Category Archives: Reviews

Music festival report: The Brooklyn Independent Music Fest 2011

Date: September 16th to 18th, 2011
Venue: Littlefield (Brooklyn, NY)
Text by Jim Hoey
Video intererview and first two videos shots by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

The Brooklyn Independent Music Fest took place at Littlefields in Brooklyn, near Gowanus, and for 3 days over 60 bands took to the two small stages to showcase a hell of a lot of pop,blues, soul, rap, and old timey music. This matches the borough’s return to oyster bars, tile floor restaurants, brick oven pizza shops, and speakeasy-looking venues that sell absinthe. With this festival though, the old and the new vaguely mixed on the stages, followed each other, and generally, what the promoters were going for, was a complete celebration of all the different musical elements that find their way to Brooklyn.

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CD recommendation: Comoros Island’s Nawal’s new CD is out – a hypnotic prayer for peace!

Artist: Nawal
Title: Embrace The Spirit
Label: JADE/WARNER MUSIC
Genre: Comoros Island “sufi” folk music

Recommended by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Nawal comes from the Comoros Islands, in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. Now based in Paris she is recognized as a key figure from her native islands. Between traditional and contemporary, Nawal’s compositions are an acoustic roots-based fusion, inspired by the light of her Sufi heritage founded on love, respect and peace. When live in concert, Nawal’ powerful voice and message is able to touch her audience’s hearts.

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EP review: Tarana – utilizing Indian and East-Asian rhythms as the foundation for a new creative musical experience

Artist: Tarana
Title: After The Disquiet EP
Label: self-release
Release date: October 4, 2011
Genre: elctronica

Review by Jim Hoey

Drummer, improviser, and experimenter Ravish Momin is the guiding force behind Tarana, and on his latest EP, After The Disquiet, his jazz, world, Indian, and electronica roots are mixed with violinist Trina Basu’s plaintive strains and pulsing lines. This collaboration leads into melodic territory and beyond for over 35 minutes, with both instrumentalists leading and building off of eachother in fluid improvisations in real time. Continue reading →

Soundfest At Val Du Lakes – an old music festival fairground was reopened

Date: June 20th, 2011
Location: Mears, Michigan

Text by Jim Hoey

This summer in Michigan, something went down around Mears, Michigan, a small town near the Great Lakes and one of the largest area of dunes in the country. An old music festival fairground was reopened, called Val Du Lakes, one which used to host bands like Aerosmith and Metallica back in its heyday.

Bill Cosby: great flow and best footwear at the fest. Photo courtesy of Jim Hoey

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Event review: 1st Annual African Dance Concert (Sabar Dancing at Symphony Space)

Date: August 13, 2011
Venue: Symphony Space (NY)

Concert review by Jim Hoey

It was another one of those nights in NYC when I left my place with no expectations, I was simply heading off to hear some African music on the recommendation of a friend. So off to the Symphony Space on the Upper West Side I went. To my surprise, this concert of Sabar music and dancing kicked off with drummers coming in from the back of the theater, and the dancers and singers chanting from backstage until they joined forces at the fore and started to get into their Sabar thing, which is a call and response type dance from Senegal, with drummers beating hard on their skins and interacting and pushing the dancers on and on, improvisationally. From the very start, the drummers cleared the air, prepped the crowd by announcing that this night requires audience energy to be authentic, and then jumped into the opening invocation, getting the crowd to clap in tune with the drum pulse.

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