Notes on 2009 concerts by Afropop’s Banning Eyre.  Concerts in New York City, unless otherwise noted.  Photos by Banning Eyre, unless otherwise noted.

February, 26, 2009

K’Naan at Stephen Madden

It’s odd enough to see a rapper from Somalia, based in Toronto, reaching out to both the world music audience and the Afro-Punk fringe of American hip hop fandom.  But to see him doing this backed only by an acoustic guitar and a somewhat shy backup singer, in the front window of a Soho shoe store—now that’s a unique experience.  A night earlier, K’Naan and his band had delivered a short, full-on set to promote his just released second CD, Troubadour (A&M/Octone).  That event at S.O.B.s had sold out, and even this scaled-back showcase drew a capacity crowd, a number of whom had to watch from the street when the store became filled to capacity.  This keyed-up audience was, by the way, as generationally and ethnically diverse as any you’ll find in the city. 

Supremely comfortable with himself, K’Naan adapted, drumming along to his first song on a Stephen Madden shoe box.  He emphasized poetry and narrative, performing his song “Somalia,” unaccompanied, and others from his new release (notably “Fire in Freetown” “Take a Minute”) based around simple, acoustic guitar accompaniment.   He invited the audience to sing with him, also to talk back, make requests, and even ask questions.  Just when the session threatened to devolve into a heated debate about the role of the clan system in creating a better future in Somalia, the call rang out for K’Naan’s hit “Soobax,” from his debut CD The Dusty Foot Philosopher.  K’Naan resisted.  He needed drums.  But the response—stomps on the floor—earned a change of heart.  K’Naan signaled the beat, and off we went, becoming a human rhythm section to a performance that hinted at the pumped-up energy level of a full tilt K’Naan concert. 

K’Naan’s personal story encompasses a traumatic childhood in Mogadishu in which he watched close friends killed in street battle, then flight from home on the last flight out of town in 1991, run-ins with the INS in Harlem, then Minnesota, and eventually, exile in Toronto.  This narrative trajectory, explored through tough but beguiling wordplay, lies at the core of K’Naan’s artistic statement.  In this barebones performance, K’Naan’s charisma, narrative and wordplay carried the day virtually on their own.  K’Naan sings as well as raps, and although his voice is neither especially powerful nor virtuosic, it conveys arresting openness, candor, and sly wit, such that one hangs on each reedy phrase.  Splitting the difference between rapper MC, troubadour poet, and Afropop star, K’Naan is building a unique audience.  The fact that he can make all this happen in a store window during a weeknight dinner hour, without stagelights, turntables, smoke machines, or even a band, is impressive.  More proof that K’Naan is cutting his own road in the 21^st century story of African music.

February 27, 2009

David Byrne at Radio City Music Hall

Photo byChris La Putt, courtesy of BrooklynVegan.com (Brooklyn Vegan review and photos)

Eleven performers on stage, eight musicians and three modern dancers, all dressed in white, all moving together in set-piece renditions of new and familiar songs—David Byrne, as always, emphasized the visual side of live performance in his decidedly uptown, sold-out, retrospective pageant at Radio City Music Hall.  The program bypassed Byrne’s orchestral work and his forays into Latin and Brazilian music.  This was essentially a blend of Talking Heads classics—“Once in a Lifetime,” “Heaven,” “Cross-eyed and Painless,” “Life During Wartime,” and ultimately “Burning Down the House”—with songs from Byrne’s recent collaboration with Bryan Eno on the CD Everything that Happens Will Happen Today (Todomundo). 

The Eno collaboration cycles back to the duo’s landmark release My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, twenty years ago, and Byrne and his band tore into a lashing reworking of “Help Me Somebody” from that album with Byrne singing vocals that had originally been sampled from a radio preacher.  The “Everything That Happens…” songs are sweet and soaring, full of gospel updraft, countrified folksiness, and anthem-like melody.  All together on one disc, they nudge beatific bliss to the edge of treacliness.  But on stage, interspersed with spiky Talking Heads grooves, they worked well, giving the set sharp contrasts, shape and flow.  Byrne’s three, splendid backing singers powered everything from the dreamy loftiness of “Everything Happens” to the rock anthems “Life is Long” and “One Fine Day,” and of course all the soulful vocal seasoning in those old Talking Heads chestnuts.  In one of the three—or was it four?—encores, the band ripped into “Take Me to the River,” and only then did those backing singers finally overwhelm Byrne—who was on the whole in splendid voice all night. 

Byrne’s expressive nuance as a singer has grown considerably over the years as the smoothness of Latin song and as some have observed a certain “operatic” quality have entered his repertoire.  But Byrne showed he can still channel the pent-up, adolescent impatience of his early-80s persona when it comes to the clarion cries of “Life During Wartime” and “Burning Down the House.”  He also remains a tasty guitarist.  He mostly strums and blends, but when he turns up for a solo, it rocks hard and bows out quickly, underscoring the casual mastery of a rocker who has no need to show off chops or overstate passions. 

The dance choreography was inventive and playful, perhaps too cute for some, but certainly engaging.  Byrne occasionally joined the dancers’ routines, but mostly juxtaposed them with quirky moves of his own.  The stage went black after each song, allowing the performers to regroup, as if each new number were a scene in a play.  For a pared-down take on the introspective “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” the singers began huddled together in dappled light and then bloomed out across the stage as the song grew and the band became illuminated.  The evening’s nonstop stagecraft culminated in the (perhaps inevitable) arrival of The Rockettes on stage for an ecstatic “Burning Down the House.”  Byrne and his front line foreshadowed this moment when they came on with frilly white tutus added to their all-white uniforms.   When the long-legged ladies took the stage similarly clad, the tutus all blended together in a fuzzy band that cut pleasingly across the sharp lines of the choreographed routines (including those legendary kicks) and the sharp edges of the music. 

During the latter half of this two-hour-plus show, the entire audience stood and danced, and for all the razzle-dazzle onstage, Radio City Music Hall took on just a hint of the vintage vibe of Village nightspots—did someone say CBGBs?—in the bygone days of the music they once called “New Wave.” 

February 28, 2009

Master Musicians of Jajouka at the Knitting Factory (Soho) 

This was living history.  When the Master Musicians of Jajouka last played New York, it was here at the original Knitting Factory in Soho in 1998.  New York’s downtown shrine to avant-garde performance art was still going strong, world music was surging into New York from every shore, and 911 was still just a number you dialed for emergencies.  All these years later, the old Knitting Factory opens only for special occasions, and post-911 realities have dramatically slowed the influx of particularly North African and Middle Eastern acts onto American stages.  The leader of the Jajoukans, Bachir Attar, was stranded with his brother in Seattle on September 11, 2001.  The ordeal they faced returning home, via JFK airport and multiple small-room interrogations, dampened his appetite for touring in America for some years.  A planned tour last summer was scuttled by the slow pace of visa processing.  So the fact that the current U.S. tour (which began on the west coast and ended last night in New York) counts as something of a small miracle. 

That said, Attar and his brothers from the sacred, Rif mountain village of Jajouka still view New York as their second home.  And judging from the crowd that packed into the Knitting Factory’s main hall for two, ecstatic, sweaty hours of the world’s most electrifying trance music, the sentiment is returned.  Dressed resplendently in emerald green robes—a Jajouka tradition that recalls the green-clad spirit Boujloud, who taught this music to humans back in the mists of mythic time—Attar and his compact coterie of eight musicians moved through a variety of musical modes, from the alluring flutter of bamboo flutes, to the lively folk music of the Rif valley, to their world-renowned trademark—the hypnotic wail of four double-reed gaita horns riding over a thundering of drums.  The group has a vast repertoire drawing from the familial Jajouka heritage, as well as Sufi music, other regional styles, and contemporary original compositions.  A sampling is available on the group’s very first self-produced CD, The Master Musicians of Jajouka Live, Vol. 1 (Jajouka Records, 2008), which you can hear and download at www.jajouka.com .  The next best thing to being there!

First published: www.afropop.org