Reviewed today are Rodrigo y Gabriela and Trio Mocotó at the Latin Quarter Festival, Dublin, Contemporary Diversity 2 at Macroom Town Hall, Co Cork and Imbongi & Albert Nyathi at Crawdaddy, Dublin
Rodrigo y Gabriela,
Trio Mocotó
Latin Quarter Festival, Dublin
Right. The samba. Simple. Here goes. The music is in 4/4 (uh-huh), but we count it in 2/4 (aha!). Only, the dance is done in triple time (pardon?), matching the footing: "tap, up-down, place" (um) to a paced "quick-quick, slow" (ouch) before the steps alter on the eighth beat to adopt the fifth position (could you please help me up?).
With the best intentions, but perhaps the worst co-ordination, some of us were bound to stumble over the fiery rhythms of the Latin Quarter Festival. The weekend of vaguely Latin events encouraged us to get into the spirit of things - or, at the very least, into the things of a spirit.
All of which makes it mightily amusing to find the Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela supping from nothing stronger than bottled water. "Are you allowed to drink down there?" a forlorn Rodrigo asks a packed and similarly teetotal Meeting House Square. "No," we sing back. Unperturbed, Rodrigo encourages us to "do whatever you f***ing want to do. If you want to dance, f***ing dance." Gabriela pounds out the ominous beat of New One on the body of her acoustic guitar, then shadows Rodrigo's brisk melody on nylon strings, and people apparently just want to f***ing nod and smile.
Few could outsmile this beaming pair, however. "They're so cute!" coos a girl in the audience. Poor old Rodrigo. A skilled and imposing hombre who can diss the idea of the festival ("F*** the Latin thing!"), then guide New One's metal riff into the complex jazz meter of Take 5 and still pass for a children's television presenter. He produces a gun at one point and you still want to pinch his cheeks. "It's pint o'clock," Gabriela smiles as she introduces the last number. "It's called Foc." At least I think that's what she said.
Same place, next day, and Trio Mocotó emerge to a depressingly empty square. Recently reformed after a 26-year hiatus, the Brazilian group invented samba-rock by taking Latin swing and soldering everything onto it from boogie to electronica samples. You can admire their music for its deceptive 4/4 breeziness, and follow a taut weave of gravelly harmonies, or notice that an array of percussion subdivides the beat frenetically, like a tin pot boiling over and spitting on the hob. You can, but you really shouldn't. This is music that simply wants you to dance.
Core members João Parahyba, Nereu Gargalo and Luiz Carlos Fritz navigate through Latin funk, call-and-response mantras and a bafflingly good tambourine solo while the attendance swells and inhibitions thaw under clear skies.
- Peter Crawley
Contemporary Diversity 2
Macroom Town Hall, Co Cork
Contemporary Diversity 2 reunites eight artists who originally exhibited together 14 years ago. On both occasions John Philip Murray was at the helm, inviting colleagues who attended art college in Dublin and Cork in the mid-1970s.
The emphasis on diversity remains, but the term "contemporary" now has less currency in visual-art terminology, as ordinarily it reflects pluralist new-media practices such as installation and video. Closest to the purist definition is Cecily Brennan, as her paintings have a clinical matter-of-factness and diagrammatic quality in keeping with issue-based concerns - specifically that of suicide.
Strict definitions aside, there are some provoking works on view. Maud Cotter's sculptures inventively use cardboard strengthened by resin, creating strong totemic forms that belie the fragility of the material. The other sculptor, Joe Butler, uses mild steel to create figures reminiscent of Picasso's. In Spectre the openings and appendages are made all the more vivid as the burnished steel absorbs surrounding colour, lending an intriguing transparency.
The painters are also a disparate bunch. Michael Cullen's bold illustrative style profiles with characteristic vigour the icons of an artist's life. Elizabeth Comerford's stylised figures have a fin-de-siècle bent.
Murray's paintings explore the human visage with a discreet, almost religious sensitivity, with the flesh colour melting seductively into the background. Jackie Cooney's calligraphic abstracts demonstrate a lighter touch still.
John Doherty's photorealistic studies are at the other end of the spectrum, as he expertly renders light and texture with great control.
Runs until August 14th
- Mark Ewart
Imbongi & Albert Nyathi
Crawdaddy, Dublin
In the face of censorship and oppression, art always finds a way, smuggling messages into unlikely vessels, raising a smokescreen of political subterfuge.
Horace would "comment with a smile", Irish nationalists donned the cloak of Aisling poems, Eastern European dramatists scrambled dissidence into the avant-garde: now the Zimbabwean dub poet Albert Nyathi slips searing social commentary into ebullient dance.
And what a band. When all 10 members of Imbongi have finally taken to Crawdaddy's tiny stage it's like sharing an elevator with a glee club. To the infectious rhythms of a band as confident with African dance as with blues and pop, the dancers first emerge in street gear, to bust giddying b-boy moves, then appear with Nyathi in full African garb, their majestic pelts and plumes flying.
"Welcome to Zimbabwe," intones Nyathi, sonorous and commanding in the role of imbongi, or praise poet.
The act of musical transportation is complete. Praise poets, who extolled the virtues of royalty in staggering terms, could indirectly question the grey areas of royal rule. So it is with Nyathi.
"Once colonised in 1890, uncolonised in 1980," he begins, "this is the land of contradictions, my friends, where you will meet, the laughing hyenas and the crying children."
More startling are the new lines that drift between brisk, clean-toned guitar and parping trumpet on I Will Not Speak: "I will not speak when you sleep in parliament, when you murder innocent citizens." One shouldn't underestimate Nyathi's bravery: Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party isn't known to sanction poetic licence. His performance courses with movement, with the exhortation to live, with the spinning contradiction that nothing is as subversive as pure joy.
Imbongi & Albert Nyathi are at St John's Art Centre, Listowel, tonight
- Peter Crawley
