I got back to New York a few days ago after spending a few extra days in Amsterdam with my mother. The weather was beautiful. We rented bikes for three days and rode all over town, checking out museums, parks, and coffeeshops. Mom was suprised at how humane and nonchalant the whole coffeeshop system was.
I got back returned to 70 emails, and finally had a chance to reflect on the music...a friend asked how it was going, and I gave her the long answer:
The music is going well but we are bursting at the seams with new songs and not enough time to sort them out and fully learn them so we have been performing a lot of the same stuff for a while. We added three new songs to our repertoire for a performance in Paris with Tony Allen (the architect of afrobeat drumming and bandleader for Fela) but since they are covers, we don't want to play them that much since 90% of our shows are originals. The music was consistently good, and we are playing some rhythm games and doing some other preparation before shows to focus more and be closer together. We messed around with the stage layout a bunch of times before coming up with something good, but it only works when we setup in a tight half-moon shape with the singer in the middle....
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.
I can't help but write how much I love the music of the El Michels Affair, listening to their version of Isaac Hayes' "Walk on By."
I have seen this group play since they were 16 and I have always loved their music. Keep it going.
I read in the paper yesterday that the ODB (aka Ol' Dirty Bastard aka Russell Jones) has moved on from our earthly plane. I pray that he is somewhere prettier than Staten Island, and that the police stop chasing him.
Newspapers report that he entered an NYC recording studio complaining of chest pains, collapsed, and died before paramedics could arrive.
ODB made his mark on me way back in 1991 on the song "Protect Ya Neck," which was the first Wu Tang single to hit Philadelphia...on the Power 99 FM Power 9 at 9...or was it the Radioactive show...anyway, Wu Tang came on the station, and the DJs kept mispronouncing the name of the group, like "Wu Tang Clang"...little did they know...
It was freshman year in college when "Enter the 36 Chambers" came out, bought it, and listened to it heavily...it was one of the last hip hop cds i ever bought...along w/ Illmatic, Buhloone Mindstate, and Midnight Marauders...
A few months later I began to get into the saxophone, buy old vinyl, and the rest was history.
So, I digress.
Dirty...rest in peace...say hi to the angels for me.
