was digging deep into the roots of Americana when she wrote this song. She’d been taking fiddle lessons and wanted to push this song beyond the typical groove expected in a bluegrass tune. Meanwhile, she’d been listening to “Amassakoul” by Tinariwen, a musical group from Northern Mali’s Sahara. Tinariwen are known for their invigorating fusion of trance with electric rock guitar. “I was looking for something that was more unexpected,” Maccabee recalls. “So while looking for a way to play ‘Kitchen Girls’ in a new way, I found this kind of groove from Tinariwen. That’s how my musical life works. There are always these different influences.”
“We’re playing all these Western classical instruments and we are all like Jewish girls,” Maccabee laughs. “But there is something about that combination… It’s a little bit trance and really rich in rhythm; if maybe more simple in terms of harmony. Things don’t move around a lot. The richness is in the timbres and the rhythmic element and we all want to explore that. Rather than a jazz tune with one hundred million chords which is a different kind of complexity. Strings and voice and hands and feet. It’s all about layers of sounds and the color of sound.”
West African rhythms aren’t the only global sounds to bounce across the quartet’s bows. Latin influences dance through songs like “Guitara,” a meter-hopping tune originally played by Sazer’s rock group. The group also found inspiration in Afro-Brazilian music. “Fontana Abandonada-Passatempo” is a medley of two songs from the pre-Samba era, written by Pixinguinha, a revolutionary flutist who changed Brazilian music when he helped turn the nation on to improvisational jazz music. Sazer scrupulously transcribed the songs for the quartet and wrote new solos for the cello and viola, a transformation from the piece’s original instrumentation. “It fits like a glove though. It plays easy,” Sazer explained. “Not that it’s all that easy to play.”
Though they are not hesitant to draw on their technical skill of transcription and arrangement, Real Vocal String Quartet is not locked into their conservatory-trained method. At every performance, including their studio recording for the album, they dive into the unpredictable when they play “Now,” a group improvisation that changes every time. No one, not even the person who initiates the piece knows what she is going to play, but that all changes once they get going. In the studio, tapping their feet on the hardwood floors at a house show, or bowing their strings beneath vibrant stage lights, Real Vocal String Quartet show their playful side conversing only with their instruments reacting to their moods, the room, the audience. They bounce rhythms and melodies off one another, gradually learning the moves of one another until they’ve built something entirely new, surprising even themselves. “Sometimes, it will get really funny and we have to stop and laugh. All of the sudden, someone will be playing some disco riff—something from the seventies.” Sazer laughed. “But we always turn it into something. We call it ‘Now’ at every performance, because it’s happening now, right now, in whatever place we are in.”
The Quartet’s tight bond is only helped by being an all-women’s ensemble. “I feel like I’m playing with my friends,” says Sazer. The fact that every member in the band is a woman is not entirely an accident. “Many of the groups we’ve played in the past with have been mostly male,” said Maccabee. “I think in some ways this could be in reaction to that. I think we just enjoy working in a space away from the ‘dudeness of band practice.’” More precious than their femaleness is the mutual desire to work together collectively and to explore string and vocal music.
Wherever they began individually, together, the players in Real Vocal String Quartet have gone somewhere entirely new. Their chemistry as a musical group has become a catalyst for a creative explosion. They’ve taken their classical and jazz training, and combined it with their talent and other forays for their debut album. African, Brazilian, Balkan, Bluegrass: they’ve stretched beyond the conceived limits of string music. It may seem like they’ve absolutely lost it, but it doesn’t take an expert to see that they’ve known where it was the entire time.
From the Palace to the People: A Global Griot Saves a West African Tradition with Rock ‘n’ Roll Revelations and Blues Muses
“To all the rock ‘n’ rollers of the USA, I’m coming in February, 2010!”—Bassekou Kouyate
On the sandy grounds near the Sahara of West Africa, where the ancient Malian Empire once flourished, where griots have, for generations, sang the praises of local kings and crooned stories of battles long ago, the unassuming musician Bassekou Kouyate stands plucking a small stringed instrument called an ngoni - the ancestor of the banjo. Amidst the urban landscape of Mali’s present day capital - Bamako, Kouyate is surrounded by members of his band who wear bluejeans and have ngonis strapped around their shoulders like electric guitars as they sit on motorbikes and cars while talking on cell phones. Like this cosmopolitan city scene, Kouyate’s latest album with his band Ngoni Ba—I Speak Fula—juxtaposes the ancient and the modern, seamlessly melding contemporary jazz, blues, rock, bluegrass, and pop influences with Afro-beat and the centuries-old musical traditions of the griots of Mali.
There is some poetic justice that I Speak Fula is the first release on the new label Next Ambiance, an imprint of Sub Pop! The Seattle-based Sub Pop! label was the original home to such legendary bands as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, and has enjoyed more recent successes with such artists as The Postal Service, The Shins, Iron & Wine, Band of Horses, Flight of the Conchords, and Fleet Foxes. American audiences will have the chance to witness Kouyate’s innovative and rocking approach to the ngoni during his 47-date North American tour February through April 2010, joining in the first six weeks banjo pacesetter Bela Fleck’s “The Africa Project.” Kouyate appears on the title track of Fleck’s double-Grammy-nominated Throw Down Your Heart. Another Bassekou Kouyate North American tour is in the works for June and July. It is no coincidence that Kouyate’s music has so elegantly merged with blues-based music. As is well known, American blues has its roots in West Africa, particularly around the Sahel region of modern day Mali. This sonic link became clear to Kouyate in 1990, when a friend who went to Mali in search of the origins of the blues, invited the ngoni virtuoso to play with noted American bluesman Taj Mahal. “I didn’t even know who Taj Mahal was,” Kouyate recalls, “and we had no language but music to communicate. He began playing and I joined in. When we stopped, Taj said: ‘So you already know the blues!’ but it was the first time I had ever heard blues. I was just playing my Ségu (home village) style, and it is the same music.”
Before this meeting, Kouyate had rarely heard music from outside Mali. Born into a family of famous griot musicians, he was steeped in the traditions of his local village, learning to sing its history. “My diet was all live griot music from the Bambara tradition,” he says. “When I was growing up it was rare to hear a radio, and in any case the only station that reached the village was Radio Mali, and they had no funds for, or interest in, playing music from outside Mali.” After his father’s passing, Koyoute moved to the regional capital Segu and began to accompany many talented singers, including Amy Sacko who later became his wife and is a vocalist in Ngoni Ba. Subsequently, in the mid-’80s Kouyate moved to Bamako where he began playing with kora (21-stringed African harp) master Toumani Diabate. Their deep musical and personal bonds, which have matured over the past two decades through the course of more than eight previous albums together, can be heard on Ngoni Ba’s latest recording, as Diabate adds to the polyrhythmic percussive plucking on several songs.
Like Diabate, Kouyate wanted to move beyond the traditions of his ancestors. “We are a new generation now. I can’t just do what my father and grandfather did,” Kouyate explains. Recounting a performance in 1985 at Bamako’s legendary train station venue—the Buffet de la Gare—Kouyate can pinpoint the decisive moment when he started to move along a distinct artistic path. “I was playing with Nainy Diabate,” he remembers, “and she was looking for a new sound, and I was looking for a new way to play ngoni. The old guys always sat down when they played, but when rock guitarists soloed they went to the front of the stage. I decided to put a strap on the ngoni, so when it was time for my solo I moved to the center and surprised everyone.” With this performance, Kouyate had not only established himself as a major innovative force in Malian music, but also intentionally brought the ngoni into the spotlight. “This is why I have struggled to create Ngoni Ba,” he says, “to put this instrument on the international stage. We don’t have to stay in back. That’s impossible.” Since the 1980s, Kouyate has continued to find new ways to play his instrument, creating a double picking technique as well as sliding and bending notes like no one before. Today, these developments have become standard practice for aspiring ngoni players.
By popularizing the ngoni, Koyoute has become its saviour. No longer was it relegated to the courts of elite rulers, but it was shown that it could be everyone’s instrument. Over the past two decades Kouyate has revived interests in the ancient ngoni by placing it in new and invigorating musical settings. After playing with Taj Mahal, Kouyate collaborated with fellow Malian musicians to create a jazz-inspired instrumental trio, in addition to participating in a number of projects that fuse ngoni traditions with global popular music: jam sessions with Bonnie Raitt and Bono, as well as the studio sessions of the late great Ali Farka Toure’s last album, Savane, and on Youssou N’Dour’s most recent recording, Rokku mi Rokka. Such directions have, as Kouyate says, “created quite a stir among traditional ngoni musicians. They began to feel that their instrument was being brought back to life. It was quite possible that the ngoni would have eventually died out, being seen as antique and only fit for museums.” Whereas before Kouyate, young musicians in Mali were primarily interested in playing guitar, this modern griot has inspired this country’s youth to re-discover the ngoni. Bamako is now home to over a hundred ngoni ensembles. With these developments in mind, Kouyate recalls, “it was one older ngoni player, Sory Kane, that said to me: ‘You’ve saved the ngoni!’”
Kouyate secures the survival of the ngoni by continuing to push its limits, exploring uncharted territory, and speaking to the next generation of players, ensuring that they will continue along the paths he has opened. Appealing to youth, Kouyate has incorporated the sensibilities of rock ‘n’ roll into his latest album. “For me,” Kouyate says, “rock ‘n’ roll means youth and dancing.” In 2007, during a concert in Portugal, Kouyate “really got excited” by the reaction of a young audience, realizing the potential of his music to connect with youth, as teenagers danced in the streets of Lisbon. “The new album was made with this young audience in mind,” he says, “It is for them that we have quickened the tempos on several numbers and added touches like the wah-wah pedal to bring more excitement.” “Musow,” a song dedicated to women, for instance, features wah-inflected ngoni improvisations over an up-tempo calabash and shakere groove.
While travelling along innovative paths, I Speak Fula also recalls the traditional role of the griot as a travelling historian. Referencing the victorious battle of Biton Coulibaly—the founder of the Bamana Empire—“Torin torin,” offers praises to this revered leader, celebrating his courage and dignity with a polyrhythmic picking party that includes one of Mali’s most talented kamele ngoni players, Harouna Samake. Singing the legend of Nce—the son of a Bamana ruler in the 1770s—“Bambugu Blues” infuses this age-old tale with contemporary flare, featuring a laid back soulful duet between Kouyate and the bluesy guitar of Vieux Farka Toure (son of Ali Farka Toure). Praising the great warriors of Mali’s past, guest Dramane Ze Konate plays a hunter’s harp on “Senufo Hunter.” “When Dramane Ze first came into record,” Kouyate recalls, “he was carrying an old harp that he played in 1960 for Mali’s first president, Modibo Ketia. Nobody in the studio wanted to touch it, because they thought it was too powerful.”
Kouyate also sees Ngoni Ba’s latest album as a deeply personal reflection, and a chance to educate his audiences. His wife inspired the song “Amy,” which speaks of her humility, strength, and generous heart, while “Saro” is a musical prayer dedicated to the memory of his late brother who died during the recording of the album. Moving across the emotional and philosophical spectrum, the up-tempo bluegrass-tinged “Ladon” reminds listeners to educate their children well for they will have an impact on Mali’s ability to progress.
Like griots of the past, Kouyate has garnered great respect by carving out a distinct identity for himself, while maintaining an awareness of the historical significance of his instrument. “The image I like,” he says, “is of the ngoni as the griot’s ID card. Even if there is a war going on and it is difficult to travel, a griot, with his ngoni slung around his back, was always allowed through, because it was known that he was going to play for a leader, and perhaps act as an intermediary for political negotiations.” Bringing the ngoni from the palace to the people, Kouyate represents a new kind of global griot; one who has travelled the world negotiating artistic alliances between the ancient and the contemporary, and, in the process, saving the ngoni with rock ‘n’ roll revelations and blues muses.
A Creole Cowboy with an Old Country Soul: Artistic Outlaw Cedric Watson et Bijou Créole Take Zydeco into a New Frontier
Riding in from the dusty plains of Texas with a fiddle under his arm, an accordion on his back, and a song in his heart, a Creole cowboy named Cedric Watson recently swaggered onto the Louisiana music scene. When this outsider burst into local saloons, first locals were taken back by his mastery of tradition and then by his ability to seamlessly integrate polyrhythms and grooves from beyond. Roping in the old with the new, L’Ésprit Créole, Watson’s latest album with his band Bijou Créole, captures the rich Caribbean, African, and European heritage that underlies Creole culture while galloping through an unexplored frontier.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Who in the hell is this kid?!’ Everyone was blown away,” recalls Lisa Stafford, the artistic director of the highly acclaimed Festival International de Louisiane. “Even though he was not from here in Lafayette,” she continues, “everyone just really embraced him and he made an immediate home for himself here. I would see him dressed in overalls at local Cajun or Zydeco dances and when he would walk up to a girl to invite her to dance, he would bow. He was just like an old country soul.” Audiences quickly recognized the remarkable talents and down-home spirit of this 26-year old prodigy as he displayed his mastery of the traditional Zydeco and Cajun songbooks. They could not have predicted, however, that Watson would be responsible for re-inventing the sounds of Creole music. Infusing it with Caribbean and West African polyrhythms, this artistic outlaw breaks through the conventions of Creole music, while maintaining a deep respect for its traditions. So much so that the album was just nominated for a Grammy in the Cajun and Zydeco category. Watson’s previous self-titled album was nominated in the same category last year.
Watson’s own brand of Creole music is informed by his profound fascination for its roots as well as his passion for exploring its untapped possibilities. While the sounds of his musical mentors, great Creole musicians such as the Ardoin family, Edward Poullard, Jeffrey Broussard, Goldman Thibodeaux, James Adams, and other Creole forebears echo through Watson’s songs, his open approach to composition allows for a diverse range of influences to flood in. “I give a lot of freedom to the individual members of my group,” Watson explains, “Each brings his own musical and cultural influences to bear. So without much effort, we just naturally sound different than other Creole and Zydeco groups.” While drawing on reggae, jazz, blues, country, and soul, Watson acknowledges, “We don’t have to go hip-hop or R&B, like a lot of Creole bands these days. We grab the Creole essence that is already there and emphasize it more.” What could easily become a stampede of musical mischief, in other words, is corralled by Watson’s sensibilities; his old country soul tastefully balances modern elements with the relentless revival of the music’s authentic connection with the past.
Revealing the source of Watson’s enthusiasm for Creole history, this album is, in part, an autobiographical tale of his own eclectic family lineage. “A lot of my ancestors were Spanish,” he remarks; “They were isleños, islanders. My great, great, great grandfather, for instance, came from the Canary Islands (located between Spain and Northern Africa) to join the Spanish and Mexican army in fighting off the German settlers in what is now Texas. Not only were some of my ancestors Black slaves, but some were also Native American and French.” As a teenager, while visiting his relatives in Louisiana, Watson was captivated by a radio show out of the town of Jennings that was entirely in French (“Even the McDonald’s commercials were in French!”), so he tape recorded it and brought it back to Texas where such programs were rare. Experiences like this fueled his fervor for Zydeco music, Creole culture, as well as his exploration and expression of the complexities of his own identity. For instance, although his parents never spoke Creole, Watson has made a concerted effort to re-discover his own roots, learning to sing in Creole and French, as well as English. With polyglot panache, Watson recounts his experiences of drinking, dancing, and flirting at a legendary saloon in Lafayette, Louisiana on the laid back, swaying song “J’suis Gone á la Blue Moon.”
Deeply aware of the African contributions to his own identity and Creole culture in general, Watson, along with his ensemble, produce poignantly polyrhythmic grooves, melding West African hand-drums with the playful punctuations of drumset and percussion patterns inspired by African diasporic musics. Throughout L’Esprit Creole, the band’s percussionist, Zydeco Mike, soulfully scrapes a rubboard, ratcheting up the rhythmical intensity of several tunes, in addition to performing on bongos and African drums. Bringing his passion for Rastafarian culture to the mix, Mike’s infusion of reggae can be felt on the laid back lilting “C’est La Vie,” as he adds hand drums to the triangle and accordion and vocal melodies of Watson, giving the composition a sound like Bob Marley in the Bayou. “Hand-drumming is something that you don’t see a lot of in Zydeco,” says Watson. “As soon as an audience hears these drums they are going to think of the Caribbean or Africa.”
Joining this prodigious posse is also drummer Jermaine Prejean who adds funkified syncopation, jazzy cymbal work, and an element of Carnival-style samba. Together with bassist Blake Miller, the two provide the band with a rock-solid, heavy-swinging foundation, while country blues rustles through the performances of multi-instrumentalist Chris Stafford. His soulful Rhodes playing along with bluesy guitar riffs shine on “Le Sud de la Louisiane.” Stafford’s steel guitar textures on “Cher ‘Tit Cœur (Dear Little Heart)” give this waltz a melancholy honky-tonk flare as Watson sings about heartbreak and healing, telling listeners to free their minds of their past problems. Expanding Creole music, Watson includes horns on several of his compositions. On “Zydeco Paradise,” Josh LeBlanc’s trumpet and the saxes of Tim McFatter and Will Henderson provide a staccato accent to this funky hootenanny.
While striding along new sonic trails, Watson’s love of traditional Creole culture and music is evident throughout the recording. His use of the double-row Hohner accordion—with its “musette tuning and wetter sound”—is a nod to Creole roots. “One of my goals is to bring back the Creole fiddle and the double row,” says Watson, proudly.
His roots also show in his choice of material. “J’suis Parti au Texas” uses a traditional melody found by Watson on an old Alan Lomax recording from the 1930s, reworking it to tell a personal story of the singer’s journey to Texas and reconnection with his family there. Paying tribute to one of the legends of Creole music, “Grand Marais” is a re-interpretation of an old Dennis McGee tune that features a soulful fiddle duet over a two-step dance beat. Building on the artistry of his forefathers, Watson adds his own lyrics that speak about a woman being refused. Finishing off the album, Watson includes his arrangement of “Bluerunner,” a song originally composed by one of his heroes and mentors, fiddler Bebe Carrier. “I wrote a syncopated bass line that’s in unison with the guitar, and we did it with the whole band,” says Watson. Atop a gritty down-home shuffle that hints at a second line New Orleans street beat, Watson’s fiddle soars and shakes with Creole charm and brilliance.
Watson’s fiddle playing is not only remarkably tasteful and lyrical, but also novel. When asked if there are any other young African-American Creole fiddlers out there, Lisa Stafford replied, “none that I know of.” Speaking about this distinction, Watson recalls that when a friend introduced him to renowned Creole accordionist and singer Goldman Thibodeaux, “It brought tears to his eyes, because he was so happy to know that there was still a Black fiddler out there keeping the music alive.” Watson also tells the story of Amédé Ardoin, the first person to ever record Creole music. “One day Ardoin was playing at a white party and a girl wiped his face. The men didn’t like that so they beat him, ran over him with their truck, and beat his hands with a sledge hammer,” recounts Watson. “It was a hate crime. I play in honor of him and all the people that came before me.”
Connecting Creole cultures of the African and European diasporas with their counterparts in the Americas, L’Esprit Creole offers a sophisticated revival of the multi-ethnic roots of Cajun and Zydeco music, presenting a culturally relevant re-invention that is as much fun as it is profound. While paying tribute to his musical forefathers, Watson, a Creole cowboy with an old country soul, has earned a reputation as an artistic outlaw who forges a path into a new frontier of Zydeco music.
A Springboard of World Music Revelations: globalFEST 2010 Announces Line Up at NYC’s Webster Hall January 10, 2010
For seven years globalFEST (www.globalfest-ny.org) has been the springboard festival for world music artists on the brink of North American national main stage success, performers known in one community but ready to cross into others, and the marquee stars of tomorrow. globalFEST 2010 showcases French Gypsy jazz with breakbeats, cumbia-fied downtempo Argentine club sounds, soul-stirring Colombian roots, new generation Louisiana fiddling, Africa unplugged, Irish traditional song, Senegalese roots reggae, Central Asian avant rock, Romanian hybrid blues, New York salsa upstarts, and a Gwo-ka master from Guadeloupe all under one roof at New York City’s Webster Hall (125 E. 11th St.) on January 10, 2010 at 7pm. The 2010 festival includes four U.S. debut performances and another NYC debut.
Tickets are $40 (www.ticketmaster.com or by phone through World Music Institute box office: 212-545-7536*). Buy tickets early, as prior globalFEST shows have sold out in advance.
This year’s festival performers:
- Alif Naaba, West African acoustic song (Burkina Faso) *
- Cara Dillon, striking Celtic vocalist (Ireland)
- Caravan Palace, electro manouche jazz (France) *
- Cedric Watson, Creole Zydeco heir from Louisiana (USA)
- Federico Aubele, bolero and cumbia meets electro downtempo(Argentina/USA)
- François Ladrezo & Alka Omeka, Gwo-ka master (Guadeloupe)
- La Cumbiamba eNeYé, music from the Pacific & Caribbean coast of Colombia (Colombia/USA)
- La Excelencia, old-school salsa dura revivalists (USA)
- Meta and the Cornerstones, African roots reggae export (Senegal/USA)
- Namgar, Siberian shaman rock from the Central Asian steppes (Russia/Mongolia) *
- Nguyên Lê’s Saiyuki, Pan-Asian jazz trio (Vietnam/Japan/India/France) *
- Nightlosers, Transylvanian blues-rock/Gypsy chameleons (Romania) #
(* = U.S. debut; # = NYC debut; artists subject to change)
globalFEST offers different musical styles to suit the variety of people attracted to the event. Traditional music enthusiasts will find appeal in Nightlosers, Cara Dillon, Cedric Watson, La Cumbiamba eNeyé, and La Excelencia. Rock and electronic aficionados will be attracted to Caravan Palace, Namgar, and Federico Aubele. Lovers of singer-songwriters will fast become fans of Alif Naaba and Meta and the Cornerstones. The French gateway continues to play an important role in bridging global artists to American stages giving France strong representation on globalFEST’s stages including Nguyên Lê’s Saiyuki and singer-percussionist François Ladrezo.
The festival—which has presented over 75 artists since its inception in 2004—is buoyed by a renewed sense of the United States’ place at the global table in the wake of Barack Obama’s election to president, confirmed by his recent Nobel Peace Prize. “This year’s globalFEST looks towards a new sense of internationalism and accessibility,” says Isabel Soffer of World Music Institute, who along with Bill Bragin of Acidophilus: Live and Active Cultures and Shanta Thake of Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, direct the annual festival. “The U.S. is being re-embraced by the world,” says Bragin. “There is a reinvigorated interest in artists trying to connect with the U.S. market.”
As always, the three festival directors seek out artists that may be discoveries or even revelations for their audience, a mix of music fans, and performing arts professionals—including concert presenters, agents, managers, artists, labels, and press—on the lookout for new talent. “We continue to bring several local U.S. based bands as well as international ones, some smaller bands that may be easier to tour in clubs and cabarets, and other larger groups for major festival markets,” Thake explains.
Webster Hall’s three performance spaces mimic the spectrum of venues that concertpresenters use nationwide: a large main stage with balcony, a medium café-style space, and a bar with a packed, standing-room-only dance floor. This environment leads to an unusual night of musical madness.
“Global citizenry continues to be a priority for many nations and particularly France, and what better way to raise awareness of each other’s cultures than through music?” says Emmanuel Morlet, Musical Attaché at the French Embassy, the festival’s founding sponsor. “From increasing understanding to the real economic role the festival plays for emerging French and Francophone performers, now more than ever globalFEST plays a great role in connecting people across political boundaries.”
globalFEST finds the balance between pragmatism and idealism. “Each year we build on previous years’ successes by bringing artists from North America and abroad that we think have the strong potential for viable tours. But we never lose sight that these are representatives of the incredible cultural riches of the world that will likely influence people in ways we can’t even predict,” concludes Thake.
globalFEST is a volunteer-run co-production of World Music Institute, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, and Acidophilus: Live & Active Cultures. Support for all seven editions has been provided by The Cultural Services of the French Embassy with additional support from the French Music Export Office, recognizing France’s pre-eminent role as a hotbed of global music activity. The globalFEST media sponsor is WNYC Radio. globalFEST is presented in association with Bowery Presents. Visa services are provided courtesy of Tamizdat. Publicity services are provided by rock paper scissors, inc. François Ladrezo & Alka Omeka are presented in association with the Anyway Organisation. Nightlosers are presented in association with the Romanian Cultural Institute.
Tickets are $40 (www.ticketmaster.com or by phone through World Music Institute box office: 212-545-7536*). Buy tickets early, as prior globalFEST shows have sold out in advance.
Note that the artist line-up is subject to change. Souad Massi will not be performing due to scheduling conflicts.
* Tickets remain $35 for WMI Friends, Public Theater Patrons, and APAP members by calling the WMI box office: 212-545-7536. Tickets can be purchased with no service charges, cash only, at the Mercury Lounge 217 East Houston Street, Manhattan, Mondays – Saturdays, 12 noon – 7pm.
The Layers of Master Percussionist Jerry Leake Emerge on CUBIST
Jerry Leake produced his new album like a mad rhythm scientist. He was methodic and resourceful, precisely mixing and pouring one ingredient into the next. It could have ended in disaster with sonic fragments left strewn about haplessly…but it did not. Cubist comes to life with mathematical precision and undeniable beauty where each composition resounds its exclusive musical “soul”. Cubist reflects and retracts not only music but also people and their experiences. “You can almost feel the characters living inside some of these creations,” Leake said of his latest work.
Imagine an “exotic” secret agent as he sprints through the Technicolor jungles of India, fueled by driving rock grooves rotating around a 10-beat tabla pattern. Picture the neon lights and gyration of dancers at nightclubs in the Caribbean: merengue grooves mingle with African drums, fiery piano duels percolating congas. Or, a modern jazz band swinging inside African drums, bells and shakers. Like the Big Bang itself, initiation for Cubist came from within and outside of its benevolent explosion, conveyed in the life cycle of the Red Giant star called Aldeberan—the first track on the disc. Sensing complementary “big” orchestral sounds were necessary to tell the epic story of stellar life and death, Leake incorporated large concert bass drums, timpani, chimes and bells, plus immense tam tam and gongs. Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music provided an ample laboratory where, alone, story-teller and scientist emerged, mixing layers of sound to destroy the great star in both climax and rebirth.
Jerry began his percussion quest as a young boy. “I savored the process of connecting dots in my music to those in my life. I was able to see myself through the history of various drums and my own process of learning about each of them.” Gradually, Leake’s passion for percussion fueled a hunger for exploration that led him to studies at Berklee College of Music, then India, Africa, and Latin America.
Over 30 years of experimenting, combining, and layering his personal and worldly musical history ‘discovery’ remains a central part of Jerry’s mission. “Everything I create is based on some integral and traceable origin,” said Leake. “I strive to add my own contemporary composing and arranging skills to find a common thread with the past—a sort of future-ancient perspective where today is already history.”
It is no coincidence that the music in Cubist reinvigorates the concepts presented by the Cubist movement in the early 20th century. Like Picasso, Leake set out to represent each musical object—each theme, instrument, and influence—from all sides, in relation to the listener. As a result, a more profound musical awareness and aesthetic evolved with sounds that intertwine human experience with global music experience.
Leake’s music serves the entire body of the listener, not just the ears or the intellect. When listening to this new direction in contemporary music you can discern the unique methods to the rhythmic madness and invention of Cubist.
This is not Your Guru's Yoga Music
When EarthRise SoundSystem’s Derek Beres and David “Duke Mushroom” Schommer first joined together to remix a song by popular mantra singer Deva Premal, they set out to create a new paradigm as to what ‘yoga music’ meant. The result was a percussively rich, organically spacious and dubby soundscape. This approach laid the foundation for their full length album, The Yoga Sessions (Yoga Organix), a collection of 21st century electronically inspired yet organically grown original music that will redefine one’s notions of “yoga music.”
Beres knows well from his five years of teaching yoga at Manhattan’s Equinox Fitness what his students crave musically: bass. Enter Duke Mushroom, whose award-nominated album, Bole 2 Harlem, merged Ethiopian sounds with New York City rhythms. As EarthRise SoundSystem, Beres—a longtime DJ and influential music journalist—and Mushroom—a producer, writer, and performer who has played on over 50 records in the past two decades—united their experiences to create an album that moves people from the inside out, a quality apparent throughout its twelve dynamic tracks.
“Throughout the process of recording The Yoga Sessions, Derek’s creative input, through his first hand knowledge of what music moves a class, as well as his skills behind turntables, were the missing links for taking my production concepts to the next level,” says Mushroom. “Going into the studio was a natural progression of our club performances. That process offered us a window to the future: that we could create original music and use this basis of DJ/drumming to bring it out live. The result is a record that eclipsed both of our expectations and desires.”
Community has formed the core of all facets of Derek and Duke’s work, and this record is no exception. The Yoga Sessions features performances from a diverse selection of vocalists and musicians, all part of the EarthRise Network: Verve Recording artist Lucy Woodward, Pharaoh’s Daughter founder Basya Schechter, Universal France artist Morley, Idan Raichel Project’s Lital Gabai, Hindustani leanings from Yoga Organix label mate Go-Ray, Moroccan Gnawa offerings from Hamid Boudali, and the soulful stylings of Daniel Dworkin—as well as instrumental performances by two-time Canadian Music Award winner and Juno nominee Eccodek, tabla player Dave Sharma (Sub Swara), and guitarist Shahar Mintz (Meta and the Cornerstones).
“Yoga, in modern American culture at least, is not only about the refinement of the individual,” says Beres. “It’s also about the community that it has created. Ever since hearing Bole 2 Harlem, I was a huge fan of Duke’s music production, his keen ear and refined taste. He pulled from many sources without appropriating any specific cultural sound, creating a completely new sound along the way. As our friendship deepened and we starting performing live together, it became apparent that this project—creating music appropriate for the yoga we practice today in our culture—would blossom.”
Beres and Mushroom agree that the music that best represents American culture is global in both form and intent. During the fourteen months spent creating The Yoga Sessions, EarthRise SoundSystem was commissioned to be the architects of a number of remixes for the likes of Bombay Dub Orchestra, Watcha Clan, Nickodemus, Vieux Farka Toure, Novalima, Laya Project, and MC Yogi. They have also previewed their tracks to critical acclaim throughout the NYC club scene with their energetic performances. Their trademark songs, rooted in melodic, prominent bass, layers of percussion, and an organic, acoustic instrumental makeup, have moved dance floors outwardly and yoga studios inwardly.
One thing is for certain: this is not your guru’s yoga music. This album was not only designed to work inside the yoga studio—following the arc of a class—but also in your home, at a dance club, or at a lounge after work. EarthRise SoundSystem has created an album that speaks to the 21st century world, unique and welcoming to anyone that tunes in.
Windswept Traditions, Québécois Revolution, and Historical Sojourns Made New: Le Vent du Nord Has One Foot in the Past While Winking at the Future
As the powerful wind whips across the Canadian landscape it brushes away layers of debris to reveal gems once buried and thought to be lost in the past, while it simultaneously fans the flames of innovation. Québec’s Le Vent du Nord (The Wind of the North) has rewritten a transatlantic francophone story of discovery and loss seeking to uncover their heritage while sailing along new paths of artistic discovery.
The title of their latest album La Part du Feu (Borealis Records) hints at this dual objective, coming from an old French proverb which states that one must give to the fire its share, or forfeit something in order to build our collective future. Without sacrificing the integrity of their heritage, the group uses the kindling of the past to produce a hotbed of creativity. By welding a wealth of musical genres into a seamless artistic statement, the band successfully lights their way forward. The members of this ensemble have a keen sense of their local history, seeking to recover, restore, and reinvigorate Canada’s deep musical roots, so that they may blossom once again in a modern setting. “Through traditional songs we discover pieces of our history,” says founding member, pianist, accordionist, and hurdy-gurdy player Nicolas Boulerice. “The songs provide direct contact with a moment from long ago, showing us what life was like at that time.” Accordionist Réjean Brunet adds, “On this record we wanted to put a spotlight on the texts of the songs to bring out their stories. We wanted to show that this music is not just for parties, but can also tell us about who we are as Québécois.”
“Octobre 1837,” for instance, recounts a French uprising against British rule, which Boulerice explains was a democratic movement and a patriotic revolution. “Because of it,” he adds, “a lot of things changed here in Canada. It altered the way the French saw themselves, and their relationship to the British.” This song was inspired by Boulerice’s personal connection with this historical event. After one of the revolutionary battles, some of the soldiers returned from the nearby river to stay at the house in which Boulerice currently resides. Boulerice sees this track as a way to remind people about the significance of this event, and to “sing the courage of the men who changed the world and helped our nation find its place under the sun and assert its differences.” Quoting the renowned leader of the Patriot movement, Louis-Joseph Papineau, the liner notes acknowledge that when it comes to reforming our world, “songs can do as much as cannonballs or swords.”
Le Vent du Nord digs deep and expends great effort in their relentless quest to recover the past. Their attentive journeys into various traditions give their music a profound historical weight and accuracy. The album benefits from manager Genevieve Nadeau’s many hours of research in the Archives de Folklore de l’Université Laval, Québec in Québec, as well as her passion for collecting traditional Canadian music. Although, as the band puts it, she likes to “hide” her favorite finds in her files to sing herself one day, the group was able to “steal” one, called “Les Métiers.” On the album, the tune was blended with another gem whose story includes an old railroad track, a remote house, and a clever Google search.
One day, an eighty-year old man sent Olivier Demers, the band’s violinist, a cassette of his French Canadian father, Sam Jalbert, playing harmonica. Demers knew the elderly son Maynard lived in Maine, but there was no phone number attached to the package. The band wanted to locate this man to gather more information about his musician father. The letter with the cassette mentioned a train passing overhead as the recording was made, so Demers looked on Google maps and found a little town in northern Maine, close to Québec, where train tracks ran through. He located a house and called the number, reaching the man on his first attempt. Demers spent hours talking to him about the music’s history. This is part of the band’s modus operandi: Even when a treasure falls into their laps, it is not enough to glorify it in song. They must learn its history and understand it inside and out. “So again we stole someone else’s song,” jokes Boulerice. “It’s basically what we try to do.”
The band also went to great lengths to recover the lyrics for the track “Elise.” Boulerice had a recording of the song, but the quality was so poor he could not discern the lyrics. The Acadian repertoire belongs to the descendents of French settlers of Canada’s northwestern regions and can sometimes be re-created with surviving versions in France, Ireland, and other regions of Canada. With the help of his friend Charles Quimbert, a Breton singer who visited Canada in 2008, Boulerice recalled that, “after two days of drinking and jamming in my house we were finally able to restore his memory and the lyrics of the tune.”
While carefully reconstructing musical traditions and recounting the history of their nation, Le Vent du Nord gusts in uncharted directions, leaving innovative sonic landscapes in its wake. “We wanted to do something different from the outset of this album, but we didn’t quite know what that would be,” says Brunet. “We wanted the music to be based on traditions but also open to any kind of arrangements,” adds Boulerice. “We were looking for new sounds.” On the track “La Mine,” he continues, “Simon Beaudry, our guitarist, was looking for another sound. I suggested he play his bouzouki with a metal slide.” The result produces a bluesy cry that captures the pensive beauty and melancholy of this song. The song, adapted from a field recording, tells of a mine explosion in 1891 in New Brunswick that left a community desperate for answers and crying to God. In Le Vent du Nord’s delivery, this song, in the character of a continental dirge, stands as a memorial to lives lost and ruined, yet wanders in questions under a cowboy starry sky.
Further plotting new ground, the band gently experiments with pedals and digital effects on this album, modifying certain sounds to meld a touch of modernity with various traditional elements. “Rossingnolet,” for instance, features a hauntingly dark legato vocal duet laid over an eerie, echoing, reverberous soundscape. This droning backdrop was a creation of the audio engineer, who cleverly modified the musicians’ acoustic performances of bass, fiddle, and hurdy-gurdy. A fellow folksinger left a cryptic snippet of this tune on Nicolas’ answering machine with the message “I am sure it would be nice with your voice.” That led Le Vent du Nord on a hunt through old songbooks to find more relics of “Rossignolet,” a ballad of husband-cide by poison that they pieced together from a dozen Acadian sources.
The quartet further expands their sound with guest collaborations. Fusing gypsy and Dixieland jazz with Québécois charm, the energetic upbeat “Montcalm” features the Montreal-based brass ensemble known as Grüv ‘N’ Brass. Le Vent du Nord had come into contact with them last summer at a festival to celebrate Québec’s 400th anniversary. The concert was held in Brouage (France), the town where Champlain had set off across the Atlantic to found New France (a colony that included Newfoundland, Acadia, and Louisiana). Aware of this historical significance, the group had a chance to “close the loop” between France and North America. While this arrangement explores new sonic areas for Le Vent du Nord, the danceable “Montcalm” was originally a strange and violent victory song written by a soldier in 1758 in a letter to his mother shortly after the victory at the Battle of Carillon in 1758. This track encapsulates the bands’ overall artistic philosophy as their sweeping sonic breeze rescues numerous traditions from becoming dusty relics, simultaneously breathing new life into historical treasures.
Le Vent du Nord handles parallel traditions with an incredible facility. They take themes from estranged cousins of musical culture and reunite them in sanguine harmony. The group sails across the Atlantic, both on tour and in their music, tying French enclaves and songwriters over four centuries into a polyphonic common history. These songs crossed the ocean once, and Le Vent du Nord takes them back again, bringing us along for the discovery, for the fight, for the voices of people who once made poetry.
With this latest offering, Le Vent du Nord “blows open a different door,” Boulerice remarks. “It is as though we have one foot in the beginnings of our nation, but are winking at the future.”
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