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The
Son of Afrobeat It is difficult for any man to live in the shadow of his father. But when your father is Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and when his legacy is the entire politico-music movement known as Afrobeat, fulfilling any filial expectations the world music community may have (not to mention the expectations of the Nigerian people) seems wholly impossible.
Some would say Femi Kuti, the eldest son of Fela, assumed this burden in 1997 upon his father's death from AIDS-related complications. However, Femi understood and accepted his father's legacy long before his death. Born in London but raised under the oppressive rule of Nigeria's corrupt government, Femi's induction into Afrobeat began at a very young age. Femi witnessed his father's musical tirades against the Nigerian government first hand. Afrobeat's fusion of Western musical styles such as funk and jazz blended with traditional West African music provided an excellent base for Fela's political commentary. But his stance against the government had its price. Fela routinely faced false imprisonment, phony criminal charges and brutal violence. All of this, coupled with the impoverished conditions in Lagos, inspired Femi to drop out of school in 1978 and pick up the alto saxophone as a member of his father's band Egypt 80. Then in 1985, as the audience at the Hollywood Bowl eagerly awaited the appearance of Fela and Egypt 80, Femi instead walked on stage to lead his father's band. Arrested at the Lagos airport on concocted fraud charges, Fela failed to board the U.S.-bound plane. In his father's absence, Femi stepped up and delivered a performance that brought the U.S. audience members to their feet. A year later, he split off from Egypt 80 and, with two of his sisters, formed his own band, Positive Force. After his father's death, Femi continued to champion Afrobeat and landed a recording contract with MCA that resulted in two albums: Shoki Shoki and the critically acclaimed 2001 release Fight to Win (which also featured Common and Mos Def). Femi makes his Eugene debut in support of a greatest hits release entitled The Best of Femi Kuti. He also just released the DVD Live at the Shrine. The disc features Femi and Positive Force live in Lagos at the Africa Shrine, an incarnation of the legendary Shrine nightclub, the music venue originally founded by Fela. Senegalese hip hop group Daara J, fresh off a performance at Live 8, will open the show with their border smashing, politically conscious style of hip hop. The group adds a new dimension to the international hip hop community by melding English with French, Spanish and Wolof (a prominent Senegalese dialect). Following the lead of Senegalese rappers like Positive Black Soul and the Senegalese-born MC Solaar, Daara J's American debut album Boomerang conveys a fresh and all too rare international hip hop experience.
Celtic
Convocation Cynic that I am, I admit to being put off by the name of the annual Faerieworlds Festival, which this year comes to Secret House Winery outside Eugene on July 23 and 24. But what matters is the music, and in that department, the festival has scored big with its headliner, the spellbinding contemporary Irish singer/pianist Karan Casey and her band.
Since her days fronting the Irish/ American supergroup Solas, Casey has drawn worldwide raves for her bell-like soprano, which seems equally at home covering traditional Celtic and English ballads, Appalachian folk tunes and modern singers from Billy Bragg to Billie Holiday. Recent shows, including several at our own recently-closed Café Paradiso, have featured more of her own socially conscious songwriting, but it's that gossamer voice and her deft use of it that put her in the pantheon of modern Celtic chanteuses such as Mary Black, Susan McKeown and so many others. The festival also includes another frequent Eugene visitor, the agile Portland-based fiddler Kevin Burke with Ged Foley. One of the world's greatest Celtic fiddlers, Burke (who plays Saturday) alone is worth the price of admission. Along with Casey, Sunday's lineup features another silly name/great music combo, Magical Strings (Celtic harp and more), Country Fair vets Trillian Green (flute, cello, and percussion virtuoso Jarrod Kaplan), Eugene's (deservedly) most popular band, the Sugar Beets, and many more Northwest-based Celtic ensembles. Check www.faerieworlds.comfor the full schedule. A different kind of festival happens Friday, July 22, when Joint Forces Dance Company brings two dozen international dancers downtown for a community dance bash. The dancing, the culmination of a weeklong workshop taught by Eugene choreographer (and Guggenheim grantee) Alito Alessi, starts at 4 pm at the downtown library, moves to Broadway Plaza and then the Hult Center. It continues that night at the WOW Hall, where the dancers will join the jazz-funk-electronica ensemble Eleven Eyes. If you haven't caught this energetic group yet, this is a great opportunity to experience one of Eugene's hottest bands. On July 21, the WOW brings another jazz influenced group, Philadelphia's eccentric (or "deranged" as one review calls them) Need New Body, whose wild and wacky combination of free noise, funk, punk, jazz, ethnic and bluegrass influences, eccentric costumes and props, and more might appeal to fans of uncategorizable acts from Zappa on down. The show features similarly strange yet compelling experimental rock from the more conventional new wavish (remember that?) Aerodrone (see story on p. 27) to Chicago's intriguingly off-center Pit er Pat (compared to Blonde Redhead), featuring spacey vocalist Fay Davis-Jeffers, and Eugene's one-man industrial triphopper, Unkle Nancy. This sounds like a show for listeners who want to explore the outer reaches of rock-based music. For a mellower jazz experience, you can hear singer Cynthia Beal with pianist and UO music prof Steve Larson performing ballads, blues and Latin love songs at the latest donation-only MusEvening performance at the UO Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on Wednesday, July 27 from 6:30-8 pm. Anyone who caught Scott Cossu's set at Country Fair knows what a lively show the Olympia based pianist/composer puts on. Pigeonholed as a new- ager thanks to his early association with Windham Hill, Cossu is far more than a gloopy mellowmeister. His music runs on barrelhouse boogie woogie, uptempo jazz, blues, mambo and other Latin rhythms, in part based on his field research in Andean music. He won't have Jarrod Kaplan or David Jacobs-Strain for his show at Luna on July 30, but he will be joined by fab flutist Ann Lindquist for what promises to be a delicious show. Luna features another Washington-based instrumental master on July 28, when Eduardo Mendonça brings his percussive Afro-Brazilian guitaristry and vocals to town. A star in his native Bahia, Mendonça leads the Seattle-based band Show Brazil! and his solo recordings feature a more upbeat brand of bossa than that purveyed by some of our other recent Brazilian visitors. You can hear another Brazilian-influenced guitar master, Eugene's own Craig Einhorn, at Eugene Wine Cellars on August 3. And African music fans should check out Eugene's Jennifer Kyker and Zimbabwe's Musekiwa Chingodza, who'll play duets on mbira (a harp-like plucked instrument) at Cozmic Pizza on July 29. Both these musicians have studied and performed Zimbabwean music for years, and this should be a treat for world music fans.
Breaking
Down the Walls On average, 20 or so CDs arrive at the EW office each week with an average of 10 songs on each one. 200 songs a week times 50 work weeks means I listen to about 10,000 songs a year. Sometimes only for 10 seconds, but I listen to them all. Ala Zingara's lead singer, bouzouki player and acoustic guitarist Robert Parks wrote one of the three best songs I heard in all of 2004, "Because the Silence."
But it's live that Ala Zingara truly shines. Their shows are amazing, high-energy celebrations and you won't be able to sit still. On the last release, Shackled To the Wind, "Because the Silence" and "Golden Splendor" (another gem) are the closest things to straight rock songs you'll hear. "Because the Silence" builds slowly, the melody picked out on an acoustic guitar with nothing but percussionist Ben Morrow's delicate, subtle rattle of background. Then comes Megan Larson with the very first deep, humming notes on upright bass. The song builds impatiently to the moment where Brennan Dignan plays the first bars of melody on electric guitar, with a microsecond of hesitation, introducing Parks' unique vocals. Drawing strongly on middle eastern influences, AZ whips along with wild, twangy world music in songs like "Macedonian Dance," which whirls you around and leaves you feeling like you just flung your arms out and spun in a circle until you fell down, too dizzy to stand. Others, such as "D Minor" and "Invoking Tara," have moments reminiscent of Rusted Root with a little reggae and Latin flair thrown in. "I suppose I've always been attracted to the unpretentiousness of world music," Parks said. "Music that has that community vibe to it. I buy records of music all over the world." And those international influences make it into AZ's music even though each song stands alone, a complete work unto itself. Within the songs, all four musicians balance their parts perfectly so that the end product is something that sounds finished and whole. On bouzouki Parks is exceptional, and with a Neil Young-ish voice, he would define AZ if all the other players weren't equally strong. Larson and Morrow are masters of musical white space. Tempo changes and complex rhythms with slight pauses and hesitations build and resolve tension within the songs. On backup, Larson's harmonies weave light, bright threads through a tapestry dominated by heavy, primary colors. Guitarist Brennan Dignan falls in step with lilting beats, strums and sparsely placed notes that rely as heavily on the silence between the notes as the notes themselves. Don't miss this one.
From
Eugene with Love Back in March I told you that Eugene teenager Brooks Robertson was wowing the world with his Chet Atkins-style fingerpicked guitar wizardry. Robertson, along with four other local musicians, was invited to attend the 21st annual Chet Atkins Festival, held recently in Nashville by the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society. From July 12 through July 17 musicians from all over congregated in Nashville to pay respects to guitar great Atkins, mingle with instrument manufacturers and hobnob with industry bigwigs. Robertson joined up with his mentor Buster B. Jones, guitarist Bobby Gibson, whose first Portland-based band included Willy Nelson, Nokie Edwards, who rose to fame as lead guitarist for The Ventures, and saxophone player Paul Biondi. What, a saxophone player at a guitar convention? Biondi has accompanied many famous musicians on the horn over his illustrious career, including Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbara Streisand, Ray Charles and Lena Horne. A career musician since high school, Biondi toured for several years with Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin, Ike and Tina Turner, and later Smokey Robinson. You're thinking, what is this guy doing here in lil' ol' Eugene? Blame it on the magic of Oregon's natural beauty, because a 1992 visit to Florence drew Biondi away from Los Angeles and into our convivial arms. Biondi is thrilled to be welcomed into the Chet Atkins Festival, thanks to his working friendships with Edwards and Jones and other Nashville-based musicians he's been introduced to. "It's fantastic," said Biondi by phone from the Nashville Sheridan Hotel, where the convention was held. "They pretty much are really celebrating Chet Atkins, his life and what he brought into the industry and also his style of fingerpicking. If you're a guitar player this is pretty much what you try to learn and do." The Ventures' first hit song was "Walk, Don't Run," a song Atkins made famous, originally written by Johnny Smith. "He recorded it, then Chet recorded it a second time, then we [The Ventures] got it off of Chet's album," said Edwards, by phone from Nashville. Edwards and Atkins became personal friends, and Edwards said it's great seeing all the recognition and respect paid to Atkins year after year. "There's so many world class players that come here, it's unbelievable," he said. Edwards and his wife Judy are in the process of selling their Veneta home and have downsized to a large motorcoach. They will return to Eugene after the festival to participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life in Eugene on July 29th at Lane Community College. Edwards will open the event with "Walk, Don't Run." Judy Edwards said, "It's for a good cause and there's nothing more touching than seeing all those candles lit" for survivors of cancer and those lost to the disease.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
My first college roommate would love this band. Living with her for one term was enough to turn my mild dislike for Jimmy Eat World into an aversion. I also clearly remember her playing the song "Amber" by 311 over and over again while I tried to study for my honors classes (remember that song? "Whoa, amber is the color of your energy, whoa"). Maybe our differences in musical taste reflected deeper, more fundamental differences in character, because we never really bonded. But that's not the point. The past three years of college have been ones of extreme soul searching for me and the upshot of all of that is: I enjoyed listening to Aerodrone's demo album. Yeah, they sound a little like Jimmy Eat World, but I'm over all that. Aerodrone sounds like a bunch of guys that just want to rock. Check out their song "Give Up." They're a little angsty, but they're having fun. And so will you, if you go to their show 8 pm, Thursday, July 21 at the WOW Hall. $8. — Ursula Evans-Heritage
See You On the Battlefield, Metal Warrior Vampires, dragons, doomed warriors and the grim reaper: shady go-betweens usually relegated to the world of role playing games, comics and other rites and rituals of the geeky. Rarely ever do these creatures of the night congregate in one place. But as Phoenix-based heavy metal band Rapid Fire rolls their big-top metal revival through town for the second time this year, rest assured, the damned will definitely make an appearance. Although many local headbangers have yet to behold the Rapid Fire phenomenon, their stage show (topped off by a touring vampire, grim reaper and dragon) is legendary, and their reputation as heavy metal shredders is almost fabled. When was the last time you heard a metal band utilize a harpsichord, church organ, male chorus and two dueling guitars all in one song? And if you can imagine the guitar riffs of Metallica circa Master of Puppets, and the demented vocals and on-stage theatrics of Ronnie James Dio thrown into one big cauldron boiling over with metal elixir (a liquid concoction that the band lugs on stage with them for every show, also known as the source of their mana, or metal shredding power), you too will revert back to your pimply high school days, whipping your head back and forth and pumping your sign of the goat proudly in the air. "We do worship the metal gods," explains bassist Brandon Kinchen. Many metal converts can testify to the saving grace of the Rapid Fire experience. But there are still many heretics out there yet to be blessed. If you were worshipping at the church of folk or the temple of hip hop last March, or your buddy just loaned you their copy of Brace Yourself, don't fret for you can still be saved. Rapid Fire plays with My Serpentine and PB Army, 10 pm, Friday, July 22. $3. — Steven Sawada
Not Screaming Sarah Bettens, the former singer for Belgian rock group K's Choice, had been approached to do a solo records long before now. Instead, the singer chose to continue making music in K's Choice, a project she originally started with her brother. It was a good choice. Several European gold and platinum albums later, Bettens is finally getting around to that solo project. The accomplished songwriter will release her first full-length solo album, Scream, Aug. 23. But the album doesn't contain as much screaming as it does the folk-pop sensibility that made K's Choice so popular internationally. Scream was still a risk for Bettens, both in style and content. The record is somewhat autobiographical, detailing the break-up of Bettens' marriage and her experience coming out as a lesbian. From track to track, the album changes from mournful love-and-loss songs to faster, tumultuous tracks that betray the angst of Bettens' recent experience. Her raspy, husky voice is soothing and the simple lyrics should appeal to mass audiences. Instead of breaking away from the sound that made K's Choice a success, Bettens chose to stick to the genres she's familiar with and has created an album sure to please longtime K's Choice fans as well as new radio listeners. Sarah Bettens is playing the early show at John Henry's with Ashleigh Flynn, 7 pm, Saturday, July 23. $10. — Sara Brickner
The Dreamy Delirium of Faun Fables The strangest thing about Faun Fables' appearance in Eugene this weekend is the mystery of why they're not playing the Faerieworlds Festival. This is music for faerie rings and wooded clearings frequented by hooting owls, not cavernous bar spaces ringing with the clack of pool balls. But so it goes, when a band's on tour.
Faun Fables is primarily the work of Dawn McCarthy, who also spends time in Sleepytime Gorilla Museum; she is joined by her SGM bandmate Nils Frykdahl, who plays, among other things, autoharp and broom. McCarthy has an otherworldly voice, restless and reedy but also, as on "Sleepwalker," deceptively throaty: At least one listener nearly mistook her for fellow psych-folk musician Devendra Banhart, whose voice shares a similar strange, muted androgyny. The band released last year's Family Album (and re-released 2001's Mother Twilight) on Drag City, an indie label out of Chicago. On first glance, the label seems an odd fit — this tripping through the forest music alongside the roaring rage of Shellac? But Drag City is also home to neo-folkie Joanna Newsom, who plays harp and sings strangely like Lisa Simpson in the body of an elf, and who couldn't be a more perfect labelmate for McCarthy and friends. McCarthy's songs are a strange combination of lightweight and fraught with resonance. Simple guitar parts underlie the vocals, which can tend to a chant-like rhythm; other instruments pick up noodling, suggestive tidbits of melody reminiscent of certain fragments of Led Zeppelin songs. Faun Fables could be a strange second soundtrack to Lord of the Rings — the dark and earthy songs of the ordinary folk in an extraordinary world. Faun Fables and Dum Dum play 7:30 pm Sunday, July 24 at John Henry's. $5. — Molly Templeton
No Kellys Here Empowered females have been making rock music for a long time, but The Kelly Affair lead singer and guitarist Amanda Christie says she still gets surprised reactions from people when she tells them she's in an all-female rock band.
"People are still always just amazed that I think that girls can sort of do something that's traditionally thought of as like a masculine thing," Christie said. "And even though I don't think its very strange or outrageous or anything, even people that I know and respect think that it's a little bit crazy." Though the band is called The Kelly Affair, there aren't any actual Kellys in the group; The Kelly Affair got their name from "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," a Russ Meyer film about a band of hot, small-town female musicians who set out to make it in the sharktank of Los Angeles. In the Russ Meyer movie, The Kelly Affair gets into the big time, but so far the real-life Kelly Affair is unsigned and doing all of their own booking. This is Christie's first "real" band, but in not much more than two years of existence, Christie, bassist Rania Haditirto and drummer Amanda Cantrell have made a name for themselves in New York City and are ready to embark on their first tour ever. "We wanted to [tour on] the west coast because a lot of our favorite bands are from Portland or from Olympia," Christie said, citing Sleater-Kinney, Team Dresch and The Thermals as examples. "At first we used to joke and call ourselves a geography rock band, because we have a song about Hawaii, we have a song about California, we have a song about Canada, then we also have a lot of mean songs about boys," Christie said. "We like to call those our 'disappointment songs.'" Whatever the subject matter, it's opinionated, bold and catchy, just like the women in the band. And when they write their emotionally charged lyrics, they're not wasting time worrying about what the public reaction will be. "We say what we want to say," Christie said. "We're
not nervous or embarrassed to say anything in our songs." The Kelly
Affair plays with Armored Frog and the Ginger Hustlers, 10pm, Wednesday,
July 27 at Luckey's. $3-$5 — Sara Brickner
BADA BING'S BLACK FOREST CLUB TSUNAMI CORNUCOPIA COUNTRY SIDE BAR & GRILL COUNTRYSIDE PiZZA & GRILL
COZMIC PIZZA@THE STRAND DIABLO'S DOWNTOWN LOUNGE EMBERS SUPPER CLUB EUGENE WINE CELLARS GOOD TIMES JAXX THE JAZZ STATION JO FEDERIGO'S JOE'S BAR & GRILLE JOGGER'S BAR & GRILL
JOHN HENRY'S LAVELLE'S WINE BAR & BISTRO LUCKEY'S CLUB CIGAR
LUNA MAC'S AT THE VET'S MCDONALD THEATRE MCSHANE'S BAR & GRILL MONROE STREET CAFE H MULLIGAN'S PUB O'DONNELL'S IRISH PUB OREGANO'S GRILL OVERTIME GRILL PEABODY'S PERUGINO QUACKER'S RED LION INN SAM BOND'S GARAGE SAM'S PLACE SPIRITS STACY'S COVERED BRIDGE TAP 'N' KEG TAYLOR'S BAR AND GRILL TINY TAVERN WETLANDS
WOW HALL
CORVALLIS BEANERY IOVINO'S RISTORANTE MURPHY'S TOMMY'S PEACOCK
karaoke TH: The Cooler, Countryside Pizza (River Rd.),
Da Houze, Duck Inn
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