All Musics Lead to L.A.

On a slip of stage, just beyond a shallow reflecting pool at California Plaza, Issa Bagayogo, the Malian singer, strums and sways. He serenades in a forlorn near-monotone, accompanied by a pair of strutting backup singers and a kamele n’goni--a long-necked, six-stringed instrument--whose plucked notes trickle under his lyrics like creek water.

But, as evening settles, the Paris-based Cuban crew P18 suddenly rearranges the mood. It throws out brass notes as bright as searchlights, steps up the beats to urgent, as if redecorating the room. It builds an extravagant groove that overlays Cuban son with funk and rap and then at turns adds shades of reggae--a flashy sonic structure it calls “electropica.” The crowd fills in. Some, emboldened by the beats, take a turn around in search of a partner.

The rest mark time until the main event, Algerian singer Cheikha Rimitti, the “Mother of Rai “ music, strides out in a dress as white and elaborate as a wedding cake. A sparkling tiara rests atop her long blue-black tresses. Her arms akimbo, she stares the audience down behind her smoked lenses, while chunky rhythms build behind her. Suddenly turning, arms close to body, gold-slippered feet shuffling like a moving hieroglyph, she makes two passes across the stage before a ragged voice curls out from somewhere way, way low--a map, a road, a history unscrolling.

Nowadays, most nights of the week in L.A., one can book passage to some exotic elsewhere. Grand Performances is but one of many series and venues around the city--small to big; open-air to humid hole-in-the-wall; free to pricey--that have thrown open their doors and booking calendars to the romance and vagaries of the world’s musics.

What strikes a chord here are the connections: World music’s thicket of unfamiliar rhythms and languages has become our sonic wallpaper. Over coffee in Silver Lake, you may be romanced by neo-samba. Trying on your bathing suit in Venice, you might find your trauma soothed by Balinese gamelan music. Your massage in Pasadena may sweep you off to Tibet, mixed with some down-tempo electronica. Between dinner and dessert you may pause to settle the bet of just who indeed the French chanteuse was--and find she was from Benin.

The city’s current embrace of world music comes at a time when the country has been criticized for being self-involved and dismissive of international affairs. Whether our particular counterpoint to the argument is driven by a love for the music or represents a deeper desire to break down cultural barriers, the simple fact remains: Crowds at L.A. venues are swelling this summer.

Perhaps, suggests Sergio Mielniczenko, DJ and director of electronic media with the Brazilian Consulate in Los Angeles, the rising interest reflects a search for different ways of reaching out. “In a time of international conflict, people who are sensitive and educated start looking for clues,” he says. “Especially during a moment of confusion and doubt, it helps us to remember that people all over sit around, play music and sing.”

At most it takes just a simple incantation: A midsummer night. An infectious beat. A collision of intentions--and downtown’s California Plaza is suddenly transformed.

Gone are the staid gray and navy suits. The impossibly high heels. The burden of laptops and bulky briefcases. Rid of their 9-to-5 skins, women wrapped in sarongs from some summer cruise long ago sway against men in Day-Glo aloha shirts. Many more--couples, families, singles--arrive in souvenirs out of mothballs ... old saris, peasant dresses, kente tunics, tie-dye genie pants. All moving to rhythms of their own design, they too are transformed, transported.

In its 16th year, Grand Performances has been, in a sense, putting on a moody, bountiful house party for all the grazing neighbors. Just think “house,” “party” and “neighbors” on a much more elaborate scale. Don’t be scared or put off by the patchouli body oils and the free-form Sufi dancing. At first blush, indeed, the mood might feel more Berkeley or Boulder “crunchy” by L.A. night life standards. But it’s so much more.

Burrowing deeper, you find these richly curated evenings link styles, moods, interpretations, diasporas--introducing native Angelenos to a world that changes around them and reconnecting transplants to their traditions and customs from home.

Whether it is to quell homesickness or satisfy curiosity about the jumble of sonic fragments one hears tumbling out of clubs, theaters, parks or the left margins of the airwaves, more and more Los Angeles, with the assistance of various producers, agents, programmers and radio and club DJs, is bit by bit becoming a destination city.

“Los Angeles,” says Grand Performances director of programming Leigh Ann Hahn, “is open to collaborative opportunity.”

While the California Plaza and John Anson Ford Amphitheatre shows have had a long (for L.A.) tradition of offering a Lazy Susan of tastes, beats, vocal stylings (and a place set aside to dance), the Hollywood Bowl launched its own World Music Festival series in 1998. UCLA has beefed up its strong world music component in its Performing Arts series. And so has the Skirball Cultural Center, which programs evening as well as afternoon tasting menus of French Gypsy-klezmer ensembles and Congolese rumba into the fall. And just as the summer festivals crescendo, the World Festival of Sacred Music gears up for September. That doesn’t even begin to throw into the mix the city’s scatter of underground clubs, rooms and restaurants that transform after-hours into low-lit boites.

Even the heady salsa craze has given way to the lure of the “international.” “The tropical movement could only support us so much,” says the Conga Room’s Brad Gluckstein, who in the fall of 2000 made a big shift to “world music,” offering a lineup that can include anything from Indian tabla to music from Mali.

Angelenos are wrapping themselves up not just in the colorful party raiments but also in the beats, the culture and the poetry of a language. People love it, says Mielniczenko, “the language becomes an instrument. It complements the lines themselves. You know something important is being said. Doesn’t matter that you don’t understand. It’s that it is honest.”

From our front-row perch we learn the fado of Portugal and the forro of Brazil from those who brought it with them. For example, says Patricia Leao, who produces the annual Brazilian Summer Festival at the Ford and the Brazilian Carnival at the Palladium, “when people think about Brazilian music, traditionally it’s been bossa nova and samba.” But what’s blowing up in Rio and Bahia is forro--a hard-driving music from the country’s northeast region, a hard-driving music with accordion. “Now people here want to know exactly what forro is.... People--not just the Brazilians--want to know about the music they are listening to. They want to know what’s happening there.”

Just as most of the country’s head has been turned by the saunter of the latest essential “exotic” or “eclectic” trend, why would Los Angeles be any different? We’re often first. We too have been charmed by the narrative and images of the collection of Cuban heirlooms who became known as the Buena Vista Social Club--on film and on disc. Or barefoot, cigarette-smoking Cape Verdean diva Cesaria Evora. At one point it felt as if all the world had copies of “Cesaria” in their CD changers or their cars’ tape decks.

At various turns, our imaginations have been enticed, spirited off by the fusions spawned by jazz and Latin music, bossa nova or Dizzy Gillespie’s wanderings into Cuban motifs. Later it was rock-pop Peter Gabriel’s foray--the World of Music, Arts & Dance (W.O.M.A.D) festival series. Interest in the music comes in waves, says Tom Schnabel, host of KCRW-FM’s “Cafe LA,” who has long played a part in broadening Angelenos’ musical palette. “And world music is suddenly popular again.” “Again” is the operative word.

Schnabel’s voice guides many through the rough terrain of multi-syllabic names and obscure musical genres--at UCLA as a lecturer and on KCRW (89.9), on which he has hosted a range of music shows for more than 20 years. He, along with Laura Connelly-Schneider, the Hollywood Bowl’s jazz and world music program manager, now has a hand in introducing its picnicking symphony, jazz and pop crowd to, say, the bluesy melancholy of fado and Afro pop or helps connect the dots between Afrobeat and American neo-soul and funk.

The Bowl’s world music series is still very much in a workshop phase, mixing and matching artists and audiences, fine-tuning its offerings. “We felt that the concert series should mirror what L.A. had become,” says Schnabel. “And it’s always a gamble of taste.” In a city as diverse and full of distractions as this one, “you don’t know what might capture someone’s attention.” What Schnabel and Connelly-Schneider don’t doubt is the interest; subscription sales went from 10% the first year to 18% in 2001, with 2002 tracking even better.

The city’s transmogrifying demographic is a gift and a challenge. Local programmers and producers are in discussion with various club owners, musicians, producers and record buyers, as well as among themselves. “It doesn’t take a genius” to crack the market, says Connelly-Schneider, but it takes creativity and patience and a trained ear to know what’s happening in the city’s far-flung corners and then bring in an audience to witness it.

What was once a underground scene, isolated and scattered, is now a buzzing network. “It blows my mind,” says DJ Nnamdi Moweta, host of “Radio Afrodicia” on KPFK-FM (90.7). Much of it, says Moweta, has been neatly stitched together by the Internet, which now provides a one-stop hookup for radio playlists, tour schedules and shopping. “You can listen on the Internet. Find out where the party is. Buy out-of-print or import recordings. Local artists can create their own site. You can find out what’s new and coming up. Before that I would be fighting with my shortwave radio.”

Yatrika Shah-Rais, music programmer for the Skirball Cultural Center and one of the rotating hosts of KPFK’s morning music show “Global Village,” travels a city he now finds diverse in sounds. “For Indian music, I might go to a Sri Aurobindo Center in Culver City. There are shows curated by ethnomusicologists at various universities, churches, clubs from Pasadena to the Westside that are far and varied.”

The challenge for producers and programmers is finding a balance between reflecting the range of ethnic communities and being competitive. As is the case with Grand Performances, Hahn figures 60% of the programming is reflective of the local demographic, the balance composed of touring bands. Building support means passing out fliers at under-the-radar clubs or learning how to tap into ethnic networks.

“One of my favorite stories was trying to get the word out about a dance concert,” says Linda Chiavaroli, director of communications for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the aegis under which the Ford falls. “It was Avaz, a troupe that specializes in Persian dances, so I was trying to get to the Iranian-Persian community. The artistic director told me: ‘No problem. We’ll put it on pirate radio; there’s a certain frequency everyone tunes into.’ I’ve discovered so much about the city through its music.”

All of these new doors opening, this mixing of venues and specialties, is also creating fusions: “As our metabolism changes, we push toward more,” says Grand Performances’ Hahn. “The overall ecology has changed. We didn’t have all those people around and in place before. Now it’s all fallen into place: The labels, the radio stations and the presence of more international festival stages have been an important building block.”

It’s also creating a much more sophisticated audience, says David Sefton,UCLA’s director of performing arts, who adds, “I don’t want to blunder into these worlds. I want to do this in a way that makes sense.” Sefton, like many other programmers, is interested in what is happening on the ground: how the club scene and the electronic workshop of DJ culture, garage bands and sampling have merged to create thickly textured music flaunting its multiple sources. “I’m interested in the stuff that moves stuff on. I don’t just want to be doing the folkloric stuff. I’m interested in what takes it forward.”

Meanwhile, DJ Nnamdi casts an eye over the glittering Grand Performances stage. He leans in for a photo of Cheikha Rimitti beaming, arms upraised, the fountains shooting up behind her--for his growing scrapbook. He’s been making the rounds. People up. Dancing. Gone are the days that he has to fight with his shortwave radio to beam in concerts and records from home.