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.

‘TECHNO ISSA’ KICKS OFF SKIRBALL’S SUMMER CONCERT SEASON

If you’re a world music fan then you live for creative musical combinations- Cambodian psych-pop, Celtic salsa, Swedish bluegrass, etc.- the more unlikely the better. What could be more unlikely than Mali techno music? If you’ve never been to Mali, suffice it to say that there’s no place earthier. And here I’m talking traditional Mali techno music, too, not just some DJ-types who happen to be from Mali, but a fusion of traditional Mali instruments and styles with modern computer-generated drum tracks and other effects. Issa Bagayogo’s is not an electronic trance band at all, then, but a true mix, essentially adding modern techniques to update traditional styles. That’s his musical mission, and he brought it to LA’s Skirball Cultural Center last Thursday night to kick off their season of free world music concerts. The mission is easier said than done, of course. It’s not as though you just push the ‘update’ button on some computer screen and ‘wham bam!’ it’s done. There’s much cultural and musical insinuation to be accomplished for a comfortable mesh to occur. Fortunately for music and musicians that process is largely non-verbal. Once it sounds right, it IS right. Now do it again… and again… and again… slight variations occurring along the way, toward a higher synthesis, the genetic drift of music in evolution.

Get it? That’s at least part of the beauty of world music, the musical communion with something higher, easy to agree on the harmony of octaves and beats per minute, even if we can’t always agree on a God (even when it's the same God). Issa gets it right, too, playing on his primitive banjo-like n’goni and backed up on keyboards and African drum and computer laptop (when will someone come up with a guitar-shaped version? Hmmm…). The result is something that is instantly recognizable as part of the West African griot tradition while finessing modern groove beats that make it imminently danceable. The request by the evening’s host to ‘turn off your cell phones’ was a joke. By about half way through the first song, you couldn’t have heard a cell phone if you’d had your ear phones in. The empty space in your mind would’ve been quickly filled with infectious grooves and a visual dim sum that kept coming in paired-off sweet/sour harmonies- north/south, black/white, traditional/modern, acoustic/electronic, hot musical licks in cool night air. The empty space in front of the stage quickly became a dance floor and remained that way the rest of the evening. Issa is no purveyor of sit-down soliloquies. This is boogie music.

One nice thing nice about the Skirball is that you can do that there, right up close, without blocking the stage. The Skirball is an excellent venue, nestled up in the Santa Monica Mountains, so it’s nice and cool on summer evenings, yet still connected by freeway to LA. Since it’s a Jewish cultural center by day, security for the shows is a bit stricter and more formal than other free shows in the greater LA area, but not too bad all things considered (ever see the El Al check-in counter in Warsaw? Don’t make any sudden moves…). It also serves as a museum, too, with permanent exhibits related to the Jewish diaspora, both physical and cultural, and temporary exhibits, currently featuring a retrospective on comic book heroes. All in all a trip to the Skirball is imminently worthwhile, especially in conjunction with the Thursday night summer concerts. Scheduled for next week are Vasen, with Mike Marshall and Darrol Anger, playing a hybrid mix of Swedish/American ‘newgrass,’ followed by Gadji-Gadjo, the Wild Magnolias, and Omar Faruk Tekbilek. The Skirball follows the idea, as I think we all should, that by fostering increased understanding and appreciation of each other’s cultures and traditions, others will also understand us that much better, also.

Issa Bagayogo’s Mali homeland is Muslim btw, with a rich and turbulent past, giving the lie to simplistic versions of Africa’s history. Google the word ‘jihad’ sometime, if you don’t believe me, and see what they were doing in the 1850’s while we were compromising in Missouri and explaining to Dred Scott how a slave is a slave is a slave. There’s a logic to it all somehow, however twisted and contorted, but I prefer not to get lost in the incongruities and the non sequiturs. I’d rather listen to Mali groove and Swedish bluegrass. See you at the Skirball.