The Prague Post
September 7th, 2008
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Showing respect

This weekend, the Third World comes to Prague

Playing for racial tolerance, clockwise from left: Konono N°1, Amadou & Mariam and Al-Yaman.
By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
June 9, 2005


The Respect music festival was formed in response to the 1997 hate killing of Turkish student Hassan Elamin Abdelradi in a Prague university dormitory. In the seven years since, Respect has delivered transcultural experiences aimed primarily at improving racial tolerance and respect. Musically, the results have been more relevant and exciting than what one finds at many of the planet's other "world music" festivals. In fact, among practitioners, that term has taken on some negative connotations.

"I hate world music," says Vincent Kenis, producer of the Congolese group Konono N°1, referring to music that he considers "still in the neocolonial mode, where the natives have the instinct and the white scientists are turning it into something acceptable."

Respect serves up the real deal, straight from the source. The Kinshasa-based Konono N°1, which headlines the Saturday bill of this year's festival, not only plies the rich polyphonies and polyrhythms of Central Africa, but implodes and explodes them using homemade electronics. The sum total of their efforts is music that sometimes sounds like a heavy-metal rendition of James Brown-turned-tropical jungle ritual. On several stops of its current European tour, Konono N°1 has been sharing the stage with Chicago-based post-rock innovators Tortoise, attracting audiences with sounds well beyond the run-of-the-mill world-beat vibration.

Opening the festival Friday is the no-less brilliant Dagmar Andrtová. An inventive folk musician may sound like an oxymoron, but Andrtová is a shining exception to the folky stereotype. She is a visionary veteran of the '60s Czech folk collective Pod plachtou (Under the Sail) whose extended guitar techniques, gentle electronics and spirited momentum make her as welcome at music festivals in Japan as she is at Czech folk venues.

Andrtová will be followed by Susheela Raman, who brings an Australian oceanic edge to the urban-Asian London sound. Her training in Indian classical music weaves layers of lyrical beauty into the rock 'n' roll sensibility born of the years she spent as an Australian blues-rock singer. Her lyrics are a combination of the sacred and profane, both sensual and devotional.

If a summer afternoon ever had a hymn to warmth and sunshine, it might sound like Friday's headliners, Amadou & Mariam from Mali. Known to their fans as simply "the blind couple from Mali," this pair front a band that can soar the heights of elegiac R&B, find strangely beautiful combinations of medieval Gallic tonality and improve on Manu Chau's signature production effervescence. Joyful originality infects everything Amadou and Mariam touch. Their cow-bell driven, medieval Gallic rock sounds as convincing as any other genre they artfully take on. The liner notes of their new release, Tje Ni Moussou, exaggerate only slightly in saying, "This blind couple from Mali ... also have the power to return sight to those who think they can already see."

Saturday's openers are another hard act to follow, both musically and as emblems of the cosmopolitan hope of international respect. Since Al-Yaman's timely formation in 2003, the band has combined talents from Yemen, Israel, Palestine and the Czech Republic. The group's hard rock, enveloped in dance-floor memories, didgeridoo drones and synthesizers, combines with the electronic bounce of drum machines to project visions of a futuristic Mideast. Al-Yaman has opened numerous times for Transglobal Underground on their Czech tours.

Respect Festival

When: Friday, June 10, from 5 p.m.; Saturday, June 11, from 2 p.m.

Where: Štvanice Island

Tickets: 390 Kč for a one-day pass or 490 Kč for a two-day pass, through Ticketpro and Ticketstream and at the venue.

For daily events, see Calendar listings in Night & Day. For more information, check www.respectmusic.cz
The Romany ensemble Terne Čhave certainly can claim trans-European musical heritage credentials. After 1989, intimidated by skinhead attacks, the group disbanded. They regrouped in 2000, updating their traditional Slovak and Czech musical heritage with modern sounds. Although the band's music is based on East European gypsy roots, it has branches growing in other directions. With Terne Čhave, you hear not only expert, lively Romany music, but also moments that share the communal celebration of the Sevilliana. The momentum Terne Čhave has generated since they reunited has taken them to folk festivals, gypsy festivals and, surprisingly enough, to a recent gig at a punk concert.

Following these two local acts, Bonga from Angola takes the stage. Bonga's trans-Atlantic sound combines his Angolan fisherman origins with Brazilian influences, with results that are instrumentally complex yet calming. Not that Bonga and his band can't spin an infectious dance tune. But his dance music is like a welcome breeze on a perfect tropical day, finely textured with intricate percussion.

Closing this year's festival will be Konono N°1, who according to their producer crank up the volume with electronics so that "their neighbors and ancestors can hear it better."

Bringing Congolese trance artists who build their own microphones and other obscure Third World acts to the Czech Republic may seem like a far-fetched venture. But year in and year out, Respect makes it work — and conveys some powerful messages about racial equality in the process.



Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com




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