IT’S ALWAYS SUMMER SOMEWHERE; IF SATURDAY THEN BRAZIL?

What’s the difference between a pit and a bull-hockey mom? The pit knows how to say nothing without even speaking. It’s like using change to promote your career or using your career to promote change, or using the power of example instead of examples of power. Who writes this crap? It’s like déjà vu all over again. It’s like too many cooks spoiling the broth. It’s time for that seventh-inning stretch. One-line zingers and time-worn clichés seem to dominate our YouTube MeVee MySpace FaceBook SecondLife era, giving high-def resolution and Mosly Def soundtracks to low-brow insults by high-income low-breeds in the no-concept re-runs that we collectively refer to as our national body politic. It is a headache with no resolution in sight. Fortunately I’m not a political commentator or I might have some spleen to vent. As it turns out I limit myself to this humble blog and a more Baudelairean form of spleen that looks for release in a thousand bastard poems and homeless confessions, some godly some not, most still seeking the light of day in a system that seeks fashion not form from editors who grin through gapped teeth when they say without the slightest trace of self-consciousness, “stay tortured, my friends.” One man’s spleen is another man’s bad attitude is another man’s political righteousness. Go figure.

Fortunately for this mostly-world-music phase of this mostly-world-something blog, there are only one or two clichés that apply to our current situation- i.e. it ain’t over till it’s over, and that’s usually right after the fat lady sings. In other words, summer’s almost over and so is the world music, at least the freebies. I’ll either have to start paying for it, what little can be found, or go off in search of festivals to get my rocks off. But festival season’s over, you say? Mais au contraire mon cher; it’s only just begun. If you don’t believe me, just look at the left-hand column of this blog, and that hardly includes all the little local hoe-downs. Always wanted to see the world? There’s no better time. The era of cheap flights is crashing headlong into the era of high-price gas, so the future of world travel is uncertain. For world music in the US, September is actually probably the best month, with major festivals still to come in Madison (this week) and Chicago and Albuquerque (next week). The fact that they co-ordinate somewhat ensures that some of the best-quality acts available will be there.

Even right here in LA, the Sacred Music Festival has many ‘world’ acts, probably more and better than other so-called ‘world fests’. Unfortunately it’s scattered over many days and all over the greater Metro area, thereby likely stretching one’s patience as thin as the definition of ‘festival’. Still for my money festivals are the best place to see and hear music, for not only do you get the music, but you usually get food, arts and crafts, and other aspects of the culture too. WOMADs may be on the decline, presumably due to lack of local funding, but local promoters are increasingly taking up the torch and the slack. That’s the way it should be, right? Just last Saturday here out at La Brea (‘tar’) tar pits, the Brazilian Consulate put on a nice little festival where you could listen to music while shopping for T-shirts and sipping acai. It’s not bad. I hear all the Olympians are trying it. I managed to catch a trio playing some nice smooth Brazilian ballads in the process. I didn’t manage to catch their names. Other than that Los Pinguos showed up for Grand Performances at Cal Plaza on Friday, playing their particular brand of ‘Latin/Indie/Other’ (so their MySpace site says) high-energy pop balladry that they bring with them from their native Argentina. Nice stuff.

I also managed to catch a bluegrass group called Bearfoot at MacArthur Park. Now I don’t normally consider bluegrass to be ‘world music’, not unless it’s sung by Inuits from Greenland, but there are always exceptions. Global Fest in New York had one earlier this year, so there is precedent. Nevertheless, this particular group hails from Alaska (no direct relation to you-know-who, but you never know…), so that’s ‘worldly’ enough for me I guess. Actually without a flat-picking banjoist (or any banjoist for that matter), their music might more resemble an old-fashioned string band, so instrumental (pun intended) is the Scruggs flat-picking banjo style in modern bluegrass music. Worldly or not, and notwithstanding the fact that my little brother plays dobro in a bluegrass band back home down South, bluegrass music is not usually the type of music I sit in my living room and listen to, no matter how much I might respect it. Still I found myself getting lost in it, though these are hardly trail-blazing musicians. But the three-part harmonies, the aw-shucks goofiness and small-town honesty should remind us all of something we might have quickly forgotten upon moving away from such, i.e. ‘home’. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m sorry, truly sorry. It’s nice to see a traditional-music band in LA not called ‘groovy’ or ‘psychedelic’ something. These guys and gals are so straight that it’s hip.

Maybe last but certainly not least, this week is nothing short of spectacular for world music in LA. First there’s the beginning of the World Festival of Sacred Music with perhaps the single most impressive day of the entire season at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday September 13, with Tuvan throat singing, fado, samba, zouk, Sufi, Qawwali, Persian, and Javanese music played by such luminaries as Chirigilchin and Waldemar Bastos among others. In addition there will be songs and ceremonies at the Haramokngna American Indian Cultural Center in La Canada all weekend and Canciones del Alma at the MOLAA in Long Beach on Sunday as part of the same program, not to mention Balinese music at the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock and Indonesian and Tibetan music at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, among others. Whew!

That’s not all. MacArthur Park celebrates its final weekend of the summer season in grand style, with a Korean ‘Chusok’ harvest moon celebration with Gongmyoung on Friday and continuing on Saturday with Central American Independence Day with bands Cutumay Camones and Marito Rivera y su Grupo Bravo on Saturday. This all culminates with Mexican Independence Day celebrations on Sunday with Mariachi Los Angeles and the legendary Poncho Sanchez and his Latin Jazz Band. While it may be surprising that Central American nations celebrate their mutual independence from Spain rather than their individual independence from each other, it’s certainly no surprise that Mexicans celebrate the day of Hidalgo’s grito as their day of independence. No city in Mexico is without a street named 16 de Septiembre. The festivities have already started. See you there.