The title of the show, presented by Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Caribbean Cultural Center and Society HAE, was slightly misleading. Blitz the Ambassador and Iyadede are both based in Brooklyn. But all three artists are grappling with how to show an African identity to the wider world.
Blitz the Ambassador, who was born Samuel Bazawule in Ghana’s capital, Accra, put his mission in his stage name. For him the job means history, funk from Africa and America, rapping, singing and showing off a hard-working three-man horn section, whose every riff was delivered with a choreographed swivel. Blitz’s set included two medleys defining his musical roots. One focused on funk and hip-hop, featuring excerpts from his role model, Public Enemy. The other was music from Ghana, Nigeria, Congo and Cameroon. In his own songs, played live by a potent funk band, Blitz drew on the stentorian delivery of Public Enemy’s Chuck D, but he also pushed into hyperspeed double-time rapping that was still intelligible as it whizzed by.
He’s a socially conscious rapper. Blitz is determined to draw American attention to Africa, and Ghana particularly, comparing American privilege with African poverty. In one song, backed by martial snare-drum rolls, he pretended to be the leader of a coup speaking on the radio, announcing repressive policies: “While you’re hungry and starving, me and my friends, we will steal all your oil, steal all your gold, steal all your diamonds.” But his “Accra Blues” was on a more universal subject: love gone wrong.
Spoek Mathambo, who was born Nthato Mokgata, was more futuristic, rapping and singing over sparse electronics as he strode and danced all over the stage. A fashion plate, graphic designer and D.J., as well as a rapper, Mr. Mathambo has collaborated, under various names, with European D.J.’s. His two-man backup at Damrosch Park consisted of Gunnar Olsen on live and electronic percussion and, from Copenhagen, Chllngr on electronics and, occasionally, saxophone, hinting at South African jazz.
Mr. Mathambo’s rhymes and choruses were backed by the bloopy tones of electro, the bass thuds of dubstep and the deep drumbeats and crackling hi-hats of tribal house. His “Control” was based on Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control.” But while the beats were jagged shards from across the Internet, his concerns stayed at home: corruption in government and, in “Put Some Red on It,” the bloody human toll of gold and diamond mining.
Even when Iyadede was singing about sunny memories of childhood in Africa, the glides and quavers in her voice may well have had as much to do with Erykah Badu as with the music she grew up with in Rwanda, which she called “a beautiful country that I had to leave.” Her “Pretend You’re a Square” had a dance-club beat harking back to the song she eventually quoted, Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell.” She also sang and rapped a French translation of a Theophilus London track. But her newest song, “Oh the Sky,” had percussive vocals and a triple-time beat out of Rwanda, making sure that going international wasn’t simply getting assimilated.
08/08/11 >> 
