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2 4 Africa
Given the stylistic breadth of the Fuji Rock roster each year, a theme is hard to come by and chiefly the product of some accidental confluence of zeitgeisty preferences and booking serendipity. This year’s could be 90s Britrock owing to the huge profiles of each of the headlining acts, but Britrock tends to dominate Fuji in any year so any consideration of such would merely be an exercise in pedantry. Last year’s mini-blowout of celebrated groups from Africa is more like it and provided a clutch of amazing memories that are still fresh in the minds of those who were lucky enough to witness them. Though Fuji’s eclectic mission has always guaranteed it will provide a showcase for African music–unarguably the motherlode of the rhythmic sensibility behind Western pop–the It’s-a-Small-World mindset that has dominated pop in the past decade makes African collaborations more visible, as exemplified by last year’s second most exciting show, the Congotronics vs. Rockers jam at the Orange Court. The most exciting? Malian lovebirds Amadou & Mariam.
This year we have a return performance or two from Seun Kuti, one of the scions of African music, but the Africa-Europe synergy characteristic of pop in recent years is more aptly represented by The Very Best, a working partnership between Johan Hugo of the production team Radioclit and Malawi singer Esau Mwamwaya. The pair met in London and since Hugo grew up in Sweden, it’s safe to say that the expat spirit had as much to do with their collaborative energy as did Hugo’s love of African music and Mwamwaya’s vocal talent. One of the more uncomfortable truisms about African music is its ability to make people happy, as if the artists’ intentions were nothing more than seeking approval. The beauty of The Very Best is that they distill this ineluctable quality to its purest club essence, which isn’t necessarily its danceability. If the lamest cut on the group’s debut album, Warm Heart of Africa (made when a third member at the time) is the one where the singer from Vampire Weekend duets with Mwamwaya it’s because English doesn’t do justice to Mwamwaya’s vocal fluidity. (M.I.A. does better on “Rain Dance,” probably because she raps) Hugo usually honors this fluidity by holding back. His tracks are rhythmically spare and, more importantly, don’t make any claims for “authenticity.” In fact, they sound like they were made by a white guy, but a very happy white guy. Authenticity has its benefits, but as the Congotronics show proved last year, it has only a slight bearing on whether or not you’re moved to jump all over the place. In that regard, we’re all from Africa.
