Global Roots Primer: Put the RAI in Mahala Rai Banda

Now, before I get to telling you all about the one band with whom I actually am familiar in this year's festival lineup, I want to get to some quick updates, sound bites and musings.

How about that Kings Go Forth Saturday night?   Now, that was a SHOW!  A show in the sense of there was showmanship, there were costumes, there were five guys singing the high harmonies at once...what more could you want from a ten piece soul group from Milwaukee, Wisconsin?

I guess I would want that stodgy audience to move their hips a little!!  Jeez.  The band was working hard up there, folks.  Yes, the matching shirts are a little homemade looking, sure the back up singer looked like your brother the accountant (the big watch, not so very "soul"),  perhaps there were a few rough notes on one of the new tunes...who cares!  They were having so much fun the conga player tried some high kicks!  The organ solos were screamin' way over the top, band leader Andy Noble was playing his brains out on his bass, and I loved front man Black Wolf's "feel the power" moves whenever somebody put out a particularly fine solo.

A live music show is a two way street.  You get out of it what you put into it.  Perhaps I'm being too hard on that portion of the crowed which merely clapped politely, maybe they were the ones chanting "KINGS GO FORTH" over and over leading to a rockin' encore.  The energy increases when both side of the stage are feeling it.  I feel sorry for anyone who walked out our door that night with out moving their hips, just a little.

Then again, Milwaukee is the short side of six hours away.  I expect to to see these guys again soon, and maybe if people know what to expect, next time it'll be an active soul experience for the whole crowd.

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Finally got my digital paws on the new Balkan Beat Box release Blue Eyed Black Boy.  With all the brass bands and such, it's clear they had a much bigger budget this time around.  They sure put the money to good use.  I love the retro-Turkish sounding grooves, and while in the past I've been rather dismissive of Tomir Yusef's lyrics, I cannot really argue with what's he's trying to get across here.  The unite-don't-divide BBB message comes through louder than ever.   Plus "Move it" really ought to be sampled on about every mix this summer; what a fun track.  See the links in my post from a few weeks ago for You Tubes of that tune; has the horse head dance gone gone viral yet?  Well , today I see two more pairs of guys doing thathorsehead dance but the original is still the best!

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Also in the big virtual pile newly come into my earbuds these last few weeks has been the debut from hot young Desert Blues act Tamikrest. 

I find myself dialing up their Adagh first many a day.  It's a big sound with three or four guitarists going at once, cranking out the uptempo numbers with some nice bottleneck touches and some well placed, low key effects.  The high lonesome sound of slower stripped-down desert blues is very well done on Adagh as well.  Lead vocalist Ousmane Ag Massa knows just when to pull his throaty vocals back a notch.

Still working through the rest of the pile of files, but I really like the new Konono #1, Assume Crash Position as well.  Whew! It's their usual less-is-more deal as the distorted kalmibas lay down extremely SOLID grooves which you can ride forever.  Let's hope another U.S. tour is forthcoming.

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So about five years ago I was walking through the Cear office and I hear something cranking our of our Operations Manager's office that sounds kinda brassy, kinda Balkan ( to my then fairly uninitiated ears) so I holler at him.  The man tosses me the disc cover from Electric Gypsyland, Crammed Discs early foray into the Balkan remix territory, a land that,  other than the Bucavina Club and Balkan Beats compilations, was fairly vacant back then.  A number of  tracks from that disc have stayed high on the play count list for years, but the one that still stands head and shoulders above it all was Shantel's remix of Mahala Rai Banda's "L'est Sexy."  The trumpet!  The beats! The clarinet!  The tuba!  The whole damn package...I probably used that tune on more mixes than anything else for years.

So when their self-titled debut came out, produced by the same Shantel, I snarfed it up.  There was a swagger and a youthful sass that I didn't find in the more trad bands like Taraf de Haidouks or Kocani Orkestar, but the musical chops were miles beyond say, Gogol Bordello.  Their horns were ultra-solid, largely because the brass players were all older guys mustered out of the Romanian military, where apparently, soldiers of Roma heritage were often directed toward the band corps.

The clarinet, fiddle and vocals had a punkish youthful attitude, probably because they were young players from the Bucharest mahala (the Roma ghetto ), as well as younger relations of village greats like the Tarif de Haikuks players.  That attitude had them tagging themselves as RAI, "noble" so they were "the noble band from the ghetto."

I was of course pretty psyched to see a second record , Ghetto Blasters, finally roll out last fall and although there have been a few lineup changes, this one brings the sweat and the swagger to the next level  So as you may guess, I am very very VERY excited to see these guys come into our hall next month on their fist real U.S. tour.

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Cedar blogger Princess turns 29 today!  Give her some love if you see her; I know she enjoyed herself at Balkan Beat Box because she had no voice left at the end of the night! I image she wa not alone in that; the band left absolutely nothing on the floor and there was not a dry shirt in the place.

Sax player Peter Hess is really starting to look like Yuri Yukanov, which is good because BBB's sax players really do channel the Bulgarian wedding music for a new generation.  Loved it when he picked up his clarinet; more like shades of Ivo Papasov!  My only wish is so to someday, somehow see a live BBB show with actual real Bulgarian singers doing the vocals instead of samples.  I could die happy.