The other night we got to perform with Tony Allen behind the drums for us. He was the drummer and backbone of Fela Kuti's Koola Lobitos and Africa 70 bands, and is a drummer on par with that of Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Elvin Jones.
He is in his mid-60s, but is super fit, and the music keeps him that way. Most older musicians I have met look younger than they actually are (with some exceptions for the more hard-living ones). We had dinner with him before the show and he regaled us with stories of the Koola Lobitos' 6 months in Los Angeles in 1969, studying jazz from afar in Nigeria and then finally doing his own thing, and the cautionary tales about the music industry and life in general.
The show was introduced by ID (MK Idowu), Nigerian writer, activist, and chronicler of afrobeat in his 1986? book "Fela: Why Blackman Carry Shit" which was reprinted in French two years ago. We met a little over a year ago in Harlem and he came to see us at the Brooklyn Museum show, and we have been friends since.
I have to go back and listen to the recording we made of the show, because I wasn't able to get 100% of what he was saying before we came onstage, but it had the crowd sufficiently warmed up and in a good mood, with several laughs, and up out of their seats crowded in the aisles and by the front of the stage.
Playing with Tony was sublime. We didn't have very involved sound check, but the show flowed very naturally. We did a set of five Antibalas originals, then invited Tony onstage to play drums, beginning with African Message, an original of his recorded with the Afrika 70, then Elephant, and Antibalas original, followed by Slap Me (Gba Mi l'eti ki n'do lowo) , and It No Possible, Fela .
The crowd was live and would not let us leave the stage after the encore, but I was ready to soak up every second we had with Tony Allen backstage.
We are a good two weeks into the tour, and things are going pretty well. Most of our shows have been in government-subsidized nightclub/cultural centers. Les Pipot in Boulogne Sur Mer (just across the Channel from England) is a little different in that it's more of a theater/cinema with built-in seats. People were still dancing, but not like in the other spots.
Update:
I few days ago I left New York to go on tour in Europe for three weeks. Here we jump into day four of the trip. I don’t like to disconnect myself from the actual moment which is why I don’t write all that much, but sometimes like now (on the highway heading south in the back of Peugeot 307), I can get my head into it…
Last night we played in La Chabada in Angers. The club was very nice, clean, spacious, with very friendly people. They received a significant portion of their budget from city and regional government arts funding.
The club has a big dining room attached to a kitchen, where the band and the crew of the club dine together before the show. It is no small affair, with salad, fresh bread, carafes of wine, delicious entrees (last night was caramelized chicken and soy patties and vegetable puree) with a delicious carrot and red cabbage salad with a light splash of sesame oil. The dessert was a bowl of chocolate fondue with little pieces of fruit in a bowl with a skewer for each person. Dinner has been like this the past three nights, and I have really been enjoying it.
Once a month or so we enjoy meals this good in the states, and it has been like this the past three nights in a row. Normally we get a “buyout” usually ten dollars a person and we each go out into the unknown city to try to find something decent and affordable to eat for dinner.
Another nice thing about last night’s show was that not only was the DJ (Manu of Comet/Mind Records) great, but the club curfew wasn’t until 3 AM, which gave us plenty of time to perform (three hours plus an encore), but time to dance and enjoy ourselves afterwards. It was Marcos’ birthday, and we celebrated intensely.
Bad Jobs
All of the previous paragraphs are a prologue to what I was thinking about when I started writing. Last night every single person that came out of the club as we were packing our equipment up personally came up and thanked each one of us. This is not too uncommon, but I realized last night that not one person left without thanking us, and giving us the opportunity to thank them as well for coming out. Stuart and I were talking about how fortunate we are that people actually thank us for what we do, and I began to think about how good it would be if we showed the same appreciation to everyone when they do their job well. I was also remembering some of the shitty jobs I have worked, in particular my day-and-a-half stint doing telemarketing selling accidental death and dismemberment insurance.
More meditations.
I see graffiti everywhere here, on walls, overpasses, along the highways, and there doesn’t seem to be any major effort to fight it or cover it up. It’s there, and it’s part of the landscape, reflecting the presence (and hopefully creativity) of the people who live there and express themselves on the street. Some are beautiful multicolored pieces (like in the parking lot of Chabada in Angers), while most are two-color throwups, and some, but not many, tags.
It strikes me as comical the way so many communities in America spend so much time and money fighting graffiti and trying to cover it up rather than embracing the creativity and listening to the voices of those who are writing. Just another example of how antisocial American governments can be…
Two exciting pieces of news.
I finally got through to Marty Borruso, the man at the biodiesel plant in Staten Island, after two weeks of leaving messages. He was extremely friendly and enthusiastic on the phone, so I guess it was worth the wait. They are having some meetings with the IRS regarding clarifications to the new Biodiesel tax incentive (hard to believe the government is doing anything positive, but this is a decent step in the right direction...more on this later) which would make the fuel up to $1.00 cheaper per gallon, finally pricing it below petro-diesel.
He was also sympathetic to the idea of partnering up with other groups to promote biodiesel, and was trying to establish a presence at the Coney Island Mermaid Parade and Bonnaroo Festivals, but I don't know how that worked out for him. There are a ton of music groups and festivals that could easily go on tour and promote biodiesel to thousands upon thousands of people, and both sides need to reach out to each other more to make these collaborations happen.
2) I got an email from Arrow aka DJ Chrome the other day. I was just about to look him up because I heard through the grapevine that he was involved in a Brooklyn-based initiative to do a biodiesel recycling plant. This is on the heels of the BioTour, of which he was an organizer and performer. We were able to speak today, and it's all true. In addition, Antibalas have been invited to the Tompkins Square Mayday Concert. I hope we can make it happen. Go Arrow!
Conclusions
One of the things I gleaned from both conversations is that large agribusiness is finally seeing biodiesel as a growth industry and is trying to corner the market by lobbying Congress for agri-biodiesel tax incentives. This is cool in the sense that hopefully some poor farmers will benefit, but as we all know big agri-business will stand to profit far more. Equally bad is that people making biodiesel from recycled oils, doing equally valuable work, will not get the same degree of support from the government.
Meanwhile I've had to run petrodiesel in the car (this one is not yet converted to run on the raw recycled grease), and I feel rotten about it. It does get over 40 mpg in the city, and 50 on the highway, so it is at least efficient. I may finally have to get dirty in the kitchen and make my own biodiesel!
peace and french fry grease.
ps I saw Beyondo last night at the C-Note, one of the best shows I've ever seen in my life.
Meanwhile the Just a Plant reading at Columbia University was an excellent symposium on drug policy reform and reality-based education.
So Aaron McGruder's Boondocks comic marks censorship in the mainstream media as it reaches its ugly tentacles all the way to the funny pages.
Prior to the recent controversy, I had only read Boondocks a few times, but I am now a fan, and you, dear reader, can see Boondocks online at this link.
http://www.ucomics.com/boondocks/
Enjoy.
