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Antibalas' Earth Trance is Intoxicating
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Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Antibalas' Earth Trance is Intoxicating >>
The Fela Kuti-loving African/funk outfit Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra is a band of apparent contradictions.
The Brooklyn group, lately revered by world-music and jam-band fans alike, is billed as "America's only live Afrobeat party," a title easily defended.
These dozen or so brass and woodwind players, percussionists, guitarists, singers and other musicians -- the lineup expands to as large as 18, or contracts, depending on gig economics -- pump out surging, gritty, densely woven horn lines over deeply infectious grooves, driving hard until the rhythms become downright hypnotic.
Call it earth trance.
"It connects people to something primal and something very celestial at the same time," says Martin Antibalas, aka Martin Perna, the Philadelphia-born baritone saxophonist and toaster who organized the group in the spring of 1998. "It's just about finding your soul. That's why they call it soul music. It allows you to step away from your anxieties."
Antibalas, a musical cooperative whose members hail from New York bands The Daktaris, King Chango and Soul Providers, was born partly as a result of Perna's dissatisfaction with previous band experiences.
"I was trying to make music on a model that's completely counter to the way our society is organized," he says. "It's a group of people that get together to play music, but it's really so much more than music. So much of our culture is about making specialists of people, and putting it in boxes and making music a commodity. I want to ... do it in a collaborative way, so that there's not a hierarchy."
By Phillip Booth 04/25/03
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