This video, “a rousing musical plea to guarantee human rights for all” from Amnesty International, features some of my favorite world musicians – Hugh Masekela, Angelique Kidjo, and Yerba Buena – and introduced me to a bunch of other wonderful musicians. Very powerful music and a very powerful message. Check it out at The Price of Silence (I tried to embed it, but this clunky old WordPress theme choked on the code, hence the old-fashioned link).

Honk Fest West is a way-too-fun weekend-long celebration of street music. This year’s fest is scheduled for April 10-12.

Last year I saw great bands from New York, Chicago, Seattle, etc. and had a great time. I hope this year is even better.  Last year two of the most obvious local bands – Portland’s March Fourth and Seattle’s Orkestar Zirkonium – couldn’t make it due to scheduling conflicts. With any luck at all, they’ll be able to participate this year.

I’ll post more info hear as details become available.

Seattle’s samba group, VamoLa, will be drumming and dancing in the streets Tuesday night 7:00-10:00 pm to celebrate Obama’s inauguration.

Here’s what Carl of VamoLa sent to a local online discussion list:

“Meet at 7:00pm at the chrome statue in front of Seattle Central Community College, on Broadway, just north of the NW corner of Broadway & Pine. [Across the street from the bronze Hendrix statue.]

“From there, we will make our way West on Pine for a few blocks and then come back East on Pike back to Broadway, stopping periodically for music and refreshments on the way.

“Drummers are welcome to bring their drums, shakers, agogo bells, etc and play along as we vamp on basic Carioca (Rio) style samba. And everyone is welcome to dance! Wear as much black, white, and red as you can if you’ve got it.”

Wow!  Just when you thought the Sunday-night African music scene at Hidmo couldn’t possibly get any better, Mohammed Shaibu and company start tearing it up. Tonight’s show was some of the most inspired African music ever to grace a Seattle stage (not that there’s actually a stage at Hidmo, which is part of the appeal).

Mohammed played guitar and talking drum and sang. The other African All-Stars tonight were Leif Totusek on guitar and vocals (including a very entertaining fake trombone at one point) , Jimmy Free on bass, Thierno Diop on djembe and vocals, and a new (to me anyway) drummer named Leo. Edward Sourarez sat in for a few songs on vocals and drums in the second set, and Randy Neal played guitar on a couple of songs.

As Mohammed and Leif goofed around, I was really wishing I had the new video camera I just ordered. They were having way too much fun trading guitar licks and dance steps.

They did a great job with “Soul Makossa” in the first set. But things really got going in the second set, especially when Edward sang and then sat in on drum kit. It’s hard to describe how funky and sweet their playing was. Pretty much everyone was up dancing by the second or third song in the set. They did a couple of nice percussion breaks which pleased the African dancers – notably Sawe and Amma. The evening ended with some particularly funky drumming by Edward and some of the most amazing talking drum I’ve ever heard from Mohammed (or anybody else for that matter).

If you haven’t been to a Sunday night at Hidmo lately, check it out soon. I can’t promise that it will always be as hot as tonight, but there’s always a sweet, house-party vibe and plenty of good food and great people.

The music in Lara McIntosh’s Sunday-morning Wassa Dance class has been really hot lately. This morning, though,Thierno Diop took it up a notch with some of the wildest djembe phrasing I’ve ever heard.

It was improv as always. I was playing a modified Soli Rapide sangban part on my dununba and kenkeni:

1 * * 2 * * 3 * * 4 * *
x . x . x x . x . x . x
D . . . K K . . . D . .

Caxambu was playing a goat-skin atabaque, Mohammed was playing what looked like some sort of kpanlogo drum, and Naby was playing Thierno’s bougarabous.

I’m not entirely sure what he was doing, but it sounded like Thierno was playing in roughly 4/4 time with a heavy sabar/mbalax flavor and emphasizing the sixteenth notes just before and after the beat. Whatever he was doing, it was some of the coolest damned drumming I’ve ever heard. I wish I’d had my minidisc recorder running. . .

Two of the better world music acts I’ve ever seen were in town over the weekend. Both the Sweet Honey in the Rock show on Saturday night at the Paramount and the Hugh Masekela 9:30 show at Jazz Alley on Sunday night were very lightly attended. Where were you guys?

About half the seats at the Sweet Honey in the Rock show were empty, which really surprised me since they have a huge natural following here in Seattle and they were on their way to the Grammy Awards the next night.

As we waited in line in the garage to get into the Hugh Masekela show, the Jazz Alley folks apologized for the delay in getting us into the late show and promised that we’d get the same multi-encore show that the early crowd got. It didn’t turn out that way. Mr. Masekela was obviously put off by the numerous missed lighting and sound cues from the production booth (and you’ve got to wonder what he thought about the maybe-one-third-full house), and after about a 75-minute set he and the whole band tromped off the stage never to be seen again. Don’t get me wrong, the show was great. His “Chissa All-Stars” included two great singers and a fabulous singer/violin player, and the band (keyboards, percussion, drums, 2 guitars, bass) totally rocked. Except for the lack of an encore, they were totally present for us.

I mentioned the light turnouts at these shows to a friend who has produced several Seattle world music events and he said that many of the local venues rely on word of mouth and their routine announcement channels, sometimes neglecting promo for individual acts. I did see a couple of small newspaper ads for each of these shows (which is how they ended up on my Seattle world music shows announcement page), but I’d love to figure out what happened here. Is interest in world music on the decline in Seattle? Were these shows inadequately promoted? Or is something else going on?

I played dununs with Naby’s band Lagni Sussu at Hidmo last night. It was a very fun gig, one of those nights where pretty much everyone in the place was up dancing.

As is often the case with Naby, it was a bit of a pick-up band, with Etienne Cakpo, Souleymane N’Daiye, and me (if you know these guys, you know that mentioning me in the same sentence is pretty much blasphemy; they’re real-deal, lifelong musicians, while I’m a dilettante late-comer) sitting in on percussion along with Eduard Souarez on drum kit and Mohammed Shaibu on guitar – and Naby on balafon and djembe, of course.

The highlight of the evening for me was having Sawe Imani come up and paste a dollar bill on my forehead and give me a big hug as I was playing. Sawe is one of my favorite dancers and dance teachers, and it means a lot to me that she appreciates my music. I started developing my chops several years ago playing for her Wednesday-night class at Spectrum, and I appreciate her patience (and that of Carold, Thaddeus, Ryan, and the other drummers) as I developed my drumming skills.

Naby is alway showing me cool dunun phrases. This one really seemed to get the dancers going (ballet style; D = dununba, K = kenkeni, actually a kenkeni/sangban flam):

1 * + * 2 * + * 3 * + * 4 * + *
D . D D . . K . . . . . . . K .

(If you can’t read this notation, drop me a note and I’ll explain it in more detail.)