Afrofest 2010 (feat. Mohamed Diaby & Manding Foli Kan Don / Waleed "Kush" Abdulhamid / Doody Le Tigre / Dramane Kone / JP Buse)
Queen's Park. Saturday, July 10, 2010.
Time again for one of the best weekends of the year. Regardless of who is on the big stage, Afrofest fills Queen's Park up with animated crowds, some of whom show up to check out the bands, some to dance, and a lot of people to just linger in the festival atmosphere. From the stage to the merchandise booths to the beer garden the park was filled from end to end, even if there was often a lot of elbow room right up by the stage. And even if the weekend's final didn't feature any of the African teams, World Cup fever was in the air.
As I emerged from the subway and made my way down to the main stage (set up near the north end of the park), I could hear the pounding beats of Mohamed Diaby & Manding Foli Kan Don rolling out to meet me. The percussion-based ensemble featured five brightly-dressed drummers at first, but by the second selection there were nine on stage — and then dancers on top of that — so there was a lot to watch. One song featured a vocal call-and-response, but by and large singing took a backseat to the interlocking rhythms. Which went pretty much non-stop — the set featured four different grooves in forty minutes, so these were long selections, one going for twelve minutes.
Diaby — originally from Guinea, but now calling Toronto home — didn't have much to say, but managed to spread some good vibes in a few words, telling the crowd, "music is supposed to make you feel good!" It doesn't take too much to get people up and dancing at Afrofest, and though most of the crowd was sitting in the shade, back a bit, the space in front of the stage filled in nicely. Whole families were up and dancing, joined by wandering stilt-walkers who joined in for a bit.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Bringing a more considered and cerebral approach was Waleed "Kush" Abdulhamid, whose music rises out of his Sudanese roots, but is not narrowly limited to any one musical tradition. The set opened with an interesting number, a slow one with slick, atmospheric keybs and layered guitars that brought to mind Daniel Lanois' soundscapes. Things picked up from there, Abdulhamid leading the with his moody but spry six-string bass playing. His strong, emotive vocals were complemented by the violin, which added an interesting edge to the band's sound.
The best material here featured that striking North African mix of upbeat and melancholy, and this is where the six-piece band (keybs/accordion, guit, violin, percussion, drums) was at its best. Despite some sound problems throughout the set — the violin player couldn't quite get his sound right, or possibly couldn't hear himself in the monitors — it was fine from down in the crowd. As a pan-African tribute to the World Cup, Abdulhamid did a Zulu song, and to close things out, he brought local Sudanese singer Ruth Mathiang to sing on the final number.1 There were a couple of the songs didn't do as much for me, but overall this was an interesting mix — dare we say fusion? — of sounds.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Playing for the first time in Toronto, Montréal's Doody Le Tigre brought a mix of Caribbean and African musical styles. With a female co-vocalist, Doody played the frontman with a five-piece band behind. After establishing a party vibe with his opening track, he changed things up musically, telling the audience, "now we're going to take the plane to Haiti!" — his own homeland — leading off with a snatch of a folksong, accompanied just by guitar before the rhythm section kicked in and took the tempo back up. Walking the stage with his namesake's swagger, Doody did what he could to pump up the crowd, starting some singalongs, even throwing in a little tiger roar after while calling out his name.
The music wasn't all party-minded fun. His single "Ça ne va pas", with stabs of reggae keybs, is a reflection on Québec's still-roiling discussion on "reasonable accommodation". Doody made his own preference for diversity clear with the number of styles his band incorporated into their songs — he threw down some rhymes, hip-hop style, on one and brought a rumba-esque beat after that. The crowd favourite was his own version of "Waka Waka Africa" — an interpretation of the makossa hit "Zangalewa", originally by Golden Sounds, it was revived with Shakira's re-make as an an anthem for this year's World Cup.
After closing out his set with a zouk-flavoured number, host Justine Gogoua — who has such an engagingly commanding personality that I should imagine she is not told "no" very often — asked for a reprise of "Waka Waka", which the band obliged.
And then a near-tragic turn in the day's festive events. Between sets, I'd wandered to the other end of the park to the bustling rows of food vendors, only to return to a chaotic scene back near the main stage. There were police cars and ambulances everywhere, emergency workers cordoning off an area with bright yellow emergency tape. It turns out that several large branches from one of the park's beautiful old oak trees had snapped and come crashing to the ground, nearly falling right onto some of the people sitting below.2 Somehow, there were only minor injuries.
An unusual silence from the stage, with the ubiquitous background music silenced while the emergency workers bustled about. There was a call, of all things, for a Norwegian translator, but not too much information as the crowd waited for the next act.
Finally, the scene was cleared — with a large area around the tree blocked off — and the festival resumed. Dramane Kone, from the musically-rich Wassoulou region of Mali, led a band that was almost all rhythm, with two kamalé ngoni in front of bass, drums and percussion. When this got into a groove, it was utterly funky stuff. For the second song, the band found that sweet spot and just settled in for almost ten minutes, time for the backing vocalist to step up front and dance, spurred on by the hand drum as the music slowly sped up. There were more hypnotic grooves after that, in one song Kone getting the audience to sing along to the refrain of "c'est la vie", and another a fifteen-minute titanic that again built up into a frenzy.
Just a couple minutes into the next song, a glum-faced Michael Stohr, president of Music Africa, stepped onto the stage, gesturing for the band to wrap it up — "it's not good news, I'm afraid," he told the crowd. The city's arbourist had declared that the tree that had lost its branches was rotten right through, and more of it could come down at any time, leading the authorities to shut down the stage for the night. Declaring that it would be better to lose an hour of music than to risk further injuries, Stohr apologized, but had next-best options in hand: the early shut-down would allow city crews to get to work and cut the tree down overnight, meaning Sunday's performances were not in danger, while the last act of the night was being moved to the smaller Baobab Stage, further south in the park. Dramane Kone had gotten most of his set in, so all things considered, it wasn't nearly as bad an outcome as it could have been.
Listen to a track from this set here.
So I moved it on over to the Baobab Stage, where what looked and sounded like a pretty cool DJ set was shut down as stagehands began hurriedly setting things up. It looked like a lot of people were eager to hear the evening's headliner JP Buse — people began to get a bit restive as the clock ticked past the ten o'clock starting time. But with lots of equipment to check on the fly, including quite a few microphones, it took some time to get things going.
With a large backing band including six instrumentalists and three backing vocalists, this was a group that would have been right at home on the big stage. Here, on the smaller side stage, they looked a little awkwardly crammed in as they went through a rudimentary soundcheck. But as the band kicked off with an instrumental, it felt all right. Featuring a tightly-wound two guitar sound — low-slung rhythm parts complementing the glittering leads — this was the sort of thing I'd been waiting all day for. Those guitars, the synth-horn stabs and that skittering drumbeat riding tak-a-tap-tap on the snare. Then, Buse emerged to rile up the crowd, shouting, "are you ready for some soukous?"
Buse, who had established himself musically in the Congo as a member of the seminal Zaiko Langa Langa in the 80's,3 sang with a supple voice and brought a relaxed manner to the stage, playing the role of dignified musical statesman, mostly leaving the flashy moves to the younger bandmembers surrounding him. But he was undoubtedly running the show, expertly employing plenty of frontman tricks to get the crowd worked up.
Like a lot of other dance-friendly African guitar bands, one got the feeling that the instrumental passages of the songs were infinitely scalable and as the band hit the turnarounds I was keeping an eye on the players to see how they knew if they were taking another go 'round or segueing into another song. The band was pretty locked in, but there were a few times where it seemed apparent they couldn't hear each other very well. As could be expected with the last-minute set up there were a few glitches with the sound and it was overall not the greatest mix, but it couldn't cover over how good this band was.
The first burst ran about twenty minutes of three (I think) non-stop songs before the band stopped for breath, Buse eliciting shouts from the crowd as he called out for a cheer from various African countries. he also stopped the next song as the band began to teach the crowd how to sing along. Tearing into another series of mashed-together songs, Buse brought up some members of the crowd to dance on stage as the band played right up to the curfew — "the stage manager tells us we have three more minutes," Buse said, "so enjoy the last three minutes!"
Even though the band probably didn't get to play the set they wanted on the stage they deserved to be on, the talent on the stage ensured this was a really solid set. This is very much a group I'd revisit for future dance-y fun.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 Abdulhamid is also a member of the Ethio Stars Band, a top-notch all-star crew, and you can hear hints of that Ethiopian flavour in his own music as well.
2 Such is the uneasy cost of coexistence between trees and humans, a looming problem that will require thought and attention as the canopy ages.
3 Zaiko Langa Langa, founded in the 70's, included a who's-who of Congolese musical stars, including Papa Wemba. The band revolutionized the country's musical scene by getting rid of the horn section and cranking up the electric guitars, and many of its members went on to become stars in their own right.
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