ON the Beat | Dance-Static Messages from Mali

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This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on April 11, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

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Dancing isn’t your typical audience behavior jam at UCSB’s Campbell Hall. But dance fever — fueled by a Malian heat source — spilled onstage as the captivating Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara guided dance-inclined audience members to fill and shake the stage. On this final night of her American tour, Diawara kept the groove pumping for longer than usual, calling out dance couplings while her hot, plugged-in, five-piece band kept the fires burning.

Beyond the dance sensation on Sunday night, at a UCSB Arts & Lectures event qualifying as the so-called “world music” concert of the season, Diawara amply displayed her iridescent bouquet of gifts. Among those are a mesmerizing presence and vocal prowess, a social conscience with a focus on women’s rights (including a song indicting the barbaric practice of genial mutilation in her home continent), and a stunning fashion sense. She is a strong candidate for this year’s best-dressed performer in these parts.

Fatoumata Diawara at Campbell Hall | Photo: David Bazemore

Diawara, whose star began to rise with 2011’s Fatou and is riding high on her new album London Ko, now belongs firmly in a pantheon of important singers from Mali, including the great Oumou Sangaré and Rokia Traoré. Her career includes a strong film and visual aspect, and the video elements at Campbell Hall could be distracting from the fully engaging real-time presence onstage. Her live presence trumps any additives. Diawara comes out of the West African griot tradition as well as the Afrobeat pulse inspired by Fela Kuti, and is pushing those indigenous styles into a contemporary, globalized dynamic.

Diawara sings and dances like there’s no tomorrow and a better tomorrow on the horizon. We came, we saw and heard, and became believers.

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Goleta Afternoon Highs On the Lawn, and Off

Right around the time that the rough and ready party band the Brasscals broke into Sonny Rollins’ ecstatic/anthemic “St. Thomas,” on the Stowe House lawn last Saturday afternoon, we realized that everything was briefly right in the world. Or at least in greater Goleta.

The occasion was the Independent-sponsored “Backyard Brunch” event, launched in 2019 but dormant during the pandemic, until now. The fickle weather gods cooperated and supplied a sunny day beaming down on this idyllic green patch of lawn fringed with embracing trees. Fine food and drink flowed in small but tantalizing portions, from such savory outlets as Goodland BBQ, Elubia’s Kitchen, and ales from Validation, Fig Mtn, and Firestone.

And the proudly analog, mobile Brasscals showed once again that they know how to have a good time — and instigate the same in whatever location they happen to be. I caught them at Tully’s on the Westside, packed in and brassily grooving, and they’re known to show up at Night Lizard. On the green at the Stowe, though, the band really stretched out, later slithering down amongst the crowd and getting interactive. Long may they interact.

Mathis Magic Returns to the Casino

By some narrow-minded cultural standard, the old school jewel that is Johnny Mathis is a remnant of another era. With a golden songbook of hits going back to 1957’s “It’s Not for Me to Say,” Mathis burst onto the scene in a period before rock & roll became rock and pop, and singer-songwriter culture ruled the radio roost. Mathis’s route is that of the singer sans the songwriter qualifier, and he found his calling early.

Pop cultural biases aside, chances are very good that any true music fan can appreciate the timeless virtues of craft, clarity, and controlled emotion in Mathis’ voice. It’s a privilege to hear him in a live context, and he has been a repeat visitor to the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, where he has lived. His latest appearance, last Friday night, was another delectable blast from the past and renewable present, even if his performance was a tad rusty. A few notes were raspier than usual and he dealt with occasional lyric amnesia (he doesn’t believe in teleprompters) with well-placed and rhythmically correct fillers of “I forgot the words.” At the show’s end, he apologized for not being in top form, saying, “I haven’t done this in a long long time.”

But no matter: Mathis moved smoothly through a program of greatest hits medleys and full sun format on such jewels as “Misty” and “99 Miles From L.A.,” the bittersweet tune by Albert Hammond and Hal David, with a Jimmy Webb-ish yearning tone. His long-standing pianist and music director John Scott Lavender led the well-oiled machine of a big band plus strings through sumptuous arrangements, a perfect physical wardrobe for that inimitable voice.

Mathis capped off the casino set with the party-stepping stuff of a creatively rearranged “Brazil” and a down-the-middle “Let the Good Times Roll.” Which they did, in the uniquely Mathis-ized way.

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To-Doings:

This weekend, the Granada Centennial Weekend presents a three-night sandwich of events, with Friday’s film night showcasing titles premiering in this space — Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. and Star Wars, and Sunday bringing on an evening of local talents. And the meat in the Saturday night middle is the Pacific Jazz Orchestra, an ambitious new project led by noted composer-producer-Oscars arranger Chris Walden. (See Independent cover story here).

Eminent jazz legend Herbie Hancock pays a too-rare visit to our town at the Arlington Theatre on Wednesday, April 17 (see story here). Hancock, 83 and hitting the road with an impressive fervor these days, is one of the few remaining musicians with a lineage and a potent influence going back to the ‘60s, and whose acoustic-meets-electronic career has caromed from deep dish jazz to more populist fare. In other words, his shows bring something for the veritable everyone. It’s a not-to-miss show on the local calendar.’

One of the famed musicians in our midst is UCSB faculty pianist Paul Berkowitz, who, among other achievements, has specialized in Schubert and was a mentor to Thomas Ades (who premiered a new work with the Danish String Quartet this week at Campbell Hall). Berkowitz, who gave a fascinating recital in 2021, returns to Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on Friday, where he will presumably shed clarifying light on a program of Haydn, “Les Six” composer Francis Poulenc, and Schumann’s “Humoreske, Op. 20.”

The Santa Barbara Master Chorale closes its season this weekend, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at the First Presbyterian Church, with a program titled “I Will Rise: Music of Resilience.” Led by director David Lozano Torres, the program includes music of Leonard Bernstein, Beethoven, Alice Parker, and more.

Next Wednesday’s edition of the lovable and vibe-alicious “Tales from the Tavern” goes to Austin, Texas. More precisely, Austin sends its musical regards via the respected “Americana” cultural couriers Betty Soo and Jon Dee Graham. Go early and savor the goods and atmosphere of the Maverick Saloon.