SXSW 2008

The South By Southwest music, film and media festival has been on the music calendar of many Southern and Midwestern music fans for two decades, but the March convocation has grown in recent years to near overwhelming international proportions where 15,000 music industry and fans catch nearly 2000 bands over the course of four days. Global Rhythm tossed its hat in the ring this year by hosting a night of music at Austin’s Copa Bar And Grill. While the line-up shifted a bit in the last minute, the night was a resounding success both musically and attendance-wise, giving the GR-staffers a real shot of enthusiasm to bring with them as they made their way home the next day.

The night at the Copa began with a wonderful set by Senegalese kora player Boubacar Diabate and his band. Featuring Diabate as well as guitar, upright bass and drums, the quartet played a quietly hypnotic set that mesmerized the crowd. Since the first band didn’t show, Diabate played a full 90-minute set that was punctuated with thrilling kora and acoustic guitar runs, and a bit of jazzy interplay in the rhythm section, which was able to follow the leader through every twist and turn.

Cranking up the amps and the energy, Lobi Traore and Joep Pelt followed with a set that was a rocking combination of Northern Mali desert blues and African highlife pop. From the first note it was apparent that the band was there to play music for people to dance and party to. With Pelt and Traore trading lead guitar lines and vocal turns, the electric four-piece plowed through the set as if it was holed up in a rowdy Bamako bar.

Dengue Fever: Mercury Lounge, 3/4/08

Even with the aid of a few well-timed hallucinogens, it’s usually a tall order to close your eyes at a live show and find yourself in a completely different time and place—but somehow, Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol manages to induce that state of time travel. In her case, the destination is mid-1960s Phnom Penh at the height of the Khmer pop craze (touched off by such icons as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea), and she conjures it in deceptively easy fashion with a little well-shaped reverb on her vocal mic—oh yeah, and five Cali-based musicians who are all arch purveyors of the style.

Dengue Fever brought their distinctive psych-rock surf sound to New York’s Mercury Lounge last night, and as it turned out, the small venue was a perfect outlet for the band’s raw energy. From the back of the room, Nimol appeared barely more than five feet tall standing on a phone book, but when she belted out wistfully haunting pop rockers like “Tiger Phone Card” (from the band’s latest album Venus On Earth, out now on the L.A. label M80) in her strong soprano, it quickly became clear who was running the show. And although she’s not a technically perfect singer, Nimol throws her heart and soul into it, which makes her an instant hit with just about any crowd. Clad in silver lamé and looking in every respect like a young nightclub diva from a bygone age, she was regaled between songs by the (significantly) male audience with hoots and hollers, and basked in it all with grace and good humor.