| globalFEST 2006 -
Traditions Transformed
Photography: William Farrington
Editor's Note: To guide you through the
exciting two-night festival, we have presented a full-feature on
globalFEST including artist photo galleries, perceptions from the
audience and news on upcoming events for some of the artists. You
can access each artist's feature by clicking on the appropriate musician
photo (below).
We hope that this feature helps broaden the exposure for these exciting
music groups: |
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Frank London's
Klezmer Brass Allstars |
Mamou Playboys |
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| AfricaSounds was able to catch the 2006
globalFEST at the New York Public Theater. Quite frankly, it was a
remarkable event. We were impressed by the extent of the diversity
in music styles as well as the cultural cross currents represented in
each music act. Events such as globalFEST are not only a
logistically challenging endeavor to organize, but the adventurous
musical program challenged our perception of 'global music'. Gone
are the traditional categorizations between music styles, as these 13
acts demonstrated. Traditions were transformed before our eyes,
and the resulting rich music compositions in many cases sounded entirely
new. |
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| This year's GlobalFEST was a concurrence of 13 acts on three
stages at New York's Public Theater presented a remarkably focused
snapshot of
contemporary world music. Illuminating two major trends, that many
artists, due to migration identify with multiple traditions and that
many share a musical vision influenced by youth culture.
Although the formal purpose for globalFEST is to introduce the diverse
line-up of musicians to industry professionals (who were attending the
Association of Performing Arts Professionals Conference) it offered the
average listener a chance to sample the myriad of music styles.
For this particular writer, well versed in
African and Caribbean music, it was an absolute treat to catch the
Russian group
Auktyun
and
Frank London's
Klezmer Brass Allstars. These were music
styles that immediately seized my attention and the very fact that I was
attending globalFEST encouraged me to open my eyes to these emerging
music acts and their respective music styles that I normally wouldn't
have listened to. The sign of a successful globalFEST is that a
casual listener finds her/himself reflecting on the new music acts
long-after the performance, in some cases searching for the correct
words to describe the experience, and ultimately adding these music acts
to their music collection and short-list of must see artists on tour.
I for one found myself in this category, I now enjoy listening to
Auktyun and Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars and would go out of my
way to catch them live when they next perform in New York City. So
in hindsight globalFEST made me a fan of new music genres and artists,
which at the end of the day is the real enduring purpose of these
festivals. |
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| One of the challenges we faced during the
evening is that one cannot be everywhere at once - and with 3 stages
featuring performers at the same time it was inevitable that we were
unable to report of every act. However, we photographed and were
able to talk to some of the artists later for some additional
perspective. Below are links of photo galleries for each artist: |
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