June 28 to July 8 - it had less variety of interest to me this year on the outdoor stages, yet it was still a good one, with some memorable indoor shows. The most pervasive theme both intentionally by the programmers, and by my own choices of which shows to see, was African music. The promoters honoured Fela Kuti this year (ten years on since his death), with his sons Femi and Seun (shay-oon) both featured, and several other bands that explicitly paid homage to him.
The Spectrum, decorated for the Fest; where I saw Baaba Maal last year, and Angelique Kidjo, Meshell Ndegeocello and Toumani Diabaté this year. Scheduled to be torn down soon. Sad.
The first night was Benin's Angelique Kidjo - phenomenal voice! - and later on at Club Soda, Montréal's own Afrodizz, who did a creditable set of Afrobeat. Great dancers, too:
The second night we crossed the Mediterranean for the indoor shows. First, at Metropolis, the trad/North African flamenco group from Seville, Son de la Frontera, opened for Barcelona's Ojos de Brujo, doing a blistering set and seeming a little stunned by the crowd's huge response. Then the Ojos' DJ/synth player brought Spain up to this century and the band kicked in with singer Marina stalking the stage furiously in flamboyant threads, her long dreads gathered back in a formidable mane.
Had to leave before their set was over to go catch Dhafer Youssef, who I've heard a bit about for his collaborations with various Scandinavian jazz/ambient/groove artists like Bugge Wesseltoft (who I saw later this fest.) He played at the wonderful space GESU with his triple fusion project: tabla player Jatinder Thakur and the (all-female) string quartet Divine Shadows Strings, both based in Vienna. Actually it could be considered a quadruple fusion, since Dhafer has mastered Tuvan-style throat overtone singing as well. He played his oud through a looper for a lot of the stuff. The balance between the elements was quite even. Very glad I saw it. And it was probably one of the most international ensembles I saw: two of the string players were from Australia, one from Austria, and one from Slovakia.
Middle East, India, Central Europe and Oz - that's typical of the musical landscape of Europe today.
No phone pix of that one, sorry.
Next installment soon.
