Led by founding member Alex Chavez and featuring Pete Vale, Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, Jaime Garza and Nathan Karagianis, the members of Chicago, IL-based Latin music quintet Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta have storied careers in a diversity […]
Tag: The Funk Ark
Comprised of Massama Dogo (lead vocals, guitar), Clayton Englar (sax), Megan Nortrup (sax), Scott Aronson (bass), Franck Martins (lead guitar). and Aaron Gibian (percussion and drums), the Washington, DC-based sextet Elikeh has developed a reputation for material that sonically has been classified as Afropop, as it draws influence from Western Africa — frequently meshing traditional Togolese rhythms with rock, funk, jazz with lyrics that deal with global themes and personal journeys.
Dogo, the band’s leader was born in Togo and while in the African nation, he played and sang in several local bands, including a local band also named Elikeh, with whom he released one album, Nyade in 2007. Several years later, Dogo relocated to Washington, DC met the current lineup and then wrote, recorded and released their 2010 Stateside debut, Adje! Adje! The sextet’s 2012 release Between 2 Worlds featured renowned Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure and Further and Dark Star Orchestra‘s John Kadlecik received international attention in World Music circles.
As the story goes, the band was considering calling it quits, finishing out the songs they had booked and moving on to other creative endeavors. During a band meeting in which the members of the band were going to discuss their future and splitting up, the band’s guitarist Frank Martins kept playing the entire time. He came up with a musical idea, someone else would join in, another band member would join in and then everyone began jamming — until they developed a song. One of the sax players had recorded the jam session and while listening to that session, the members of the band realized that their break up talk was premature. “We’re all excited about the band now,” Dogo mentioned in press notes. “It’s lucky the guitarist didn’t want to put down his instrument. The EP saved us.”
as the song begins with an introductory section with soaring organ chords throughout before establishing the tight, percussive groove that holds the entire song together, and allows for each section and each instrumentalist to show off their immense chops — and conversing with each other throughout the length of the song. Of course, each region of the world specializes in subtle variations of the genre so that Togolese Afrobeat won’t be exactly the same as American Afrobeat or Nigerian Afrobeat — and in the case of Elikeh, the band’s sound possesses subtle elements of highlife, the genre that influenced Fela, thanks to its upbeat feel. But interestingly enough there’s subtle elements of pop and other African traditional sounds, which helps to set them apart from a very crowded DC Afrobeat scene. And yet somehow, from listening to this single it’s surprising to me that they’re not much larger than what they currently are; hopefully, the blogosphere can get it right.
Named after a beloved Nigerian funk album, the members of the Brooklyn-based septet Ikebe Shakedown features members of the touring bands for the likes of the incredible Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the larger-than-life Charles Bradley, Lee Fields, and […]
Named after a beloved Nigerian funk album, the members of the Brooklyn-based septet Ikebe Shakedown features members of the touring bands for the likes of the incredible Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the larger-than-life […]
Beacon’s debut For Now EP was a hauntingly ominous album that manages to burrow into the dark places of regret, temptation and obsession with an extremely minimalist form of modern R&B and electronica — it’s an anxious, […]
Beacon’s For Now EP was a hauntingly ominous album that manages to burrow into the dark places of regret, temptation and obsession — it’s an anxious, fever dream of an album. As a result, For Now landed at number […]
a Q&A with Steven A. Clark
Ranking fourth on this site’s Best of 2012 list, behind the co-number ones, Cody ChesnuTT’s certain classic, Landing on a Hundred and Lee “Scratch” Perry and the Orb’s trippy, mind-bending The ORBSERVER in the star […]
MillionYoung and the Asteroids Galaxy Tour at the Music Hall of Williamsburg 11/11/12
MillionYoung and the Asteroids Galaxy Tour Music Hall of Williamsburg November 11, 2012 So on a rare Sunday night, I was at the Music Hall of Williamsburg to catch the Copenhagen, Denmark-based funk and soul […]
//www.mixcloud.com/media/swf/player/mixcloudLoader.swf?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2FKGNUMusic%2Ffunk-ark-live-kgnu-session%2F&embed_uuid=d707abb4-1d32-4bd0-b30c-e775c2c9538d&stylecolor=&embed_type=widget_standard Funk Ark Live KGNU Session by Kgnumusic on Mixcloud During their cross-country tour, Washington DC’s the Funk Ark stopped in Boulder, CO’s KGNU studios for a live session and interview on their Afternoon Sound […]
DeRobert and the Half-Truth’s 2011 release, Soul in a Digital World was a worthy addition on my best of list last year because it was refreshingly old school and sincere, and showed how profoundly deep soul music’s […]