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