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Feb. 3, 2012
Chutzpah’s global music mix
Israel’s Hadag Nahash will have their Vancouver debut.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Wear comfortable shoes to the Commodore Ballroom on Saturday, Feb. 25. From the first notes of the opening band, Santa Lucia, through the repertoire of the headliners, Hadag Nahash, you’ll be on the floor dancing.
Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts is bringing Israeli band Hadag Nahash to Vancouver for the first time. The promotional material describes their music as “a sonic melting pot of hip hop, rock, jazz, reggae and electro-funk, with hard-driving grooves and a Middle Eastern flavor,” which a listen bears out. Its energetic and multicultural rhythms mix well with Vancouver-based Santa Lucia’s self-described “sound that evokes the early days of Latin funk ... [an] addictive combination of Nuyorican Boogaloo, West Coast funk and the ever-present Cuban grooves ... with monstrous horns and bass, funky breaks, polyrhythmic beats and furious lyrics in English and Spanish.”
The music will speak for itself for the most part but, for those who understand Hebrew and Spanish, it will communicate even more.
Santa Lucia – Byron Russell (saxophone), Anthony “Chiko” Misomali (drums), German Cantillo (guitar and vocals), Colin Maskell (tenor sax), Ryan Conroy (bass) and “Chocolate” Gonzales (trumpet and percussion) – have three full-length albums to their credit. On their website, the description of Suppressed Anthems, which was released last year, includes the comment, “Latin revolutionary sloganeering, environmental concerns, global politics and clenched-fist leftist anthems all bounce over the band’s leftist grooves....” In 2005, they received a Western Canada Music Awards nomination for best children’s recording, for “The Hero Inside,” which was written for Cackleberries, an online animated learning series.
Hadag Nahash has won multiple awards. Since 1996, the band has been not only rockin’ the house, so to speak, but shakin’ up Israel’s political and social scenes. As much as they are known and have been honored for their musical ability, Hadag Nahash’s songs, which “call for peace, tolerance and equality and include provocative and controversial left-leaning lyrics of political protest ... ha[ve] become part of the soundtrack for progressive struggles within and beyond Israel.”
About their social activism, band front man Sha’anan Streett told the Independent in an e-mail interview, “I don’t know about ‘intention,’ but it was definitely part of who we are from very early on. The first song we played together is called ‘Shalom Salaam Peace,’ and we’ve been playing volunteer gigs for just causes for as long as we’ve existed.”
He added, “In the band and in my/our personal life, I try to help do what’s needed most. Another thing is – it’s easier to raise awareness for important stuff when you have a successful band like Hadag Nahash on your side.”
Hadag Nahash is comprised of Streett, who composes many of the songs, on vocals, Moshe Asaraf on drums, Yaya Cohen Harounoff on bass guitar, David Klemes on keyboards, Shlomi Alon on saxophone, EWI (electronic wind instrument) and vocals, and DJ Guy Mar on turntables and vocals. With six CDs (five studio and one live recording), they are a major player in Israel’s hip-hop scene, and recent years have seen that popularity spread internationally. Among many others, they have performed with the Black Eyed Peas and Matisyahu, they have toured the United Kingdom and the United States more than once, and their music has been featured in Adam Sandler’s movie You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, on the TV show NCIS and on the soundtrack for the game The Sims 3.
The only aspect that appears to not have been a complete success is the band’s name. “It’s a joke that doesn’t really translate very well,” explained Streett to the Independent. “It’s a mixture of the letters that compose the Hebrew words ‘nahag hadash’ that mean ‘new driver,’ which is a sign you must put on your car if you are in fact a new driver. ‘Hadag nahash’ means ‘fish snake’ and, initially, we were hoping people would put Hadag Nahash signs on their cars and confuse police. Never happened.”
The doors open at 8 p.m. for Hadag Nahash and Santa Lucia’s Feb. 25 show at the Commodore Ballroom. Tickets are available from Chutzpah! at chutzpahfestival.com, 604-257-5145 or the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
More music Chutzpah! acts
Every music offering at this year’s Chutzpah! Festival, which runs from Feb. 11 to March 4, features a diverse mix of sounds and rhythms from around the world.
On the second night of the festival, Lullabies in Exile brings together Toronto-based singer-songwriter Lenka Lichtenberg (see “Eclectic Jewish music,” Dec. 15, 2006, and “Jewish world music releases,” Nov. 26, 2010, on jewishindependent.ca) and Israeli composer, violinist, oud player and singer Yair Dalal. Backed by Lichtenberg’s band Fray, the Sunday, Feb. 12, 7 p.m., concert at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre merges Dalal’s Iraqi/Babylonian traditions and Lichtenberg’s Yiddish/Ashkenazi roots.
On Saturday, Feb. 18, 9 p.m.(ish), the Sway Machinery, from Brooklyn, N.Y., plays at the Electric Owl, 928 Main St. (two blocks north of the Science World Sky Train station). Sway includes guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood, formerly of Balkan Beat Box, with which he has played at previous Chutzpah! festivals; drummer John Bollinger of Barbez; bass saxophonist Colin Stetson of Arcade Fire and Tom Waits’ band; and Jordan McLean and Stuart Bogie, the trumpet and tenor sax from the horn section of the band Antibalas. The group “seamlessly melds prayer poems and modern beats, ancient Jewish cantorial music with blues, afro-beat, desert rhythms and rock.”
Also on stage for one night only is Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You, starring Warren Kimmel, with vocalist Tess Neff, percussionist Phil Belanger, bass player Alison Dalton and led by music director/pianist Wendy Bross Stuart. The cabaret-style show chronicles Kimmel’s 40-year (and still going strong) theatrical career. The actor, who was born in Johannesburg, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and has played leading roles in England and Canada, everything from Dan Goodman in Next to Normal to Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You takes place at the Rothstein Theatre on Sunday, Feb. 26, 7 p.m.
A special post-festival Chutzpah! concert features the Vancouver première of the Touré-Raichel Collective on Sunday, April 29, 8 p.m., with a second show added on Monday, April 30, 8 p.m., both at the Rothstein Theatre.
Pianist/composer Idan Raichel, “who sold out the Chan Centre on his last Vancouver visit, is credited with changing the face of Israeli popular music with his pioneering blend of Yemenite chants, biblical psalms, Ethiopian folk music, Arabic poetry and Caribbean rhythms.”
Raichel and Malian guitarist/songwriter Vieux Farka Touré – who has been described as “the Hendrix of the Sahara” – met by chance at an airport in Europe. They became friends and began to collaborate musically. They got together at a studio in Tel Aviv a couple of years ago and, from that recording session, the Touré-Raichel Collective was created. The group, which also includes Israeli bassist Amit Carmeli and Malian djembe and calabash player Souleymane “Souley” Kané, will have their first CD (The Tel Aviv Session) released on March 27 by Cumbancha.
According to Touré’s website, “The live concert reflects the natural spontaneity and free-form creativity of the recording sessions, allowing audiences to experience firsthand the invention of sublime and transcendent music that crosses boundaries of country, culture and tradition.”
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