Summer’s not over yet, Best of the Fests yet to come- Electronicaboriginal, maybe?

When you think of music festivals, in the US at least, you probably think of Coachella or Lollapalooza, maybe Bonnaroo, all of which boast of daily attendance numbers well into five figures, with overall totals into six.  This pales in comparison with many of those in Europe, though, at least half a dozen of which show numbers well above that, with Glastonbury UK topping the list at some 175, 000 souls per day.  Of course ‘Hardly Strictly Bluegrass’ festival in San Francisco this month might have that many if anybody bothered to count.  It being a free festival, the only numbers are from the crowd controllers, i.e. police estimates.  Nevertheless, Europe has so many festivals- in an area half the size of the US with twice the population- that it becomes something of a Mecca for many US bands looking to make hay while the sun shines.  This leaves US fests to concentrate more on, how do you say, the ‘indie’ groups?  Yes, with the exception of Bogota’s major festival, you would recognize the names of many, if not most, of the acts at the biggest festivals worldwide.  We’re the jugglers and the clowns.

If you’re looking for ‘world music’ fests- (sound of loooong needle scratch on vinyl LP)- the selection goes way down way fast.  Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festivals set the standard worldwide, with long-running events in UK, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, and elsewhere subject to local funding, Dubai being one of the newer more interesting offerings.   Here stateside it’s pretty grim for the most part.  We create most of the world’s music, remember, along with the UK, so there’s not much initiative to look elsewhere.  ‘World music’ itself- music of other languages, cultures, and traditions besides the predominant Anglo one- come largely from the ex-pat African and Latino communities in our largest cities, and France, in addition to major ‘emerging countries’ themselves, such as India, Brazil, and Mexico.  People gotta’ eat.  Besides that the best music in the world today probably comes from tiny remote impoverished Islamic Mali, the landlocked heart of West Africa, the jigsaw puzzle piece linking African communities black and semitic, woodlands and desert.  

!Globalquerque!, in (almost) equally remote and scenic Albuquerque, NM is one of the best world music festivals in the US.  This year’s festival takes place on 9/16-17 and features such top world music acts as Los Amigos Invisibles, Cedric Watson, the inimitable Buffy Saint-Marie, and many others, google ‘em.  The overlapping World Music Festival in Chicago hasn’t released their schedule yet, but usually shares some of the same bookings, convenient if you don’t happen to live in the greater Albuquerque metropolitan area.  Other than that, Francophone-oriented Festival Louisiane in Lafayette, LA simultaneous with the jazz fest in N’awlins in April is by far the best… unless you count the entire summer in LA. 

‘World music’ is to be found in North America, too, of course.  Buffy Sainte-Marie is a Cree from Canada, and Andrew Thomas, also performing at !Globalquerque!, is a Dine’ (Navajo).  When you think of Native American music, what do you usually think of, maybe the sound of a lonely flute echoing over the vast expanses of the Grand Canyon, perhaps best exemplified by Carlos Nakai?  I like that, too, but ‘Indian’ music is much more than that, almost anything imaginable, actually.  Native American music is not limited to the American Southwest, either, of course, nor does it stop at the two borders.  In addition to Buffy Sainte-Marie, there are many others, both north and south.  They’ve got shows for that now, too, in the spirit of SXSW and NXNE, specifically to showcase that talent and open them up to increased opportunities.  

One of the newer showcases is the Aboriginal Music Week in Winnipeg, Manitoba, November 1-6, which should be diverse and good.  The show will include the spacey Indie vibes of World Hood and the Metis fiddle of John Arcand.  Then there’s the hip-hop of Winnipeg’s Most and Derek Miller’s roots-rock.  Leela Gilday’s introspective folk-rock offerings are as good as any singer-songwriter in the business today, and the Electric Powwow electronica mind-bumfuggle of A Tribe Called Red simply has to be seen- and heard- to be believed.  Check ‘em out.

Then there’s LA, which is something of a giant festival all summer… if you know where to go.  I haven’t been out as much as usual this year, but still managed to catch Debo from Ethiopia, Bombino from Niger, and others, while missing far more than that simply because of scheduling conflicts or because I’d already seen them.  Best part?  It’s all free…  So, if I achieve escape velocity to actually get out of the crib this weekend, I guesss I’ll just have to content myself with maybe Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loka at LACMA tonight or maybe Quetzal and Conjunto los Pochos down at Celebracion Mexicana in Macarthur Park on tomorrow, or possibly Pete Escovedo at Rum & Humble (yeah) in the courtyard at Hollywood & Highland on Tuesday.  Then there’s Ernie Watts at the Farmers’ Market next Thursday.  Damn!  That’s as many shows as I’ve been to all summer!  I used to do that in a single night.  I’m younger than that now.  C U there.  Drive carefully.     

Native American Music Lives!!! (North of the 49th parallel, too)…

When you think of Native American music, you probably think of it most often as a genre, typically exemplified by the prominent roles of flute and drum, lilting windswept melodies over pulsing drum beats, words frequently limited to chanting and vocal percussion, a sound that has not only earned it a niche in New Age music circles, but spawned a host of imitators, also. South American folkloric groups long accustomed to playing similar instruments have even taken to copying their North American cousins outright in major European capitals, wearing buckskin and Lakota war bonnets while invoking the Mohicans and others by name in their effort to sell albums while busking. Hey, work’s work, I guess. Just don’t let Russell Means catch you.

But Native American music is more than a genre of course. Native American music is music made by Native Americans. In Arizona alone that can run the gamut from the classic flute style of Carlos Nakai to the politico-punk of Blackfire and a plethora of styles in between. I’m still not sure what genre Keith Secola and his Wild Band of Indians fit into. And that doesn’t even count such icons of pop/rock as Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson and Daniel Lanois, all from Canada.

Yes, Canada’s got a whole lotta’ music, too, not the least of which are such stars as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, so embedded are they into the American music scene that that fact is often forgotten. And yes, they have Native Americans, in a proportion at least several times greater than that of the US (and that doesn’t include Inuits). And yes, they have their own version of the Grammy Awards, called the Juno Awards, held usually in March or April of every year since 1970. They even have a category for ‘Aboriginal Recording of the Year’, an honor accorded no other minority in Canada (except Francophones), not bad for an ethnicity that didn’t even get the right to vote until 1960.

This year they’ve done even better. This year there will be an exclusively First Nations showcase. Since the Juno Awards are an all-week affair, it can become more of a SXSW-style event (not to be confused with the NXNE in June), complete with showcases. The Native American showcase is sponsored by Manitoba Music and will feature five of Canada’s most up-and-coming native artists. Christa Couture is perhaps the most ‘Canadian-sounding’ of the lot- despite her Arapaho father- pure modern acoustic folk, slick and sweet, self-conscious and world-wise, complete with piano and strings. “All the while she was starting and stopping, box-car hopping, to no avail,” she sings on ‘Sad Story Over’, whether autobiographical or not, I couldn’t say. Leela Gilday works in the same folk genre, even though she comes from the far north in Yellowknife NWT, a Dene cousin of our own Southwest US Navajos (Dene:Dine, get it?). Her style is more world-weary then world-wise, though, as in the song ‘End of the Day’- “She gets up from the table, the coffee’s growing old, she thinks of how the years go by, it seems she’s growing old.” Canada has got some of the best folk music in the world, and if they’re reluctant to give that up, then I see no reason to. Their First Nations fit right in.

Canada is not known for its urban music; I wonder why? Maybe they’re just too happy and healthy up in the north country to get bogged down in the anger and hatred that defines much of urban music… and much of America. Maybe that’s what national health care will do for you. If that makes Canada old-fashioned, then so be it. There is some, though, funk and electronica, too, so Natives will have their own versions, and Cris Derksen is a good example of that. A half-Cree classically trained cellist, she gets down down and funky with some hard-edged electronica on ‘What Did You Do, Boy?’ Digging Roots is a bluesy group headed by the collaborative duo of ShoShona Kish and Raven Kanatakta, killer voice meets killer guitar chops sharing a bouquet of flowery lyrics to create a sound that reminds variously of Joplin or Stevie Ray, even got some native rap, too. Coming from Ojibway roots and composition styles, it sounded good enough to win them the Juno award for Aboriginal Album of the year last year for their collection entitled ‘We Are’. Listen with a friend.

But my personal favorite of the five groups showcased is a group called ‘Eagle & Hawk’. Likewise of Ojibway roots and Winnipeg-based, these guys maintain a healthy schizophrenia consisting of gold ol’ R&R and what I could only describe as maybe… Indian rock? This can run the gamut from the chants, strings, and ambient sounds of the ethereal ‘Water Sounds’ to the border-town honky-tonkin’ ‘Wild West Show’. Their self-reflection and mock-deprecation can even be so incisive as to be anthemic, as in “I See Red’- “I’m not embarrassed when I look into the mirror; is it fear and anxiety or just the cost of sobriety?” This is good stuff.

I haven’t been to the Juno Awards before, but I know Canada has THE best folk music festivals in the world out West, and some of the best pow-wows, too, I hear. And if there’s less urban and electronic music than down south here, that’s easily compensated with good solid songsmanship. Check ‘em out if you get the chance.