[FA Worldmusic] Jon Pareles, Chief Music Critic - NY Times Review: Globalfest 2008

[Evangeline Kim]

Dear All,

Globalfest 2008 was fantastic!  For those who missed it, here's the 1st review
by Jon Pareles in the NY Times -- a great read.  High praises to Bill Bragin,
Isabel Soffer, and Maure Aronson, the producers !

Best,
Evangeline


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/arts/music/15webs.html?ei=5070&en=5abfc1184
37f110f&ex=1201064400&pagewanted=print


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January 15, 2008
Music Review
To See (and Hear) the World in Five Hours: Unique Sounds Ripe for Import
By JON PARELES
The most striking group at Globalfest 2008  the five-hour, 12-band showcase
of world music on Sunday night at Webster Hall  was the one that traveled
lightest: Lo Crr de la Plana, from Marseilles, France. It was six male
singers, four of whom also played hand drums and tambourine. They sang in a
disappearing language, Occitan, and in an old style that once was church
music. They performed traditional and traditionalist songs that took pride in
what the groups lead singer, Manu Theron, cheerfully called filthy
Marseilles.

And with just those voices and percussion, they did remarkable things. They
sang rich chordal harmonies and joyfully ricocheting counterpoint. There were
drones and dissonances akin to Eastern European music, sustained solo vocal
lines related to Arabic music and Gregorian chant, and percussive
call-and-response hinting at Africa  all the connections of a Mediterranean
hub. The music was equally robust and intricate, a local sound ready for
export.

Thats the undercurrent of Globalfest, which runs during the annual conference
of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and doubles as an audition.
Globalfest revels in the vague (or open-ended) term world music as it mixes
local and national styles with international hybrids.

There was local pride from Puerto Plata, an 84-year-old Dominican guitarist
turned singer. He holds on to vintage styles that were overpowered by modern
merengue. Puerto Plata sang elegant Dominican sones and boleros in a timeworn
but still courtly voice, while Pablo Rosario sent quick, staccato guitar lines
darting around the melodies. When Puerto Plata wasnt singing, he demonstrated
some dance steps.

Chango Spasiuk  an Argentine who has dedicated himself to chamami, a style
from northeastern Argentina  had his guitarist, Sebastian Villalba, singing
about the pride of my region. Mr. Spasiuks version of chamami slightly
dresses up the old rural dance tunes, with chamber-music-tinged arrangements
that use sighing violin lines and delicate accordion voicings, along the lines
of what the towering Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla did with tango. But
Mr. Spasiuk also preserves the musics six-beat bounce and vitality, with
passages that huff and scurry the length of his keyboard.

Another local style  the Senegalese funk called mbalax  arrived with the
singer Fallou Dieng, a protigi of the Senegalese superstar Youssou NDour. Mr.
Diengs band, Le DLC, could rival his mentors band with its cantering,
skittering grooves and neatly placed hooks.

Traditionalism and spectacle merged in Dulsori, a South Korean group whose
name means wild beat. The group played huge drums placed overhead, along
with flutes and a kotolike zither. They set up deep, pounding rhythms derived
from outdoor farmers festivals that could probably be heard in the next
village. But Dulsori had modern show-business touches, too. Its singers cued
audience participation like pop stars, gesturing with wireless microphones. At
one point the melody on a double-reed instrument turned into the Oli, Oli
sports cheer.

Some of the hybrids were just as spunky. Vinicio Capossela  a playful,
raspy-voiced Italian songwriter whose visionary cabaret style draws on all
sorts of music  had a different mask (including Medusa), jacket and hat for
nearly every song, and one of his arrangements mingled toy piano, theremin,
banjo and melodica. Samarabalouf was a nimble French trio  two guitars and
bass  that breezed through tunes hinting at Hot Club swing, Arabic melodies
and rockabilly, making as many droll faces as possible as they played.

Nation Beat, from exotic Brooklyn, uses the maracatu beat and rabeca fiddle of
northeastern Brazil, and it has a Brazilian singer, Liliana Arazjo. But the
band also tosses in New Orleans second-line rhythms and bluesy slide guitar.

The other American bands were less consistent. Crooked Still, a Boston band
with mountain-music roots, a cellist and a breathy-voiced singer, was best
when it stayed closest to eerie old fiddle tunes. Pistolera, from New York
City, played accordion-pumped Mexican-style polkas and rancheras with a female
perspective, but it needed more dance-floor drive. Accordion was the Hungarian
element in Little Cow, a frisky band from Budapest whose songs suggest that
Jamaica ska, or its new-wave revival, has just reached Eastern Europe.

Finally, there was Toumast, led by a Tuareg guitarist from Niger, Moussa Ag
Keyna, who came to Paris after being wounded in battle. The Tuaregs, whose
separatist rebellion was defeated by Mali and Niger, developed music that
merges modal African riffs with stark electric-guitar rock. Aminatou Goumar,
who usually shares lead vocals, was unable to appear, leaving Mr. Ag Keyna to
lead what sounded like a power trio plus a percussionist (playing hand drums
and metal castanets). The songs  about the rebels and expatriate sorrows 
revolve around Mr. Ag Keynas high voice, starkly hypnotic riffs and snaky
lead lines, working up to a trancelike momentum. They dont need to be heard
as world music. With the right bookings, Toumast could be a sensation on the
stoner-rock circuit.




Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company