December 2007

This article originally appeared in The Daily Iowan.

Camp Euphoria favorites Chicago Afrobeat Project will make another local appearance on Saturday at the Yacht Club, 13 S. Linn St. Intertwining American rock influences with Nigerian drum styles, the band looks to spread messages of diversity and unison through its ensemble. Sometimes featuring as many as 15 members, or as few as seven, only the core members will make it to Iowa City this time around.

“It’s tough to organize a huge band,” drummer Marshall Greenhouse said. “We don’t have 100 percent commitment from every member, which is a good thing. It gives our band huge variety.”

Featuring mostly white musicians, the band members say they’ve received criticism for playing traditionally African music. Despite these critiques, the band donated portions of the money made from its most recent CD, *(A) Move to Silent Unrest*, to Journalists Against AIDS Nigeria.

“Our music song ‘Media Man’ talks about the media’s criticism of us,” Greenhouse said. “But this isn’t music for a specific race, it’s just music that’s good to dance to.”

The full band features bass, keyboards, tenor sax, guitar, drum set, baritone sax, trombone, two secondary percussionists, djembe, talking drum, and two dancers. Their performance extends far beyond recordings and into the visual realm. The heavy Nigerian influences, combined with a jazzy feel, gives the band the vibe of an ethnically charged Coltrane, Roots, Big Band swirl (with a hint of the Doobie Brothers).

This slew of people is no oddity in Afro-beat groups, which even Iowa City has produced. On the local scale, Greenhouse said, he’d seen a lot of Chicago Afrobeat Project’s ideals and styles in the band Euphorequestra, and the two could possibly initiate a joint tour.

The article was originally published in the Quad City Times.

If the middle name of the Chicago Afrobeat Project sounds unfamiliar to its potential audiences, don’t worry.

It was that way to some of its players at one time as well.

“When the band first started, I had only heard five African songs in my life,” said Marshall Greenhouse, one of the band’s percussionists. “Now, I’ve heard hundreds.”

Afrobeat is credited to Fela Kuti, the leader of the Koola Lobitos, a popular Nigerian band in the style of “high life.” As a college student in Los Angeles in the 1960s, Kuti became influenced by the music of James Brown and the band Parliament, as well as the teachings of civil rights leader Malcolm X. He took the soul and jazz music he had become familiar with and combined it with the music of his homeland to create an Afrobeat sound.

Chicago Afrobeat Project will return to the Redstone Room inside River Music Experience, Davenport, for the fourth time on Friday night. The band also played in LeClaire Park last summer, during the RME-sponsored River Roots Live.

This time, it’s backing a new album that was released in early October, “(A) Move to Silent Unrest.” It’s the second album the band has released, after a debut two years ago.

“With the first one, I could hear more of a rock influence, because we hadn’t been playing Afrobeat as long,” he said.

The band has grown in several ways, Greenhouse said. While establishing more of a foothold in Afrobeat, it also has the freedom to branch out as needed.

“We’ve also tried to develop a sound to not even care if people think it sounds like rock or jazz or Afrobeat,” he said. “We want to do the music we feel like doing.”

The changes in the band have come gradually through the years, he said.

“There’s never been a moment when somebody said, ‘Let’s change and go in this direction,’” he said.

The band has as many as eight members that go on the road. Their ages range from mid-20s to early 50s, but the elder member of the group doesn’t perform outside Chicago, Greenhouse said.

Half of the band members have been with the group for at least four years, and the turnover gives the group some energy, Greenhouse said.

“New people come in and they have new ideas,” he said. “Our goal with the band is to keep it going for a really, really long time.”

Afrobeat can be an acquired taste, Greenhouse said.

“It depends on what you’re in for,” he said. “A lot of people like the music to go out for a night and dance — it’s good party music, but they aren’t necessarily going to go home and listen to the music.”

He doubts that it would ever find a mainstream audience, but wouldn’t discount it.

“I don’t think it can’t get popular, but if it was going to get popular it would have to be because a hip-hop artist came in and sampled Afrobeat songs,” he said. “But people said the same thing about reggae at one point.”

This article originally appeared in the River Cities’ Reader.

The Chicago Afrobeat Project could not have a more plainly descriptive name, yet the band’s new CD transcends the ordinary. The group, which returns to the Quad Cities with a show on Friday at the Redstone Room, does its fair share of aimless jamming – all pleasant – but on several occasions it reaches highs that lift up the whole endeavor.

Listening to the first track of its new album, (A) Move to Silent Unrest, creates worry that the band’s musical imagination is as pedestrian as its name. While competent and enjoyable, “BSCG2” is defined by incessant tap-tap woodblock percussion – an annoyance throughout the first half of the record. And nothing about the track gets beyond a standard-issue fusion of instrumental funk, jazz, and world music.

The woodblock is back on “Superstar Pt. 7,” but the tune is livelier, with a call-and-response between a lone sax and a chorus of horns, strutting sax and keyboard solos, and bursts of exclamatory punctuation from the guitar and horns.

The vocals on “Media Man” come as a bit of surprise, and they’re largely superfluous. They serve mostly to remind you how little you’d missed the human voice.

The fourth track, “Cloister,” shows the Chicago Afrobeat Project finding a gorgeous stride. Just past the two-minute mark, the horns provide a stuttering chorus – shy at first, then growing in confidence, with sparkling accents from the guitar -that carries the piece through its nine-plus minutes. When it rises in volume and intensity, it’s a repeated, direct melodic/rhythmic element that’s easy for the ears to grab hold of, and it’s a welcome counterpoint to the more ethereal jazz elements of the record.

Something similar is at work in “Chupacabra,” but the dominant horn line is presented almost at the outset, a reversal of the structure of “Cloister.” “Carcass” closes the record, pushing the pace to a gallop and featuring some squealing sax, a right turn from “Chupacabra” but almost its continuation.

What’s striking is that these horn motifs have an impact far greater than their (in)frequency should allow. They shape the entire album, acting as tentpoles. (A) Move to Silent Unrest is the type of album that works better as whole than broken up into its component parts. It requires time to develop, grow, and find its feet. And when it does, it’s pretty spectacular.

The Chicago Afrobeat Project will perform on Friday, December 7, at the Redstone Room in downtown Davenport. The show starts at 9 p.m., and the bill also features Ragaman (a member of which is the River Cities’ Reader’s Lars Rehnberg) and Rude Punch. Admission is $7.