1 post tagged “chicago afrobeat project”

Afrobeat is getting closer to Ithaca... Last night my daughter came along with me on the 54-mile trip to Syracuse to see the Chicago Afrobeat Project at Funk'n'Waffles.  What a cool place!  It's a former coffeeshop in a basement under a bar.  It was started by two guys who like funk music and made a name for themselves serving waffles at parties as students at Syracuse University.  So now they have a business serving up funk, and waffles.  And they've got the good funk: crates of records from 1970 plus or minus five years (the kind of stuff I've been getting into recently thanks to the 4 Brothers Beats blog), which they keep spinning on a turntable while the clientele chows down.  Here's what it looks like inside:

We had a Belgian waffle with maple syrup, and it was fantastic.  The opening band was an apparently popular local reggae band.  I will only say that I was not a reggae fan before the set, during the set, or after the set.  But I am an Afrobeat fan, and the Chicago Afrobeat Project delivered two sets of it.  They had just seven members (which I understand from this interview is the touring portion of their full 11-member group) but that's enough for a full Afrobeat sound when there's a baritone sax in the mix.  They also have the best keyboardist, Kevin Ford, that I've heard in an Afrobeat band.  His solos on organ and electric piano are acrobatic without straying out of the "action music" framework of Afrobeat and becoming a fusionesque wankfest.  The band is on tour promoting their new album, A Move to Silent Unrest; both of their albums are available in mp3 format from eMusic.  Here is "Crunch" from their self-titled first album (2005):

The Chicago Afrobeat Project is also in "active" status on the Internet Archive, though there's only one show there so far.  Somebody post more, please!