Gig: "Support Afrofest" Concert

"Support Afrofest" Concert (feat. Ruth Mathiang + Waleed Abdulhamid / Donné Roberts / Fojeba / Resolutionaries Marimba Band / Afrafranto)

918 Bathurst. Friday April 22, 2011.

It had been an unsettled few weeks for Music Africa, the organization that runs Afrofest. When the news came through that the city was going to revoke its permission for the use of Queen's Park, it hit many as a shock. And, frankly, as a high-handed and patently unfair gesture, given that putting together an event as large as Afrofest takes months of dedicated planning, which was already well underway. While there is doubtless some merit to worries about the long-term effects on the ever-growing festival on the park and its gorgeous trees, pulling the rug on such short notice was highly disrespectful to a top-tier cultural event that had been held at the park for two decades. Fortunately, the community rallied around the organizers and that put a lot of pressure on City Hall. This concert was part of that effort, not a fund-raiser so much as a consciousness-raiser, and an effort to broaden the organization's membership base to help keep it resilient against future crises.

And so, on a cool and windy Good Friday I was headed down to the beautiful hall at 918 Bathurst and received my membership card as I made my way in. Unsurprisingly, it was a well-organized show, with some food booths in the back and the room set up with some dancing space in front of a few rows of chairs. The night began with Music Africa president Michael Stohr announcing that Afrofest would be held in Queen's Park in 2011.

That was a positive note setting the table for Ruth Mathiang and Waleed Abdulhamid, playing together this night as an acoustic duo. Abdulhamid — a busy collaborator as well as a bandleader in his own right — was on a stool with his guitar, providing the instrumentation and backing vocals while Mathiang filled the room with her voice and bright presence. "Hopefully you won't be sitting down too long," she said to the crowd, leading with the simmering "Mama Africa",¹ the music dropping out mid-song to get the crowd clapping and singing along.

The pair offered an intriguing mix of vocal textures, with Mathiang's smooth tones next to Abdulhamid's rougher voice like a smooth cheek rubbing against a whiskered one. There were also some contrasts in the subject matter, with a solemn ballad about the costs of war in Darfur on women and children followed by a celebratory wedding song from the same region. Relative to the sparse instrumentation, there was a lot of groove going on, and I was excited at extrapolating how that would get ramped up even more with a full band.²

Listen to a track from this set here.

Donné Roberts brought a slightly stripped-down band from the last time I'd seen him, now playing without First Nations musician Marc Nadjiwan. But the cross-cultural "Afro Pow-Wow" trappings were still apparent, both in the opening instrumental and in Roberts' chanting in "Malembo". That was layered on top of some nicely irresistible Malagasy grooves, with Roberts' powerful guitar work supplemented by bass/drums/percussion and sax.³ By the time the band was playing "Wenge Yongo", the dancefloor was filling up nicely.

As I'd experienced before, there were a few points that didn't have enough grit for my palate — sax player Rich Howse (a.k.a. Isax Injah) can sometimes get a little "smooth" for my tastes, but he balanced that out with some interesting touches, such as little lurches that sounded like turntable scratches and some echo-y dub squeals during "Ariengue".

A set like this was a good chance for the band to stretch out, with just five long songs in fifty minutes. That reached its zenith with "Sadebake" going past a quarter-hour, ending the set with an extended fiery groove.⁴

Listen to a track from this set here.

As things turned over, there was a quick acoustic mini-set from Fojeba. After that super dance party, it was a bit harder for a lone guy with a guitar to hold people's attention, but did manage to get some people clapping along. Besides his hard-hitting funky zouk sound, Fojeba is also a topical songwriter, and a couple weeks before the election, he made clear his preferences with a song about Jack Layton.⁵

Already being familiar with the Resolutionaries Marimba Band, I was looking forward to another chance to see their dance-friendly and decidedly catchy grooves. Powered by Chaka Chikodzi — plus some of the younger players he has mentored — rotating between three large marimbas, the music takes traditional Zimbabwean rhythms and kicks them up to dancin' speed with a funky rhythm section.

Once again, I was struck by the strong melodic sense here. Even though this grooves a-plenty, the marimbas really have a "voice", making each song something memorable you could hum along to. The crowd was a little slow to warm up to it, but once the irrepressible "Manhanga" started, they were clapping along and dancing.

Chikodzi is also wise enough to mix things up: before the marimbas kicked in for "Shauriyako" the rhythm section backed a hip-hop freestyle (though I didn't catch the rapper's name), and the slower rhythm of "Kurima" gave everyone a chance to catch their breath. Once they get rolling, the band really gives the impression that they could simmer along for hours with this stuff. This might be the hottest band out of Peterborough right now.⁶

Listen to a track from this set here.

From what I've seen of Theo Yaw Boakye, he's not one to turn down an invitation to help out a good cause. So even if it looked like a couple members of Afrafranto were unavailable, with the help of some fill-ins Boakye had no problem putting together an entertaining set.

Most notable was the absence of guitar hero Pa Joe, so though there was a capable replacement, it was no surprise that the guitar was accented less for this show. The slack in sound was made up by a pair of keyboardists as well as a trumpet player. The presence of the latter also implied a shift in tone from the more barebones palmwine that the band has previously specialized in to more of a classic highlife sound.

With this sort of lineup, it's no surprise that it took a couple songs for the band to warm up. But once they were firing on all cylinders the set sounded closer to the non-stop groove that the band is known for — not quite the effortless segueing from tune to tune that they can do at their best, but there were a few tidy and seamless transitions here.

And though this was still danceable, it was mostly a simmering and mellow mid-tempo set of slinky rhythms, well-suited for the later part of the night. You could almost close your eyes and imagine you were in a Ghanaian nightclub where things were winding down after a sweaty night of partying. While thoroughly enjoyable, this might not have been the band at its most powerful. But it was still quite intriguing to see them working at some different ideas — some of which would subsequently be incorporated into their regular bag of tricks.

Listen to a track from this set here.

A night like this was a powerful reminder of how important Afrofest — and Music Africa behind the scenes — is at uniting the various local African music communities. It was a triumph that the community rallied to ensure that festival went ahead last summer. As of yet, there's no word on the specifics on Afrofest 2012 — the website confirms that planning is underway, but venue and dates are still unconfirmed.⁷

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¹ If that wasn't an overt enough tribute to the legendary Miriam Makeba, Mathiang also covered her songs "Hapo Zamani" and "Malaika" during the set.

² And, indeed, that would turn out to be the case, as I'd later hear.

³ Roberts' bassist is David Woodhead, who would also be notable to many readers of this blog as the father of local indie mainstays Airick and Daniel Woodhead.

⁴ With his new album Internation just out, Roberts will be playing the Lula Lounge on March 20, 2012.

⁵ Fojeba will be playing the Main Hall at The Tranzac tonight (February 24, 2012). With his full band (including, last I saw 'em, some of the same folks in Roberts' band) and horns and everything, it's a funky and fun time.

⁶ And in a piece of well-timed news, the band has just released an album (called, quite accurately, Marimba Explosion), which is available on their bandcamp. It sounds like an energetic representation of their live set.

⁷ And in the meantime, the last of Music Africa's Black History Month celebrations will be at the Gladstone Hotel's Melody Bar tonight (February 24, 2012), with a "Young Stars Night" promising some Afro jazz and Hiplife styles. Free, 9 p.m.

Gig: Okavango

Okavango: An African Orchestra

Glenn Gould Studio. Friday, February 25, 2011.

Although I'd paused many a time on Front Street to nod hello to Glenn Gould, relaxing on his bench in front of CBC headquarters, I'd never actually been inside to the concert space that bears his name. Perhaps unsurprising, given that I'm probably better-travelled in the city's dives than the fancy music venues. The Glenn Gould Studio turned out to be a comfortable, woodsy room, designed (as the name implies) as a recording space, fairly intimate with a capacity around three hundred people. The event was the debut of Okavango¹, a new cross-cultural exercise conceived by Nadine McNulty to bring together some very talented musicians who might normally share stages, but never at the same time.

The CBC-ish audience (older, affluent-looking) entered to find the roaring face of a lion greeting them from the stage, but less threatening in his current incarnation as a rug. The seven members of the band were fanned out in a V around him, drummer Walter MacLean at the centre providing the pulse.

One of the ensemble's goals is to provide us with an image of a non-monolithic Africa. All too often — and I'm sure I'm as guilty as a lot of people — "African music" is used as a shorthand descriptor, as if it's a singularity instead of a multiplicity. That's a recipe for losing sight of the enormous diversity within African music, where different instruments, tuning systems and tonal approaches can be found in different parts of the continent. And in providing a space for these differences to find a common ground, it also meant that this group could come together in an sorta-idealized Canadian way to find an "Africa without borders... before the borders were created".

Although the programme listed the show as being organized with the first half devoted to "traditional and popular songs from various regions of Africa" and the second to a suite of specially-commissioned new compositions, it turned out that the two sets of songs were intermixed. But regardless of whether they were brand new or reinterpretations of old classics, it was a chance to see how all these instruments could gel together.

The first set led off with "Shosholoza", a South African song well-known across the south of the continent, a little mellow to start before being kicked up by Pasipamire Gunguwo's marimba. After that, Nuudi Kooshin (who is usually just referred to by his last name) led the band on "Kharami" — a Somali love song.² The kaban (Somali oud) mixed well with Daniel Nebiat's krar (Eritrean lute) and Sadio Sissokho's talking drum found a place on top of that, one of those elements that you wouldn't normally expect in a song like this.

Waleed "Kush" Abdulhamid, meanwhile, was adding his usual nimble basslines, but with a bad cold couldn't pitch in on vocals. He had prepared an arrangement of "Malaika" (well known from its performances by Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte) but deferred when it came time to play it. The band egged him on and he gave it a try before quickly calling it off. In what would be a technically imperfect but heartwarming moment, he was convinced to try again, and this time the audience took up the chorus for him, saving his ravaged voice.

Sadio Sissokho, who grew up immersed in the Senegalese griot tradition, played a kora that had been passed down through his family for many generations. Communicating with the crowd in French, Sissokho got some live translation help from Donné Roberts, and he was equally soft-spoken on the slower "Khaira", slowly building up with his intricate picking patterns as his vocals increased in intensity.

Between songs, there was some discussion about the difficulties of everybody getting in tune with one another while all the stringed instruments required recalibration. Daniel Nebiat's first contribution was "Semaetat", a new composition backed by the ringing, zithery tones from his krar. Roberts threw in some tasty licks that went back and forth with Nebiat, and the first half ended with Roberts' "Valala". At the outset, he enlisted the crowd to sing along on the la-la-la chorus — it turned out to be a jaunty song buoyed by his guitar and marimba and included a nifty kora solo.

After an intermission, the band reassembled for a second set starting with Pasi Gunguwo's "Sanje", easing in and out with bird calls sandwiched around a nice simmering groove with Gunguwo's mbira holding the rhythm underneath it all. He spoke about how that was the hardest instrument for everyone to find a meeting point with, as it cannot be tuned — meaning everyone else had to tune to match it. Nebiat's reinterpretation of "Hadar Gerki", a classic Ethiopian love song, again had a rollicking talking drum line — creating a "peanut butter in my chocolate" kind of vibe where the mixture is unanticipated but not unpleasant.

The last couple selections were something of a summary and statement of purpose from the band. "Sega", an instrumental with a Malagsy groove written by Donné Roberts, was a showcase of how the diverse instruments could work together, stretching out and giving everyone a chance to take a solo. The show then closed with another new composition from Sissokho called "Africa Bollo", meaning "Africa Unite".

As the band finished, they brought up Nadine McNulty to the stage. Her vision in bringing these different styles together should be praised. And anyone wanting to get a better handle on any of the composite elements should be keeping an eye out for the shows she puts together under the Batuki Music banner.³

Listen to a couple songs from this set here.

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¹ The very name is suggestive of the cross-cultural meeting place that the band embodies: the Okavango Delta is "a basin in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana where animals come to graze and drink water. Animals of prey as well as predators are forced to coexist and share the meager resources because of the harsh environment around them."

² Kooshin made the claim that across his eight albums, all his songs were love songs; Daniel Nebiat would later teasingly refer to him as "Dr. Love".

³ One alumnus from this show (Daniel Nebiat) will be opening at Batuki's upcoming presentation of Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba at The Great Hall on Sunday, November 27, 2011. This should be a completely fabulous show — the band knocked my socks off the last time they were in town — and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Recording: Donné Roberts

Artist: Donné Roberts

Song: Ariengue

Recorded at "Support Afrofest Concert", 518 Bathurst Arts Space, April 22, 2011.

Donné Roberts - Ariengue

Review to follow — my notes for this set can now be found here.

Gig: Wavelength 500 (night 4)

Gig: Wavelength 500 (night 4) (feat. Constantines, Rockets Red Glare, Donné Roberts, Picastro, Danger Bay)

SPK Polish Combatants Hall. Saturday, February 13, 2010.

Night four, inside the friendly bunker of the Polish Combatants Association hall, turned out to be less, um, adventurous than the previous couple nights. Which isn't a comment about the music on offer so much as the crowd and vibe which left the focus squarely on the bands. There was also a bit more of a sense that this show was celebrating the past more squarely than the first nights — but also of not being chained to it. Perhaps best expressed in a line I found scrawled in my notepad after the show, cribbed from the last band of the night: "time can be overcome."

leading off the night was Danger Bay. Not, prima facie a retro-minded selection — the band has just put out their first EP¹ — but still a historically resonating one, as the band is the current musical project of Wavelength co-founder Jonny Dovercourt. Compared to the last time I saw 'em, I wouldn't say that the band has tightened up so much as become more deliberate in what kind of noise they want to create. To wit, Dovercourt's guitar was not so much sloppy as spatter-y, and similarly, the rhythm section is generating a sort of elegant but slovenly aggressiveness. Following that lead was vocalist Deirdre O'Sullivan, who, with a beer bottle in hand and wearing a homemade t-shirt reading "I ♥ SULTS" occupied the stage with a certain rock'n'roll menefreghismo, sauntering up to join the band as the set started and giving the impression that she could be doing this, or not. Some songs came in shorter bursts, which worked well, but equally enjoyable were the more extended instrumental passages, such as on "Pirates of Somalia". A half-dozen songs in twenty-minutes was short and sweet, but left a pleasant aftertaste.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Another usually forward-looking veteran taking the opportunity to look back a bit, Liz Hysen and her comrades in Picastro played a set that was largely focused on '07's Whore Luck. Perhaps that was down to the fact that current regulars Nick Storring (cello) and Brandon Valdivia (drums) were joined by Evan Clarke (guitar — and doing double-duty on the night), all of whom played on that album. Hysen's oft-grim and slowly creeping compositions aren't everyone's bag, and, indeed, the night's quietest set faced the loudest chatter from the floor. Unconcerned, the group turned in a very good set. The slow roil of "Hortur" sounded quite excellent, and set the table for some of the relatively more animated material such as "All Erase".

Like the cold from a prairie wind in winter, Hysen's songs get in your bones and linger, leaving you with a certain unsettled effect. Singular and uncompromising but not in-your-face, when in the mood for it I find Picastro's music to be particularly affecting and on this night it struck me just right. Good stuff.

An esteemed member of a different segment of Toronto's independent music scene than the one often found at Wavelength, Donné Roberts has helped bridge that gap just as he has done all his life. Madagascar-born and growing up in Russia, Roberts quickly became a notable figure in Canada's world music scene on his arrival here, eventually gaining notice for his work with the African Guitar Summit project. With a constantly evolving sound, his genre on this night might be summed up by the first title on his set list, "Afro Pow Wow", a product of his ongoing collaboration with First Nations musician Marc Nadjiwan, whose chants added a new dimension to Roberts' songs. The effect that this has had on his music can be heard in the difference in older, familiar material like "Wenge Yongo", which now has a dual lead vocal line with Nadjiwan adding an undertow to Roberts' brighter melody. The band was professionally tight although occasionally too smooth for my taste — with a trilling soprano sax, "Voromailala" didn't quite have the edge I was looking for, but moments like that were mostly outweighed by funkier fare. It's indisputable that Roberts is working on a pretty unique fusion of styles here, drawing out something that lies at the common heart of two different cultures. That, plus his virtuoso guitar skills (shown off here during the closer, an extended version of "Sadebake") show that Roberts is a talent to be reckoned with. And although this set was danceable and entertaining, it wasn't quite the flavour I was seeking on this night.

And then for what might have been the most hotly-anticipated set of the night, a reunion of Rockets Red Glare, a bright light of the local scene at the time of Wavelength's inception and defunct since '03. Before my time for paying attention to such things, I mostly vaguely knew the name as a "here's what happened on the last episode" kind of note in some articles about Feuermusik. Certainly a different sound than what one usually hears these days from Jeremy Strachan, here playing bass. Evan Clarke, back up on the stage after his turn with Picastro, was more aggressive here in his musical approach. Musically, call it what you will — post-hardcore, say — though in a dirge-y way. Songs generally featured a melodic bassline carried by Strachan, with Clarke's guitar — abrasive but not noisy — chopping against it, not needing squalls of feedback or distortion to make its point. Gus Weinkauf's drums were un-fussy, but had a bit of a shuffle when needed.

With Clarke's anguished, flattened sing-speak vocals, the music mostly connoted a sort of dread, or a sense of a cold, stark landscape. Fairly bleak stuff — "bury yourself" was a a typical lyrical sentiment in one song. Austere and dark, yet not necessarily grim to listen to, in that paradoxical emotional spell that music can cast — catharsis, I guess, to pull one over-used trope out of the bag. With expansive songs that you could wander around in, so to speak, it was bracing and exciting to hear, and though I have no point of comparison, the band was amazingly tight.

As to the benefits of having a reunion, there are always those boxes of CD's in the basement to get rid of: "we have some merchandise for sale," Strachan (who handled most of the banter) said, sounding somewhat bemused by that. Otherwise, for a band that lasted til '03, ending before the age of blogs and other contemporary memory enhancers, RRG mostly existed like a myth or urban legend, so a nice chance for them to, if nothing else, stake out their place in local music history a bit more firmly.

Listen to a track from this set here.

And finally, a different sort of retrospective set from the Constantines. With keyb player Will Kidman under the weather, the band took the opportunity to "play some old songs" as a four-piece. Given that, and the special occasion of the Wavelength show, the band decided to try a bit of a "Classic Albums Live" experiment and tackle their first album (2001's self-titled effort) in its entirety. Even with having dug through their back pages at their recent string of 10th Anniversary shows, this one had the feeling of being something a little different, and special. So although they'd tackled some of the mainstays of that album recently, it was cool to hear the tunes tumble over each other in sequence, played with a fair amount of fire (though Bry Webb's claims of "the songs used to be faster ten years ago" were to the contrary). Playing the whole album also means including tracks that you wouldn't imagine hearing much live, such as instrumental "The McKnight Life" or "To the Lullabies", which was treated like a bit of a skeleton in the closet although it was pulled off pretty well.²

Playing the album made for a tasty fifty minute set, and then the band came for an encore. Launching into a fiery "Young Lions" and then "Hotline Operator" had a big semi-moshy crowd worked up — I'm glad I wasn't on the side of the room where someone was spraying their beer around. Maybe just because it had been another lengthy night, but I was starting to feel worn down and definitely experiencing diminishing returns as the encore stretched out to an unexpected length, though this may have been my tiredness talking, as the band were playing the newer songs with the same intensity they'd exhibited through the main set, and seemed in a mood to play as much as they could, Webb telling the crowd, "I think we're just gonna keep playing 'til we get cut off". Frankly, I could have done with a couple songs less, as we were over the half-hour mark of the encore by the sixth or seventh song, but the final blast of "Nighttime/Anytime" gave me a nice feeling to go out on. The past is with us still — sometimes it's right there in front of you. Turn it up!

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ The band's recent Non-Canonical EP is a cassette-only release, of all things. Certain to raise an eyebrow in some quarters with its obsolescent-format-love, I must admit I have less of a problem with this than vinyl fetishism. Maybe perhaps because I came of age, musically, listening to cassettes, it brings a bit of a gleam to my eye, even if I don't particularly miss 'em all that much. I did pick a copy up at the merch table after the set and, truth be told, even if it came with a code to download the MP3's, I'm far more likely to listen to the cassette — I still have a Walkman in good shape that I pull out every once in a while to listen to something that I haven't been able to upgrade.

² "This is a deep cut," Steve Lambke said before that one, to which Bryan Webb replied, "some might say too deep."

"I don't think we've played this in eight years — it's a whole lot of jibber jabber," Lambke noted.

After, Webb was self-critical: "Nothing Fugazi about that song," he said, self-mockingly. "Nothing at all."

"That's off our album Steady Diet of Nothing," Lambke deadpanned back.