Zola Jesus

This is the second of WPRB’s four part review of the Pitchfork Music Festival held on July 15-17  in Chicago, Illinois.

 Day Two

by Griffin Winton-LaVieri (WPRB Music Director)

Having realized it was worth it to be up front and thus arrive at the gates early; Ravi and I spent two hours waiting outside the festival grounds on Saturday.  However, that day, instead of going to the Green stage where Fleet Foxes would headline, we opted for the nearby Red Stage. Our fellow early arriving Pitchfork attendees were generally more interested in Fleet Foxes so we had no trouble making it to the barrier.

The first act on the Red Stage was Woods. Woods are a pretty solid freak folk band. I haven’t really gotten into their music so I didn’t really recognize their songs but nonetheless enjoyed my self. One of the members of Woods sang through a pair of headphones, which is a rather novel way of making music. The lead singer sang in a pleasing falsetto.

After Woods, on the Green stage was Cold Cave. Thanks to the positioning of the stages and a jumbotron, we could observe the band though either a video feed or as tiny guys on a relatively distant stage. They were dressed in black and performed with remarkably high energy considering it was not only incredibly hot out but it was likely earlier than they would be ever expected to leave their apartments. I really like Cold Cave’s first record so I enjoyed hearing tracks like “Youth and Lust”,  “Hello Rats”, and of course, the title track. As mentioned above, the members of Cold Cave danced wildly around the stage (in a cool way, though) and I was ultimately unsure how much of the sound they were actively producing themselves.

Up next on the Red Stage was No Age. I’m a big fan of No Age and so I was particularly excited to rock out to them. Dean and Randy ripped through songs off of all three of their records and the crowd ate it up; bodies were pressed against each other,  water was flung overhead to cool us down, and crowd surfers flowed regularly over the barrier. No Age covered a Black Flag and the Misfits but the highlight of the set was “Everybody’s Down” which featured Dean leaving the stage and joining the crowd.  No Age are a quality band who write good songs and put on fun shows. Fun Fact:  The picture that heads the Pitchfork article about the festival was taken during No Age’s set and I’m the kid wearing red in the front row.

Destroyer played next on the Red Stage.  Naturally, Bejar’s epic jazzy jams were a stark contrast to No Age’s punk songs but it was now late afternoon and chilling out was in order.  Destroyer make enjoyable music and they performed their tracks well so it was a good set, even Dan Bejar, who is notoriously moody, seemed like he was having fun. I had the part in “Bay of Pigs” where Bejar sings “Magnolia’s a girl/ her heart is made of wood/ as apocalypses go/ that’s pretty good/ sha-la-la/ wouldn’t you say?’ and the synths come stuck in my head all day in anticipation of hearing it live so I was quite pleased when that song concluded Destroyer’s set.

After that, Ravi and I grabbed dinner and headed to the Blue stage for Nika Roza Danilova, who is better known as Zola Jesus.  With barely any trouble we were able to make it to the front, which made me happy because Zola Jesus is actually one of my favorite musicians and I had never been able to make it to one of her shows before.  Although I had read about how small a stature she has, it was surprising to see her in real life and realize that, yes, she is 4’11”.   Her size didn’t inhibit her performance in the least as she danced and pranced across the stage as she sang tracks from her Stridulum and Valusia EPs. The standout song was probably “Manifest Destiny” which is an incredibly powerful track in terms of Danilova’s vocal performance.  Zola Jesus is an artist to watch out for and I am incredibly excited to hear her new record Conatus, which  will be released in October.

Fleet Foxes were headlining that night but neither Ravi nor I are particularly familiar with their music so we left after Zola Jesus. Instead of being satisfied with a day’s worth of live music, we ventured to Chicago’s Lincoln Hall for an unofficial after-show.  Shabazz Palaces opened the show. I’m not a big fan of rap or hip-hop so they weren’t exactly my thing but I definitely acknowledge that they could be a quality act.  It was entertaining to watch the two members perform as many of the songs featured synchronized dance routines. The headlining act was Moonface, which is Spencer Krug’s new project.  It was an interesting performance as Krug played keyboards and sang and another fellow played marimba and drum machines.  It was fun and worth going to but after two days of standing on metal barriers, I was tired and my feet were incredibly sore.

Photo Credit: Ravi Prakriya

This July 4th weekend, indie-rock champions and local WPRB favorites the Feelies are playing three shows at Maxwell’s in Hoboken.  Born out of Haledon, New Jersey in 1977 by Glenn Mercer and Bill Million, The Feelies have been mainstays of indie-rock ever since they began playing shows in their hometown and New York in the late 70s.  When I was in high school, I looked desperately for bands that had the same meticulous and precise energy as Talking Heads, and The Feelies were one that I very happily found.

Their classic 1980 album Crazy Rhythms is a mixture of a twangy, interweaving, and bright guitar work with drums that ascend, descend, and drop off completely, making the album sound haunting and clear (like it might’ve been created in a laboratory somewhere in North Jersey).  The band was weirdly dissimilar from both the sound of punk and new wave popular in New York at the time, but retained some qualities of both genres in their sound, and created a unique style that really lasted in my memory.  They stayed popular in the underground music scene early on, and they recorded three other equally great albums through 1991, each having a huge impact on indie music at large.

It was only three years ago that the band officially reunited after a 17-year hiatus, playing a few shows at Maxwell’s before playing a much-anticipated opening for Sonic Youth at the River to River festival in Battery Park, and then playing the entirety of Crazy Rhythms at the All Tomorrow’s Party music fest a year later.  Since then, they began writing new songs and recorded Here Before, again showing what they can do with their minimalist approach and all that pretty guitar work.  This weekend they play Maxwell’s for the 4th year in a row on the Fourth of July, as the band has consistently played shows on national holidays since it began (yet another interesting and folk-lorish detail you might want to know).  What a better way to celebrate our nation’s history than with these American pioneers of indie-rock…  The first two shows are sold out, but tickets are still available for Sunday’s show.  Check them out!  I’ll be going to Sunday’s show and will be writing about it next week.

Listen to 103.3 fm WPRB on Wednesday, November 4th at 8:00 pm ET as Jon Solomon welcomes comedian Andy Kindler to his show.

Kindler, who is a regular correspondent on the Late Show with David Letterman, has recently released a DVD of a 2003 performance called “I Wish I Was Bitter (sic).”

» Web Site

Here’s video of Kindler on Letterman from 2008, trying to find a life coach:

Come join WPRB and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia as we celebrate jazz pioneer SUN RA with live performances, lectures, films, and a record fair! These events are part of the ICA’s current exhibition, “Pathways to Unknown Known Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-1968,” which runs until August 2nd.

Full information about Sun Ra and the exhibition after the jump!

WED 07-01 @ 7PM: The Sun Ra Arkestra
Tickets are $10 General Admission, $5 for Students with a Valid ID, FREE for ICA Members

ICA is very pleased to present The Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen. The Sun Ra Arkestra continues to deliver some of the most potent, soul-grabbing jazz music ever written. With lyrics and song titles filled with mysticism, mythology, space travel, and other similarly cosmic trains of thought, the Arkestra’s freewheeling stage shows, complete with colorful costumes and uninhibited adventurism, perfectly embody the otherworldly proclivities of true jazz innovator Sun Ra.

WED 07-08 @ 7PM: John Szwed Lecture
FREE!

Hear a lecture by John Szwed, the biographic expert on all things Ra. He is an anthropologist, musicologist and historian who teaches at Columbia University and is the author of Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (Da Capo Press, 1998).

SAT 07-11 @ 9AM-5PM: Philadelphia Record Fair 2009
$10 from 9-11AM, FREE from 11AM-close

A day of vinyl nirvana! ICA hosts the annual benefit for Vox Populi, Philadelphia’s acclaimed artist-run collective and gallery. Flip through bins. Find your treasure.

WED 07-15 @ 7PM: Outdoor Double Feature, curated by Jesse Pires (WPRB’s DJ Hi-Res!!!!)
Rain or shine. FREE!

Sun Ra: Brother from Another Planet (Dir. Don Letts, UK, 2005, video, 59 mins)
Don Letts, the legendary London DJ who introduced reggae and ska to a generation of punk rockers, delves into the mysterious world of Sun Ra in this British, made-for-television documentary. Sun Ra biographer John Szwed, musician Archie Shepp and member’s of Sun Ra’s Arkestra discuss the life and work of one of jazz music’s pre-eminent pioneers. For the uninitiated, Brother from Another Planet is a great introduction to Sun Ra, and for Ra devotees, it’s required viewing.

Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (Dir. Robert Mugge, USA, 1980, video, 61 mins)
Consisting of explosive live footage of the Sun Ra Arkestra and fascinating interviews with the man himself, A Joyful Noise is the complete Sun Ra experience. Filmed in and around Philadelphia and Washington D.C. when the Arkestra was living in Germantown, Robert Mugge’s documentary captures the group at the height of its creative powers. Each live performance featured in the film further illustrates the distinctive alchemy Sun Ra was able to create with his disciplined band. Ra makes his case for a better world through music, transcending banal, earthbound realities to produce a strange and fascinating aesthetic fusing ancient history with future visions.

WED 07-22 @ 7PM: King Britt & Rucyl, “Saturn Never Sleeps”
FREE!

“Saturn Never Sleeps” is a cosmic adventure in contemporary music. For this artist-curated event, Philadelphia DJ, composer and producer King Britt, in collaboration with multimedialist Rucyl, present a night of sonic and visual funk taking micro-edits of Sun-Ra source music and combining it with live experimentation together with video collage.

WED 07-29 @ 7PM: Sonic Liberation Front & Planet Y, curated by Ars Nova Workshop

Please join Ars Nova Workshop and ICA for two very special performances in conjunction with Pathways to Unknown Worlds. An expanded 12-member Sonic Liberation Front, the Philadelphia ensemble acclaimed for their iconoclastic combination of Free Jazz passion and Afro-Cuban percussion, will premiere “Jetway Confidential No.3 (for Sun Ra)”, a new composition dedicated to Sun Ra and commissioned specifically for this performance, and perform an arrangement of Sun Ra’s “Where Pathways Meet” from 1978’s Lanquidity recording, which featured saxophonist and SLF member Julian Pressley. This evening will also feature a very rare appearance from Planet Y – Buchla Music Easel master Charles Cohen and Stinking Lizaveta’s Yanni Papadopoulos, best described as “Subotnick meets Sun Ra meets Schnitzler.” (Aquarius Records) In addition, newly-unearthed archival films will be projected on the gallery walls.

Led by percussionist Kevin Diehl, a protégé of Free Jazz pioneer Sunny Murray, Sonic Liberation Front merges post-bop with traditional Afro-Cuban Yoruba roots music. While other ensembles have merged Bata drumming and jazz, none have done it with the vigor of SLF. The band members are true students of the Lukumi tradition under the guidance of percussionist/omo aña Chuckie Joseph, a lifelong Yoruba cultural scholar. It’s been said a million times that all music originates in West Africa ¬ and by returning the focus to its origins, SLF achieves a natural eclectism that serves as a fountain of ingenuity. Ancient to the future, indeed. For this special performance, an expanded 12-piece SLF performs featuring some of the most notable names in Philadelphia’s exploratory music scene including members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Make A Rising, and Shot x Shot.

Planet Y: Yanni Papadopoulos (dg-20 Casio digital guitar), Charles Cohen, (Buchla Music Easel)

Sonic Liberation Front: Todd Margasak (cornet), Terry Lawson (tenor saxophone/flute), Dan Scofield (alto saxophone), Julian Pressley (alto saxophone), Brent White (trombone), dmHotep (guitar), Travis Woodson (guitar), Matt Engle (double-bass), Chuck Joseph (Bata drums/drumkit), Shawn “Dade” Beckett (Bata drums/percussion), Khari Clemmons (Bata drums), Kevin Diehl (Bata drums/drumkit)

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Jazz pioneer, bandleader, mystic, philosopher, and consummate Afro-Futurist, Sun Ra, (born Herman Poole Blount 1914, Birmingham, Alabama, died 1993) and his personal mythology have grown increasingly relevant to a broad range of artists and communities. “Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-1968” presents a collection of paintings, drawings, prints, manuscripts, ephemera, and video produced by and about Ra and his associates–much of it previously unseen.

This exhibition, on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art April 24 – August 2, 2009 in the second floor gallery, examines how Ra and his dynamic, continually-evolving ensemble, the Philadelphia-based Arkestra, crafted both their otherworldly image and fiercely independent approach to self-production.

Highlights of the exhibition include original drawings for their 1960’s albums Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow and Other Planes of There, and five newly discovered typed and annotated broadsheets. Until recently, only one such broadsheet was known to exist – the one that Ra gave saxophonist John Coltrane in 1956. The show will also include the unpublished manuscript, The Magic Lie, a book of Ra’s poetry, which has become influential in the nascent Black Islamic movement. In addition to these documents, the film Spaceways, by Edward English, will be on view. The film documents Ra and his Arkestra (a deliberate re-spelling of “orchestra”), in 1968, as they prepare to perform at Carnegie Hall.

Early in his career, Sun Ra spent virtually all of his time and energy on Chicago’s south side, identifying with broader struggles for black power and identity, and saw his music as a key element in that struggle. As well as Sun Ra’s connection to the incipient grass-roots Afro-Futurist movement in Chicago, he also has a connection to Philadelphia. In 1968, Sun Ra brought the Arkestra to Philadelphia, where his band mate Marshall Allen inherited a house on Morton Street in Germantown. The house served as band headquarters until Sun Ra’s death in 1993. The Arkestra continues to perform under the leadership of Marshall Allen, who still resides at the Germantown house.

Long admired among fans of progressive jazz, Ra and his personal mythology have grown increasingly relevant and influential to a broad range of artists and communities. His music touched on the entire history of jazz, but he was also a pioneer of electronic and space music, and free improvisation.

Sun Ra developed a complicated persona of cosmic philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of Afro-futurism (a term coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future.”)

“Pathways to Unknown Worlds” is curated by John Corbett, Anthony Elms and Terri Kapsalis for the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago and is coordinated at the ICA by Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow Stamatina Gregory. This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.

• Art around the clock (Michele Angermiller, Newark Star-Ledger)
• Annual marathon show for art lovers slated (Chris Sturgis, Times of Trenton)
• Review of The Van Pelt’s performance in Brooklyn (Ryan Muir, Brooklynvegan.com)

And of course, we’re psyched! Please don’t forget to stop by our tables/booths to say hello when you come out to support these fantastic events.

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This Swedish trio came to WPRB two weeks ago on their first tour of the United States and they’ll be playing songs from their about-to-be-released domestic debut “Survival Strategies In A Modern World.”

Watch their video for “Security By Design” while you wait for their set to start!:

“Atmospheric Philly cinema-rockers iNFiNieN — who blend piano, many-pedaled guitars, sitar, Arabic melodies, complex percussion, and cooing female vocals straight out of a Blonde Redhead album.” (Philadelphia Weekly)

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Halim El-Dabh is University Professor Emeritus of African Ethnomusicology at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. He continues to teach African Cultural Expressions. He has conducted ethnomusicological research in the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, and Zaire. Within the African Diaspora, his research includes Brazil, Jamaica, and the United States.

Born in Cairo, Egypt on March 4, 1921, El-Dabh came to the United States in 1950, acquiring U.S. citizenship in 1961. After studies of Native American music in the American Southwest, he began studies with Aaron Copland and Irving Fine at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts. Later, in New York’s vibrant musical scene, he developed close associations with such composers as Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Henry Cowell, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, and Leonard Bernstein.

Among his compositions are eleven operas, four symphonies, numerous ballets and orchestral pieces, chamber and electronic works, and works for various combinations of African, Asian, and Western instruments. His ethnomusicological researches, conducted on several continents, have led to unique creative syntheses in his works, which, while utilizing contemporary compositional techniques and new systems of notation, are frequently imbued with Near Eastern, African, or even Ancient Egyptian aesthetics.

Deena is Deena Shoshkes, the singer-songwriter who fronts the veteran Jersey power-pop group the Cucumbers. The sounds on Somewhere in Blue are a unique blend of new wave rockabilly, country and folk rock, filtered through Deena’s long-time indie pop sensibilities. Songs written with Tennessee-based lyricist David Graham (four of which appear on the CD) led Deena into country music, old and new, and southern rock, and inspired a new voice and direction in Deena’s solo songwriting as well. Recorded in Nashville, with producer Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Josh Rouse) and New Jersey, with The Laughing Boys, Tom Lucas and Ed Iglewski, the recordings bridge the distance between Deena’s roots in New Jersey music (from Hoboken indie pop to the Jersey shore) and alt country Americana. (via NotLame.com)

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