Song for Barbès: Secret Planet Showcase at Drom

The Secret Planet showcase is an invitation to open ears, presented by partners who have a history of allowing artists to explore new musical landscapes. “Roots to the Future” describes the 10th annual show Barbes, the club in Brooklyn, and the Electric Cowbell record label. Each year on a saturday in January, insiders and the public gather at Drom in the East Village for an local/global/traditional/experimental open ended musical experience. This year Alba Ponce de Leon, Sunny Jain, Cochemea Gastelum, Combo Lulo and Los Cumpleanos performed, joined by Vox Sambou from Montreal, Sofiana Saidi and Mazalda from France, Huda Asfour and Kamyar Arsani from Washington DC, and the duo Sounds of Siberia.

From the present perspective,  one wonders when we will enjoy a night like this again. When will traveling and gathering together again be a part of everyday life. 

Who could have imagined it was to be  watershed moment with the sadness and pain of the COVID-19 crisis around the corner impacting disproportionately hard on those in the room. A staggering loss of life, including musicans Manu Dibango, Mory Kante and now Majek Fashek, darkened stages have left artists stranded. This month, May 1st 2020, Barbes the club that nurtured many of the artists on stage that night turned 18 marking the event with virtual tributes (Songs for Barbes can be found on Facebook) rather than with live music. There is also a gofund me link to support the club and its workers: https://www.gofundme.com/f/barbes-needs-you?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=m_pd+share-sheet

Barbesare has been supporting artists since it opened providing space for musicians to play the music they were interested on a regular basis and as a result nudged the music we listen to in new directions.

There was a feeling of camaraderie, on stage and among the audience, more so because many came from long distances to be in New York City that weekend. The Association of Performing Arts Professionals were meeting in Manhattan. The Secret Planet sat at the heart of a very exciting weekend of music, as The APAP meeting draws music presenters to New York City each year and goes along way in determining what touring artists we will hear in the coming year.

Alba Ponce de Leon and the Mighty Lions are like a who’s who of the local Brooklyn music scene, her soulful vocals are mingled effortlessly with her stellar bandmates. Alba The songs, sung in Spanish, blend americana musical genres from south and north of the border. Soul, country, surf rock, rhythm and blues and the romantic somewhat melancholy ballads of Mexico. The set drew from her Names You Can Trust 2018 release and her upcoming album. Alba also just finished an album with Resistance Revival Chorus (formed after the Trump inauguration) of street protest inspired music titled “This Joy”   and is now collaborating now with Combo Lulo on a new project.

Cochema Gastelum debuted music from his new release "All My Relations” released February 22nd. Drawing on a wealth of musical experience, beginning with his Native American heritage and it was a deeply expressive set. He was a riveting figure on stage. Keyboards, bass, drum kit, congas and hand held percussion backed his sax and flute playing. The band transitioned through the diverse roots based rhythms with the ease of a jazz jam session.

Huda Asfour and Kamyar Arsani, an atypical Arabic musical duo that share a background of  training in traditionasl music and a passion for breaking the rules. Huda, a Palestinian and Kamyar, an Iranian met in Washington DC and have been collaborating for several years. Their set began with a love song written by Huda’s grandfather whose oud playing inspired her as a child. An improvised piece came next followed by an iterpretation of a Rumi poemon the nature of madness and concluded with an original song inspired by traveling in Syria. Kamyar’s band Time is Fire released “In Pieces” on Electric Cowbell/Insect Fields on February 28th.

The Sounds of Siberia are keeping musical traditions (Sakha and Tuva) alive in a changing world. The music which is interspersed and mimicked natural sounds, felt experimental and contemporary. The duet featured Yuliyana Krivoshapkina on the khomus an instrument similar to the Jews harp, and vocals and Nachyn Choreve throat singing and doshpuluur, a wooden lute, and the igil a two stringed cellulite instrument. Together the visually exotic duo evoked an extraordinary breadth of expression with their voices and traditional instruments of humble appearance. 

Sofiane Saidi and Mazalda  play a jam based take on Algerian Rai music giving the musicians more space to improvise within the structure of the music. Rai’s origins are the Cheb singers, many were women, in Oran, Algeria in the 1920’s. The collaboration brings well honed grooves with a respect for the music’s origins to audiences many unfamiliar with the music. It was an outsider music in the multicultural Algerian port city, adapting and evolving. Young musicians in the 70’s embraced and electrified the indigenous rhythms, at the same time rock musicians in the west were embracing the blues. Saidi grew up near this epicenter of this youth cultural eruption, drawn to the clubs to hear the great singers, first as a fan then singing himself before moving to France in his teens. Mazalda was formed in 2002 in Lyon moving from acoustic to electronic dance music before backing Cheb Lakhdar and percussionist Cheikh Mohamed Ben Amar on the 2014 release ‘10s Orion Rai

EN DÉCOUVRIR PLUS

Bouyon, a Haitan soup is an apt way to describe Vox Sambou’s musical process. Rooted in Haitian rhythms and flavored with the Montreal based artist’s musical experiences in that multi ethnic music scene. (He also performed the night before in the Mundial Montreal showcase featuring several other Canada based artists). Resistance to oppression is the idealogical connection, propelled musically in the hip hop, roots music, reggae and afrobeat grooves. Vox Samou rough rap inflected vocals with the soaring voice of Malika Tirolian, and Born in northern Haiti, he came into prominence as a founding member of the hip hop collective Nomadic Massive and has collaborated with a broad spectrum of artists since forming his own group.

The raw, hard sound f Sunny Jain’s Wild Wild East’s expresses the reality of the immigrant in New York. Jain describes the music from the bands Smithsonian Folkways release as a conduit “to connect two things together and have them be one world” . As immigrant neighborhoods look across the water at the Manhattan skyline and realize the illusion that is New York City it feeds anger or creativity. This ensemble addresses that reality. His drumming propelled the music from the shadows of the stage. The musicianship (Grey Mcmurray, guitar; Pawan Benjamin, tenor saxophone, shehnai, bansuri; and Kenny Bentley, sousaphone) was powerful, rough hewn and urgent, restlessly searching never quite coalescing into a groove. Listen to the the saxophone and guitar interaction on Immigrant Warrior(below video). Vocalist Ganavya joined the musicians for an improvisation on an East Indian spiritual alternating with Roopa Mahadevan on vocals. like the city it left the audienc ehungry for more.

Combo Lulo, nine musicians crowded the small stage partially obscured by music stands performed a nine song set with Atlantico a stoic take on Colombian Cumbia. The stepping off point retracing afro caribbean rhythms need for music stands soon became obvious, the magic was in the arrangements, layering caribbean rhythms