|
|
 |
And the Afrobeat goes on in Antibalas
|
| Click Here to go back. |
Boston Herald, And the Afrobeat goes on in Antibalas >>
What do you call a band from Brooklyn with a Spanish name, a shifting lineup of more than a dozen ethnically diverse members and a repertoire based on the music and philosophy of a dead African superstar most Americans have never heard of?
A triumph of youthful idealism over common sense.But this unlikely formula is working for Antibalas, which performs tonight and tomorrow at the House of Blues and whose name translates as anti-bullets or bulletproof.
"There was a real optimism from the start," says Martin Perna (also known as Martin Antibalas), the group's baritone saxophonist and founder. "That really carried us, combined with the favorable reception we've gotten from our first gig on. People respond positively when you honor and respect the funk."
That's African funk in the case of Antibalas, which is carrying on the jazz-meets-James Brown Afrobeat style pioneered by Nigeria's Fela Kuti."Fela was the architect of the sound," says Perna, who decided to start his own Afrobeat group after Fela died of AIDS-related causes in 1997.
"I got turned on to Afrobeat," he says, "by some other musicians I was playing with when I was doing these sessions for Desto Records in the mid-'90s, original music drawing on the tradition of American funk and James Brown and Dyke and the Blazers. I wanted to play Afrobeat, and I had the vision to put together a 14- or 15-piece group. It was a struggle trying to keep a group that size together at first, especially in New York with no money coming in. Plus, I had no experience whatsoever as a bandleader.
"Our first show was up in Harlem," Perna says. "I thought it was a sloppy disaster. But people really dug it. I thought, 'Well, if they're digging it now, it's a sign we should try to improve and move forward.'
"While Antibalas pays tribute to Fela, it is not a Fela tribute band. All of the mostly instrumental music on the group's two albums - "Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1" and last year's "Talkatif" - is original."
We want people to know that we're playing Afrobeat," Perna says, "but we're not trying to play note for note what Fela did. We approach a Fela tune the way a jazz combo would approach a Thelonious Monk tune - as a classic and a model. We've learned the arrangements of 15 or 20 Fela tunes and over the course of a night we'll play one or two. We tell people, 'Hey, this is Fela. Without him we wouldn't be here.'
"But at the same time, we're writing our own songs with our own influences. Everybody in this band brings a different experience to it. (Duke) Amayo, our lead singer, grew up with this music in Nigeria. He would sneak out of his house when he was 12 to go to Fela's club, the Shrine. Our percussionist Ernesto Abreau, who's Dominican and Cuban, grew up playing all these rhythms you find in Afrobeat, but never knew Fela's music.
"From the get-go, the question was, how do we go about re-creating Fela's music while making it relevant to our situation in Brooklyn? How do we stay within the conventions of his music, but at the same time express ourselves?"
Antibalas also endeavors to make Fela's outspoken anti-authoritarian political message relevant to its own situation. The group is organized as a loose cooperative, where members share profits and responsibilities as well as the spotlight.
But while Perna admires Fela's heroism in standing up to Nigeria's dictatorial rulers, he is not so naive as to ignore the complex musician's flaws.
"Fela was a contradiction in many ways," he says. "He embraced the idea of the African extended family and had this commune where all these people lived together. At the same time he was very autocratic, to the point of smacking his musicians onstage if they messed up.
"No one exercises that kind of authority in Antibalas," Perna says. "We're trying to preserve and foster humanistic values in our music and our lives. We don't all live together, but we share a lot of things. There is friendship and financial and emotional support. It's our own extended family. In addition to everybody you'll see on stage, there are another 10 musicians back in New York who play with us fairly regularly.
"For example, after Sept. 11, I went to Mexico for five months. I got somebody from the extended family of musicians to take my place. The band is so much bigger than any individual, even me, the founder and conceptual leader. We have it set up so there will always be an Antibalas."
As word of the group's high-spirited live shows spreads, Antibalas is creating a new generation of Afrobeat, with the recent formation of at least five other Afrobeat bands in New York.
But it's the approval of several people close to Fela, including his saxophonist-bandleader son Femi Kuti, that's given Antibalas the most encouragement in its quixotic quest.
"We opened for Femi at the Montreal Jazz Festival," Perna says, "and he sat in with us last year in New York. He even wanted to use some of our musicians on a tour. Early on we met Tony Allen, who was Fela's drummer and the architect of the Afrobeat rhythm. These people tell us to keep doing what we're doing, which means a lot. We have some enormous shoes to fill." 02/14/03
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
