Grupo Fantasma/Debo Band write-up

Last item for a while about the Debo band...my review of a show last week at the Iron Horse in Northampton.

I said, "Two big bands bring the funk to Western Mass., one the 11-piece Ethiopian-crossed-with-proggy-jazz Debo Band, the other Austin's mighty nine-man Grupo Fantasma. You wouldn't think that 11 or even nine people would fit on the Iron Horse's modest stage, but both bands pack them in. Debo's guitar player is almost entirely invisible behind the horn line, the bass and sousaphone players bob up and down, partly obscured by a lavish two-violin, one accordion electric gypsy band. Grupo Fantasma obscures its red-hot guitarist, too, behind a front line of timbales, bongos, singers, sax, trombone and trumpet players. But the sheer size of these bands, especially in such a constrained space, generates an an overwhelming, body-moving, surrounding sound. You can't not move to the beat. It's all around you."

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This video is from a couple of years ago, but still...




We're going to see the Hold Steady and Mount Carmel tonight, too. More on that later.

Debo Band live

The Debo Band


Grupo Fantasma

So I went to see the Debo Band and Grupo Fantasma last night and it was really, really fun. I will have a write-up later at Blurt (just finished writing it), but for now, here are a couple of photos and my review of the Debo Band's self-titled first album.

Debo Band
Debo Band
(Sub Pop/Next Ambience)

The Debo Band, with its eleven members and full, big band brass and reed sound, digs into "Akale Wube," a traditional Ethiopian folk song made famous by the great saxophonist (and sometime Ex collaborator) Getatchew Mekurya. Like Mekurya, the Debo Band takes a certain amount of liberty with the tune, underlining its swaggering funk rhythms with a decidedly not-Ethiopian sousaphone, executing its crazy, keening flourishes with a Celtic-leaning electric violin. Like bandleader Danny Mekonnen, born in the Sudan to Ethiopian parents, resident of North Dakota, Texas and, recently, Boston, a frequent visitor to East Africa, these songs are well-travelled and not wholly anchored geographically. Yes, they draw from the Golden Age of Ethiopian jazz - the Haile Sellassie-sponsored 1960s and 1970s heyday chronicled in Buda Music's Ethiopiques series - but no, we are not talking about museum quality reproduction. The Debo Band is a live band in every sense of the word, and even here, on record, you can hear them creating on the fly, bending well-loved tunes into new shapes, and injecting everything from Irish folk to East European oompah brass into the slink and strut of their materials.

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