The Quixotic Rhythms of Chris Berry

Photos and Feature by William Farrington

  
   

 
   

Looking more Brooklyn than Highfields in a flat cap, extra large enyce jersey and baggy jeans, Chris Berry sat center stage, a djembe drum in his hands, the audience at the Bowery Poetry Club drawn towards the stage by it's rhythm was as multiethnic as his group Panjea.

   

 
   
To his left stood Phil Yeager on trombone, Chris Kuzme on tenor sax and Dan Richards playing Trumpet.    
   

 
   
Guitarist Francis Key of France, Senegalese Mamadou Mba on Bass, Harvey Whirt of Surinam playing the drums and Kenyan bassist Achouni Adou crowded the perimeter of the stage.  
   

   
As the band launched into their first funky uptempo number, two beautiful dancers, Lisa Berry and Zimbabean Rujeko Dumbo entered the stage, arms pumping and hair flying, bending at the waist in traditional African style.  
   

 
   
Before long, Berry was on his feet singing in a rugged voice.  The lyrics were a plea to make "every day a new day" as if with force and sincerity his words could make things right in the world.  
   

 
   

The band kept the musical energy flowing with an instrumental with the leader now playing the "thumb piano" or 'mbira' and calling for solos as in a jazz session followed by a song that briefly changed the focus from straight ahead dance rhythms to a meditation on the state of the world entitled 'Why Do We Kill People Who Kill People to Show People that Killing people is Wrong'.

  
   

   

   
Over the course of the evening, Berry disassembled musical preconceptions, transforming them with his unique musical vision, making questions such as "Is this African music?" irrelevant.  
   

  

   
Lean arrangements contained shorthand references to musical influences from soul, rhythm and blues, to South
African jazz and Afrobeat to dancehall, rap and of course the Mbira music of his teachers.		  
   

   

   
Studying and playing mbira extensively with master players, Chris became renowned for his ability to"call the spirits," and later made history by becoming the first foreigner to be honored as master composer and player for
the Royal Ancestral Court of Nuanda. 		 
   

 
   

Currently Chris teaches at the University of New Mexico and tours internationally.  How did a young musician from California end up a respected master of the mbira in Harare, Zimbabwe?  The answer begins in his hometown of Sebastapol, in northern California where Titos Sompa, a master drummer from the Congo, ended up settling.  Attracted to the sound of his drum Chris would stand outside of the house mesmerized. It was unlike anything he had heard in his life.

 

 
   

He was adopted by Sompa as a son and trained on the djembe with the master at age 13. Five years later he traveled with Sompa to the Congo where he lived for several years as a musician and a student. While in the Congo Berry became entranced by the sound of the mbira and he was encouraged to travel Zimbabwe to learn the instrument.

 
   

 
   

The mbira, a small hand held instrument, derives its unique sound from a rounded resonator, sound board, iron keys and buzzers. The instrument is used in traditional sacred healing trance ceremonies. In Harare, musicians such as Beauler Dyoko brought the  instrument into an urban setting playing the music in beer halls. It gained prominence in contemporary music through musicians such as Thomas Mapfumo and Oliver Mtukudzi who amplified it and played the traditional rhythms on guitar.

 
   

 
   
In Harare, as in the Congo and California, Berry followed the African tradition of learning directly from a master, orally passing tradition and knowledge from generation to generation. He studied the Mbira for ten years principally with Marink Chitena. Chitena died after the day after giving his final lesson.  
   

   

Berry began the second set at the Bowery Poetry Club seated playing a traditional Mbira duet with Rujeko Dumbo, who he met and married in Zimbabwe. He continued to perform on the mbira returning his feet and to the powerful big beat and raw rhythms whose energy rivals contemporary dance genres such as hip hop and drum and bass but is generated generated organically.

 
   

The set ended with a raucous piece that featured lyrics taken from a speech by Nelson Mandela and had a good number of the audience on stage dancing hands in the air and Berry relishing the pandemonium his music had created. Berry's music has absorbed the traditions of the Diaspora but is not bound by them and reflects the restless seeking of his personal vision.

 
   

 
   

One left with the impression this is the way that vision was expressed at this moment in time, which is a good reason to seek out his performances. Berry who has scored #1 hits and pltainum selling albums in southern Africa is in New
York, recording a new album to be released in July. He can be seen with Panjea at B3 the first Thursday of each month, the following night at the Zinc Bar and every first Saturday of the monthat the Bowery Poetry Club.