Festival brings African diaspora to Madison

The Memorial Union’s Terrace, Wisconsin Union Theater, Willy Street Fair and, this year, also Madison College, are about to explode in music, dance, films and lectures with this year’s World Music Festival, Thursday–Saturday, Sept. 23–25.

With a theme of Africa and her diasporas, performers hail from around the world. The Kenyan Kenge Kenge explore the origins of the benga style, playing roots music from the JoLuo community in the west of that country. Dense textures of rhythm and chant are overlaid with an unusual assortment of self-made traditional instruments and singing which is “strong and generous, full of character and contrast.”

Homemade instruments are also the mainstay of Djarara, the Haitian rara music band, which will be doing a residency during the festival. A documentary about the group, “The Other Side of the Water: the Journey of a Haitian Rara Band in Brooklyn,” will be screened twice, and director Jeremy Robins will be available for question-and-answer sessions afterward. The band itself will participate in several outreach events, including one at the South Madison Farmers Market, and will perform several sets during the festival. Read an interview with Robins on the Wisconsin Union Theater’s blog.

Khaira Arby is a Malian singer known interchangeably as the Nightingale of Timbuktu and the Diva of Desert Blues. Born in the Saharan Desert village of Abaradjou, her parents were from different ethnic backgrounds. These cultures are evident in her music when she sings in several languages, sometimes within the same song. The Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars is a group of musicians who came together to form a band while living as refugees in the Republic of Guinea after a brutal civil war in their country forced them from their homes.

The African diaspora is also represented through Joan Soriano, the young Dominican Republic’s “Duke of Bachata,” who, with his six-member band, will make people dance on the Terrace in the festival’s final act (at the Rathskeller if rain or very cold). “The Duke of Bachata,” a documentary about Soriano, will also be screened during the festival.

Another Latin American band is the Colombian Cimarron, playing the festive dance music called joropo. It is a virtuosic display of rippling melodies played on harp, bandola and cuatro accompanied by bass, cajon and maracas. La Santa Cecilia’s six members creatively combine up-tempo Pan American rhythms such as Cumbia, Bossa Nova, Rumba, nostalgic Boleros, passionate tangos, jazz, rock and, yes, klezmer music.

Then there’s the rest of the world: the Romanian Mahala Rai Banda, one of the world’s best-known Roma bands will whip the Terrace in a storm of dancing and also present a lecture/music presentation workshop. Barbara Furtuna, a male vocal quartet from Corsica devoted to polyphonic song, brings a repertoire which spans traditional, sacred and profane polyphony, their own creations and adaptations and covers of old songs that are part of the Corsican collective memory. Ordo Sakhna is a Kyrgyz group which introduces the epic nomadic civilization of Central Asia through authentic Kyrgyz instruments, dress styles and traditional music. The 10-person ensemble’s repertoire includes ancient melodies and dastans (short sections of epics) which have been passed through generations. Finally, The Sway Machinery, led by guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood of Balkan Beat Box fame, updates Jewish sacred music in rocking ways. Lockwood, son of a renowned composer and grandson of a cantor, takes traditional music and sets it to contemporary, dancy rhythms. He will also lecture about “Jewish Folklore and the Creative Arts.”

What would the festival be without the magical stilt-walking creatures of Dragon Knights? These beautiful beings will again grace the Terrace and the Willy Street Fair, this time bringing back one familiar creature and one we haven’t met yet, a jumping (on stilts!) bug.

Better yet, all performances, lectures and films at this magnificent event, put together by the Wisconsin Union Theater with many sponsors and collaborators, are free.

For a full schedule of events, visit the Wisconsin Union Theatre.