Zimbabwe native and ex-Stylus scribe Andrew Iliff knows more about African music than Vampire Weekend. He also rocks better sunglasses.
The house lights finally dimmed, the final stragglers in their places, a single spot lit up over the stage at the Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, illumining a women named Kokanko Sata warming up her kamelen n’goni. Leaning over, a friend whispered to me, “Look how much potential energy there is on stage!” In the spilt glow of the spot, a serried array of guitarists sat just to one side of Sata; the nearest in a series of percussionists warmed the surface of a calabash with his palms; behind him, the highest point on the stage, Tony Allen fidgeted amongst an armory of cymbals like a fleet of UFOs, clad in a silver-white satin spacesuit; to the right stood the seven-man Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, silently waiting to go off like a Chekovian shotgun, a finger of bicep curled around a sousaphone trigger. At the centre of the crowd, Sata’s solitary melody was meditative, throat clearing; seldom has musical restraint seemed so tense, like an abandoned mic turned up high.
Allen introduced the Hypnotic Brass with a beat that skittered like rock-heavy surf. “Sankofa,” from the recent Lagos Shake album of Allen remixes and collaborations stepped into the all-but empty space, constructing a crisis-stricken fanfare atop a relentlessly ascending march, a grim call to The Last Battle. In between phrases, the players – all sons of Sun Ra Arkestranaut Phil Cohran – grooved in I-Three synchrony, making copulative gestures with their, um, horns.
And Damon Albarn, the guy with his name on the marquee? Hunched over a pint-size keyboard like a schoolboy playing hookie on a park bench, sporting the smile of one who is getting away with it. The all-for-one staging kept just about everyone onstage all evening, no matter how few or many were performing, presumably so that Albarn, geeking out at the foot of Allen’s drum riser, wouldn’t be all on his tod.
Albarn During His Willy Wonka Phase
Albarn’s omnivorousness risks overreaching; it takes some kind of Mad Hatter to accomplish the transition from Simone White’s cerebrospinal urban folk (a ruefully Alice cover of Fred Bango’s “Bunny In A Bunny Suit”) to Lobi Traoré’s highwire blues, whose breakneck, polyvocal clatter is cousin to the din of Konono No. 1. And indeed there were some bum notes over the two hours of the Albarn Invitational: handclapping gospel singalong stultified after Allen’s liquid lecture in rhythm; Victoria Williams Southern savant act wore thin when her eccentric guitar strum stifled and stymied a string of collaborative percussionists.
Albarn’s bloody-minded avoidance of any ethnobongo “world music” fetishism – an obstinate refusal to pay any attention to borders – is the trademark of Honest Jon’s, the label Albarn co-owns. Opening its doors with Mali Music, a collection of tricked-out field recordings from Albarn’s first visit to Mali, Honest Jon’s now flogs a mongrel catalogue that makes putting archival Baghdad folk alongside homoerotic Japanese prog appear inevitable.
Thus, on a stage draped with flags, the British flag got equal prominence with the Malian, and a Hypnotic Brasser wore his American flag like a superhero. When Bocoum shouted “Feet!” and his violinist indulged him with a little soft-shoe shuffle in bright white sneakers, his equally pearly-white smile was an offshoot musical solo, not a minstrel’s exhibition. Some earlier publicity materials described Albarn as “curating” the show, but Albarn himself introduced it as “Honest Jon’s Chop Up,” using a Nigerian term for a feast, and “served” might have been better. Albarn’s presence was like that of an affable chef eager to watch people eat: burbling unintelligible introductions, grinning encouragingly, unnecessarily breaking up the silent pause while the next course is served. The draw-your-own-conclusions approach was less in evidence in Williams wide-eyed birkenstocked remark halfway through – “They’ve been playing some of these songs since the 14th century!” – about as welcome, and necessary, as being reminded that the introduction to “Fake Empire” is really a ¾ rhythm played against a 4/4 rhythm, you see how that works?
Freed of curatorial responsibilities, Albarn was easily the most unnecessary man onstage, huffing with ADD gusto at his melodica as though he’d just got it home from Fisher Price. Finally he borrowed Simon Tong’s guitar and Sata’s centrestage microphone to lead an all-in rendition of “Sunset Coming On,” the beautiful if slightly flat-footed closer on Mali Music. But just as it was all getting a little kum-ba-yah, Albarn leapt into the air, the pace doubled to a Traoré tempo – only this time with twenty people walking the highwire all at once. As the audience rose to its feet and danced in the aisles, Albarn slipped back alongside Traoré, flailing inexpertly at his guitar, a delighted guest at his own banquet.
Download:
MP3: Tony Allen/Hypnotic Brass Ensemble-“Sankofa”
MP3: The Good, The Bad & The Queen-“The History Song”
MP3: Blur-“Girls & Boys”
MP3: Gorillaz-“Dirty Harry”
