Bantus
Posted on | January 28, 2010 | 1 Comment
Back in June I received an intriguing phone call from one Matt Gordon, who had gotten my number from Kevin Van Geem (the drummer in my sextet) and needed a substitute keyboardist to play (get this) marimba parts on a gig with a Zimbabwean singer, Loveness Wesa. Needless to say, I was more than slightly interested, and ended up playing the gig, at the Salem World Beat Festival. In the process of doing this, I learned that I had actually been subbing for Nathan Beck, the director of Boka Marimba, a Zimbabwean marimba band I have been fascinated with since my youth, when I would go down to the Saturday Market and watch them play for extended periods of time, one day vowing that I would somehow find a way to join the band. Then I discovered that the guy playing drums on that gig in Salem, Eric Orem, had also done the same thing, and now was in the band! Anyhow, I fumbled through the marimba parts on my keyboard at the Salem festival and had a great time. Then, when I was about to fall asleep one night several months later, I got a text from Loveness asking me to join the band. So, although I have not achieved my childhood fantasy of joining Boka, I am really happy to be a member of the Bantus Band, which is even better for me anyway, since I don’t play marimba at all!
Loveness’ music is squarely in the great tradition of Zimbabwean electric pop, pioneered by such artists as Thomas Mapfumo (with whom most of the members of our band have spent some time touring) Oliver Mtukuzi, and Jonah Sithole (check out this link for a fantastic cassette of his group courtesy of WorldService) with lots of other regional and even South African influences as well. It’s great fun and is one of the first non-jazz projects I have been involved in for quite a while, which is a huge breath of fresh air for me! It’s easy to get caught up in the frighteningly insular jazz world, and this band provides a great opportunity to play dance music, something I don’t do nearly enough (though the Bridgetown Sextet has been really fun on that front as well, in a different vein). It’s also been a great lesson in the importance of very specific methods of working through relatively simple chord progressions, especially since myself, the guitar, and the marimba are all inhabiting the same sonic space, more or less. I’ve learned quite a bit about some elements of the mbira tradition (though there’s much much more to learn there), and of course it’s been great being in a group with no written music! Unlike some of my other bands, where one of the most difficult steps towards putting on a great show is to memorize all the music, there are no charts to begin with in this band (although I confess to writing down a few of the trumpet lines for myself) so we’re set to go in that regard, although the classically trained part of me can’t help but wonder which method is more efficient in the end. And, finally, Zimbabwean pop was really my first introduction to African music (I spent countless hours on trains in France listening to Mapfumo during my time studying there in 2004 and 2006) so it’s a sort of “full circle” thing to be playing in such a band.
It’s been an interesting few years since I finished up jazz school at PSU, and I’ve found myself (in typical fashion) making occasionally impulsive decisions about what direction to go in musically and which kind of projects to start and to focus on, and I feel that only recently am I gaining a bit more of an objective perspective on being a musician and on what I want to do. Being in this band has taught me a lot about the importance of playing the music I love, regardless of whatever preconceptions may have been instilled in me from being in jazz school, or being on the jazz scene, or just being a jazz nerd! It’s a bit surprising to me how easy such external ideas can become internalized in some sense, but I’m really glad to have opportunities such as this come up to remind myself about the best parts of being a musician for me: having fun, making people happy, and connecting to the audience through groove!
Here are a few tracks we recorded in December – there’s a couple more at our site too (click to listen:)
Loveness Wesa and the Bantus – Mbire
Loveness Wesa and the Bantus – Sevenza
Loveness Wesa and the Bantus – Njelimana
Well, after all that I would be amiss not to mention our upcoming show this Saturday night in Portland. We’re putting on a concert to help raise funds to bring Loveness’ mother to Portland from Zimbabwe. It’s a worthy cause – life in Zimbabwe is hard and is not getting any easier with Mugabe’s government continuing to cause great hardship for the population. We’ll be playing from 7:30-9:30 at the Ainsworth United Church of Christ – it should be a great time. Full details as well as some new recordings we made in December are all at our site http://www.bantusband.com
Photo credit: Maureen Oliver. More photos of the band are at her blog here.
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January 29th, 2010 @ 9:27 am
This sounds like fun, you sound like an interesting musician yourself, I would love to be part of this journey. From now on I’m your fan Andrew and the Bantus band, you guys sound terrific. I also checked out your site Andrew you are an amazing artist, exactly what the Pacific Northwest have been waiting for, musicians with talents like this. What a variety of taste. Wish you all the best.
Thanks from me for life!
Thandie