Banka: African funk in Limerick

Hey, boyz n grrlz. We're here blogging live from the music studios of the University of limerick. I just discovered that I have wireless access in this room. Once each week, the World Music Academy here gives free concerts of traditional music, or whatever master class guest lecturers are around for the day. Every week it has been an astonishing hour of virtuoso performances of all kinds, but today is the freakin' weirdest and most wonderful so far.

It is a grey day here in the WessofIreland, and today's concert by Banka is a blast of funky sunshine in all the grey. To appreciate the contrast of west African funk in this place, you have to know that up to now, almost none of the musicians who have performed here have been amplified. These guys are TOTALLY wired and the amps are turned UP. The floor is shaking, and I can feel the bass in my chest. This is traditional music like this room has never felt before. I have mentioned before the fact that Irish audiences listen with their feet, and, indeed, while Banka positively grooves up on the little stage, the feet are going but so are the shoulders, nay the whole row of connected seats is moving.

On stage are four guys: electric piano, full drum set, a bass and an electric guitar (did I already mention they were all, like, way amplified?). They are playing pretty traditional African pop, which has a really distinctive rhythmic groove with deep resonant harmonies. It is quite a trip to hear the djembe rhythmns on a drum set. These poor guys must be freezing cuz they are all wearing big sweaters, and the singer has not taken his scarf off yet.

They are here to teach a master class in singing, and some of their students were still practicing when I came in to set up. It was quite a picture of translation. Here was this group of Irish, European-Americans, and Chinese people sort of grooving in a circle, singing these deep harmony songs from West Africa. On stage, in the middle of the singing, the lead singer gets up to dance, and he gets the audience (who have been practicing the song he is singing) to join in the call and response of "ummama me" as he sings. How not Irish is this, or what? In his huge sweater and scarf, there is the lead singer grooving all over the little stage to the whoops of the Irish crowd. Whatta trip to planet earth.

The bass player comes out to thank us and bless us, as the audience that has come to listen to him. He then invites the students up onto the stage to sing with him, and there they all are, this buncha northern Europeans and Asians, ready to participate in the sub-Saharan rhythms. They try, rather self-consciously and stiff kneed, to dance while the microphone shrieks, and they sing their new song to us. It is sweet. They forget the words and consult their pieces of paper with the phonetic transcriptions with this full full sound blasting out from behind them. Oh, wait, they have remembered the words and gotten some confidence and now we can hear them singing over the music. The lead singer and piano player, grins as he pounds out the melody: now he is actively laughing, and he comes out to join the novice students to teach them how to dance more than just shift from one foot to another. He ties his scarf around the hips of the woman nearest him, and the drummer pounds out a better rhythm for them to shift from one foot to another. The guitar player just quits playing and pulls out a video camera to video this line of melanin challenged students making a heroic effort at this brand new world they have just entered.

I love my planet. This is the part of globalization this is good, great fun. This ain't World Bank globalism: this is international craic.