Rock the Casbah (feat Rachid Taha / Karim Saada / Maryem Tollar Ensemble)
Queen's Park (Luminato Festival). Saturday, June 12, 2010.
Say what you will about Luminato1 they have put on some worthwhile free music shows every year. And here, with the rumble of the subway underfoot by a stage set up against a closed-off Wellesley Street, there were some promising names indeed. It was a grey, rainy day, dark and overcast throughout. That pushed the schedule back, and I ended up seeing more of the undercard than I was expecting, to mixed results.
Based on what I had read, I wasn't in a rush to catch the Maryem Tollar Ensemble, an Arabic Pop project that is an adaptation from the band's previous incarnation as Mernie! I'm not familiar with that grouping, but perhaps the loss of that exclamation point underlines a groping for increased seriousness. As it turned out, there was too much Adult Contemporary refinement on display here for the music to do much for me. Tollar is talented singer, no doubt, and the on-stage dancers livened things up some, but the extended instrumental breakdowns (such as during "Issalam") verged on the limpid — a bit more smooth than I'm into, bordering on fusion-y muzak. Not at all unpleasant, but not particularly exciting.
Continuing the Northern African theme was Karim Saada, Algerian-born but now Montréal-based, making his Toronto debut. Playing banjo, mandolin and guitar — and proving to be a nimble picker on all — Saada had five-piece band behind him. This set also had a faint whiff of too-smooth as well, but his "pop" also had a melancholy undercurrent of chanson, which kept things more engaging. Plus, there was a hint of North African drone in there, too — I think "chaabi" is the word I'm looking for here, genre-wise — and that made the forty-five minute set reasonably interesting.
That would be it for smoothness on the afternoon, though, with the headliner as smooth as an unshaven cheek.
Who said there's no more rock stars? Surely no one informed Rachid Taha, who fits the bill to a tee. Algerian-born and Paris-based, Taha plays le stadium rock, with all of the reach-the-bleachers expansiveness that the term implies. But that doesn't discount the fact he presents it with his unique version of raï-influenced global groove and punk attitude. Taha himself was goofy fun on stage, rumpled and louche, full of mugging, obscene gestures2 and slouchy swagger. Revelling in his role as shit-disturber, he greeted the crowd with a jovial "hello Chicago! I mean... Toronto!" — substituting different cities after almost every song.
The set started slowly, the sounds depending heavily on the two synth players3 before amping up into the more rockin' "Shuf", which was pleasingly groovy. And then, all kinds of musical gestures thrown into the mix, including a Bo Diddley beat on one song. A string of hits were followed by a couple tracks from his most recent, last year's Bonjour, including "Je T'aime Mon Amour" and the title track. In one of those signs of being too cool to care that something is uncool, he namechecked Kenny Rogers as an influence on "Ha Baby".
The peak of it all was probably "Bent Sahra", which was particularly awesome — something like the beat from "Live is Life", but cut with a bit of the darkness of "London Calling". And speaking of The Clash, we got, duh, "Rock el Casbah" — perhaps the song that has gained him the most attention in North America — to close things out in everyone-sing-along style.
Taha was ready for more, but was told by the stage manager that the next song was the band's last. Still, we got nearly an hour, and a totally awesome time. I'd sampled and dug some of his stuff, but it was nothing compared to the full-on rocking-ness of this. Given the cool, grey, damp weather, a lot of people stayed home, so it wasn't packed in at Queen's Park. That meant we got a pretty up-close appearance from a band that regularly plays the big festivals on the other side of the Atlantic, and the effect was totally irresistible. Top notch.
1 Y'know, official culture as bourgeois affectation, too much high-brow folderol, too much middle-brow crap, ridiculously expensive ticketed events, etc. etc.
2 In a topical aside, he found a moment between songs to lead the crowd in a chant of "Fuck B.P.!"
3 With no bass player on stage, these guys would be adding to the bottom end throughout the set.
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