A weekend with THE VERY BEST and NINJASONIK – Bmore and DC Reviewed!

Good things happen to those who wait. Patiently building a massive buzz based off of the strength of their own charisma and live performances that define the concept of raw power and energy through music, Brooklyn’s Ninjasonik are finally set to release their debut album Art School Girls on Brooklyn’s eco friendly label Green Owl Records this spring. If history regarding the label’s releases were to repeat itself, it would be wonderful for the boisterous and eclectic trio, as Green Owl’s last album release, The Very Best’s Warm Heart of Africa was praised by literally all who heard it, the glee filled Afropop coming from the combination of Malawian vocalist Esau Mwamwaya and European mixmasters Radioclit the 21st century progeny of Miriam Makeba meeting Paul Simon’s Graceland with a stop through Dr. Dre’s house for good measure. Combining these unlikely energies for a four city concert tour prior to SXSW seems like a recipe for a ridiculously fun time. Thus and so was my past weekend, as I got the opportunity to catch both acts performing on bills in Baltimore and Washington, DC, two dates that more than anything proved that a necessity in attaining superstardom, moreso than ever in a depressed musical economy, is the power of the live performance.

Baltimore’s TaxLo date was scheduled to be a raucous two room affair featuring Simon Phoenix alongside my two favorite young DJs in the area, University of Maryland senior Phil Real, and the hard, bass heavy wunderkind DJ Lemz, and a mainstage of Ninjasonik, Publicist, Le Tigre’s JD Samson, and The Very Best. It’s the type of mollywhoppingly bizarre lineup that has proven to be the bread and butter of Cullen Stalin and Simon Phoenix through the years, and though Samson was not able to make it due to train difficulties, the night was still, from a performance standpoint a success. Ninjasonik’s live show is once again more polished than it’s ever been. Telli and Jah Jah’s interactions onstage have become more entertainment vehicle than rap event, providing a most unlikely humor. And if not a fan of the deft skills and production mind of DJ Teenwolf, do familiarize yourself with this man. He’s not going anywhere anytime soon and is a top performer on the decks. The Ninjasonik set insistently meanders like bull trampling the streets of Pamplona through party rocking hip hop, instantaneous dance hits like “Pregnant,” Devo’s “Gates of Steel” and Fugazi’s “Patient Boy,” drops from the Lion King and covers of Major Lazer, The Death Set and Matt and Kim. A Ninjasonik show speaks not just to the genre less nature of modern music, but also rather heavily to now just defining music as good and bad. Ninjasonik, absolutely the former.

There’s nothing quite like watching a crowd that has never seen The Very Best before. Esau Mwamwaya’s vocals suggest to a crowd that they’re about to sit through an art-house pop performance of African hymns. Add Johan Hugo as a DJ dropping Radioclit’s explosive Afro-fusion melodies, and it’s suddenly highly unfamiliar territory. Now throw in a South African hypeman who’d likely be just as comfortable at a Westside Connection show as getting it in with this crew. And let’s top that off with lithe and attractive African female dancers to lift the performance over the top. As The Very Best weaved from mixtape smash remix of “Paper Planes” to debut album winners like “Yalira,” oddest trunk funk anthem in awhile “Julia,” and party closer “Warm Heart of Africa,” I watched Baltimore kids experience the entire gamut of positive human emotion until by the end, 20 kids were onstage dancing with their newfound heroes, and the entire crowd was a sea of juking, moshing and flailing, the effervescence of Esau Mwamwaya and crew having once again succeeded.

DC’s performance was differently entertaining and a horse of a different color. In this city, The Very Best’s debut has been the latest adoption of the conservative liberal crowd, people who seem light years removed from people who wear “tats and slugs,” “do drugs, drink PBRs and hang out in clubs” as Ninjasonik states on band raison d’etre anthem “Bars.” Add to that lineup fellow Green Owl labelmate, Philly club DJ and producer Zakee Kuduro, and exemplary emcee Tabi Bonney backed by DJ Stereo Faith, and you get a disparate audience that definitely sat on their hands at various points of the evening, but not out of disrespect for the performers, but more for merely being in awe of, as the Bar Kays said before performing “Son of Shaft” at Wattstax, “a side of life you’ve never seen before.” Between Tabi Bonney rocking early to a room filled with Winchester rave hippies to Telli and Jah Jah leading the crowd in a derisive chant of “Fuck yo conversation!” to a pocket of murmuring folks in the crowd, and a night that ends with a sea of bodies undulating fervently to Yeasayer’s transcendent “Warm Heart of Africa” remix is unusually strange, but really can’t be all that bad.

Phenomenal acts make for phenomenal performances and phenomenal weekends.

SEAL OF APPROVAL – (DC) THE VERY BEST, NINJASONIK & TABI BONNEY – ROCK AND ROLL HOTEL – 3/14/10

This is the biggest no brainer of all time. The three best performing acts on the underground (save maybe Matt and Kim and The Death Set) are in one building at one time on Sunday night.

The Very Best‘s potent blend of Afropop with just about everything else on their debut Warm Heart of Africa was one of my favorite albums of 2009, as Esau Mwamwaya’s voice has quickly become one of the favorites in all of music, sprinking pleasant vibes across the musical universe. As far as live performance, much like the last time they were in town, expect to be uplifted to great feats of dance as African dancers join with Johan Hugo of Euro dance production powerhouse Radioclit and Mwamwaya’s Malawian voice to bring the house down.

http://www.youtube.com/v/sVIchuL6geo&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

Ninjasonik, as always, will be described by this site as what would happen if you cryogenically froze the Beastie Boys as they got off the plane from the last leg of ’86’s “License to Ill” tour, and then loosed them upon society. Trapped in their scatalogical and completely ridiculous punk fueled hipster party rhymes lies the heart of three young men grinding hard to be at the top of the game. Telli “Bathroomsexxx” Federline is the Rodney Dangerfield of hip hop in that he gets no respect whatsoever as an emcee. Reverend McFly may be one of the funnier hypemen in the game, and DJ Teenwolf, well, he’s the best producer on Planet Brooklyn, and if you dig anything or anybody on the East Coast underground, he’s likely played a part in it. Unrelatedly, it’ll be great to see them in DC in front of more than 40 people as well, the city has slept on, around, and all over the band on NUMEROUS occasions.

http://www.youtube.com/v/AgpiZ0OFoIM&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1

Tabi Bonney is the most calm, prepared, well packaged and winning emcee on hip hop’s underground. Video director, fashion designer, most respected emcee and now making moves as 1/3 of new Black Eyed Peas underlings the Crybabiees, if you can’t watch DC’s #1 rap talent rip up the stage with our big brother site The Couch Sessions debut party at SXSW, check him here. His live performance is most professional and extremely on point and never fails to gain fans and move crowds.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=9770989&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Crybabieees – Love Me (directed by the Lara Brothers) from tabi Bonney on Vimeo.

Simply put, this may be the BEST top to bottom bill anywhere in the city all year.

THE VERY BEST/JAVELIN – DC 9 – 11/2/09

It’s truly the simplest of pleasures in the universe that evoke the greatest appreciation. It is by this statement that we define the success that was The Very Best’s completely sold out tour stop with Javelin at DC 9 on Monday evening. The Very Best, which takes the dark, gritty ghetto electro remixing of Radioclit and blends it with the, well, warm heart of Africa that Malawi’s Esau Mwamwaya brings to the table is an effusive blend that again, for lack of a better term, brings “the very best” out of the soul of the listener.

Opener’s Javelin nearly rendered the evening a half success. Occupying the slot due to a fantastic new wave remix/interpretation of The Very Best’s trunk funk anthem “Julia,” the 80s shlock celebrating, hipster trending, Brooklyn synth and sample remixing/DJ/performance duo certainly provided moments of fun and dance, but in being COMPLETELY ironic lose lots of steam from their very well crafted synth pop creations. In the midst of their opening set, the audience was treated to a retinue of video images culled straight from 1985, whether it be a man in an awkward tan sweater with Johann Sebastian Bach on the front explaining the craft of playing the synthesizer, to a “learn to breakdance” video, BMX bike riding on the roof of a suburban rambler, keytar images or manatee life in the Pacific, the entertainment value of the videos, while memorable, stole a lot of the impact from Javelin’s compositions. However, once the shock of the imagery wore off, near the end of their set, tracks like their breakbeat heavy remix of the theme for 8-bit Nintendo Mike Tyson’s Punch Out competitor “Soda Popinski,” as well as a breakdown over a track that took the chorus of Blondie’s “Rapture” into a recitation of childhood rhyme “Frere Jacques,” and a finale that ended with recitations of the chorus of Outkast’s “SpottieOttieDopalicious” over an electro backing made for a very quirky, disjointed, but overall entertaining opening act.

Then, DJ Johan Hugo, two beautiful English based African dancers in lettermen jackets and traditional garb, and the overjoyed Esau Mwamwaya took the stage, and the event was transformed from mere concert to African tent revival. The Very Best is a simple concept that effortlessly succeeds due to stellar execution. Between 2008’s “The Very Best” mixtape, and the new Warm Heart of Africa release, there is certainly enough material present to create an exciting, dance friendly set that moves, grooves and removes all pretension from people, and culminates in a great time. Opener “Yalira” served as a vocal appetizer, as Esau Mwamwaya’s charmingly accented voice and Hugo’s production rained down upon a sold out crowd well acquainted with The Very Best’s body of work, and just waiting for the moment to dance as though hell’s demons were being set forth from them in an exultant manner. From there, we journeyed back to 2008’s starmaking and awareness inducing mixtape, with Mwamwaya’s take on M.I.A.’s now ubiquitous anthem of social freedom “Paper Planes,” which still, if even sung in an African tongue 90 percent of the crowd cannot understand, causes riotous debauchery.

But the highlight of the set is the album’s guaranteed hit, “Warm Heart of Africa” featuring Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig. It’s a joy filled exciter, with such simple yet catchy African rhythms that it’s tailor made for acceptance from possibly slow footed and plodding Western audiences. As the song built to crescendo though, Hugo stops the track to a noticeable gasp of shock from the crowd, and drops his remix of the track, an uptempo electro meets the Zambezi River like overflow of pleasant vibes that caused jumping, screaming, and movements in the female form that belied A-line skirts, prim and proper couture, or awkward hipsterdom, and turned the room into an earthquake of rhythm and very sexy and nubile undulations.

The Very Best’s set also included Africa by way of Crenshaw Swap Meet g funk love anthem “Julia,” which in front of a live crowd really spotlights the unique qualities of Mwamwaya’s Malawian-accented voice that makes the group the truly unique winner for 2010 that all expect them to be. Closing with their take on Vampire Weekend’s African themed and rhythmically tinged “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” was expected, though funky club killer “Rain Dance” with the aforementioned M.I.A. not being performed owes much likely to M.I.A.’s flow being responsible for 75% of the track’s vocals, which does not lend well to the live experience, which, more than anything serves as a backdrop for making Mwamwaya’s luckiest human in the world million megawatt personality and Hugo’s excellent production and remix talent to shine ever brightly.

In final, The Very Best present a live event. To refer to it as a concert would be to limit the effectiveness of the group in creating a perfect party atmosphere. In final, I take from this show leaving the venue, looking back on the stage at a bemused Johan Hugo, dropping remixed traditional African music to a room of people that had no desire nor intention of wanting to drink, wanting to fight, nor ultimately wanting to leave. They created the essence of the ultimate moment, and achieved the aim of what the group likely considers their perpetual goal…living up to their name.