Every show at Chicago’s 14th annual World Music Festival is free—even the ones in conventional venues (Martyrs’, the Mayne Stage, Reggie’s Rock Club) rather than in city facilities, museums, or parks. That’s a first for the festival, and it’s about the only piece of good news concerning this year’s installment, unless you count the simple fact that it’s happening—the city’s excellent Music Without Borders series in Millennium Park didn’t return for summer 2012.
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Shoshona Currier, director of performing arts at the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, was in charge of booking the festival, but it’d hardly be fair to blame her for the huge drop in quality: she didn’t move into the job till April. In a Tribune story from that month, DCASE deputy commissioner for arts programming Angel Ysaguirre revealed that festival booking hadn’t begun—a huge change from years past, when WMF founder Michael Orlove and his colleague Brian Keigher had started planning the next festival as soon as the current one ended. Under Orlove a consortium of midwestern world-music presenters (from Bloomington, Minneapolis, Cedar Rapids, Madison, and Milwaukee) would gather each February to discuss which international artists they wanted to block book at all their events, with Orlove and Keigher providing a list of potential acts. Chicago’s size and financial clout traditionally allowed it to provide anchor gigs, and the involvement of the other presenters made the tours feasible by spreading out the total expense.
David Chavez of Sound Culture, who’s helped out in the past, programmed the lion’s share of this year’s festival in June and July, by which point it’s historically been almost entirely booked. His stepped-up involvement can be seen as an extension of the outsourcing of DCASE’s summer music programs—Pitchfork fest organizer Mike Reed, who handles Downtown Sound, and Jazz Institute of Chicago director Lauren Deutsch, who curates World Class Jazz, are no longer collaborating closely with the city but rather doing that work very nearly on their own. Some of the acts Chavez lined up—including New York-based Balkan brass combo Slavic Soul Party! and Chinese folk-rock band Hanggai—ended up on the bill at Lotus fest too, but Williams says many of those bookings came together at the last minute. If this year’s lineup looks hastily assembled, that’s because it was.
Slavic Soul Party!
On the recent vinyl-only release New York Underground Tapes (Barbes), America’s greatest Balkan-style brass band sounds better than ever. Percussionist and Slavic Soul Party! bandleader Matt Moran is surrounded by an excellent new lineup, and a few members complement his own durable tunes—distinguished by richly contrapuntal arrangements, breakneck tempos, and excellent soloing—with compositions of their own. This group long ago shook off the “pretender” label—only the fact that they’re based in Brooklyn separates them from the best Balkan bands.
Mon 9/24, 6:30 PM, Ping Tom Park, 300 W. 19th St.Tue 9/25, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club
Janka Nabay
Sierra Leone expat Janka Nabay, now based in Baltimore, calls himself the “king of bubu music,” and it’s hard to argue. As far as anyone knows, the ancient ritual music of the country’s Temne population—used during Ramadan processions and traditionally played by masses of people blowing on cane or metal pipes—had never been recorded until he did it. To distinguish himself from his rivals in a Freetown music contest in the mid-90s, he drew upon on bubu’s skittering, high-velocity rhythms; his performance caused a sensation, and before long he was a local star. After fleeing his war-torn homeland for the U.S., he hooked up with a crew of Brooklyn indie rockers, and the same band released its first U.S. album, En Yay Sah (Luaka Bop), in August.
Fri 9/21-Thu 9/27, various times, venues, and performers. Some shows are 18+ or 21+; all are free.
