“This is the start of the beginning,” said the turbaned King Sunny Ade, his round face sporting a blinding smile as the juju churned around him. “Or the beginning of the start . . . “
In any case, the show Saturday at the Vic Theater was almost endless. And for about half the night, that was heavenly.
Ade is a superb guitarist and master showman. Known in Nigeria as “The Minister of Enjoyment,” he’s the godfather of juju music, a vital ingredient in ’70s and ’80s Afropop. In Ade’s hands, this is a joyful music, with a bed of rolling rhythms, led by the constant congress of three guitars. At the Vic, he played with 15 musicians, eight of whom were percussionists.
The bottom was provided by the Tope Akuni on traps and the young Tosi Hmuwo on congas, each pushing and outdoing the other while the limber Ade exchanged solos with the willowy John Apkan. Septuagenarians Femi Owomuyela and Mattew Olojede, who’ve been singing backup with Ade for about 40 years, showed off some limber, sexy moves while responding to the King’s calls.
And there were the women: three vibrating vixens who made only two short but mesmerizing appearances. These were curvy, full-bodied, fully dressed women loving every minute of their power. Whenever they came on, the Vic exploded in shouts and raised hands.
But somewhere just before 1 a.m. (they’d begun a little after 11, after a relatively calm highlife set by opener Prince Obi Osadebe), things took a turn. That’s when the “spraying” began. This is the Yoruba tradition of showering money onto singers in exchange for praise. And Ade is considered a master of this kind of improvisation.
For the first 15 minutes or so, this was great fun. Audience members, hands thick with bills, sauntered onstage and threw them at Ade, or stuck them on his sweaty forehead. Ade would disappear behind a circle of admirers, then pop up on the other side of the stage. By now having doffed the guitar, he made the audience laugh, giggle and roar with his praises, all expressed in his native Yoruba.
But then the praising went on and on, topping off at about an hour. By that time, Ade had lost more than half of the crowd. A show that began with such force ended with a whimper. What was left of the audience, exhausted, didn’t even bother to try for an encore. Ade had worn them out.
— Achy Obejas
Cube samples European tunes
Only a handful of senior European composers is heard with any frequency in the states, so Cube’s opening concert of the South Loop New Music Festival at Curtiss Hall Friday came as a welcome sampler of modern European music.
Among the highlights of Valerio Sannicandro’s “Enfasi cobalto” was a continuum of sustained and dovetailed drones that lingered in the ear even when bursts of aggressive color intervened. Helmut Zapf’s “Albedo VII” and Joanna Bruzdowicz’s “16 Tableaux d’une Exposition Salvador Dali” were edgy and derivative, respectively, yet succeeded on their own terms.
Herbert Brun’s “Gesto” seemed to mock its concision and craft, as Janice Misurell-Mitchell strode with her piccolo to music stands placed around Philip Morehead’s piano. By comparison, Hilary Tann’s staid “The Walls of Morlais Castle” and Sebastian Huydts’ neo-Baroque “On an Abandoned Theme” were safely bland.
Big names were not absent. Judith Weir’s piano work “The King of France” employed Spanish/Arabic folk music, balancing inventive craftsmanship with a bracing improvisatory sensibility. Tristan Murail’s “Le fou a pattes bleues,” featuring flutist Caroline Pittman and pianist Philip Morehead, was an intoxicating sonic blast, with bright bursts of color and overlapping melodic fragments.
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— Michael Cameron
John Williams still a thrill to hear
Guitar aficionados packed Orchestra Hall Saturday for an appearance by John Williams, who, after four decades of concerts, is still in command of a formidable technique, even if his frequent pauses for tuning sometimes produced less than perfect results.
Williams’ own “From a Bird” was an attractive set of six pieces that used a bird song as raw material for a tuneful, if cautious, expose of guitar color.
Bach’s mighty Chaccone in D minor for violin has inspired innumerable transcriptions, and William’s take on this monument of variation technique was as potent as any. The lyricism and intensity of the original were necessarily subdued, but its firm harmonic underpinnings and taut structural soundness more than compensated.
After fine readings of works by Albeniz and Sculthorpe, Williams then treated the audience to a generous sampling of short works by Venezuelan composers, most written as souped up variants of the Viennese waltz.
Ignacio Figueredo’s “Pasaje Los cuajaritos” was a virtuosic thrill ride, a tour de force that almost made one hear the clacking of maracas. Three works from Paraguayan composer Agustin Barrios Mangore shunned local color in favor of European models, with only modest success.
— M.C.