It’s not often when I’m surfing iTunes or looking through CD’s that I wonder, gosh, what would Antibalas listen to? But then I stumbled onto a post from Spinner that answered just that question. They asked Martin Perna, barry sax player for Antibalas, to run down his five favorite albums that fall under the vague label of World Beat:
1. ‘Os Afro Sambas,’ Baden Powell: Baden Powell is one of my favorite Brazilian guitarists. This project was from the ’60s, I think … really lushly orchestrated music of the Afro-Brazilian orixas.
2. ‘Cymande,’ Cymande: One of my all-time favorite bands — Caribbean expats in London in the late ’60s making West Indian hippie music. Find dozens of famous hip-hop samples on this album.
3. ‘Best of …,’ Victor Jara: Jara is the Bob Dylan of Chile, except that he was kidnapped by the army, tortured, dismembered and killed in front of thousands of other political prisoners during the CIA-funded Dirty War.
4. ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,’ Fela and Egypt 80: One of my favorite Fela tunes — full of subtlety and sophistication. At this point, he had stopped calling his music “Afrobeat” and referred to it as “African Classical Music.” This album will show you why.
5. ‘Concepts in Unity,’ Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevayorquino: An incredible summit of legendary Afro- and Afro-Caribbean musicians throwing down on the ultimate diasporic fusion record that doesn’t sound like fusion at all. ‘Chocolate’s Guajira’ is one of my all-time favorites.
Antibalas live in Harrisonburg, Virginia in 2004.
Minneapolis World Beat 