Aurelio Brings Dance Music to People Who Don't Dance, Last Night at the Triple Door

Aurelio and Garifuna Soul
Monday, Jan. 17
The Triple Door

In many ways, the sit-down Triple Door is the perfect venue for the Honduran pop artists Aurelio, a man who makes music that compels the limbs to twitch in rhythm. Seattle doesn't dance, it just bobs its head and sways self-consciously. So at Monday night's seated affair, the local audience didn't have to feel awkward about being compelled to dance and taking a pass. They could sit comfortably and move deliberately, their movements captured only by the flicker of their table-top tea lights.

At the same time, a constricting venue like the Triple Door could be the absolute wrong place to experience the music that Aurelio and Garfuna Soul were making. Jon Kertzer, boss of the Sub Pop imprint Next Ambiance that is releasing Aurelio's record, Laru Beya, today, has said that African music - which Aurelio makes, by way of the Caribbean - is best sold to North American audience when they're "seeing it, and dancing to it and directly relating to it." But despite the tables, chairs, booths, and tippy martini glasses, it only took a couple songs for a few members of the audience to figure out how to make the room work, and as the night wore on the pockets of dancers made their way to the front of - and onto - the stage.

Garifuna Soul consists of two players on Garifuna drums (large hand drums similar to the djembe), one on the maracas, two guitarists, a bass player, and Aurelio primiarly playing acoustic guitar and singing. They share more in common with a loose-lipped jazz ensemble than your stereotypical World Music fare, using the framework of their recordings as a starting point rather than the performance's destination. Stoic highlights on Laru Beya - specifically Mayahuaba - were transformed into propulsive dance competitions between Aurelio and a member of the audience, his band, or, most often, himself.

Although the show appeared to primarily draw a crowd already won over by the genre, Aurelio's sound would be easily accessible to pop music junkies and afficiandos of groove-oriented jams. His name and genre may not be familiar to the aforementioned audiences, but Aurelio is the kind of act that would make your weekend when happened upon at a festival.

Reporter's Notebook:

BTW: Aurelio's Laru Beya is the second release for Sub Pop's world music imprint, Next Ambiance. The first, Bassekou Kouyate's I Speak Fula has been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Traditional World Music Album category.

Personal Bias: I took in the set from one of the suites overlooking the floor and stage of the Triple Door. The room is blocked off from the audience by a sound-proof pain of glass, with the audio of the show pumped inside. While it may not be an ideal way to soak up all the aesthetics of the show, it feel extremely luxurious, and it enabled me to bring my 10-week-old son to his first show, which he enjoyed very much.