In 2010 a sponsored three-day celebration of Indian culture allowed Chicago’s World Music Festival to expand from seven days to ten, and even without that extra bump, its 13th annual edition is eight days long. Given how diminished many of the city’s other music fests have been by budget cuts, it’s an impressive accomplishment, even considering that the first day’s programming consists of just one show—a free set by Chicago’s Occidental Brothers Dance Band International at Summerdance.
Of course, the crippled economy has affected the World Music Festival’s bookings. This year there are fewer Chicago premieres and more artists who’ve played earlier iterations of the fest—and sadly, one of the most exciting repeat visitors, Romany singer Esma Redzepova, had to cancel to due to visa problems. (So did the amazing Congolese street band Staff Benda Bilili, who were supposed to headline Pritzker Pavilion on their first stateside tour.) But plenty of excellent artists are still scheduled to play, and a few—including Malian singer and guitarist Sidi Toure and eclectic Italian ensemble Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino—are making their local debuts.
The WMF is also presenting four acts in cooperation with the new Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements festival, this weekend in Eckhart Park: Toure, Bomba Estereo, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and Fool’s Gold.
(See more on Brilliant Corners.) And Benda Bilili, a new documentary about Staff Benda Bilili, premieres in Chicago with a free screening in the Cultural Center’s Claudia Cassidy Theater at 1 PM on Sunday, September 18.
World Music Festival shows take place at 22 venues around the city (addresses and other info are on page B29), and except where noted they’re free and all-ages. Bills are listed in chronological order, with openers first and headliners last. Advance tickets to events with admission fees are usually available from the venues; for details see worldmusicfestivalchicago.org. Considering the vagaries of international touring, last-minute schedule changes are always a possibility; updates will be announced on Twitter and Facebook. The fest also has its own free Android app, but iPhone users are out of luck.
As usual the early weekday performances at the Claudia Cassidy Theater will air as part of Continental Drift on Northwestern University’s WNUR (89.3 FM). The festival once again closes with “One World Under One Roof,” a free evening-length extravaganza that transforms the Cultural Center into a minifestival, with overlapping sets in three different halls inside the building. —PM
Thursday, Sept. 15
7:30 PM | Spirit of Music Garden
Friday, Sept. 16
5:30 PM | Navy Pier
Cafe Antarsia Locals Cafe Antarsia dress up their story-songs with facile flourishes of eastern European and cabaret music and heaping helpings of theatrical overkill. —PM
6:30 PM | National Mexican Museum of Art
Citlalli Castellano & Mariachi Nuevo Jalisco This local singer performs with a traditional mariachi band. —PM
7 PM | Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements, Eckhart Park | $20
7:30 PM | Spirit of Music Garden
Joaquin Diaz Though he left his native Dominican Republic more than two decades ago to settle in Montreal, accordionist and singer Joaquin Diaz hasn’t lost his touch with his homeland—or with merengue, its most famous musical export. Rather than the genre’s hyperactive, chintzy modern iterations, he plays something more rustic and traditional—merengue tipica, more or less. In keeping with the romantic theme of his most recent album, Mi Corazon (Nuits D’Afrique), Diaz breaks up the upbeat numbers with a few boleros for the slow dancers—but most of the record is wall-to-wall rapid-fire rhythm, a lattice of grooves that come together unfailingly for accents on the one and the three. —PM
8 PM | Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements, Eckhart Park | $20
8 PM | Old Town School of Folk Music | $10 suggested donation
House of Waters The hammered dulcimer is a very versatile instrument, and Max ZT of House of Waters spends both his band’s CDs, Elsewhere and Peace the Coats, demonstrating that. Sometimes sounding like a mandolin, sometimes like a harp, sometimes like a kalimba, sometimes like a pizzicato violin, the dulcimer provides the trio’s backbone with its delicate, almost liquid notes. Bassist Moko Fukushima (who has roots in jazz) and percussionist Luke Notary (who’s studied with a djembe master in Senegal and toured with Cirque du Soleil) pitch in to create a sound that’s mostly calm and graceful, dominated by resonating strings. The music could use a little more dynamic range, and the players have assimilated their Indian and African training and influences so smoothly they almost disappear—but it’s hard to argue with the loveliness of their performances. —MK
8 PM | Reggie’s Rock Club | $12, 18+
L’Orchestre Super Vitesse This local instrumental group, led by Occidental Brothers guitarist Antonio Carella (also a former member of Chicago Afrobeat Project), pays homage to the Cuban-influenced music produced in the late 60s and 70s in west African countries like Guinea, Mali, and Senegal, evoking that era accurately and elegantly. —PM
Toubab Krewe This jam band from Asheville, North Carolina, started out six years ago playing an improbable fusion of heavy southern rock and west African music. On their latest, TK2 (Nat Geo), they’ve improved their reach—”Mariama” has flourishes of something approximating stride piano, and “Carnvalito” szounds like Manu Chao—but not necessarily their grasp. —PM
8:30 PM | Navy Pier
Primitive Percussionist John Yost of “rhythm based events organization” Rhythm Revolution leads a glorified drum circle. —PM
9 PM | Mayne Stage | $15, 18+
Malika Zarra Though she was born in Morocco, vocalist Malika Zarra left when she was three and grew up in France. After moving to New York in 2004 she began to explore her musical heritage, but anyone hoping for her to dig deep into those roots on the recent Berber Taxi (Motema) will be disappointed. She’s fashioned a slick jazz-pop fusion with Moroccan flourishes (an occasional clatter from the metal castanets called krakebs, a thwack on a bendir or frame drum) and some Berber and Arabic lyrics—it sounds like a mix of Zap Mama and Esperanza Spalding. Zarra is a wonderful singer, but neither her sound nor her songs can yet equal her voice. —PM
9 PM | Martyrs’ | $12, 21+
Andreas Kapsalis & Goran Ivanovic Duo This long-running local acoustic-guitar duo injects lots of improvisation and jazz-wise harmony into everything from flamenco and bossa nova to Balkan dance music. —PM
Saturday, Sept. 17
Noon | Dock at Montrose Harbor
Joaquin Diaz See Fri 9/16.
1 PM | Navy Pier
House of Waters See Fri 9/16.
1 PM | South Shore Cultural Center
Blitz the Ambassador This Ghanaian rapper moved to the U.S. in 2001 to study at Kent State, and after ten years here the only real trace of his homeland in his music are its smart lyrics, which focus on African social and political issues. —PM
3 PM | Navy Pier
3 PM | Margate Park
Tsukasa Taiko Students Recital The youth ensemble of Tsukasa Taiko, Chicago’s best-known traditional Japanese drumming group, performs under the direction of bassist Tatsu Aoki. —PM
3:15 PM | Edgewater GRalley Festival | $10
5:45 PM | Edgewater GRalley Festival | $10
Malika Zarra See Fri 9/16.
6 PM | Navy Pier
Chai Found Music Workshop This group from Taipei performs traditional and contemporary classical music from Taiwan and China. —PM
7 PM | International House | $8, $5 students
Arooj Aftab Arooj Aftab, a Berklee College of Music student from Lahore, Pakistan, has posted covers of sad and meditative Western tunes like “Comfortably Numb” and “Hallelujah” online as she works on her debut album, but the roots of her own compositions run deep in qawwali and other forms of Sufi song—when she talks about her spiritual mentors in interviews, she sounds utterly, raptly starstruck. Her beautiful voice is more than capable of the ever-climbing ululation that lifts listeners into trance states, and though she’s probably still too young to have developed the depth that qawwali demands, she’s a talent to watch. —MK
Alsarah & the Nubatones Sudanese expat Alsarah leads this compact New York combo in traditional songs from her beleaguered country, as well as some original tunes that explore similar sounds. —PM
Wust El Balad This popular Egyptian group wouldn’t sound too terribly out of place on Lite FM, except for the traditional Middle Eastern instruments (oud, hand percussion) and consonant Arabic singing. —PM
7:30 PM | Spirit of Music Garden
Bulgarika featuring Nikolay Kolev This nimble Bulgarian group, which includes onetime Ivo Papasov accordionist Ivan Milev, plays the high-octane Romany folk music of its homeland. —PM
8 PM | Old Town School of Folk Music | $10
8 PM | Navy Pier
Blitz the Ambassador See above.
8 PM | Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements, Eckhart Park | $20
10 PM | Martyrs’ | $15, 21+
Toubab Krewe See Fri 9/16. Mad Professor (see above) will give the band’s set a live dub mix.
Sunday, Sept. 18
1 PM | Navy Pier
Opposition Party Chicago’s Opposition Party gigs at a wide variety of local venues, but it should feel especially at home in front of a World Music Festival audience. You might guess that a band calling its jammy pan-African sound AfroFunkDubJazz would specialize in provoking crowds into constant sweaty motion, and you’d be right. The Opposition Party just self-released a live CD, Live at Primitive, and though it’s mostly covers—Bob Marley, Fela Kuti, Burning Spear, Herbie Hancock, Thomas Mapfumo, Mulatu Astatke—the group’s ballsy to play a few of its originals alongside them. The Opposition Party’s songs—mostly by keyboardist Joshua Siegal—acquit themselves well enough, but the band’s horn section and percussionists own the show. —MK
2 PM | South Shore Cultural Center
3 PM | Preston Bradley Hall
Friends of the Gamelan This long-running gamelan—the finest such ensemble in the city, and to be honest the only one—plays the entrancing, polyrhythmic Indonesian traditional music of the same name, dominated by the distinctive sound of metallophones. —PM
4 PM | Navy Pier
Bulgarika featuring Nikolay Kolev See Sat 9/17.
5 PM | Spirit of Music Garden
Sergent Garcia When I first heard Sergent Garcia more than a decade ago, I was charmed by their unself-conscious mix of reggae, dancehall, and salsa, which front man Bruno Garcia called “salsamuffin.” But this French band’s latest record, Una y Otra Vez (Cumbancha), marks the endpoint of a subsequent slide into world-in-a-blender mediocrity. It’s like Komar & Melamid conducted a horrible experiment to see what the entire Putumayo catalog would sound like compressed into a single album. —PM
6 PM | International House | $5
Kutumba See Sat 9/17.
Chai Found Music Workshop
See Sat 9/17.
6 PM | Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements, Eckhart Park | $20
Fool’s Gold A Los Angeles-based group playing an updated take on a specific strain of pop-rock developed in the UK in the early 80s doesn’t seem like the most obvious choice for a world-music festival, but a couple of things about Fool’s Gold help this booking make sense. First, lead vocalist and cofounder Luke Top, who was born in Israel, sings much of the group’s self-titled 2009 debut in Hebrew. Second, Fool’s Gold draw on the snaking lead-guitar melodies of Nigerian highlife—and because Top and company borrow shamelessly from the playbooks of Celtic-influenced bands like Big Country, that African flavor collides synergistically with wisps of traditional music from the UK. —MR
7 PM | Mayne Stage | $15
Nuriya New York singer Nuriya has an unlikely-sounding multicultural background—she’s the daughter of exiled Syrian and Iraqi Jews who grew up in Mexico City—but her music is predictable adult-contemporary pop dosed with antiseptic flamenco guitar. —PM
8 PM | Reggie’s Rock Club | $12, $10 in advance, 18+
Twilight Circus Dub Sound System Canadian Ryan Moore got hooked on dub in the 80s, and after settling in the Dutch city of Nijmegen in 1992, he launched a career as a dub producer. He also spent much of the 90s playing bass and drums with the Legendary Pink Dots, but left the band once his own Twilight Circus project took off. —PM
8 PM | Old Town School of Folk Music | $10
Marco Calliari Born in Montreal to Italian immigrants, Marco Calliari cofounded a thrash-metal band called Anonymus in 1989—at that point, it would seem, he wasn’t too attached to his roots. But as the years passed, his interest shifted to the traditional music of his homeland, and in 2003 he released his first folk-influenced album. In ‘06 he left Anonymus, who soldiered on without him, and threw himself into his solo career; last year’s Al Faro Est (Casa Nostra) brings a raucous Tom Waits flavor to original songs steeped in Italian folk. —PM
8 PM | Lincoln Hall | $15, 21+
Black Bear Combo This Chicago group brings a punkish flair and garage-band energy to Balkan brass, with fidelity to tradition instead of Gogol Bordello-style showbiz kitsch. —PM
Steve Gibons Gypsy Rhythm Project with Nicolae Feraru Led by violinist Steve Gibons, this outfit has grown into one of Chicago’s go-to groups for stripped-down, old-fashioned Romany music—and there’s only one ringer in the bunch, cimbalom virtuoso and Romanian expat Nicolae Feraru. —PM
Monday, Sept. 19
Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater
Marco Calliari See Sat 9/17.
Megitza Quartet These locals play a rock-flavored mix of eastern European styles. —PM
7 PM | Claudia Cassidy Theater
8 PM | Martyrs’ | $10, 21+
Megitza Quartet See above.
Marco Calliari See Sat 9/17.
Tuesday, Sept. 20
Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater
DePedro If you don’t count soundtracks, it’s been three years since Calexico has made a new record, but front man Joey Burns has kept increasingly busy as a producer. The Spanish group Amparanoia seems to have a thing for his indie-pop take on mariachi and spaghetti-western sounds: last year he worked with the group’s popular singer, Amparo Sanchez, and he’s been collaborating with guitarist Jairo Zavala (aka DePedro) for even longer. Last year’s Nubes de Papel (Nat Geo) is their second DePedro album together, and Zavala sounds very much at ease in Burns’s woozy desert hybrids—in fact, the Spaniard has played guitar in touring versions of Calexico. Zavala sings a few tunes in English (including a somnambulant cover of the Velvet Underground’s “What Goes On“), and despite his heavy accent, his atmospheric, ballad-heavy music sounds like it belongs on this side of the Atlantic. —PM
7 PM | Instituto Cervantes | $15, $10 members
DePedro See above.
8 PM | Lincoln Hall | $15, 21+
Bomba Estereo See Fri 9/16.
8 PM | Martyrs’ | $15, 21+
Mar Caribe Banjo player Tom McGettrick leads this Chicago instrumental ensemble, which has spent almost five years fine-tuning a sound that overlaps pretty thoroughly with the spaghetti-western desert pop of early Calexico. On the band’s forthcoming album, The Law, the music isn’t much more original than on its previous release, but the playing is tighter and more skilled. —PM
9 PM | Hideout | $10, 21+
Movits! At this point pretty much every musical style on earth has been crossbred with hip-hop. Movits! aren’t the first to try mixing it with hot jazz, but as far as I know they do the best job. Part of that is because this trio from Lulea, Sweden, is willing to embrace the goofiness of the combination—they perform in black tie and keep the banjos and Frenchy accordion high in the mix—but the bigger reason is that they’ve located the two styles’ shared love of raucous, bumptious rhythms and giddy racket. —MR
Wednesday, Sept. 21
Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater
Movits! See Tue 9/20.
5:30 PM | Hostelling International
DJ Sound Culture David Chavez, who books world music and jazz concerts under the name Sound Culture, spins records that parallel his programming choices, though with a bit more dance-club flavor. —PM
Frigg Heads up, fiddle fans. Sure, you know and love the Appalachian, Nova Scotian, and Scottish and Irish styles—but what about the Scandinavian traditions, perennially underrated on these shores? This young group from small-town Finland (with two Norwegian members armed with resonating Hardanger fiddles) hopes to change that. Most of the members are students of the same teacher, and on their latest album, the self-released Grannen, they harmonize beautifully to produce a fluid, almost aquatic sound, enhanced by delightful complementary instrumentation like harmonium and Estonian bagpipes. They lean toward the cheerful, carefree traditional dance music of their respective nations—and yes, such music exists even the land of the ice and snow. When you see so little of the sun in the winter, it’s only natural to want to re-create some of the feel of a summer breeze on your skin. —MK
6:30 PM | Millennium Park
8 PM | Mayne Stage | $15
Calypso Caravan featuring Calypso Rose, Lord Superior, and Clyde “Lightning” George The Calypso Caravan was added to the fest after Staff Benda Bilili announced the cancellation of their first U.S. tour this Tuesday—and for a last-minute substitution, it’s pretty impressive. Calypso Rose, born in Tobago and based in Queens, New York, is one of the greatest living practitioners of her namesake style, and in recent years she’s deftly added reggae to her repertoire. Trinidad’s Lord Superior (aka Andrew Marcano) is very nearly a match for Rose in notoriety and skill, and Clyde “Lightning” George, a Trindadian expat living in Chicago, is a master of the steel drums. —PM
Creole Choir of Cuba This ten-member vocal group from the Cuban city of Camaguey—known back home as Desandann (“descendents”)—formed in 1994, as the island’s economy withered from the aftereffects of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Rather than embrace the familiar sound of Cuban son, as pioneering a cappella group Vocal Sampling did in the early 90s, the Creole Choir of Cuba looked to the music of their Haitian ancestors—who’d been twice wronged, first by the African slave trade and then again by their French masters, who manipulated them into a second round of servitude in Cuba after the Haitian revolution. The songs on their U.S. debut, Tande-La (Real World), which the choir sings in Spanish, French, and Creole, are raucous with fervent call-and-response vocals and driving rhythms. And the choir does more than revive old traditions—some of their lyrics address the brutal reign of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, for instance, or the crippling fallout of a simple robbery. —PM
8 PM | Chief O’Neill’s | $10 donation
Brock McGuire Band This Irish folk quartet from County Clare is steeped in tradition, but not to the point of rigid purism: the recent Green Grass Blue Grass (Paulman Music) is a collaboration with bluegrass heavies like Ricky Skaggs and Aubrie Haynie that explores the commonalities between the two genres. —PM
8:30 PM | Old Town School of Folk Music | $5 suggested donation
9:30 PM | Empty Bottle | $12, 21+
Frigg See above.
Movits! See Tue 9/20.
Thursday, Sept. 22
Noon | Claudia Cassidy Theater
Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole with Shawn Pimental Twenty-seven-year-old Hawaiian singer and dancer Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole has a remarkable voice and expert pitch control; he can deliver traditional oli chants with piercing authority and strummy sing-alongs with enough gentle soulfulness to make Jack Johnson kick a stone. Unfortunately, his most recent album, 2008’s Kaumakaiwa (Mountain Apple), favors the latter—at times I thought I was listening to an Anne Murray reissue. —PM
Creole Choir of Cuba See Wed 9/21.
Middle East Music Ensemble of Chicago The Middle East Music Ensemble of Chicago was founded at the U. of C. in 1997 and includes a wide array of students and visiting musicians who all share an interest in the beautiful sounds of Middle Eastern music as well as the complex theory and rich history behind its various forms. Past concerts have sometimes focused on specific themes, such as Turkish folk or the Iraqi oud tradition; the ensemble has a depth and range that’s pretty astounding, considering the vastness of the territory it’s charged itself with covering. Founding director Issa Boulos has taken a job in Qatar, and he’s been replaced by Wanees Zarour, a Chicago-based Palestinian composer who plays buzuq, violin, and percussion. —MK
Noon | Daley Plaza
6:30 PM | Randolph Cafe
Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole with Shawn Pimental See above.
7 PM | Preston Bradley Hall
7:30 PM | Claudia Cassidy Theater
Frigg See Wed 9/21.
8:30 PM | Preston Bradley Hall
Middle East Music Ensemble of Chicago See above.
9 PM | Randolph Cafe
Brock McGuire Band See Wed 9/21.
9 PM | Claudia Cassidy Theater
9:45 PM | Preston Bradley Hall
Creole Choir of Cuba See Wed 9/21.
10:15 PM | Claudia Cassidy Theater
Bill O’Connell Triple Play with Dave Valentin & Richie Flores Keyboardist Bill O’Connell has worked with a wide range of jazz artists over the past four and a half decades—Charles Fambrough, Nnenna Freelon, Emily Remler—but his heart belongs to Latin jazz. He got his start working for the legendary Mongo Santamaria in 1977, and by far his longest-running and most meaningful musical partnership has been with Latin-jazz flutist Dave Valentin. His band Triple Play puts that musical bond front and center: he and Valentin improvise on O’Connell originals and classics by the likes of Santamaria and Milton Nascimento. Conga player Richie Flores (a veteran of bands led by Eddie Palmieri, Papo Vazquez, and David Sanchez, among many others) deepens the clave feel, and on the trio’s self-titled 2008 debut for Savant Records, he and the front line artfully balance delicate melodies and tough rhythms. —PM