January, 8, 2005
Text by Banning Eyre. Photos by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow

Now that the second globalFEST extravaganza--13 world music acts on three stages and three floors of Joe's Public Theatre in one, wild evening--has gone down, we can call it a New York tradition. And a truly welcome one. From classic American gospel music (Ollabelle) to pumped-up Japanese shamisen head-banging (Yoshida Brothers) to many varieties of African and Latin music, this was an overwhelming night of music, offering more than any one person, no matter how diligent, could fully absorb. GlobalFEST owes its existence to a dedicated contingent of true believers among the vast ranks of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP)--Bill Bragin of Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, Isabel Soffer at World Music Institute, and Maure Aronson of World Music/CRASH Arts.. APAP members gather in thousands for their annual conference each January in New York, and in recent years a (now official) World Music Coalition has shaped and spiced the event in colloquia, panel discussions, presentations, and showcases, of which globalFEST is the granddaddy. The effort is clearly paying off.

GlobalFEST is open to the public, but because it aims to inspire and excite busy and over-stimulated arts presenters, it is, of necessity, a bit of a tease. With so many groups in one place at one time, and such focused publicity, the event is a guaranteed sell-out, so if you don't buy your tickets at least a week or two in advance, you'll find yourself in the rope line waiting, likely in vain, for people to leave. Once in the door, you have to make sometimes painful choices between the three simultaneous programs, and if you opt to leave one venue for another, you may have to wait in line to get in. Sets are only 45-minutes long, and they often leave the crowd wanting more. In other words, getting the most out of a night at globalFEST is an art in itself. That tension actually serves a purpose. A principle goal of this event is to introduce presenters to the vibrancy and variety of world music, and to show them just how much excitement a village brass band from Poland, or a slight, feline chanteuse from Mali can generate. In that sense, as wonderful as it is to be buffeted about among the night's colliding hubbub of talent, the real payoff comes in the amplifier effect, as these acts get booked at a club, theatre, or festival near you during the next concert season.

This year, Afropop Worldwide was installed on the 3rd floor at Martinson Hall to record four acts for our program. This report therefore focuses on the four, stellar acts that performed there, with occasional stolen glimpses of action on the other two stages. Things kicked off at Martinson with a slamming set from New York's own Spanish Harlem Orchestra. There's a distinct irony to the notion that this group is in any way exotic or foreign; these 16 musicians and their salsa sound are in fact about as New York as you can get. The group's leader, veteran pianist and arranger Oscar Hernandez, has pulled together seasoned and diversely experienced session musicians with the idea of recapturing the freewheeling energy and positive vibe of the Harlem's east side--"El Bario"--in the 1960s and 70s. (SHO's second album, "Across 110th St." won APWW Top Ten honors for 2004).

From the first crack of the timbale, the musicians and the audience were moving. The vocal front line--Marco Bermudez, Ray De La Paz, and Willie Torres--offered a tapestry of motion through the group's burning set, trading vocal leads and backing each other up with spot-on harmonies. For these guys, there is simply no distinction between singing and dancing. The tempo never lagged as the group slid through vocal sections, fiery solos by the likes of trombone virtuoso Jimmy Bosch, and explosive bursts of percussion. It didn't hurt that many in the crowd knew exactly how to dance to the music. World music hitchhikers did their best to keep up. The band's power and tightness set the evening off to an electrifying start, and it felt good to begin in an area of world music whose cultural specificity was so well understood. Everyone seemed at home in the band's virtual barrio. Now it was time to venture.

Two West African stars followed, Mory Kante from Guinea and Rokia Traore of Mali. Writing about globalFEST in the New York Times, Jon Pareles noted that the music of these African acts was "gentler" than the high-octane fare offered by the likes of the Warsaw Village Band (Poland) and the Yoshida Brothers (Japan)--"mesmerizing rather than overpowering," is how Pareles described the Africans. That says a lot about the direction of African pop music in the past decade. Kante, Traore, and Lokua Kanza (Congo), who performed later in the evening at Joe's Pub, are all part of a movement toward more nuanced, acoustic textures, sounds far from the tumult of drumming and electrified rhythm many still expect when they hear the word "Africa." This is especially interesting in Kante's case, as he was the original "electro-griot," whose 1988 hit "Yeke Yeke" made an unprecedented breakthrough into France's main stream, selling over a million singles worldwide, and helped launch a movement of aggressively produced, high-gloss Afropop.

Kante had not played New York in 14 years (not counting an extended set at SOB's the night before globalFEST), so his mere presence was historic. During most of those years, he has continued to kick out the high-tech jams, although even his most electric albums have included passages or even whole tracks featuring acoustic instruments. It's important to remember that playing acoustic music is a return, not a new thing, for Kante. Born to a griot family of Guinea and neighboring Mali, Kante was playing kora and balafon--the two featured melody instruments in his current ensemble--well before he joined the path-breaking Rail Band of Bamako in 1971. No doubt that's one reason he negotiates his current acoustic turf with such confidence and aplomb.

Kante's 8-piece band showcases two, sterling balafon players, one being his son. Balafon is the instrument favored by the griots of Guinea. Kante himself plays both acoustic guitar and kora--the instrument he's most identified with publicly--in his group. He also sings with an unmistakable voice that has become part of the very fabric of world music. Most of the set came from Kante's superb new album, Sabou. The songs are Kante's, not part of the Mande griot tradition as such, but they retain so much of that genre's august, effusive emotional quality that they feel very much like an extension of tradition, rather than a departure from it.

After a few technical glitches at the start of the set--it is not easy to present such large and varied bands in rapid sequence on one stage--Kante and his group settled into a masterfully paced set that included lyrical, contemplative numbers, as well as cracking, percussion-driven songs, one of which gave Kante a chance to spread the wings of his signature white robe and dance in the dignified, showy manner of a griot. There was even an inspired reworking of "Yeke Yeke" late in the set. Judging by the buzz among the presenters, we will most certainly not have to wait another 14 years to find Kante on tour in American cities. In fact, the wait will more likely be measured in weeks, or at most, months.

Rokia Traore's idiosyncratic take on Malian roots music and personal songcraft has made her a major attraction in Europe. And she's not doing badly this side of the pond either, having garnered rave reviews for her new album Bowmboi in Rolling Stone, Elle, and Time, and sold out Carnegie Hall's Zankel Auditorium last fall. Traore's core repertoire consists of sweet, melodious songs that float on a rhythmic bed of plinky lute (ngoni) lines and deeply resonant emanations from a pentatonic balafon--lower pitched and tonally dissimilar from the instruments used in Kante's group. In recent years, though, Traore has learned how to pump up a crowd with more forceful dance rhythms, and as her set progressed, there was more of the latter and less of the former.

Traore has also blossomed into a wonderfully agile performer, confident and modest, but in complete control of her presentation. She can hold her guitar, stand still as a beach tree and summon delicate, breathy airs that quiver with a sense of emotional vulnerability. But when the band lays into the rhythm, she puts the guitar aside, begins to dance with lithe, unusual moves not found in any ethnic tradition, and she belts. The globalFEST crowd was in her masterful hands from the start, and she left them howling for more. Traore's take on African roots may be gentle, but it's certainly not withering, and its hold on the audience is robust indeed.

The program at Martison Hall reached a rousing climax with a no-nonsense set from New York's celebrated Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Nigeria's political firebrand and musical visionary Anikulapo Fela Kuti died in 1997, but the genre he created (afrobeat) now enjoys a worldwide following it never knew during his lifetime. There are afrobeat bands everywhere these days, but Antibalas ("bulletproof" in Spanish) was among the first to understand the music's future potential. Formed in 1998, Antibalas rose largely on the strength of its hard-hitting brass section, the fiery core of the afrobeat sound. Today, they have it all: charismatic lead vocals from front man Duke Amayo, a sonically rich, perfectly percolating rhythm section, great original songs, and arrangements that unfold with a drama that never fails to entrance a live audience.

Even at 45-minutes, an Antibalas set delivers an infectious, communal vibe. At times, everyone is singing, playing and moving together like a crowd rallied to the pitch of movement frenzy. Then, with a hand wave from Amayo, the energy drops to a whisper, simmering peacefully, while he has words with the people. It is not easy to channel the Fela energy without succumbing to mimicry, but Amayo carries it off. Antibalas long ago proved that Fela's legacy is not his alone, but something that goes on, a forum for the struggles of today and tomorrow, rather than mere nostalgia for the past.

Slipping out for a snatch of the action on other stages, I caught a moment of Lokua Kanza's set in Joe's Pub. Kanza long ago left aside the rigid conventions of Congolese music to forge his own road showcasing his extraordinarily nimble voice in heart-filled pop songs. His current trio, filled out by his brother and daughter, uses just two acoustic guitars and hand percussion--but what voices! As he drew out the ending of a song with effortless flights across octaves and tonal qualities, I heard him as an African Al Jarreau, and envied those who had seen the whole set.

The revelation of the night for me was the fifteen minutes I spent with Peru's Eva Ayllon and her 9-piece ensemble in the 2nd floor Anspacher Theater. Ayllon has been an important exponent of Afro-Peruvian music for over three decades, but only recently has she begun to approach the visibility of that genre's primary ambassador, Susana Baca, in this country. Ayllon's staggeringly beautiful recent album Leyenda Peruana, came as a wakeup call to many, suggesting a more robust and earthy dimension to Afro Peruvian music. But seeing Ayllon in action was another matter altogether. A take-no-prisoners performer with a voice that is electro-shock therapy for the soul, she projected astounding intimacy from the stage. On one song, she called forth her guitarist and circled him like panther as he wove rhythmic melodies through her vocal. On another, two percussionists flanked her, one on the small box played by opening and closing it, and the other on the ubiquitous donkey's jaw--by now cult instrument in Afro Peruvian music.

I was lucky enough to hear one of my favorite songs, Ayllon's reinvention of the "Black Christmas" tune "Inga." Her version is very different from Susana Baca's, showing the stylistic range possible within this still-evolving genre. In an interview the next day, Ayllon told Afropop Worldwide that she has recently married and moved to New Jersey. A number of presenters were pleased to hear it. Stay tuned for much more from her camp.

If the goal of globalFEST is to awaken those who have somehow overlooked the power and accessibility of world music, there's little doubt that it succeeded. The event's publicist, Dmitri Vietze, remarked that there is a noticeable difference among the arts presenters just since last year, the first year of globalFEST and the World Music Coalition. As he put it, the pronoun has changed from "they" and "you" to "we"--music to the ears of old world music hands. I left the Public Theatre feeling reenergized, sensing for the first time in awhile that the best days for world music in the US may yet lay ahead.