A music-biz professional told me recently that Chicago’s annual World Music Festival is too big and sprawling. He thinks it should include fewer artists (this year there are more than 60) and that more of those should be marquee names. But the things he’s complaining about are exactly what make the fest so special–it’s a veritable smorgasbord, assembled without the music industry’s regard for the bottom line. True, there’s so much good music on offer every day that it’s impossible to see all the shows you might like to, but how exactly is that a problem?
Thursday 14
Erkan Ogur
6:30 PM | PRITZKER PAVILION
RThe Turkish city of Konya is the original home of the Sufi order colloquially known as “whirling dervishes,” which was formalized in the late 13th century by the son of the community’s spiritual leader, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, best known in the West for his breathtaking poetry. The music is simple: zither, lute, hand drums, reed flute, chanted prayers. So is the ritual dance itself, a symbolic offering of oneself to God called sema. The repertoire of this professional ensemble also includes Turkish classical music and other Sufi material. MK
Sara Tavares
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R Albert Kuvezin established his Tuvan-music bona fides as a founding member of Huun-Huur Tu, the best-known traditional ensemble from the former Soviet republic, then left to form this progressive outfit, which combines Tuvan elements–most prominently the throat-singing style called khoomei–with techno, rock, and blues. Before developing an appreciation for the music of his homeland, Kuvezin was obsessed with contraband rock music from the West, and on the latest Yat-Kha album, Re-Covers (World Village), he revisits those preglasnost days: the disc is a collection of mind-bendingly idiosyncratic takes on classic tunes by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Santana, and Captain Beefheart. The band strips the songs down to bone and gristle, transforming them into thumping drones; if not for the lyrics, some of them would be totally unrecognizable. On Re-Covers Yat-Kha achieves its peculiar intensity without the aid of electronics–just traditional Tuvan stringed instruments, guitar, minimal drumming, and some of the whistlelike style of khoomei called sygyt. Kuvezin himself practices the rare kanzat style, a low-end growl that makes Howlin’ Wolf sound like Judy Garland; sometimes he could pass for Tom Waits at his most dyspeptic, and at others he works up a demonic howl as hair-raising as anything you’ll hear in black metal. PM
