AFRO-BEAT, AFRO-TRAD, AFRO-DIASPO, & A TOUCH OF FEVER IN LA

Well, it doesn’t get much better than this past weekend for variety and quality in the LA free music department, some of it expected, some out of the blue. I’ll have to admit that I almost got my rocks off prematurely with the Budos Band last Thursday night at McArthur Park. I went expecting nothing, but apparently KCRW has been playing these guys regularly, so there was a pretty good crowd out there. Now there’s a concept- LARGE CROWD AT MCARTHUR PARK! I’d like to be able to say that more often. Too often I’m the only guero in a sparse crowd of homies with hot dogs and pupusas. What do I know? I’ve been busy traveling around the world, and then have to turn off KCRW when it’s fund-raising time lest my guilt complex destroy me.

Budos Band is hot! Now I’ve always politely respected ‘afro-beat’, but never followed it too closely for one simple reason- nobody can match Fela. Not even Femi can match Fela, but he probably comes closest, he or brother Seun. Listening to the various pretenders has always been more an exercise in endurance than ecstasy. The Budos Band raise the bar a notch in the ‘other’ department, a good healthy notch. What’s the difference? With Fela there’s always a variable there that can’t be predicted… Fela’s personality. This is something that can’t be taught… though it can be learned. It may be something as simple as coming in on the off-beat on one song… or slightly biting the reed on the next. Once it’s written in, then it’s no longer the spontaneous variable that made it so exciting in the first place, that subtle flick of the tongue that drives you wild. Budo’s got it, but I’m hesitant to speculate on its origin. It just may be that organ, though, which gives it a sound not typical of Afro-beat bands, and may be as close as the genre can come to rock & roll without going to lead guitar, because then it’s no longer Afro-beat. I Hardiely recommend a listen.

Next night was the Big Night Out, Cal Plaza water court under the Perseid showers with Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba opening, to be followed by Dengue Fever, one of my all-time favorite fusionistas, mixing up classic Khmer pop, Ethiopian jazz, surf-rock, and God knows what else those guys- and gal- have got buzzing through their brains. Well Bassekou Kouyate is on something of a roll after sitting near the top of the European world music charts with ‘I Speak Fula’ for many months not so long ago, so he’s doing the roll-out tour now, trying to sell some tickets, since not even Billboard’s Top 10 means that many bucks any more, and certainly not the WMCE. If you want bucks you gotta pack in the butts, not CD’s. Ngoni Ba did not disappoint, though hardly due to Bassekou’s ngoni all by itself, of common ancestry with the banjo, for those interested in the musical genome project. This is one tight band, doing things with talking drums that should have been done long ago- playing lead- not just some curious lilting blips in the background. That Fula/Fulani tradition (Ali Farka also spoke Fula) is well placed to fill the gap between the incredible raw stuff now coming out of Tuareg country to the north and the more citified Keita/Diabate stuff coming out of Bamako and beyond.

An interesting ‘compare and contrast’ could be made with Saturday’s African diaspora band ‘Tabou Combo’, originally out of Haiti, now (mostly) New York. While both bands can certainly rock, Bassekou’s is still clearly tied to the African folk blues tradition. You can almost feel the trodden earth under your feet. Tabou, on the other hand- full of brass and balls- has been freed by the very slavery which produced it, free to experiment with other nearby sounds and influences, free to fly with something of an ‘island sound’ claiming allegiance to no one. While that term may seem rather generic, any other description would require so many hyphens that I probably wouldn’t pass the grammar-check. Better listen for yourself. I bet they’re a regular at SOB’s in NYC.

Then there’s Dengue Fever. Then there’s always Dengue Fever, I hope, notwithstanding the real contagious disease which is currently inflicting so much misery on my sometime-home of SE Asia. This band has simply got to be seen- and HEARD- to be believed. When Nimol breaks into that high-pitch Cambodian squeal so indicative of 60’s pop music there, I get a shiver up my spine that implies that I’m now entering another dimension. Unfortunately the mix didn’t seem quite right last Friday night, as I could hardly hear Ethan’s organ at all. That’s a rather important component of DF’s sound, to say the least. Fortunately they’ll be back at Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena THIS Friday, so that may necessitate a double-dip, something I would not normally do for any lesser band. Cal Plaza may simply not be the best place for their sound, as the acoustics are rather uneven there. I think it’s better upstairs, though you sacrifice any close-up visuals, hardly a loss with the spectacular fountain background. Besides DF, best bets this week look like Nortec Collective and Mr. Vallenato at Cal Plaza on Saturday night, maybe Ceci Bastida, too, Tijuana yes! C U there.

BASSEKOU KOUYATE & NGONI BA- ‘I Speak Fula’: Is it African Bluegrass or Blues… or Jazz?

World music can be like a genome project sometimes, except here the DNA involved is an aspect of culture, not biology, and in this case music, descended through history along many crooked lines of mutation and permutation. Ali Farke Toure’, the great African singer and guitarist, was one of the first to stir the pot with his proclamations as to the African origin of blues, and its cross-fertilization both ways, easily attested to in his own music. Of course it’s not just the music but the instruments themselves that have African origins. While it’s long been known that the American banjo had such African origins, it’s only been recently that that point has really been driven home and African ngoni players have actually sat down and played with their American banjo-picking counterparts. Of course the American banjo has come a long way since its introduction into the larger culture as a familiar part of minstrel shows, to its position at the forefront of American bluegrass music. The African ngoni has had a similar ride from the background into the forefront of African music.

Bassekou Kouyate is to the Malian ngoni much the same as Earl Scruggs is to the American banjo, revolutionizing its style and status, including the introduction of new picking styles that serve to make the ngoni a lead instrument and not just background harmonic filler. To this end he has accomplished another innovation- a band composed entirely of ngoni’s, albeit of different sizes and pitch, hence the appellation ngoni ba. Imagine a band composed entirely of American banjos! But the Malian ngoni as played by Bassekou Kouyate serves a much broeader function than the American banjo, more similar to the role of guitar in American popular music. Perhaps only an innovator such as Bela Fleck has been as inventive with the banjo, and it’s no coincidence that he will be sharing the stage for many of Ngoni Ba’s upcoming tour of the US early next year.

While others have similar notions of crossing over into the American mainstream, notably Issa Bagayogo with his ‘techno’ style of ngoni music and Cheick Hamala Diabate’ with solid English lyrics and superb mastery of the American musical idiom, Ngoni Ba perhaps stays closest to the historical tradition. On ‘I Speak Fula’ the emphasis is on the picking, though he gets splendid support from wife Amy Sacko on vocals and guest stars such as Toumani Diabate’ and Ali Farka’s rising son Vieux. The album starts off briskly with the title song ‘I Speak Fula’, a fast percussive number with a pleasant mix of male and female vocals, then slows down a bit with ‘Jamana be Diya’, a deep moody ballad. ‘Musow - For our Women’ raises the tempo- and anxiety- level again, with some superb wailing female vocals by Sacko laid over a nervous jittery percussive track and some stylish finger-picking by Kouyate. This is one of the album’s best songs.

‘Torin Torin’ is something completely different, and sounds almost Celtic in its use of female vocals and choruses. ‘Bambugu Blues’ then gets down and dirty with some slow earthy blues that almost sounds like it’s being played back slow motion. From that point on the pattern is established and it’s just a matter of the featured players taking their turns and their bows. ‘Amy’ features Zoumana Tereta on zoku fiddle and ‘Saro’ features Vieux Farka Toure’ on jangly guitar. ‘Ladon’ is a piece of mostly instrumental virtuosity and ‘Tineni’, featuring Toumani Diabate, is a long slow ballad with kora that serves to accentuate the harmonic potential of the ngoni. ‘Falani’ and ‘Moustapha’ wind things up by winding them down, s-l-o-w-l-y and with feeling, till there’s but a single instrument serving a solitary singer, with another voice or two in the background chanting affirmations. It’s all in Fula of course, the language of Fulani people and Ali Farka himself, so I can only imagine what they’re saying, but sometimes it’s better that way. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this album is the reception it’s received already. Only just released in Europe, it’s riding high in the WMCE. This is Ngoni Ba’s only second album, but it surely won’t be their last. That’s ‘I Speak Fula’- available online now and early next year in US record stores. Check it out.