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Notes: New York's Fifth Annual Global Music Fest
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Giant Step, Notes: New York's Fifth Annual Global Music Fest >>
For 5 non-stop hours, Sunday night, January 13th, cavernous Webster Hall’s three floors in New York City were shaking underfoot with ecstatic, mesmerized, cheering, clapping, dancing crowds as Globalfest, America’s World Music extravaganza once again kicked off the New Year in high style with 12 exhilarating performances by artists from all over the world.
Brilliantly conceived and produced, and coinciding with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ 51st annual conference, attended by presenters and talent buyers from all over North America and beyond seeking the best in performing arts, globalFEST is by now recognized internationally as one of the finest showcases of World Music ever. With seamless production values, part of the event’s great fun is dashing floor to floor from the Downtown Room to the Marlin Room to the Ballroom to catch about 25 minutes of each overlapping act. The quality of carefully selected musicians is so good and the contrasts are so intense and freshly surprising, they heighten the overall appetite for cosmopolitan musical tastings.
Here are the highlights from the evening’s 4 rounds over 3 stages:
Round 1, 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm:
Samarabalouf, the French Gypsy-styled trio, 2 guitars and contrabass, tossed off high energies as they whizzed through modernized versions of Django Reinhardt’s “manouche” jazz legacy with flamenco flourishes, yet their set was worthy of rock crowd appeal…. Argentina’s master accordion player, Chango Spasiuk, along with violinist, guitarist/vocalist and percussionist/guitarist, presented one of his country’s folk traditions known as chamamé, infused with brightly flickering polka rhythms, sometimes swirling with quickened waltz-like passages, and made the by turns melancholy and charming, indigenous melodies swell expansively with big, finessed, European classical orchestra timbre…. Dulsori (meaning “Wild Beat”), the impressive Korean women’s drumming ensemble with flute and zither embellishments, carries a tradition that originated in farming villages with a multitude of enormous, booming drums that spanned the Ballroom stage. Their calibrated sound charges can make anyone literally stop in their tracks and feel the earth move and resonate. The drumming was at once spectacular, deep and mystical, in tribute to and in communion with the spirits and forces of nature. How often does this happen in a city club setting?
Round 2, 8:10 pm – 9:20 pm:
Two flights down in the ever-packed Downtown Room, next up was Mexican New York-based, pop-rocker act Pistolera. They are 3 amusing women wearing 50’s style flouncy Latina dresses – lead singer/guitarist, accordionist, and drummer – and a male bass player, who played tumbling cumbias and bandas with just a hint of ranchera soul…. Appearing upstairs in the Marlin Room, Crooked Still, who hail from Cambridge, Massachusetts and fashioned as “new-grass” musicians, the group is a pitch-perfect music-school trained ensemble - voice/guitar, fiddle, banjo and cello. Their unusual repertoire holds nostalgia for 60’s coffee house folk music and yearnings for the early Dylan/Baez days…. Meanwhile, Italy’s utterly sophisticated, mischievous, tenderly gruff singer-songwriter, pianist/guitarist Vinicio Capossela and his musicians’ big-band sound, including bass, drums, banjo, theremin, vibraphone, samplers and trumpet, was turning the Ballroom stage into a gigantic cabaret. Inventive and consistently entertaining with madcap humor – changing hats and jackets depending on the song - his multiple personae dramatized and serenaded the audience with Italian folk-con-amore tunes, romantic movie-theme music, and threw in a little extra corn maybe just for the sake of Fellini’s own.
Round 3, 9:20 pm – 10:40 pm
Back on the ground floor, a thumping ska-rock band, Hungary’s Little Cow (named after and inspired by a popular, animated cartoon character) probably shook up Bela Bartok’s ghost with their irreverent twists on Hungarian folk music. The assertive accordion player drove the vocals, guitars, keyboard, bass, percussions and traps with his frenzied sighs and minor-keyed rhythmic counterpoint punching…. Upstairs the 1st floor rang with immensely pleasurable, fulsome vocal polyphonies sung in the medieval Occitan language of Southern France by the 6 members of Lo Cor de la Plana from Marseilles. Accompanying themselves with simple, light frame percussive bendirs, tamburellos, and a pandeiro, the musicians also clapped and stomped away to distinctive Mediterranean melodies, some once heard strictly in regional pagan churches and now, impiously, in clubs and bars! They could rival the Whiffenpoofs any day…. Swinging away in full glory in the Ballroom, the very, very tall and graceful, dressed in a gleaming white robe, Fallou Dieng & Le DLC Band, too rarely seen in World Music festivals, finally had the opportunity to show off his impassioned, fervent mbalax music (one of Senegal’s most popular dance styles with thrashing sabar and tama drums and twinkling guitar riffing) to a delighted international audience. The crowds rocked the dance floor, as his turbaned dancer leapt and spun in dizzying heights and his band members beamed with joy as they played away in peaceful harmony. And the evening grew deeper still.
Round 4, 10:30 pm – Midnight
The last 3 groups topping off the night were among the best. Local Brooklyn-based, Nation Beat, rollicked away in Northeast Brazil’s maracatu beats blended with engaging Southern U.S. musical intersections such as Cajun fiddling, bluegrass guitar, and cowboy rock and blues. Lead singer, Liliana Araujo, carries the syncopated Brazilian lyrics with the liberated ease of a strong carnival queen…. The 84 year old Dominican son maestro who recorded his very first album last year, Puerto Plata, introduced an undiscovered period in the country’s musical history, acoustic guitar-driven music that went underground during the despotic Trujillo regime. With a gentle, crooning voice, he claims has improved with age, his remarkable sones and boleros took us back to the authentic and original roots of today’s commercialized pop merengue and bachata. Needless to say, this is real, cheek-to-cheek, couple-dance music – elegant and sensuous…. Toumast’s lead singer-guitarist, Ag Keyna Moussa, from a valley region straddling Niger and Mali, was once a rebel fighter with the Touareg political liberation movement, but traded in his rifle for the guitar to continue the struggle for the nomadic, hardship-ridden Touareg people. Backed by drums, bass and clattering metal castanet percussions, he took the signature Touareg “tamashek” rhythm and turned it into moody, hypnotic rock grooves. Groups of compatriots swathed in robes and turbans on the dance floor seized the rhythms and it wasn’t difficult to conjure up vast expanses of desert sands along with loping camels in the mix.
Each globalFEST seems to be greater and better than the last, but all in all, this annual event is by far the most seriously powerful World Music showcase one could possibly hope to experience. globalFEST has become a critical industry benchmark for World Music and provides the participating artists with associated prestige in their careers. Hats off to the globalFEST Producers: Bill Bragin, Director of Public Programming with Lincoln Center, Isabel Soffer, Director of Programming with the World Music Institute, and Maure Aronson, Director of World Music/CRASHarts. Kudos too to Danny Kapilian, Production Director, and Dmitri Vietze, Publicist, whose vital, behind-the-scenes work makes the magic happen.
Above all, do seek out the CDs and upcoming performances in your region by this year’s globalFEST stars and also, remember to get tickets next time around for globalFEST 2009!
-- by Evangeline Kim 02/01/08 >> go there
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