POP MUSIC REVIEW : Stirring Sounds on the Westside

Africa and Bulgaria came within a mile or so of each other over the weeekend, as a Paris-based Zairian and a Bulgarian ensemble brought their distinctive music to the Westside.

The Zairian pop sound known as soukous is usually described as light and lilting, but those adjectives didn’t apply to Kanda Bongo Man’s stirring local debut at the Music Machine. The singer’s relentlessly up-tempo 90-minute set left the capacity audience sweat-drenched and exhausted.

The backing quartet didn’t even need the excitement-boosting assistance of Kanda Bongo Man’s dance routines--not with those roller-coaster melodies and crystalline guitar lines, and with dynamic drummer Ty-Jan incessantly exploding snare-shot bombs over, under, around and through the arrangements.

The seven-member Bulgarian troupe Balkana took a more ethereal tack during its 90-minute set earlier in the evening at McCabe’s. It was easy to understand why Bulgarian music has fascinated musicologists--the nagging, dissonant vocal harmonies and giddy whoops were only part of the picture.

Listen to the reeds and it sounds surprisingly close to Irish music, focus on the strings and the reference point becomes Greece, go to the voices and it could be a mixture of Arabic melodies and Gregorian chant.

Balkana’s blend of virtuoso turns--by Kostadin Varimezov on gaida (bagpipes), and the fleet-fingered Mihail Marinov on gadulka (a bowed string instrument)--meshed with vocalist Yanka Rupinka’s radiant smile and the fancy footwork of crowd favorite Jimmy Vassiliev on teppan (a marching bass drum) to earn a standing ovation from the capacity audience.