Globalfest:

The final big showcase of the APAP conference weekend, Sunday night, was Globalfest’s 10th Anniversary celebration. From its earliest edition originally supported by APAP, the event has become an internationally branded festival and now travels to SXSW, Bonnarroo, Paris’ Festival d’Ile de France and the Joshua Light Show. National and international presenters seeking exciting, newer world music acts flock to it each year now, and of course, for the artists invited, Globalfest represents prestigious recognition. It was a happy evening, sold-out 5 days in advance. The following were the most appealing:

Christine Salem, a rare Maloya singer from the La Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean created an immediate buzz for those who saw her – and many stayed for the entire set, she was that sensational. >From Europe to the Indian Ocean, Ms. Salem has gained a reputation among critics as one of the most beautiful voices to be heard from the region. Prior to the reforms of 1981, French colonialists, the Catholic Church, and the police banned Maloya music, as its identity lay with creole culture and revolutionary anti-slavery sentiments.

Over the past 15 years, Ms. Salem has helped elevate Maloya music to high artistic professionalism from its origins as a spiritual music associated with Réunion’s distinct creole “servis kabaré.” The latter signifies the island’s festive devotional ceremonies, founded on African and Madagascan cultures, featuring ancestral worship, dance and music, trance and “speaking in tongues.” In interview, Ms. Salem mentioned her earliest and sometimes recurrent onstage moments when she falls into trance, completely startling her musicians with her intensity and invented language – a mixture of Creole, Malagasy, Comoran, Arabic, and Swahili.

With a deep velvet contralto she sang the Maloya bluesy laments and supplication to her ancestors – alternating with bouncy quicker-paced dance rhythms, as she shook the kayamb, a flat reed instrument filled with seeds, meshing layered polyphonies with her musicians on roulé (cylindrical drum), bongos and doum (African hand drum). The crowds were enthralled by the charismatic power of her voice.

With a stately, cheerful presence, Martha Redbone delivered a set of upbeat songs reflective of her Native American, Appalachian folk, and African-American combined heritage. Woven into her repertoire were Woody Guthrie’s “This Train Is Bound For Glory,” Olabelle Reed’s “Undone In Sorrow,” and the Civil Rights anthem “Eyes On The Prize.”

Yet her most beautiful renditions, “How Sweet I Roamed,” and “I Rose Up At The Dawn of Day” with instrumental and vocal harmonies by her lively musicians on keys, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, bass, drums, from her recent and extraordinary “Roots Project,” based on the poetry of William Blake, were transformed into thoroughly beguiling Appalachian gospel.

The shared improvisations by Iran’s Kayhan Kalhor on kamanche fiddle and Turkey’s Erdal Erzincan on the baglana lute were a mystical dream experience of ecstatic virtuosity. They stretched long suspended sequences of soulful yearning with glittering pizzicato and plucking embellishments. This is music to swoon over in mesmeric rhapsody. Globalfest has over the past decade presented some of the world’s great traditions, and this memorable Near Eastern showcase ranked as one of high integrity, intricate complexity, and splendor.

Globalfest has also presented some of Africa’s most wonderful stars, and this year’s edition was no exception. Zimbabwe’s Oliver Mtukudzi and Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara represented two of the continent’s countries, currently undergoing most difficult passages in time. The tall, forever youthful and beloved Oliver Mtukudzi, a real Afro-pop veteran and crowd-pleaser, two-stepped and twirled with his band members, as they transposed traditional twinkling thumb-piano mbira lines in his “Tuku” style – incorporating regional chimurenga, jit, and mbaqanga – to guitars. Rhythmic beats and textures from percussions and drums completed the joyousness that are so much a part of Mr. Mtukudzi’s gently loping songs in Shona, spliced with a fierce prayer in English, “Hear Me Lord.”

Mali’s newest young international star, Fatoumata Diawara, who earned early kudos as a singer with the formidable Wassulou diva Oumou Sangare, edged herself into a stadium mode as she whirled, paced, and danced across the stage to a searing rock guitar. This was a bit of a surprise, as her debut album, “Fatou,” is filled with such quietly lovely and mostly acoustic music. But her strength as a performer with that blazing smile is irresistible. We remain thrilled when African stars emerge from troubled times and carry forth banners of pride and prayers filled with love of country and culture. Above all, they give us hope that some of today’s greatest musicians in African music are alive and thriving, despite war and painful economic hardships.

What’s a festival without some madcap fun and whooped-up energies? The upstairs ballroom overflowed with adrenalin-charged Chicago’s marching band, Mucca Pazza. Mucca Pazza is a riotous rah-rah band, with cheerleaders, brass and drums corps, and stage antics. Dressed up in mismatched kitsch-military uniforms, the contrast lay in the band’s tuned and synchronized band music. The air was filled with balloons as cheerleaders tumbled, wiggled, and collapsed onstage and jumped down on the floor through the crowds. Mucca Pazza is razzle-dazzle carnival American-style.

The final act of the evening, A Tribe Called Red, hailing from Ottawa, Canada was the unusual Native American DJ collective. Theirs are echoing powwow chants in a Jamaican dub-toaster style, with added hip-hop loops, drumbeats, electronic squeaks and buzzing psychedelic effects all wrapped up in club ambience. Rhonda, a traditional dancer appeared wearing brilliantly colored Native American gear, spun several hoops at once with her arms, legs – and teeth to the amazement of all, as the over-packed downstairs studio room became a throbbing, sweaty sound box.

Globalfest Afterparty:

A quick walk down the road in the cold night air at midnight to the Globalfest afterparty at Joe’s Pub blessed the night after the intensive showcase sessions. Happily for a few hundred globe-hopping dancing feet, Chicago’s Brian Keigher aka DJ Warp, commandeered the turntables on the club’s elegant stage for the second year in a row. Newly appointed Executive Director with the Kalapriya Center for Indian Performing Arts, Mr. Keigher enjoys a brilliant and award-winning career in the world music industry. His knowledge and vast experience as presenter, producer, and programmer, is not to be outdone by his popularity as one of the best world music DJ’s, appearing at clubs, festivals, and events throughout the Midwest and the U.S. This year he invited two others to share the stage at the turntables.

DJ Warp writes: “I had David Chavez come DJ with me this year since Bill Bragin (or Billmo) was not going to DJ. David Chavez also presents as Sound Culture in Chicago. He is the former talent buyer at the Hot House and now booking at Mayne Stage Theater and other venues and has been doing a great job as one of the few independent “world music” promoters for the last few years as Sound Culture. He is a longtime DJ as well. I also brought MC Zulu (Dominique Rowland) from Chicago, originally from Panama come and join me. I love Zulu and his vocal styling so I thought it would be a good way to showcase him and his ‘madcapped’ talents in front of a crowd who may actually want to book him for their summer outdoor events, or to have him host a stage or such and help fill between live bands sets and keep the crowd excited and engaged. When he came out with the top hat, the umbrella, and the mega phone I knew people would get a kick out of him.”

An added surprise bonus on stage was the Toronto-based jazz and gospel singer Shakura S’Aida who added even more house soul to the celebration.

He notes that he “looks to use DJing as another form of musical expression in an effort to continue his life mission of turning people onto damn good music.” With a keen ear for the latest in abstract dance music and unusual international music, DJ Warp had the entire dance floor packed. What did he play? He started his set with a track from Vieux Farka Toure recorded in India at the Amarrass Desert Music Festival, followed by new music by Palanke Soultribe, the new Double Moon Remixed 2, Si Begg, Lekan Babalola remixes, and recent music by recent music by Pearson Sound, Bonde do Rolê & Tony Allen, Atom TM, and Luke Vibert.

Further, “I think my style was a bit more African and even techno driven this year, though I did musically venture to the Balkans, Arab areas and a bit of the Afro-Cuban electronic sound mixed in. I think David’s style is more on the Latin side of the spectrum, but he was also playing soca electronic music and more too.”

No one wanted to leave the party the music was so good, and at one point we saw Joe’s Pub Director and Globalfest Co-Producer Shante Thake’s fiancé swirling her around on the dance floor. As they danced together, romance was in the air and we knew that all was right with the world.