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Sun Rise
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Philadelphia City Paper, Sun Rise >>
"Philly has everything that Seattle has lost including [comparatively] cheap real estate and a can-do attitude. It is a city with possibilities. Seattle went through a time where everything was possible and now it's impossible to live there on less than $200,000 a year."
So says Andrew Frankel, executive director of the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and longtime exponent of Nigerian arts. He moved here thinking he was swearing off the arts-presenting business. But within a year his old friend and client, King Sunny Ade, a legend of juju music of Nigeria, was in need of tour management and, given Frankel's newfound optimism, he's back in business again. Along with several other ex-Seattleites he'll present Ade and Prince Obi in concert on.March 26 at the Blue Horizon in a truly African-style, dance-all-night event.
Frankel says he is pleased and flattered at the stir this show is creating. "I lived in Seattle for 15 years and it was a constant battle to get taken seriously by the press."
About 20 years ago after finishing college, Frankel went to Nigeria to study talking drum. During those two years working on the music, he also met his wife, who cemented his devotion to Nigeria. Living in Seattle he maintained a not-for-profit to present Nigerian artists that "went dormant" in recent years due to wind change in the arts in Seattle. Frustration with that scene and the political climate in Nigeria that made arts-presenting a challenge made Frankel look around for other options. The East Coast seemed best for his family ties to Nigeria, since being here cuts off at least 6 hours from any plane journey. "We looked everywhere from Boston to Virginia. New York was out for the same reasons as Seattle. We came to Philly just to see some friends and we fell in love."
Two of Frankel's colleagues from Seattle, Aaron Straight and Jeb Lewis, both working on the Ade tour, have been similarly seduced and are now Philadelphians. Lewis, Frankel says, loves to work with blue-collar people, so it is no surprise he bought in Fishtown.
With these two Frankel is now working on establishing a -based not-for-profit, African Arts Network. The tours will be international, reaching across this country and into Canada. Philly is the perfect base for such a network, notes Frankel. We all know we are surrounded by francophone West Africans from the Ivory Coast and Mali since we interact with them daily in stores, driving cabs. But Frankel says he also knows "a huge number of Nigerian doctors, lawyers and buainesspeople in Philly."
The King Sunny event is an auspicious start for this new organization. Juju is the modern party-music evolution of traditional Yoruba drumming and singing, the same tradition that evolved into the basis for much of Cuba's modern music. Ade is a singer and a guitar player, but as the band leader notes, the ensemble has "multiple guitars" [even pedal steel]. On this tour his band is a modest 27 pieces; in Nigeria the high 30s is more the norm. In addition to guitars, there are singers, dancers and an array of percussionists. Most important among the latter is the talking drum.
"Some people come just to hear the drums, not to hear me sing," states Ade, to emphasize the importance of the instrument in the tradition. "We use it to communicate. It can speak to you; you play it like a code. For example, when it is time for us to close, the drummer would let us know. Or they can sound that there is fighting somewhere. The drummer would holler, look at me, and I'll get the message. Sometimes when I'm singing the drums might be calling, 'Hey, fine, pretty girl.' Sometimes we'll translate the drumming for the audience." Tunes can go on for 20 minutes, working dancers into a sweaty froth.
Ade has been touring the U.S. almost annually since his first cultural exchange program in 1975. Throughout these tours the shows have been formal concerts, lacking the praise-song interaction that would be part of any Nigerian event. Traditionally the singer will elaborate praises for a particular person who is then expected to "spray" the singer with cash, Ade says this evolved from early customs of singing for tribal royalty who would tie cowrie shells -- early African cash -- to the singer to show appreciation. Then the singer would dance all around to show off how much he'd been appreciated. Then they moved to coins on a string, now we use currency," which can be pasted to the singer's forehead. It is also much more democratic today: Anybody with the cash can have their praises sung.
Opening for Ade is Prince Obi Osadebe and bis highlife band. The Prince represents the Igbo tradition from Nigeria and their favorite party music, replete with a large horn section.
-Mary Armstrong 03/24/05
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