Hollywood Babel On: Diaspora Blues

Days like today are what you live for if you’re a fan of world music and/or a reluctant Angeleno, hoping to justify your existence, or at least the higher rents of LA, vis a vis the Golden Triangle (that’s northern Thailand I’m talking about, not the greater Beaumont area).  How often, on some random Thursday, do you get your choice of the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars, Bombino, or the Garifuna Collective?  And this isn’t even the weekend ferchrissakes!  And they’re all for free, unless you count parking fees.  That may apply most seriously to the Sierra Leone guys, who’re playing out at the Skirball, difficult of access by public trans.  Only problem there is the security check, reminiscent of the El Al counter in Munich.  Better eat those brownies first, just to be safe.  If you don’t know, they’re war refugees from Sierra Leone—Britain’s equivalent of Liberia—who chose to make the best of a bad situation, and who, over the last decade, have produced some of the world’s best music.

HOLLY WOOD BABEL: Peruano, Africano, Colombiano, Angeleno… Novalima, guey

Did you know that Peru had Africans?  If you’ve heard (of) Susana Baca, then you did; or should, anyway.  They’ve been there since the early days of Spanish colonialism, though never in huge numbers, apparently.  Still it doesn’t exactly fit the image of an Andean nation with an Amerindian culture defined by its high degree of advancement and largely unassimilated entrance into the modern age.  That’s the point, that the races in Peru never really mixed, natives confined to the Cordillera, and whites content to stay along the coasts where they—and their African slaves—landed.

It's That Time Again in LA: Let the Music Flow...

It’s that time again in LA—summer—and there’s so much good music for free that it almost makes the smog and traffic jams and lack of parking space worth it (BTW there’s a solution to the aforementioned problems: sell your car and ride public trans).  When I first arrived in LA five years ago from the Golden Triangle outback I went almost ape-shit crazy gorging on sights and sounds, as if you could just fill your belly like a big ol’ bear, then snooze it off for a season or two.  So that’s what I did.  But I think maybe it’s time to get back in the swing, especially since this may well be my last summer in LA, therefore time to fill up the esthetic tank. 

Here’s the best deals I can find, ALL FREE, highlights (in chronological order) looking like:

www.levittpavilionpasadena.org: Carmen Souza (tonight 6/20), Alex Cuba (6/22), Vieux Farka Toure’ (7/12), Dirty Dozen Brass Band (7/14), Bachaco (7/25), Jeffrey Broussard (8/1), Mia Doi Todd (8/21), Chicano Batman (8/10), LoCura (8/23), and Quetzal (8/24)… hijole… plus many more…