End of the year...2018
End of 2018 reflections, touring, travels, work, life.
highlights from last few months…
Emerald Cup (Santa Rosa, CA) with Antibalas (12/16/2018)
This was a beautiful cannabis culture event in Sonoma County. It was pouring rain and I was in full business mode so I didn’t sample any of the world class (and legal) cannabis, but I did get to see an entire set by the ever-amazing Dirty Dozen Brass Band who played right before us.
Trópico Festival (Acapulco, MX) with Antibalas (12/8/2018)
I wish all festivals were like this—right on the beach, super laid back, the stage was walking distance from our hotel rooms. The lineup was really cool—Nicola Cruz, De La Soul, Celso Piña and Giorgio Moroder were my highlights. They don’t do festivals like this in the US.
Art Basel: PAMM (Miami, FL) with Antibalas (12/6/2018)
Photo: WorldRedey
This was a jump off concert for the Perez Art Museum-Miami for Art Basel 2018. We played on a beautiful stage right on Biscayne Bay. I also got to make a visit to the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens to discuss proposals for some interpretative history projects.
Complete Last Waltz (Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY) (11/17/2018)
I get to do this every two years with an amazing crew of friends that includes my Antibalas horn mates plus John Altieri on tuba, the amazing house band, and singers including Nels Cline, Binky Griptite, Nicole Atkins and a bunch of other people.
September-October
Fall touring with Antibalas all over—Calgary and Edmonton, DC, Brooklyn, Richmond VA…
And lots of time spent in California with my man Gabriel Roth and bandmate Amayo mixing the new Antibalas album for Daptone records.
Back from Bogotá with Antibalas
Whoa! Our trip Bogotá was beautiful. So intense, dynamic and delicious, and as always, fleetingly short.
I went with Antibalas to perform at Rock al Parque, a three-day (FREE!!) festival produced/funded by the city of Bogotá, featuring three stages, probably 100 or so regional, national and international bands, and over 300,000 people coming through.
It was so much fun but not without its challenges. Each band only had 50 minutes to perform--we're just getting warmed up and into our third or fourth song by then. Bogotá is also (8,660 feet) above sea level. The altitude was no joke when it came to singing and blowing air through a horn. The cold weather (55F) was not ideal for tropical music but nonetheless it was a jam and a privilege to rock for such a great audience.
Highlights:
Seeing Javier Bonilla and his group present Afro-Colombian music at Bar El Chaman. Arepas, of course, and lots of good coffee. Some delicious vanilla-steeped rum at bar Matik Matik with insane vinyl DJS, hanging out with one of my favorite bands--La 33-- at the birthday of Santi, the pianist, meeting master quena/flautist Fabian Triana and receiving a beautiful quena as a gift along with his music, digging for second hand vinyl in the flea markets thanks to tips from Quantic.
UPDATE: Antibalas-Journey Back to the Motherland film on Kickstarter
UPDATE: We hit our and exceeded our goal!
Antibalas has just 24 hours to meet our Kickstarter goal of $50K to film our upcoming musical pilgrimage to Lagos, Nigeria.
In the past 29 days, over 421 supporters around the world have gotten us over 90% of the way there. Please help us reach this goal, and thanks to everyone who's already generously contributed.
New Collab: "Prisma Tropical" : Balún feat. Antibalas Horns
Congratulations to Balún on the release of their new album "Prisma Tropical" (out 7/20/2018).
I was honored to be invited to the studio with the Antibalas horns, recording arrangements by trumpeter and Antibalas bandmate Eric Biondo for the song "Pulsos."
The rough mixes of the record sounded fantastic and otherworldly. I'm so happy this crew is making music and that this record will be soon out in the world.
Collaboration: Dos Santos new album "LOGOS" feat. Antibalas horns out 6/15/2018
About 15 years ago I was passing through Austin Texas on my way back from México. My man Adrian Quesada introduced me to musician (and at that time grad student) Alex Chávez. I moved to Austin and lived there for several years, and got to collaborate on a few occasions with Alex and the group MITOTE.
The years went by...Alex earned a Ph.D and is now a professor at Notre Dame and a few years back got an exciting new project called Dos Santos up and running out of Chicago.
Last fall, while on tour with Antibalas, we linked up again and recorded two songs for the new Dos Santos album. The session was a trip: we had very little time in between soundcheck and the gig, so they built an impromptu recording studio across the street from Thalia Hall at 606 Records. Amidst the bins of vinyl and sips of very good tequila, the four of us--Jordan McLean and Eric Biondo (trumpets), Morgan Price (tenor sax) and myself (baritone sax) knocked out the two songs with great charts by Nick Mazzarella.
Thanks to Dos Santos for inviting the Antibalas horns to be a part of this beautiful work.
L-R: Pete "Maestro" Vale, Martín Perna, Alex Chavez
The record is officially out 6/15/2018 on International Anthem. Preview/order the record HERE.
Angelique Kidjo's REMAIN IN LIGHT: Album out 6/8/2018
Cover design: Kerry James Marshall
At the end of 2016, Angelique Kidjo asked me to compose and prepare horn arrangements for "Crosseyed and Painless" by Talking Heads.
I had grown up in the late 70s and early 80s listening to Talking Heads (thanks, MOM!!), recorded with David Byrne and St. Vincent a few years ago, and then served as the musical director for "The Music of David Byrne and Talking Heads" at Carnegie Hall in 2015, with Antibalas as the house band.
Little did I know that this would turn into doing horn arrangements for the entirety of Remain in Light, recording on the album with producer Jeff Bhasker, and touring the country and the world with Angelique, her band, amazing guest musicians (including David Byrne and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads, Nona Hendryx of Labelle, Lionel Loueke, keyboardists Ray Angry and Jason Lindner), and of course, my brothers from the Antibalas horns.
We just finished up a run of shows on the West Coast, and the project will continue to travel the world and beyond after the release of the album on June 8, 2018.
Live at the Theatre at Ace Hotel, Downtown LA. 5/5/2018. Photo: Oz McGuire
For those who got a chance to see the show, THANK YOU!! For those who haven't, brace yourselves! It is powerful and poetic.
Jamcruise 2018: Reflections
Putting aside for a moment the strangeness of being on a massive floating city and fraught politics of global capitalism inherent in pretty much everything we do, Jamcruise 16 was amazing and along with going to Cuba and Benin, probably the richest musical experiences of my life.
Five days, nights and morning of performing, listening, collaborating and creating with some of my most favorite and esteemed musicians, people I listened to and adored well before I ever imagined myself playing music: Maceo Parker, George Porter if the Meters, Steel Pulse, John Scofield, to make just a few.
I am truly grateful to have been a part of this and in awe of the tremendous amount of work it took to put together such a magical event. It was transformational and I want to see this happen again and that far more people- musicians and fans can experience this.
I am fascinated by the concept of modifying the concept of a cruise ship into something more sustainable. How could it run with a zero carbon footprint, with equitable labor practices, cooperative ownership, healthier connections with the people in the different port cities to build systems which promote economic self determination and cultural understanding and appreciation.
The cruise ships are sophisticated, well oiled machines and I wonder how much of this is possible only because of all the social and environmental costs and externalities that are hidden from us. Having several friends from Nicaragua who have spent decades working on and off ship, it is a mixed bag. It does offer new possibilities, relationships and income not possible at home. At the same time, the work is intense and demanding and full of assaults to ones dignity. And the price of being separated from ones family and community for periods of nine months at a time over several years.
All that to say that in addition to my gratitude to the people who organized the event, I am even deeper indebted to the people on the ship grinding tirelessly to create a space for other people to experience such an intensely joyful event. Til next time.
¡Orquesta Akokán! Out 3/30/18 on Daptone Records
Orquesta Akokán at Areito studios, La Habana, Cuba. (Photo: Joel Pront)
On March 30, Daptone Records will release the new album by Orquesta Akokán. It is among my favorite albums of the past few years--so much flavor, amazing arrangements and creative orchestration. Read more about them here at NPR program alt.Latino.
I was honored to have been asked to write the liner notes for the, which I'm including here:
Listening to the new LP by Orquesta Akokán, you can't help but feel the spirits of Cuba's musical giants radiating from the speakers. But honoring and caring for these spirits is not easy work, nor is it a task to be left solely to one generation. It is a collaboration of young and old; The elders know the traditions, the gestures, the incantations, but it is the younger generation that have the duty to learn, the strength to carry on, and the fire and soul to make new songs for new spirits.
In November of 2016, Michael Eckroth traveled to the hallowed Areito studios in Centro Habana with a stack of charts tucked under his arm. Arriving in the cavernous wood-paneled live room, he took stock of the players assembled by producer Jacob Plasse: a dozen or so of Cuba’s most ferocious and pedigreed wind and rhythm players from storied groups including Irakere and Los Van Van, the sensational veteran vocalist José “Pepito” Gómez, and a handful of seasoned young New York Latin music freaks. These musicians would transform his charts into the living, breathing document you’re holding in your hands.
An arpeggio tumbles sweetly down the keys of the piano, and the set bursts forth en masse with exclamatory trumpet blasts, introducing saxophones that immediately establish themselves as the center of a rhythm section. The arrangements carry the exquisite beauty, pathos, and playfulness of the renowned dance orchestras of the 1940s and 1950s who had recorded in this very room, evoking the ghosts of Arsenio Rodriguez, Perez Prado, and Beny Moré. And the robust, time-tested musical architectures of son cubano and mambo are present and skillfully honored through all nine of these original compositions. The melodious tres cubano, the swinging tumbao of the congas, the tight blend of vocal harmonies — they’re all there. Yet there’s something unequivocally fresh — saxophone sections playing montunos where you’d imagine a piano, an angelic, swinging flute you’d expect in a charanga recording, sones — vocal improvisations that have the seasoned flow and cadence of mid 1970s “salsa dura” singers, and of course, the appearance of the inimitable César “Pupy” Pedroso on piano. Somehow this synthesis of musical grammar and compositional styles, of Havana and New York, of old and new, makes perfect sense.
Akokán is a Yoruba word used by Cubans to mean “from the heart” or “soul”, so it comes as no surprise that a recording like this would find its way back to Brooklyn’s Daptone Records. For nearly a generation, the venerable label has brought us soulful music in a myriad of styles, made in the present, but with all the craft and flavor of the classic recordings of the past. In doing so Daptone has enshrined both the genres it honors as well as artists creating new works in the universal canon of dance music. It’s a perfect kitchen from which to serve this captivating baile between old and new — una sopa levantamuertos (soup to raise the dead), prepared with rhythm, with care, and above all, con akokán.
-Martín Perna, Antibalas
On Tour with Antibalas: West Coast / Rockies Spring 2018
Antibalas Spring 2018 tour dates on West Coast, Colorado and Idaho. Teaching at Penn State Spring 2018.
The year is off to a busy start. All this amidst the backdrop of total chaos. Cold days, hot days, snow in weird places, the threat of nuclear war and the daily erosion of democratic systems.
I digress. I'll be continuing the album tour for Antibalas's new album "Where the Gods Are In Peace." We're just back from Philly, DC, and Jamcruise 16, and our next stops are in Brooklyn followed by a West Coast run and dates in Boise! and Colorado. See upcoming dates below and check back for new additions or sign up to the Antibalas MAILING LIST.
I'm also teaching a semester-long undergraduate course titled AFAM 197 / MUSIC 297 "African Diaspora Music" at The Pennsylvania State University to 18 students. We're four weeks in. So far, so good.