|
|
 |
African beat rocks the Wrangler crowd
|
| Click Here to go back. |
Lahontan Valley News & Fallon Eagle Standard, African beat rocks the Wrangler crowd >>
This weekend, traditional African costumes stood out in world of Wranglers.
Acclaimed Malian musician Habib Koite and his band, Bamada, brought a vibrant blend of classical and contemporary international sounds to Fallon's Barkley Theatre Saturday night.
Koite's African lyrics were incognizant to most audience members, but the music's breadth of rhythmic and instrumental vivacity cracked language barriers to enrapture the crowd for hours. At the end of the night, the nearly 200 people who filled the theatre gave standing ovation and called for an encore performance.
"Most of the songs are in African language I know they don't understand," Koite said in a pre-show interview. "But this time when I play this kind of song, maybe they watch the music onstage and maybe they see the color of the musician and the instrument."
Koite showed colorful muicianship in his performance, dramatically opening with a balladic guitar/vocal solo and adding his five band members onstage one by one. By the end of the first number, Koite had the audience at attention with rock rhythm underlaid with ethnic African cadences.
By the second, he had the crowd cheering, applauding and bobbing with the beat; Koite helped audience members clap different rhythms to bring them into his music.
Enthusiasm was constant as listeners were led across a spectrum of blues, funk, flamenco, reggae, bluegrass and rock-n-roll hues.
"I think the different music give to the whole set some change, move it's not all time the same music," Koite said, explaining the music's appeal.
"Each rhythm, each melody can have some people."
Instrumentation continually rotated between traditional African and modern Western from the ngoni (a plucked lute) to the electric bass. Performers showed virtuosity in all instruments.
Percussionists, who used several different drums and shakers, played solos that literally made their hands a blur.
The band's bassist displayed equally impressive agility in Hendrix-like solo while the xylophonist showed great range on both the balafon (a wooden xylo phone) and the violin. One performer played two instruments, the acoustic harmonica and the guitar, simultaneously.
"They see the traditional instrument and some acoustical instrument and they hear sound and they imagine many things ... they are very free to go where they want but they don't understand word," said Koite, who played a flute and drum. "They feel the music, they think about the music and where they come from and what culture."
Fallon was Habib Koite and Bamada's 25th stop on its 37-city tour of North America. The group will continue touring California, Oregon, Colorado, Washington and Canada this month.
-By Leilani Fisher 03/01/05
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
