2008 Australasian World Music Expo (part 2): Funkin’ for New Zealand

Okay, so it’s been well over a month and the year is almost done, but we trust that today’s entry will be every bit as fresh to you as it was to us in late November. We apologize for the delay; after getting through two debilitating afflictions—one being Thanksgiving weekend (and all the brutal travel that entails), the other being a three-week stint on a jury trial in New York City municipal court—it took us a minute to get back up to speed and bring you the additional news we promised on the inaugural Australasian World Music Expo in Melbourne. So let’s get back into it…

For a relatively remote island nation that’s barely the size of Italy, New Zealand boasts a rich and thriving cultural history. American audiences probably know more about NZ from a visual standpoint, thanks in part to the films of Peter Jackson and the TV productions of Sam Raimi, whose love affair with the island’s lush countryside goes back to the Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess vehicles (and continues with his latest series, Legend of the Seeker). Meanwhile, the arthouse geeks among us will be familiar with Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors and Niki Caro’s Whale Rider—all well and good, as they say, but in the end it’s the music that paints a truly comprehensive picture, no matter where you come from.

For its part, New Zealand has consistently exported a wealth of musical styles, from rock, hip-hop and reggae to the traditional Maori haka (line dances with chants) and everything in between. And if there’s anything you want to know about the NZ music scene, you need to speak to Anton Carter (pictured above). Not only is he a founding member and lead MC for the hip-hop group Rhombus, but he’s also the strategy advisor to the Arts Council of New Zealand, and for the last decade has spearheaded numerous funding and development programs for musicians all over the island. With the rise to international prominence of such bands as Fat Freddys Drop and the Black Seeds, Carter sees a bright future for NZ acts on the worldwide stage.

“We’ve got more professional artists now—more critical mass,” he observes. “In the last 15 years, particularly in music, we’ve really matured, so what we’re seeing now is that growth and maturity, where people are more confident in what they’re doing. We’ve got to the point where instead of trying to look out to the rest of the world to get information about whether we’re doing something right, we actually turned around and said, ‘Forget about that. We’ll just do what we want to do.’ And in my opinion, I think New Zealand is a wonderful place to learn the craft—to make your mistakes, to increase your skills, and to get better at performing and developing your own sound. What we’re seeing now internationally are the results of that.”

Two artists in particular at AWME made Carter’s point for him. Kora is a formidable five-piece band consisting of Maori brothers Laughton, Francis, Stuart and Brad, who along with family friend and bassist Dan McGruer have reclaimed the hardcore funk sound that drove such classic acts as Parliament-Funkadelic, Cameo and later, Fishbone. Not only do they nail the rock-funk amalgam with a vengeance, but they also spice it up with heavy dub vibes and astonishingly thick layers of vocal harmonies that’ll send tingles up the base of your spine.

Then there’s singer-songwriter and MC Ladi6 (nee Karoline Tamati), already a fixture in NZ and Australia for her soul-baring delivery, which conjures echoes of India Arie and even Lauryn Hill, but again with a distinctive roots feel reminiscent of a certain Caribbean island that lies halfway around the world. Her music is playful, savvy and sophisticated, and on top of that, she’s got a stage presence that kept just about everybody in the Spiegeltent space transfixed throughout her set.

Keep an ear out for these and other NZ-based musicians like Scribe (a hip-hop MC who’s big in Australia right now), Little Bushman (pure psychedelia) and many more; they’re definitely poised to give American headliners a run for their lucre.

“You know, seven years ago I was telling people, ‘You’ve gotta watch out for this band Fat Freddys Drop,’” Carter says. “And once people knew them, then I kept saying, ‘Okay, now you’ve gotta hear this band called Kora. These guys are next!’ [laughs] But again, I think the beauty of what’s happening in New Zealand is that people aren’t afraid to mix genres. If you want to get a gig, you can’t specialize. You’ve gotta allow yourself to be influenced by everything, and all these artists are examples of that.”

2008 Australasian World Music Expo: Melbourne, 11/20-23

Greetings from the land of all things antipodal—you know, where summer is winter, the toilets flush counter-clockwise and kangaroos breed like stray cats in a trailer park, right?

Well, not so fast: we’re reporting from Melbourne—an exceedingly lively, diverse and cosmopolitan city, and host to this year’s inaugural Australasian World Music Expo, or AWME. This gathering of topnotch musicians, producers and industry movers from all over Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands is vying to become one of the prime showcases for the region’s deep range of indigenous talent. After a whirlwind four days of non-stop music, informative panel discussions and impromptu late-night raps about the state of “world music” today (and whether the term itself has outlived its usefulness), we can safely say that AWME has lived up to every bit of its potential, and without question merits a return visit in 2009.

“I guess the idea for this came about by attending expos and trade fairs in Europe and North America, and realizing that there was very little profile or understanding of indigenous and world music from Australia and the region,” explains producer and expo organizer Simon Raynor, who recalls feeling mystified, along with Australian musician and producer David Bridie, by the near total absence of Australasian artists at even the prestigious WOMAD Festival, among others. “We wanted to come up with an event that could showcase artists from this region to international delegates. But instead of flying a whole bunch of artists to Europe and North America, we turned that on its head and decided to fly a whole bunch of delegates to Melbourne to see a focused showcase of artists from our region.”

AWME 2008 has indeed been a focused and intimate gathering, but its modest size hasn’t diminished the quality of the content in the least. Indigenous singer-songwriters like Kutcha Edwards and Bart Willoughby (pictured) have been playing back-to-back with more progressive bands like Melbourne-based Chilean jazz-funk upstarts Labjacd, while dancers and drummers from Badu Island have shared the same stage with folk rockers like James Henry and Liz Stringer. Fully supported by the Australia Council for the Arts, funded by Arts Victoria and the Australia Council, and based for its four-day run at Melbourne’s sprawling Arts Centre—which is augmented by the 300-plus capacity Spiegeltent for live performances—the expo hit all the right notes for its first time out.

And if last night’s closing party was any indication, the future is certainly bright. For us wayward yanks, the highlight of the night was a string of jams by Aboriginal legend and national treasure Bart Willoughby. Joined by players from local roots reggae band Mista Savona and krump stylists Grrilla Step, Willoughby cut through the mix with a soulful wail that belies his shy, reserved nature offstage. Punctuating his phrasings with yelps and shouts, his delivery really has to be heard to be believed. Check out this video for a taste of Bart’s singing and drumming skills, and if you can find it, get your hands on the classic From My Eyes EP by his band, No Fixed Address.

In the coming days, we’ll be blogging with some more reflections on AWME 2008—after we’ve sifted through the many photos, handwritten notes and CDs we collected along the way. For now, we’re gearing up for our 20-hour flight back to NYC. See you on the flip…

NEXT: Funkin’ for New Zealand

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.

Sunny Jain Collective: Taboo at Joe’s Pub.

I caught the premier of Sunny Jain’s new project last Thursday at Joe’s Pub. Jain was commissioned by Chamber Music America and co-sponsored by Sakhi for South Asian Women and Breakthrough to compose music about the situation of domestic violence, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS, (particularly as these issues pertain to women) so the title of the performance, Taboo, is well-chosen.

Taboo consists of Sunny Jain on the drums and dhol (more on this later) along with several regulars from the Sunny Jain Collective: Marc Cary on piano, Steve Welsh on tenor saxophone/sound effects, Gary Wang on bass, and Samita Sinha and Achyut Joshi sharing vocals. For the premier performance of this material the group faired well, although there were some definite rough patches.

What is this “world music” you speak of?

Here’s an interesting post by Everett True over at the Village Voice on the politics/origin of “world music” as a term and a genre. It’s a pretty important conversation in the music community that began at some point in the ’80’s when the term was first used to create a niche genre in the American/UK record industries.

True points out the phrase was used even before that for the French “World Music Day”, although the debate ultimately is an offshoot of Edward Said’s concepts of “othering” and Orientalism. For further reading, take a look at the 1999 editorial “I Hate World Music” here by some guy named David Byrne, and Gilberto Gil’s piece “The Music of the World is Bigger than World Music” here.