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POPULAR MUSIC
Goapele last year. She's now shed her dreads, and she sang about change in her 9:30 club concert, but pretty much stuck to the old stuff. Which was fine.
(By M.j. Kim -- Getty Images)
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Who's Blogging  |
Goapele ended with her 2003 single "Closer." The crowd's excited reaction to the old favorite, easily the singer's most popular track, contradicted everything she said about the power of renewal; it made change seem overrated.
-- Sarah Godfrey
Lucky Dube Tribute Concert
On Oct. 18, South African reggae star Lucky Dube was carjacked, shot and killed in front of two of his children in a suburb of Johannesburg.
The socially conscious, politically minded Dube was remembered with a tribute concert on Friday at Zanzibar. Sadly, the show didn't live up to the man it was honoring.
While doors opened at 6 p.m., the performances didn't begin until 11. In fact, the show took so long to get going that one of the evening's artists, the talented Jalani Horton of Bambu Station, decided to cut his losses and leave because there was so little communication about what was happening.
By the time Chris Ntaka -- Dube's original guitarist -- took the stage, the evening was a blur for the people who had arrived early. After many hours of danceable reggae and African music being pumped over the sound system, Ntaka and company performed a low-key set of songs featuring guitar, percussion (and, later, sax) and the singers Loide and Anna Mwalagho.
Naturally, the concert featured several Dube tunes such as "Born to Suffer," which features the suddenly prophetic lyrics "Without their father/Children suffering," and "Back to My Roots," which features the suddenly ironic lyrics "I went to the party the other night . . . I was disappointed, yeah."
But while all the artists are gifted, their hour-long set felt like a practice more than a performance.
After an unfathomable one-hour intermission, S.T.O.R.M. Reggae Band took the stage at 1 a.m. Those who stuck around, however, were treated to 40 minutes of high-energy jams from what is arguably this area's best reggae band. It was the sort of smart, punchy performance that honored the indefatigable spirit and music of Lucky Dube.
