Afropop's Matt Payne spoke with Jack Walsh, the Executive Producer of Celebrate Brooklyn, about the shows going on under the Prospect Park Bandshell this summer.

Matt Payne: Before we dive right in, could you talk a little bit about how you got your start with Celebrate Brooklyn? What got you to where you are now with Celebrate Brooklyn?

Jack Walsh: Sure. Let’s see, Celebrate Brooklyn began in 1979 at the Prospect Park Bandshell. I was born and raised in Park Slope and I became aware of the festival and attended a few of the first performances. At the same time, I was producing performances at school, at NYU, and I made my way to the producer and he hired me as his assistant way back in 1981.

MP: And then you slowly climbed the Celebrate Brooklyn ranks from there?

JW: (laughs) The Celebrate Brooklyn ladder, yes.

MP: How long have you been the Executive Producer there?

JW:  For fifteen years, since 1994.

MP: Wow, cool. So you’ve been doing this for quite some time, what makes this year special? What are the highlights that make this year different?

JW: Well the big six-foot guerilla in the room is the fact that we opened with an unprecedented free concert with David Byrne a couple weeks ago, on June 8th. That was really something that was off the scale for us. We have a venue that holds about 7,000 people and we had about 27,000 people show up for that. We planned for the extra people and accommodated nicely and it was an extremely smooth and successful event.

MP: We were able to take a look at that, we have a small feature up on our site actually. The joke is that David was “Byrne-ing Down The House” so to speak, to use an old Talking Heads song. Everybody was completely stunned, both by his performance and the amount of people that were there at Celebrate Brooklyn.

JW: Getting to that day, I too was quoting the Talking Heads. People were asking me how it was going getting ready for that show and I kept saying, “I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax.”

MP: (laughs) Nice! We also saw the David Rudder performance, which was also a highlight. Tell me a little bit about that before we move on to performances that are upcoming.

JW: We had Goran Bregovic right between those two, from Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, which was a fantastic World Music show with his Wedding & Funerals Orchestra. Then there was the David Rudder show that you were at. David is from Trinidad and back in the mid-80s, early 90s he was extremely successful. He hasn’t been back to New York in a while and he’s moved to Toronto, so we brought him down from Toronto for the show. Despite the weather, we had a healthy size crowd and a good show.

MP: So looking forward, and specifically right around the corner, Thursday the 25th (of June) Femi Kuti is going to be coming. Tell me a little bit about how you think that concert will run. What got Femi to the stage? Is this his first time?

JW: No, this is his second time at Celebrate Brooklyn. I think it was about seven years ago that we had them. He’s a fantastic performer, he has a huge band on stage, and I think there are also four dancers. It’s a great great show, super high energy. He’s going to be playing some of his newer material, he’s playing both saxophone and trumpet on this tour, and so we’re excited to have him back. Great musician and great legacy, he’s carrying on his father’s legacy. I’m particularly excited about the opener for that show, which is Melvin Gibbs Elevated Entity. Melvin is a Brooklynite who some people have called the greatest bassist in the world. He comes out of the whole Black Rock Coalition here in Brooklyn back in the 80s. He’s played with everybody; he’s just a musician’s musician. He’s been all over the map in terms of styles from rock, and soul, and Afrobeat, and everything in between. In this group he’s kind of bringing it all together. For this show he’s got Bernie Worrell on keyboards, he’s got Vernon Reed on guitar, J.P. Lewis on drums, Amayo, the singer from the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra is in the band, and he’s got a beat boxer. It’s like his bringing together African music, funk, rock, hip-hop, and electronica. I mean it’s a really amazing project. He’ll be opening for Femi this Thursday and he goes on at seven o’clock.

MP: Awesome, we’ll be there with bells on! The other African act that we’re very excited about is King Sunny Ade as part of the African Festival (July 18). Tell me a little bit about this year’s festival, what people can expect, and again any insight as to the music we’ll hear that day, King Sunny Ade, and everyone else.

JW: Well we’re tremendously excited. This African Festival is a daylong celebration of music of the African continent and we try to make it as diverse as we can, with artists representing different countries and different styles of music.  The earliest part of the program is Yasser Darwish, a dancer from Egypt. After that we’ve got Abena Koomson, a poet and singer who is Brooklyn born but of Ghanaian decent. Then Cheikh M’Baye is also Brooklyn based but he’s got this fantastic Senegalese drumming ensemble. Then the Mandingo Ambassadors, a fantastic group led by the guitarist from the original Mandingo ambassadors, and they are from Guinea. They’ve set up shop in Brooklyn, doing a residency at a small club in Park Slope…

MP: Barbes.

JW: Barbes, right. I think there are three guys in the group from Guinea and three guys from New York so three are Africans and three are New Yorkers. It’s a great nod, literally and figuratively, to that guitar style of music that they play. And then Freshly Ground is coming over from South Africa. Freshly Ground is a fantastic South African group that is extremely popular there but has very little visibility here in the US. We’re excited about them and I think they sort of draw on a lot of the different tradition in terms of African and South African traditions, and have really modernized them so there is a pop element to what they do as well. And then King Sunny Ade is going to close the show. What can I say; he’s a living legend. As you and many of your readers and listeners know, he’s a godfather of this Juju style of music out of Nigeria. He’s been on our wish list for probably 10 or 15 years and we’re glad the stars have finally aligned to have him come and close the show for us.

MP: As are we, it’s going to be great. In terms of the festival itself and all of the vendors, will it be the same as years past?  Give us a little idea of what people can find.

JW: Yeah, at this event we do something different. Generally the performances all just take place in the band shell where we can comfortably accommodate about 7,000 people. But for the African festival, which is a daylong event and runs from 2 o’clock in the afternoon into the evening, we do set up an African marketplace with food, clothing, and crafts from about 50 vendors. It’s set up behind the venue where people can stroll around, eat, and buy things. It was designed to sort of have a little of the flavor of what you might see in an actual African market place in a town square in Africa. Those things have taken on a life of their own and attract an audience of their own. But for us, they act as a counterpoint to the music and an added experience that makes it a wonderful day out in the park.

MP: One of the things that Celebrate Brooklyn is great about is that it really does span all genres, not just the ones our readers might be focused on like the African, Latin, and Caribbean acts, but also the hot pop and rock acts coming out like Dr. Dog or certainly They Might Be Giants who are legendary. In terms of the Latin, you guys have a connection with the Latin Alternative Music Conference and this year will be featuring Los Amigos Invisibles (July 10). Could you just tell me a little about the performers that day, along with Los Amigos Invisibles, and also how you formed a connection with the LAMC.

JW: Well the LAMC has been in New York or LA. When they do the conference, it’s a music conference about Latin Alternative Music with panels and showcases and so on, they have a couple featured shows so that both the public and attendees to the conference can attend the shows. So we partnered with them a very very long time ago when they first started the conference and we did a showcase with them, trying to showcase artists that were relatively big in the Latin Alternative scene but hadn’t quite reached the level of visibility one would hope for in New York. So giving them a large platform such as Celebrate Brooklyn helped to elevate them and thrust them forward in some ways. So we have a long history of great shows that we’ve done with the LAMC. Then for a while it went away, it went back to LA. We were very instrumental in introducing them to some folks in the Mayor’s office here in New York. There is a Latin Entertainment And Media Commission, which is referred to as the LEMC. Their job is to bring Latin events to the city so we connected them and they lured the LAMC back to New York about four years ago. So that’s the history of the relationship. In terms of the performances, this year we’re extremely pleased to have Los Amigos Invisibles. They’re a fantastically fun and talented group that’s based here in New York but they’re all originally from Venezuela.  They play a fantastic, funky, fun mix of music that draws on their Latino heritage, they sing in both Spanish and English, but it’s really like a big party. I can’t describe it better than that. I mean they’re extremely talented and great musicians but it’s like a funk dance party; it’s a ton of fun. The other group on that co- bill is Aterciopelados from Bogota, Columbia. They are a fantastic group and they’re terrific songwriters. They’re a husband and wife team that is sort of the basis for that group and they write and perform fantastic music that draws on electronica, singer/songwriter type stuff, and also their Latin roots. But it’s very much alternative, or progressive, or forward looking. It’s not necessarily an act that features their roots in a profound way, it’s a pretty moderate sounding group.

MP: Awesome. The last big one for the Afropop folks is Burning Spear on July 30th.

JW: Burning Spear, I mean what can I say, it’s Burning Spear. He’s a total legend. This will be his third time at Celebrate Brooklyn in the fifteen years that I’ve been producing it. His shows are like a locomotive; it starts out in a groove and it gains speed and momentum and just goes goes, gaining strength and it’s just amazing. I wish we could just have him play a five-hour show because it’s just that kind of thing, it gets more muscular as it goes. We’re really excited, he’s a beautiful man and spirit. Actually the story behind this is I ran into him at the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival, not this past spring but a year before, I ran into him at the airport in New Orleans. I said it’s time to have you back and he was like, “Yeah mon!” Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens are going to open that show which I think is interesting. It’s not your typical pairing; Naomi is part of this whole stable of classic artists that are part of the Budos Band scene in Brooklyn, like Sharon Jones. I saw Naomi at a showcase for their record company, Daptone. They did a Daptone record review about four years ago and I can tell you Naomi is authentic, she’s the real thing. She’s a gospel singer, elderly woman from Brooklyn. She’s got a couple of backup singers and the guys from Budos Band back her up, it’s really fantastic. So it’ll be an interesting pairing, a really authentic show. I think the Burning Spear crowd that comes will really enjoy experiencing Naomi.

MP: Afropop listeners, although they’re honed in on the African, Latin, and Caribbean, music, they have a wide range of tastes. What other concerts or notable happenings are going on at Celebrate Brooklyn that you think the Afropop audience might be interested in?

JW: I think I lean towards the roots music stuff. We have a great Blues guitarist and singer/songwriter, Robert Cray on July 17th. I think this is his first free show in New York in a long time. It should be a great show; he’s got a really great and muscular four-piece band. Buckwheat Zydeco is coming up from Louisiana on July 24th. His band is sort of a mash up of Zydeco and Muscle Shoals Memphis Soul, accordion and horn section. Kaliash Kher on July 25th is not to be missed. He’s an incredible South Asian singer from India who played in New York for the first time last winter at the GlobalFest showcase. We saw him do a couple songs there and were absolutely blown away. It’s going to be an absolutely transcendent show.

MP: I remember seeing him. It was very surprising. He was the Bollywood star, right?

JW: To me, he just totally kicked ass. I thought he was so authentic and at ease. I don’t remember the name of the group he followed, they were from Spain and a similarly big group with lots of instrumentation and very well established in their home country. It was such a different experience, they seemed to be trying so hard to impress. Then Kaliash came up and just sort of relaxed and did his thing, it was fantastic. It was interesting seeing those two back to back.

MP: Well we’re certainly grateful for all that you and Rachel do. We’re really excited, starting with tomorrow night, to come out and enjoy all these shows this summer. Do you have any other comments for our audience before we go?

JW: Just come out and enjoy, we do all of our shows rain or shine. We ask everybody to “Keep it great, give three dollars at the gate!” so we can keep doing it. Keep listening to Afropop!

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