"Please Don't Close Your Door" (Oliver Mtukudzi/ Habib Koité/ Daby Touré/Yossi Fine/Extra Golden, Prospect Park Bandshell, 8/03/08)

[Before you start in below, please go here and give what you can to help photographer Lori Baily following her tragic loss.]

Celebrate Brooklyn's fifteenth annual all-day African festival was actually the third date on their schedule this summer highlighting artists from that continent.  I'd missed the shows with Salif Keita and Sibongile Khumalo (who'd been subbing for an injured Miriam Makeba). These six-and-a-half hours went very quickly, the two closing acts were exceptional.  Last to first:

I don't get the feeling Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi (dead? myspace) spends much time sitting still.  In his late fifties, his bio claims forty-six records, original music updating forms from his native Zimbabwe (Shona mbira music, Korekore rhythms, jit) and mixing in elements of soukous, soul, and South African mbaqanga.  Or so I've read.  Yeah, words words words.  Music:

Oliver Mtukudzi - Dzoka Uyamwe (mp3) (buy)

Warning:  That song will bounce around your head for days.

I'm a sucker for marimba and I love the way its rhythm bubbles under, and somehow connects with, the guitar line, how the vocals and bassline rock the song back and forth, how the drum sticks to fills and how its high-hat pops in and out of what seems like the only upper-register space available.  This song's a great example of what I like about a lot of Afropop; however heavily involved the interplay of elements and influences, it's bright and accessible and invigorating.

Live, Mtukudzi is the only guitarist in his band, which surprised me.  Tall and bony, he dances both with and without his instrument, going through loose routines with a pair of female percussionists/back-up singers, doing a bit of rock star back-to-back with his marimbist.  His act's the best sort of machine, where practiced but playful pros go at their work with a little sloppy love.

I'd wondered if Mtukudzi - known as much for his serious lyrical content as his light touch - might address the current situation in his homeland.  He did so gently, indirectly, with a brief story about how young people come up to their elders and complain how much harder their lives are.  "There's no easy life," he said, smiling.

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The first half of Habib Koité's set was awesome in a way I'm unable to describe.  Nothing stunning happened, it wasn't boisterous or demonstrative or anything other than performers performing.  Everything just clicked.  (The second half got quieter and more serious and was only really great.)

Habib Koité & Bamada - Fimani (mp3) (buy Afriki)

Habib Koité & Bamada - Fatma (mp3) (buy Muso Ko)

Both Koité and Mtukudzi have had albums released domestically by Putumayo - full records, not just contributions to one of the label's many coffee clutch compilations.  That brand can be the target of scorn, due to its softness or success; Koité's latest record, Afriki, is smooth sounding, especially when compared with his first (the only one I currently have to compare it with).  And both artists have, weirdly, Bonnie Raitt connections (she has covered Mtukudzi, collaborated with Koité, performed with both).  Accessibility doesn't have to denote edgelessness or cultural detachment.  Koité's bio calls him a "modern griot," makes much about both his family's role as traditional musicians and the Malian guitarist's innovative tuning.

What matters most, as always, is what a legitimate live presence the music has.  And the music completely fills the stage, the audience.  Most of the band, Bamada, just stands there and goes to work.  Or sits:  Whereas Mtukudzi's marimbist is showy (plays behind his back!) and positioned at the front of the stage, Koité's elderly balafonist is tucked away on a stool in back.  Koité himself is fierce, poised, gracious.  Against all that, talking drum player Mahamadou Koné explodes all over the place like a sugared-up kid at an adult party, occasionally getting the bandleader to smile and break form to good effect.

I loved most these sore-thumb runs Koité would loose, which made me think less about any connection he might have with fellow Malian Ali Farka Touré than the connection between Albert Collins and John Lee Hooker.

It's great music-making, and if they're near you you should see them.  There are more U.S. dates on Koité's myspace.  They're play four straight nights in Seattle this week before moving on to California and Chicago.  Go.

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Daby Touré - All is Full of Love (Björk Cover)(mp3) (buy)

Mauritanian Daby Touré (myspace) was frustrated for most of his set with the sound problems and crowd indifference.  He kept imploring people to get up and dance by saying, "This is not a film!"  That's not something subsequent acts would have to say, their music said it for them.  Touré's stuff is more coffee-clutch that theirs, very contemporary singer-songwriter stuff.  Occasionally he'll start using his acoustic guitar as a percussion instrument, which is good, but mostly his three-piece band rocks soft.  They walked off stage after a short set; they came back on, sort of awkwardly.  It felt less like an encore than as if someone told them they had better get out and earn their dough.  And they were better, then!

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Yossi Fine (myspace) is a Brooklyn resident, Paris-born, of Israeli and West Indian descent.  A bassist and producer, he spent some stage time looping together a song, more time jamming along to a conceptual Israeli-Palestinian collaboration he'd patched together.  Which was good, and a nice change of pace (though the day felt like it offered plenty of variety), but watching someone slap bass to playback doesn't make for much of a show.

Thank goodness he brought along kora player Balla Tounkara (myspace), who refuses to just stand there and thumb it in.

*

Extra Golden - OK-Oyot System (mp3) (buy)

Half-black/half-white half-Kenyan/half-US benga hybrid Extra Golden (myspace) have a high indie profile, a good story, and a song called "Obama," but they came off mostly lifeless and lacking.  Could have been the early start time, could be that a band formed as a collaboration between a couple dudes from an Ohioan rock band (one of whom does time as an ethnomusicologist) and a Kenyan musician loses more than a little something when the Kenyan musician passes away.  Guitarist-singer Opiyo Bilongo, who joined the band after Otieno Jagwasi's death, seemed like the only one who was out there enjoying himself.

I like this band's first record quite a bit - that's its title track, above, and it was one of the strongest songs that Sunday - and I'll give them another shot at this amazing WFMU-curated bill on August 20th.

I've never heard any other benga music!  I should probably find some.

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Also there:  AfricanLoft, Audiologo, Emonome, A gNat's World View, The Green New Yorker

More pics here. 

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That King Khan & BBQ show at Cake Shop last October?  The whole thing's on video, streaming at Pitchfork.tv.  Which I guess is a good thing?

And, um, no, I didn't get the date wrong, the thing knocked me right into tomorrow.

tags: celebrate brooklyn  oliver mtukudzi  habib koite  daby toure  yossi fine  extra golden  concert reviews  

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