THE NEW ECONOMIC 9-11 HITS; AND THE BAND(S) PLAY ON

9-11-08 to the day, the U$D exchange rate was at its highest in many moons, the price of oil was down below $95 (not coincidentally) after startling rises just a few months prior, and the world seemed like it just might proceed with something like an orderly process after all the recent psychological clusterf**k of high gas prices and mortgage foreclosures and oil wars. A week later that had all changed as the Twin Towers of the US economy took deadly aim and shot themselves squarely in the foot, feigning suicide for the free hospital care, rocking foundations and sending inestimable fallout to the streets below. This may be my last blog if the lights go out and the Dark Ages begin, so just let me say that I’ve enjoyed it. You’ve been great. I’ll miss you all. So Bush’s administration began with planes crashing into psyches and apparently ends that way, too, as Congress contemplates what could be called the Economic Patriot Act, i.e. think fast and toe the line or lose it all. Fortunately we have fiscally responsible Republican ‘businessmen’ in charge, not those free-spending Democrats, or we’d really be in trouble.

Yep, you know the econs really suck when I listen to Georges Will and Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning instead of Chris Morris and ‘Watusi Rodeo’, just possibly the best and most unique radio show in the greater LA area, putting the triple rrr back in roots music, encompassing the best of CBGB- that’s country, bluegrass, and blues you know, Americana around its edges- without ever repeating itself. Who else can say that? Where else are you going to hear Rodney Crowell’s ‘Sex and Gasoline’? Where else can you hear Lucinda, Smokey, B.B., Elvis Costello and Hank all in the same program? Who says the non-urban American majority can do little more than field-dress a moose? My favorite ‘world music’ is the rootsy kind also, the other being the slower more classical studied kind, better for listening than dancing. There were good examples of both this week in LA, Cava the first, Savina Yannatou the second.

But I’m sorry I missed the Ozomatli-Spearhead-Lila-Nortec show at the Bowl. I’m sure it was good. Reports from Globalquerque where Lila headlined two nights before were superb. I’d definitely like to hear her new version of ‘Black Magic Woman’, as she moves on from a Frida Kahlo heart-of-darkest-Mexico obsession to a more one American one, or at least the border. Not unsurprisingly the new album has many more songs in English, following the lead of LA’s Dengue Fever and Ozomatli themselves. This is one of the problems with ‘world music’: you can apparently only go so far in a non-English format, and Lila’s tried. Still she’s little known to the average Mexican OR American. To make the circle complete, not only does she do more songs in English, but she adapts English-language compositions to Spanish, like Lucinda Williams’ great “Yo Envidio El Viento.” But she’s the only act at the show I hadn’t seen before, so I passed. I’ll catch her somewhere. Very few acts do I see more than once. Now if Nortech were to ‘present’ Clorofilo and Hiperboreal, then that might be different. Anybody can play a QWERTY f***ing keyboard. I want to hear somebody who can play accordion like Flaco.

But I DID see Cava live at Amoeba, so that’s not a bad substitute for Lila, especially considering that front-woman Claudia Gonzales is in somewhat the same circles, having sung with Charanga Cakewalk, Lila’s frequent opening act. She’s great too, a natural born showman, totally charming and unaffected. She’s a good singer and musician too, manning a Taiko drum when she’s not otherwise banging (and sitting on) her cajon, not to be confused with my cojones. She gets strong right-arm support from whiz keyboardist Walter Miranda and other assorted percussions and… trombone? I was skeptical, but it sounded good, fit right in with Cava’s own unique blend of cumbia, son y salsa. This is not your typical Latino trombone and Taiko group. Still I couldn’t help but wonder what the group would sound like with a guitarist and now I see they’re supposed to have one, his absence at Amoeba unexplained. Power struggle? Love spat? Upset stomach? Only someone’s hairdresser would know for sure, but I imagine it could significantly alter the sound of a band accustomed to one. But for all the attention given to Cava’s use of Taiko drums, I was most captivated by the live on-stage use of the quasi-mythological theremin. For those who don’t know, this is an instrument played by hand-waving the frequencies surrounding an antenna, and famous for the eerie ‘vibe’ in the closing sequence of the Beach Boys ‘Good Vibrations.’ These guys will be at Pasadena’s Zona Rosa on Thursday. Check it out.

Savina Yannatou’s show at the Japanese-American Museum in Little Tokyo Thursday evening was something totally different, a refreshing change from the huge doses of Mexican food we get for world music here in LA. At least it’s filling. But her music is that of the Mediterranean, including her native Greece, but also including the surrounding Muslim and other Middle Eastern countries. Still her music encompasses so much more than that, not only interpreting different regions but different eras and different uses of the voice, gargling and squeaking out sounds that I didn’t even know a person was capable of, and somehow it all fit. She frequently introduces her songs with poetry, too, usually a bit romantic and wistful, setting the tone for the music to come. She stopped in LA on her way to Globalquerque! and the Chicago World Music Festival. I hope she was a hit there. She deserves it. The show here was opened by Mamak Khadem of Iran doing classical Rumi-like musical ruminations on the human condition, textured and soulful, ethereal yet down-to-earth. It was a good evening.

As the air gets a nip in it and the sun starts rising later than I do, it gets harder to find the really good stuff, the stuff from overseas and back East that you’d die to go to bed with, die to have come out of your own radio 7/24, world music par excellence. But it’s still there, even if you have to look a little bit harder for it. It goes underground and indoors for the winter, down dark alleys emblazoned with strange Chinese characters. You gotta’ start reading HOY and checking the Guatelinda website. You gotta’ start checking the local Ethiopian, Armenian, Russian, Korean, Chinese and Thai-language presses. Want to see something totally authentic and not filtered through the industry people of world music’s own private Interzone? Thai luke toong superstar Tukkataen is over here stateside and playing at the Thailand Plaza restaurant on 10-10, tickets on sale at all Dok Ya Bookstores. LA Weekly won’t tell you that.

But this week’s best bet is Etran Finatawa, Niger’s own Tinariwen and cousin to all the other Tuareg ‘Saharan Blues’ bands currently en vogue, and for good reason. Their stuff’s good, unique, and authentic. EF is different from the rest in that they combine Tuareg and Wodaabe (Fulani) riffs and traditions, no small feat in the Sahel where water is in short supply and Tuaregs want it as much for their goats as much as Fulanis do for their cows; no small feat considering that Tuaregs are Semitic Mediterraneans and Fulanis are dark sub-Saharans; no small feat considering that Wodaabes pride themselves on their rejection of Islam. They’ll be at Amoeba on Tuesday evening and again with Chicha Libre at the Japanese-American Museum on Thursday. But the big deal this week is the All Roads Film Project at the Egyptian Theatre from 9/25-28, which features third-world and ethnic filmmakers' documentaries and narrative films. Somali hip-hop star K'naan opens the show Thursday night. See you there.