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Music Review | Gossaye Tesfaye
For Émigré Fans,
Soothing Words and Spirited Rhythms
From Home
Robert Caplin
for The New York Times
Gossaye
Tesfaye, a singer and songwriter
from Addis Ababa, performing
pop songs in Amharic that
are grounded in Ethiopian
traditions but show many
foreign influences, too.
By
JON PARELES
Published: January 7, 2008
Women squealed
as the headliner took the stage
at S.O.B.’s late on Friday
night, elegant in a dark suit
with a yellow necktie. He started
an anthemic ballad, and within
moments, the audience was joyfully
singing along and waving its
arms overhead. The pop star
onstage was Gossaye Tesfaye,
a 32-year-old songwriter from
Ethiopia, and he was singing
love songs in the Amharic language.
The crowd that filled the dance
floor at 1 a.m. must have made
up a considerable fraction of
the 2,500 Ethiopians that the
last census counted as living
in New York City.
Mr. Tesfaye, who was born in Addis
Ababa, plays modern pop that is well
aware of the world outside Ethiopia.
The song that started his set could
almost have been an American R&B
ballad but for its vocals, and he
followed it with a song that rode
the brisk Afro-Latin beat of Congolese
soukous. On his albums Mr. Tesfaye
also dips into reggae and Nigerian
Afrobeat. His band used Western instruments:
bass, trap drums, keyboard, saxophone.
But the melodies of Mr. Tesfaye’s
songs were distinctively Ethiopian.
They riffled up and down through
pentatonic (five-note) scales, and
when he sang sustained notes, they
took on North African, Arabic-flavored
quavers. Mr. Tesfaye has a high,
sweet tenor voice that can break
into a rich falsetto or add a hint
of rasp; his tone is clear and genial,
never pushy but never shy.
As the set progressed, the band’s
rhythms made their way back toward
Ethiopia. One song moved to a brusquely
swinging modal funk vamp that, to
a Western ear, sounded something
like Louisiana zydeco. Other tunes
built galloping six-beat grooves
that stirred up the dance floor.
As the music dug into its homeland
beats, Mr. Tesfaye tossed phrases
back and forth with his saxophonist
and with an audience that was eager
to sing along or clap the complexities
of those six-beat rhythms. Women
climbed onstage to dance with him
and pose for cellphone photographs;
one plastered paper money on his
forehead. What had started out looking
like a typical pop event had turned
into something unmistakably African.
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Music Review | Kassva
A Wide Range of Sounds, From Antillean to Zouk
Hiroyuki
Ho for
The New York Times
Jocelyne Beroard,
left and Jean Phillippe Marthely of Kassav
on Tuesday
Night
at S.O.B.s the bands frist New York Show
in more then a decade
ShareBy Jon Pareles
Published: August 2, 2007
It
has been more than a decade between New
York City shows for Kassav’, the
band from Martinique and Guadeloupe that
has brought French Antillean music to an
international audience since the 1980s
and regularly sells out large theaters
in Europe. On Tuesday night, with a sold-out
audience at S.O.B.’s, Kassav’ had
obviously not been forgotten. Audience
members shouted along on nearly every song,
singing not only the words but also the
zigzagging horn-section lines. And Kassav’ has
had so many hits it had to pack them into
medleys.
Kassav’ was a pioneer of a musical
style called zouk — it rhymes with
juke, and means party — that defines
cultural survival via assimilation. The
band records in Paris, but at the core
of its songs is a jovial midtempo beat
from Antillean carnival music — originally
played on a log drum — that’s
kin to Haitian compas and Trinidadian calypso.
Back in the 1980s Kassav’ put the
log drum at the center of its stage setup;
now that drum is absent but the beat persists.
The lyrics are in Kreyol, the Africanized
French still used in the islands, and they
revolve around love, dancing, the Caribbean
sun and the healing power of zouk itself.
The core members of the band — Jacob
Desvarieux on guitar, Georges Decimus on
bass and Jean-Claude Naimro on keyboards — play
electric instruments. And the songs cheerfully
borrow from French pop, salsa, fusion jazz
or electronica, all of which Kassav’ dovetails
with its Antillean beat. In one song two
of the band’s singers, Jean-Philippe
Marthely and Jocelyne Beroard, hooked elbows
and swung their partner as if they were
at a square dance.
On albums Kassav’ can sound a little
too slick, conforming to French pop tastes.
But onstage it concentrated on dance tunes
and shed some layers of unnecessary gloss.
The band had three contrasting lead singers:
Mr. Desvarieux, who was gruff and smoky;
Mr. Marthely, a buoyant tenor; and Ms.
Beroard, whose voice can be bright and
poppy or sweetly affectionate. Mr. Naimro’s
keyboards could sound like zinging dance-club
synthesizers, an accordion, a steel drum
or the clarinet used in old Martinican
biguine music. Mr. Desvarieux’s guitar
sometimes hinted at blues-rock or the intertwining
lines of African rock before slipping back
into the rhythm section. Slower tunes had
an easygoing lilt and upbeat ones galloped,
while somewhere in the mix, echoes of carnival
beats carried them all. |
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Music Review | Isaac Delgado
Cuban Beat Gives Way to New York Salsa Sound
Rahav Segev for
The New York Times
Jocelyne Beroard,
Issac Delgado with his new band,
which includes his son, on Friday.
ShareBy BEN RATLIFF
Published: July 9, 2007
The Cuban singer Issac Delgado played a handful of shows in New York 10 years ago, and at that time his band was magnificent. A sonero — an improvising singer — he was one of the significant stars of timba, Cuban salsa with harder-hitting rhythm sections. You could stand agog at how complex the operation was, the interlocking patterns in clave rhythm that all seemed irregular, with Mr. Delgado’s midrange voice balanced on top of the music, commanding and swinging.
But we haven’t seen much of him since. Late last year he defected to the United States through Mexico, and has started a new life in Florida. He made a new record, “En Primera Plana” (“On the Front Page”) with the New York salsa producer Sergio George, and formed a new band, with his son, Issac Delgado Jr., on piano. On Friday he played at S.O.B.’s, and it was a strong show in a slightly different style.
The biggest change seemed to be in the bass: the cropped, booming electric-bass patterns in Mr. Delgado’s old band was replaced by a smoother New York salsa swing. But the music was tough enough anyway. The younger Mr. Delgado played hard piano vamps, and traded solos with the 12-piece band’s other keyboardist, Milton Salcedo. And the horn section — including the trombonist Alberto Barros, who is the band’s musical director — was stunning, playing a tangle of beautifully coordinated counterpoint, threading in and out of the groove.
Now 44, the elder Mr. Delgado has a lot of shoring up to do in order to remind the United States salsa market of his importance in Cuba and the rest of Latin America. Even with his new material, he is trading on the past: some of the tracks on “En Primera Plana” are medleys of old songs. He played one on Thursday: “Necesito una Amiga,” a midtempo love song from his days as the singer with the band NG La Banda, stretched out and changed via a vamp section into “Qué Te Pasa Loco,” a hit from 13 years ago.
What he and his band can do came through fully in the song “Malecón.” (A screen behind the band showed a revolving, 360-degree aerial film of the Malecón shoreline in Havana.) The song started as a plush ballad, with soft-pop chords on the keyboard, then by the time the two other singers came in on the chorus, the song became rugged, with hard beats on timbales and congas. Toward the end the song gave way to long, repeating cycles of trombone lines, stretching across eight bars with gaping rests and accents in unexpected places.
While he had his own little section for improvisation in almost every song, he was really improvising most of the way through the set, whether just habitually adding an echoing tag to the chorus singers’ lines, or making up verses about a woman from the audience who jumped up beside him near the end of the set, crouching and swiveling.
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Published by Latina.com
Also playing this week: Anyone down with
live concerts en la Gran Manzana knows that S.O.B.'s is a venerable institution where you can catch the
best in Latin and world music. Starting this week,
the venue kicks off its 25th anniversary celebration
with July Con Sabor Latino, a series of Latin shows
that includes highlights like The Original
Tito Puente Orchestra on July 1, recent Cuban expatriate and
salsa icon Issac Delgado on July 6, Spanish rapera
La Mala and Brooklyn boricua MC
Joell Ortiz on July
11 and a special Colombian Independence Day concert
with Folklore Urbano on July 20. Visit www.sobs.com to score tickets and celebrate our música
latina! |
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 "Con
sabor latino" SOB's celebra 25 años
Por SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS
The Associated Press
Publicado el lunes 02 de julio del 2007
www.elnuevoherald.com
El legendario SOB's de Nueva York, otrora casa de Tito Puente
y Celia Cruz, celebra
su 25o aniversario con un año de actividades que arranca en julio "Con
sabor latino", un mes de tributo a la música latina en sus distintos
géneros.
"Realmente es para morirse", declaró el lunes a la AP el fundador
y dueño del local, Larry Gold, sobre su hito. "Lo digo con toda sinceridad.
En términos de diversidad SOB's ofrece desde música tropical tradicional
hasta hip hop latino contemporáneo, con estrellas de hoy y estrellas del
futuro... Somos uno de los pocos locales que puede decir eso".
Inaugurado como Sounds Of Brazil
(Sonidos de Brasil) la noche del viernes 4 de
junio de 1982 en el 204 de la calle Varick,
en el bajo Manhattan,
Gold dijo que
le tomó apenas tres semanas darse cuenta de que no podría subsistir únicamente
con comida y música brasileña. Tenía que abrirse a un repertorio
más amplio.
"Terminé siguiéndole
la huella a la música brasileña
hasta Africa... y eso me llevó hasta Sudamérica",
relató el
neoyorquino, quien asegura fue su amor por la música
latina lo que lo llevó a abrir el icónico local.
"Hace unos 23 años comenzamos
a ofrecer una serie latina semanal, La Tropica
Nightclub, de la que participaron Tito Puente, Celia
Cruz, Eddie Palmieri y algunas bandas más
jóvenes, otras mucho más antiguas",
relató. "Fuimos
el primer local en tener a los Gypsy Kings, a Rodrigo
y Gabriela... y nuestra meta es seguir presentando
lo mejor de todos los géneros de la música".
Gold
recuerda que el día de la inauguración
fue maravilloso. "Y
el sábado fue aún mejor, pero el
domingo llovió y llovió y
casi nadie vino, así que en un fin de semana
tuvimos nuestros altibajos".
A través
de todo este tiempo, asegura, jamás ha pensado
en el cierre.
"Fue realmente exitoso desde
el comienzo. Y cuando no lo era tanto nos sentábamos
y decíamos 'tenemos que trabajar
en esto o en aquello'. Un día
alguien me dijo que debíamos ser
consistentes con nuestros clientes y
una vez que le dedicamos un día
específico de la semana a la música
según su género nos hicimos
imparables".
Hasta hace tres años
las noches de los lunes habían
sido las de música tropical (ahora
son los viernes). Martes, miércoles
y jueves hay rock en español,
música gitana, tango y otros ritmos.
"Sí tenemos latin jazz...
aunque menos", indicó Gold, adelantando
que a fines de año ofrecerán
el evento mensual Wold Jazz
Cafe, los domingos.
La importancia
de la música latina
para SOB's y la importancia
de SOB's para la comunidad
latina de Nueva York radica
en que el local siempre ha
sido
sincero en cuanto a su política
de contratación, opina
el empresario.
"El intentar atraer a la comunidad latina a su propia música, ya
sea la bachata, la plena, la salsa... Este es un lugar abierto para todos, amigo
del
consumidor, que ofrece
un espectáculo de calidad con un valor educativo
y creo en el género
total de la música
versus en una banda específica",
dijo.
"No somos un local que contratará a
una banda en particular sólo
porque esté de
moda. Cuando
contratamos
a Marc Anthony
antes
de que fuera
famoso fue por
nuestro amor
y nuestra fe
en la
salsa. Cuando
contratamos
a Calle
13 antes de
que saltara
a la fama lo
hicimos
por creer que
el hip hop latino
debía
exponerse en
la misma plataforma
que las
corrientes dominantes.
Somos una casa
honesta con
la comunidad
a la que sirve".
La
celebración
de su primer
cuarto de siglo
comenzaba el
lunes con la
Orquesta Original
de Tito Puente
acompañada
por el hijo
menor del Rey
del Timbal,
Ronny Puente,
e incluye presentaciones
del cubano Issac
Delgado, los
raperos "La
Mala" Rodríguez
de España
y el neoyorquino
Joell Ortiz,
el jazzista
Chico Alvarez,
las bandas puertorriqueñas
Plena Libre,
de música
tropical, y
Cultura Profética,
de reggae; el
colombiano Pablo
Mayor y su Folklore
Urbano y la
orquesta neoyorquina
de charanga
Son Sublime.
Preguntado
cómo resumiría estos 25 años...
"Cuando comencé lo hice
por mi pasión y mi amor a la música
y
aprendí el
negocio
como
algo secundario,
a
través
de
mi primer amor. Nunca
pensé más
allá del
día
de
la
inauguración.
Ha
sido
un
viaje
maravilloso
en
el
que
me
he
expuesto
a
distintas
culturas,
idiomas
y
personas
e
incluso
a
una
diversidad
dentro
de
cada
cultura,
como
los
distintos
ritmos
que
uno
consigue
en
Cuba,
en
Puerto
Rico",
dijo.
Sus
próximos
planes incluyen
crear un
programa dirigido
a niños
donde éstos
puedan interactuar
directamente con
grandes artistas,
ya sea
tocando algún
instrumento o
compartiendo la
tarde con
ellos, y
llevar parte
de la
música
de SOB's
al aire
libre, al
Central Park.
Entre
septiembre y
agosto del
próximo año traerá al
local artistas del pasado cuyos nombres
se abstuvo de revelar, pero dijo estar
trabajando
para que "el programa de nuestro
25o año sea el más especial
que hayamos presentado". |
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 Andy
Palacio
S.O.B.'s; June 28; 9 p.m.; $28 Tickets
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: June 24, 2007
Pop
Jon Pareles
The danceable exhilaration of ANDY PALACIO's
music hides a mission: to preserve the Garifuna language
and culture of Central America's Caribbean coast.
Mr. Palacio is from Belize, one of the places that still has Garifunas, descendants
of West Africans who survived the shipwreck of two slave ships in the 17th century.
They mingled with native Caribs in St. Vincent and were exiled to what are now
Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. And like other ethnic minorities, they have faced
pressure to assimilate.
One response is music: a pop style called punta rock, which generates dance hits
in Central America, and the more traditional music Mr. Palacio and the GARIFUNA
COLLECTIVE offer on their album "Watina" (Cumbancha). Mr. Palacio had
synthesizer-driven punta rock hits, but now he pushes African-rooted drums and
acoustic guitars up front, using old Garifuna rhythms. The songs are often in
minor keys; to an outsider they can sound like Andean music sent to the Caribbean
seaside. Lyrics are in the Garifuna language, taking up questions of memory and
identity. But it's still Caribbean music, with a lilting drive, call-and-response
buildups and Afro-Caribbean dance moves. Onstage Mr. Palacio and the Garifuna
Collective make their music sound like a party, not a cause. |
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 Seun
Kuti & the Egypt 80
Published: June 14, 2007
By nymag.com Agenda
Edited by: nick Catucci
S.O.B.'s; July 1; 9 p.m.; $30 Tickets
Finding
a corrupt Nigerian government official is easy; finding
a musician willing to criticize him is a little more
difficult. When that musician is the youngest
son of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, we can't help but take notice. Seun Kuti, the heir
apparent to His Royal Highness of Bad, makes his North American debut fronting
the Egypt 80, many of whose members (including Seun’s mother) were in Fela's
original band. This show will sell out, and soon—buy your tickets now. |
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 'DRANK' ON IT
T-PAIN TOPS THE CHARTS, BUT CAN HE GET THE LADIES?
By
RAAKHEE MIRCHANDANI May 31, 2007
T-PAIN is in pain.
And it's not from the weight of more than 100 carats
of diamonds slung around his neck.
The Crunk & B superstar,
who hit No. 1 on Billboards' Top 100 for "Buy U A
Drank (Shawty Snappin')," spent
his first day in New York skipping the clubs
and sipping room-temperature water, nursing
his laryngitis.
Or perhaps the effects of
one too many nights of drinking Patrón
and $150 shots of Remy Louis 13.
"Basically these days lots of people begin their relationships
in the clubs," says the Tallahassee
native, in town to promote his new album "Epiphany," out
Tuesday. "Whole
conversations begin with some guy
buying a young lady a drink. I wanted
to make
a song for those folks."
He's
also been making songs for his
famous friends, including Kanye West (they plan
to tour
together in October),
Usher and Britney Spears. T-Pain
has already written and produced
two tracks for her upcoming album
and says Spears promised she'd have him back
for
more.
"It's rebellious, like,
'B----, I'm Britney Spears.' I got her cussin'.
I got her doing
'leave me alone' type of stuff, not that sexy 'look at my body' stuff," he
says. But, about her body,
he says it's "looking
pretty good." "She's
going to do great. And her
body, that is back," he
says. "She looks great;
I'd do her." |
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 Growing Pains
Marsha Ambrosius goes solo and loses a friendship
in the process
by kenya hunt / Metro New York
APR 9, 2007
Profile.
When a reason ably successful rock or pop band
loses a key member to
solo stardom, it’s often devastating
to the other members — even more
so when the group is
only a duo. Marsha “the Songstress” Ambrosius
and Natalie “the Floacist” Stewart had
worked together as songwriters and producers
and later as the R&B duo Floetry,
which earned seven Grammy nominations, for 11
years. But when Ambrosius, the singer with the
effortlessly commanding voice
and quiet disposition, told her partner, Stewart,
the effusive MC, back in December that she had
accepted a solo record deal
with Dr. Dre, their longtime friendship took
a hit. They haven’t
seen or spoken to each other since.
“She told
me that she expected it. But it didn’t feel
like she was really happy for me. Our friendship got
a little twisted,
so it was very bittersweet,” Ambrosius
says over the phone from Atlanta, where
she has spent
the last few
days recording
with Usher and a new producer named Oak.
During the weeks before that, she was in
Los Angeles
recording the
bulk of her upcoming solo album with Dr.
Dre — a stark
contrast from her experiences mostly providing the hooks and
choruses to Stewart’s verses.
“I got into Floetry based on my
friendship with Nat. As a performer, I gave
her the ball and always took the back burner
because I wanted her to shine.
She’s a phenomenal writer,
and I wanted the world to hear
her words,” the 29-year-old
from London explains. “It’s
sad. I know deep down, she knows
what kind of friend
I am. I’ve
prayed on it. I made the compromise,
and it was a beautiful compromise,” she
adds as if trying to convince
herself, as well.
Ambrosius says her new album
will be somewhat of
a departure from Floetry’s neo-soul sound.
“
It’s Dre at his most genius, plus my melodies and song
concepts. I did all the writing,” she
says. She first met
the CEO of
Aftermath after a Floetry
concert in 2005
when he approached her
at the Roxy in
L.A. A year later, Dr. Dre,
who is credited
with turning Snoop
Dogg, Eminem
and 50 Cent into
the platinum-selling artists
they are,
offered her a
deal.
“I was shocked, but I went for it.
Who could say no to that?” she says. Chad Hugo
of The Neptunes, Scott Storch and Just Blaze
also contributed work
to the album.
She’ll test out the new material during a set at S.O.B.’s
Wednesday
night. The gig
will be one of
her first as a
solo artist.
“I’m nervous and excited.
I have so much new material I might need
to bring my composition book onstage,” she
says laughing. |
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Straight Jackin’ This dynamic duo out of LA is a blend
of funkadelic soul. Lead singer Jack Davey and her beat master,
Brook D’Leau (pronounced De Low) know
how to rock a crowd with a swagger stick.
by dominga martin
At press time Jack Davey’s
first official check from Warner just cleared
and they were ecstatic and “officially” signed
to a major.
We sat on a sofa in the back
offices of New York’s
indie launching pad SOB’s, a
night club which serves as a providence
for artists
who
are on the
verge, and who pay homage to the ground-breaking
venue.
Ms. Jack Davey had just “torn
the roof off the mutha...” and
was there strictly to dance!
“I’m here to dance tonight
yawl,” she screamed to the crowd and began
to sashay with an attitude that would challenge Naomi
Campbell on a catwalk. Her
baby voice chimed through the mic and shocked the crowd
when she began her intro “On
the corner selling bass rock…” and proceeded
to rock the mic while the funky bass lead the way to
bigger and badder hits.
She is definitely a lady with
style and divatude, and had New York’s
hardest and most critical in the palm of her little
hands.
However, Ms. Davey is not alone. She
and her band mates, Khari Farari and Nicki
not only make up a crew with cool names, but also
compliment
the
style
and swagger of this duo to watch.
Although
her performance is a bit sexually charge, she
swears “it’s
just my alter ego” and I believe her. After
she sat curled up on the sofa, long Mohawk
dripping to the side, all innocent like…yet,
on stage, she is a tigress with a gangstress
lean. Why did you come up with the name Jack
Davey?
Ms. Jack Davey: It came out of nowhere. We
wanted a name that was unisex for a male and female
duo and a sound that would manifest as
only a Jack Davey
sound.
Who is Jack Davey?
Ms. Jack Davey: A baby
that we had together...
Brook D’Leau: Out
of wedlock…
Ms. Jack Davey: And became
a happy child that grew up on electronic
fusion with
a shaved
head on the side.
As you can see, this duo is a lot of fun,
and mesh together like a brother and sister of the
same embryo; twins, with an addiction
to good times and music. The
band had been together for 2-3 years and are just getting their due and although
their current California sound plays visions of a sunny day on Venice beach while
riding on hydraulics…and maybe up to make-out point, Ms. Davey says the
new album has nothing to do with sex.
Hmmm? I’ll believe it when I hear it.
For more info on J Davey: www.myspace.com/jdavey |
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