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The Patriot Ledger, Feature and Concert Preview >>
MUSIC PREVIEW: African music healed a ‘hooligan’
CHAD BERNDTSON
For "The Patriot Ledger"
Chris Berry’s awakening to African music was a singular moment - one of those stop-dead, everything’s-about-to-change epiphanies that sounds, as does much of his life thus far, like a screenwriter’s dream.
Growing up in Sebastopol, Calif., he ran with an edgy crowd in his junior high years, and one day, the Berry-described ‘‘hooligans’’ boosted a Fela Kuti album. The percussive bottom to the stuff, the healing power, the depth - these things spoke to the impressionable youngster.
‘‘What I love about music in Africa is that at (the music’s) base, it’s truly used for healing. It’s their therapy, their medicine, their drug. It’s everything to them,’’ he said. ‘‘Musicians over here should realize the amount of energy and power they wield, and how, when they’re hitting the notes, they can affect people and their consciousness very strongly. It’s nothing contrived and intellectual, my love of this stuff. I feel chosen by it - it chose me.’’
African sounds are at the heart of Panjea, Berry’s renowned ensemble. But the eight-member group also owes much to dancehall and a Western hip-hop aesthetic, with scores of other international flavors in between. Having just embarked on a major U.S. tour, Panjea rolls through the Paradise Lounge in Boston on Tuesday.
Following his experiences with the Kuti album, an affinity for percussion led Berry to study under African drum master and expatriate Titos Sompa. He started when he was 13, and at 18, Sompa brought him to Brazzaville, in the Congo. That trip eventually led him to Harare, and to the feet of the legendary Monderek Muchena, who would instruct Berry on the mbira, or thumb piano, the instrument he was most drawn to as he began to absorb local music.
Berry’s immersion in African culture kept him a resident there for more than a decade, during which time he formed Panjea, whose name is a variation on Pangaea, the supercontinent that existed in the Mesozoic Era before continental drift set in and the land mass divided. (Initially a misspelling, Berry says the name has come to ‘‘redefine’’ the word, hinting at the band’s far creative reaches).
Panjea broke wide, and Berry went on to become a multi-platinum artist on the continent, regularly selling out stadiums and major concerts from Zimbabwe to Mozambique and South Africa. As one of the first Westerners to be accepted among the highest echelons of African mbira masters, Berry is a master of both mbira and ngoma drum. From the elders, he was granted the title of gwenyambira, which means ‘‘one whose music calls the spirits.’’
Berry’s enthusiasm and worldly outlook are an infectious combination, and word of mouth has endeared him to many an international musician, some of whom have sought him out.
One was Michael Kang, mandolinist and fiddle player for crunchy Colorado bluegrass jammers the String Cheese Incident. Kang will appear with Berry for much of Panjea’s tour, with an appearance in Boston ‘‘likely’’ at press time. Berry first met Kang through an association with String Cheese drummer Michael Travis, and Kang implored Berry to take him to Africa, where Berry acted as his guide as much as a creative collaborator.
‘‘I think some people over-romanticize Africa and then there are some people who still see it as ‘the dark continent,’ with jungle and savages and whatever else. Both of those could not be further from the truth,’’ Berry said. ‘‘Everybody I’ve ever brought to Africa, including Kang, I’ve told them to expect nothing and just be ready. It’s never what people think it is - it’s just another world, and not one that we can truly imagine over here.’’
Berry’s new record, ‘‘Dancemakers’’ (out last week from Wrasse Records), couldn’t be more appropriately titled. But it’s just one of a full plate of projects, which keep his time split between the U.S. and Africa. Berry also has a long-held ambition to study bardship, telling stories through music and studying the roots of oral tradition.
‘‘I always start with the music, and always with the drums and bass,’’ he said. ‘‘Then I usually try to hear what the music is trying to say to me, and I put lyrics on top of that. ... My music specifically is an amalgamation of a lot of things - a lot of people say it sounds African, and then a lot of people don’t think it sounds African at all. It’s just me.’’
CHRIS BERRY AND PANJEA At the Paradise Lounge, 969 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, 8 p.m., Tuesday. Tickets $10 at the box office or through www.thedise.com. Doors at 7 p.m ., show is 18-plus 04/27/06 >> go there
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