Oumou Sangare at Celebrate Brooklyn!

Oumou Sangare at Celebrate Brooklyn!
by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, July 31, 2011

LAMC: Borders, be damned!

Latin Alternative Music Conference’s Happy Fusion

by Jon Pareles, The New York Times, July 11, 2010

Visa hold-ups cause OBVSC/Portuondo cancellation

Update on an earlier InfiniteBody post

The magnificent Omara Portuondo and Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club® will not be appearing at tonight's Celebrate Brooklyn gig in Prospect Park due to visa issues. This appearance will not be rescheduled.

The festival will still host tonight's planned opening act, flamenco dancer Nelida Tirado, at 7:30, followed by a screening of film director Wim Wenders' documentary Buena Vista Social Club. For more information on this and other festival performances, click here.

In the meantime, please enjoy:

Omara Portuondo: Cuban Music's Matriarch

NPR Music, June 17, 2010

Celebrate the great voice of Cuba

Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club featuring Omara Portuondo

with flamenco dancer Nelida Tirado

at Celebrate Brooklyn!

Thursday, June 24, 7:30pm

Prospect Park Bandshell

9th Street and Prospect Park West, Brooklyn

Map and directions

Gates open at 6:30pm

Free/$3 donation suggested

Luminescent Orchestrii at Celebrate Brooklyn

Photos from a recent show at Celebrate Brooklyn, where Luminescent Orchestrii performed a rousing opening for the sublime Kronos Quartet

(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa

"We are a dance band!"

Benjy Fox Rosen (left, bottom); Rima Fand (right)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Rima Fand (left), Sarah Alden (right)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Yes, they are.

That would be Brooklyn's Luminescent Orchestrii, with their waltzes for the proletariat, their mashups of klezmer and Jimi Hendrix, their transformation of what they called Andy Statman's "quiet mandolin thing" with its droning, pleasing dragginess into something raucous, their Yiddish songs that proclaim things like "I can't dance/my shoes are broken/I will dance in my socks!" These musician/singers are peppery and irresistible, and it did my heart good to see a couple of totally unselfconscious dads twirling and frolicking with their joyful tots right in front of the stage. Any band that can get a couple of (presumably straight) guys to cut loose like that will surely stir your weary ass, too.



Rima and Sarah (left); Sxip Shirey (right); Sarah (bottom)
(c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


Sxip (c)2009, Eva Yaa Asantewaa


So, if you missed today's show at World Financial Center Plaza, you can catch Luminescent Orchestrii at Celebrate Brooklyn, where they will open for the Kronos Quartet in a free show on Thursday, July 16 (7:30pm).

Check out some LO music here.

In triplicate

How bizarre to join the line at the Women's Room near Prospect Park Bandshell last evening and overhear one woman saying to another: "Ed McMahon. Farrah Fawcett. Michael Jackson." I come from people who say, "Deaths come in threes." So, my ears perked up. What the hell else could she have meant?

I'd just come off the subway from Manhattan. No radio. No iPhone. Only an iPod Touch out of range of WiFi. Celebrate Brooklyn's publicist brought it up, though, somewhat tentatively: "Did you hear anything about Michael Jackson dying?" I said, "Whoa! This woman in the restroom...!" A friend of his came by and confirmed the story. We stood around, talking about what a cute kid the young Jackson had been. That nose, adorable. Why couldn't he see that?

I made a call, left a message for my wife. Called a friend who cried, "I heard!" before I even got one word out. Later, the woman sitting next to me in the press area kept babbling away about Femi Kuti's dancers--even during the opening act's set--and refused to listen to anything about the loss of Jackson. "I'll cry when this show is over."

She had a little camera with her, boasted of chatting up Angelique Kidjo, who I adore, and who was circulating in the crowd. She much prefers Youssou N'Dour, Salif Keita, Baba Maal and Femi Kuti, of course, saxophonist/vocalist son of Afrobeat's illustrious warrior, the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti. I love 'em all.

Mostly, though, she worships Femi Kuti's trio of dancers, whose ebullient shimmying is a truly a cause for wonder. "Can you guess which is my favorite?" she later asked me during a brief moment of rest at her seat. I guessed correctly, and she trotted back to one corner at the edge of the stage, leaving me to enjoy the show. At last!

Melvin Gibbs' Elevated Entity (which included Vernon Reid on guitar, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, and vocalist Amayo from Antibalas) opened the evening with some chugging Afro-Brazilian-funk-rap, which I liked well enough. Kuti's set, though, was a marvel of discipline, swing and energy--and not just because of all that powerful shimmying. Kuti follows his father's example in not merely playing for you but enlisting you in his army, and I happily signed up.

Kuti lyric quote of the night: "You better ask yourself why the richest countries have the poorest people." Yeah.

Here's a good article on Kuti by Saby Reyes-Kulami in Seattle Weekly (June 9, 2009):

Femi Kuti Pushes Afrobeat Into the 21st Century
The son of a genre pioneer brings hip-hop, soul, jazz, and brevity to the mix.