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Fela Fellas
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Weekly Planet, Fela Fellas >>
The NYC collective Antibalas totes the Afrobeat torch
BY ERIC SNIDER
Phil Ballman will never forget the first time he heard Fela. It was in 1990 and he was a 20-year-old Florida State University student working at Vinyl Fever in Tallahassee. He was intrigued by the cover of Zombie, one of the more renowned albums by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Nigerian musician who founded a style called Afrobeat. The disc was marked down. Ballman bought it. "It didn't leave my CD player for six months," he says. "It had everything I was interested in: the groove of funk, the nimbleness of jazz, the political strength and uncompromising stance of punk rock. It was counter-cultural, anti-authoritarian rebel music, but at the same time it was impeccable dance-floor material, sophisticated dance music that's fun to play. I thought, 'Man, I'd love to play in a band like this.'"
His dream was realized nine years later when he became the drummer for Antibalas ("anti-bullets"), a Brooklyn-based Afrobeat ensemble.
Most Antibalas members feel similarly blessed to be part of a 20-person, multi- ethnic collective that keeps the Afrobeat torch alive while expanding its horizons. What began as a New York City cultural and nightlife phenomenon has evolved into an increasingly busy road act that puts no less than a dozen musicians on stage. They lure audiences into their communal dancefests with long, sweaty, celebratory performances. The money can be skimpy; the travel can be cruel; most everyone has a day job or other music gigs. But the payoff is big. "The energy we put in, we get back," says baritone saxophonist Martin Perna, who co-founded the band in 1998, "not in the form of a dollar bill, but in friendship, honor and integrity."
Antibalas is a true musical democracy. There is no leader. Band decisions may come to a vote, but most often are decided by consensus. "It used to be a bunch of guys and me calling the shots," Perna says. "Then we decided to make a true collective. It's harder, but it's more interesting. It can be kind of a no-brainer to lead a band, but the tension can be reflected in the music, and you might get guys just up there for the paycheck. We didn't want people just up there for the paycheck."
Maybe this is the band that should've been called Nirvana. "Every one in the band has a genuine affection and respect for everyone else," Ballman says. "We switch roommates on the road every night, so we get the chance to hang out with everybody. We make sure we recognize birthdays, do things outside the band, play in other groups together, go drinking together."
Occasionally, an issue will confront the group that requires careful inner negotiation. A couple of years ago, Antibalas, which had signed a record deal with the Ninja Tune label, was offered a tour of the U.S. West Coast. Because the band was an untested entity, promoters couldn't offer enough money to make it financially feasible for the members. A shoe company offered a sponsorship. It was willing to pay enough cash for Antibalas to go west in exchange for putting "Gravis presents" on flyers and having a marketing presence at the show. No ad campaign. No huge banners. Still, "There was a tremendous amount of debate," Ballman recounts. "Do we want to do this? Is it going against our political thing? We ended up doing it, even though some [members] had issues with it. We realized that the bigger picture for us was to get out there and get the music to the people."
Antibalas' communal M.O. differs from Fela's. The saxophonist, singer and composer, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1997, was the star and leader of his mammoth ensembles. For years, he rebelled against Nigeria's military regimes, enduring jail time and beatings. His music was stridently anti-authoritarian, but it could also whip up a damn party. Fela was educated in England and visited the United States, where his exposure to American R&B and jazz spurred a fusion of Western and African styles that became an immediate sensation in his homeland.
Afrobeat was built on rolling funk grooves and fat, coarse horn riffs and solos. But there was also an open-endedness and subtly complex internal group dynamic that was distinctly African. For instance, two guitarists would play the same interlocking parts for up to an hour; the bassist would repeat the same simple vamp. A drummer and battery of percussionists laid down a percolating groove that would induce trance states.
Antibalas hasn't tinkered much with the formula. They haven't brought in a turntablist or didjeridoo player or an MC for the mere sake of wanton experimentation. "We inherited this stuff from Fela," says Perna, a Philadelphia native. "If you're gonna mess with it, you gotta do it for a long time so you understand why the guitars never change and that sort of thing, how all the pieces fit together."
The collective has made a few tweaks to the style, including the addition of a trombone, some wah-wah guitar and splashes of dub-style echo. Most notably, they've added breakbeats, drum/percussion segments that are a staple of rap music.
But don't expect Antibalas to slide too far toward hip-hop. For one, their organic stage marathons would wear out a rap crowd. Most hip-hop acts do well to perform 45 minutes. Antibalas routinely does two 90-minute sets and generally adds an encore. Perna says, "The audience gets tired before we do." 04/23/03
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