Summer is unfortunately coming to a close but that means I’m ramping up for a great series of shows in the fall and winter. We are quickly approaching the 10 Year Anniversary of Pandemic. This is the first in a series of events leading up.
Friday Sept 4th Pandemic is squaring off again w/ Juan Diego for a night of Cumbia, Tropical Bass, International Flavors, Coastal Vibes, Manele, Chalga, Bhangra, Bollywood, and more. Juan Diego and Pandemic Pete have been teaming up and destroying dance floors for the past 3 years. You may have caught them at the Cosmopolitan Pgh event back in July or at the La Misa Negra show at Bayardstown Social Club.
TAL NATIONAL THURSDAY SEPT 3rd AT THUNDERBIRD
http://talnational.bandcamp.com/track/zoy-zoy
with special guest Matthew Tembo
By the time Tal National reached international acclaim with 2013’s ‘Kaani’, the band’s first release outside of Niger, they had spent a decade crisscrossing dirt pathways through the Sahara, playing epic five-hour sets, seven days a week and selling their CDs on street corners. In the process, they became Niger’s most popular band, with songs blasted on national TV and cell phones. Following FatCat Records’ release of ‘Kaani’, Western audiences and critics embraced the band’s finely-honed sound. NPR were hit by “the band’s tightness and fiery energy”; The Guardian praised “their full-tilt approach, and hypnotic intensity”; while Songlines wrote of “a rich, hybrid sound that draws on familiar West African elements to create something rewardingly fresh and different”. FatCat released their dazzling follow-up, ‘Zoy Zoy’ in April 2015, which Pitchfork called “colorful and bright and dizzying, [recalling the] wall-of-sound quality of Konono No. 1, except more frenzied and texturally varied.”
Niger borders Nigeria, Mali and Ghana, and is also the home of well-known musicians Bombino and Etran Finatawa. Collected within this former French colony can be found Songhai, Fulani, Hausa, and Tuareg populations, all of whom are represented in the membership of Tal National. The nation is no stranger to highlife, kora and afrobeat musics, while giving the world Tuareg Blues and a unique brand of hip-hop. In Tal National’s music can be heard the rolling 12/8 rhythms in the Hausa’s fuji percussion, the pensive aridity of the Tuareg’s assouf and the exquisite griot guitar of Mali’s Songhai, all delivered with virtuoso precision and unrelenting energy. After listing ‘Kaani’ in its top 10 albums of 2013, The New York Times wrote that “the music keeps leaping ahead with one surprise after another: guitar parts that align and diverge and reconfigure, drumming that pounces on offbeats. The patterns are crisp, complex and tireless.”
This concert is co-sponsored with The Consortium, Pandemic and Calliope.
ALSO HELPING OUT W/ ROOTS: A ROOTS REGGAE FESTIVAL
The Detroit Party Marching Band is a guerrilla band based in Detroit, Michigan. The band appears at events unexpectedly.[1] The band has played at events such as Mardi Gras (2012), Theatre Bizarre, Noel Night, Blowout!, the Nain Rouge parade,[2] the Hamtramck Labor Day Parade, 2010 Detroit Free Press Marathon,[3] and HONK![4] in Somerville, MA, as well as at many bars and parties throughout the Detroit area, both scheduled and unexpectedly. It has supported acts such as Band of Horses, Rebirth Brass Band, and What Cheer? Brigade. It was founded by Rachel Harkai and John and Molly Notarianni,[5] who felt inspired by the second-line bands they saw in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and also after a trip to HONK! in late 2009. Its repertoire is a mix of Balkan and Balkan-inspired songs, and modern pop and R&B rearranged for brass, usually by the members themselves. They have also toured the Netherlands in Europe as part of the Cross Linx festival. They enjoy the admiration of their mothers, each other, and various drunks in and around Detroit.
SATURDAY NOV 22 :::: PITCHBLAK BRASS BAND returnts to PGH as well w/ THE PEOPLE”S CHAMPS
more details soon.
Hip hop music has always been unafraid to push boundaries. Perhaps because it simultaneously came from nothing yet came from everything, the genre stands alone in how creatively outside influences can be incorporated into its musical mix.
PitchBlak Brass Band uses the epic sounds of tubas, trombones, saxophones and other typically non-hip hop instruments in the spirit of The Roots and some of rap’s iconic live bands, to deliver an energy that samples, loops and breakbeats can’t always capture. Their blend of soundscapes and lyrical exuberance creates a grand adventure in listening, one that can hold the attention of music fans from across a fairly wide spectrum.
-Manny Faces, Birthplace Magazine
THE PEOPLE”S CHAMPS
eople’s Champs combines the hottest dance rhythms from West Africa and South America with retro-futurist synth tones, crafting them into indie songs with Stevie Wonder-esque lyrics.
With their “crazy ass genre mash ups” (Blakbook), People’s Champs’ truly original sound is equal parts Sharon Jones, tUnE-yArDs, Os Mutantes, William Onyeabor, and Prince. Critics are calling People’s Champs a “New York supergroup!” (Lucid Culture) and “Well on their way to becoming NYC’s de facto Funk and Afrobeat experience” (Deli Magazine).
