Text by Danya Cheskis Gold; Photos by Louise Chang.

A dynamic quintet from Ashville, NC, has created a winning fusion of guitar rock ‘n’ roll and traditional music from Guinea and Mali, where its members have traveled to study music.  Here’s Danya Cheskis-Gold’s report on here encounter with Toubab Krewe.

            Charmed from near and far by the magic of Toubab Krewe’s African dance grooves, loyal fans appeared at the stroke of nine on a July evening at Tribeca Rock Club.  The down-to-earth Krewe members, Teal Brown, Drew Heller, Justin Perkins, David Pransky, and Luke Quaranta, gently assembled and arranged their global mixture of instruments; while Justin positioned his electric guitar and kora side by side, the patient audience sipped on icy drinks and bobbed to the assorted reggae and funk songs playing overhead.  Although the conversational buzz of 9 PM had transformed into a lively chatter by 9:10 PM, all sounds came to a halt as soon as Justin approached the mic.

            The tone of the evening was respectfully set when Justin established a moment of silence for a teacher who had recently passed.  As my eyes headed downwards to create personal space for reflection on the seriously strong bond between Toubab Krewe and its master teachers, I saw every other head nod towards the floor, as well, the audience unified in its acknowledgment of the band’s genuine connection to its music.  Then Toubab Krewe vibrantly came to life, propelling its fans into a night-long state of music-induced euphoria. 

The way these musicians reeled their audience in that night was an uncanny reflection of their own, personal exploration of their West African music.  In a recent interview with the band, I heard the experienced, yet overwhelmingly humble, voices of five guys from down south, a backwoods town in Vermont, and a place outside of New York City discuss the deep reverence that they have for their African teachers, and what it means to slowly gain respect for their own music. 

            Three of the five members of Toubab Krewe—Drew Heller, Justin Perkins, and Teal Brown—grew up together in Asheville, NC, a town with blossoming music and art scenes.  From Drew’s first encounter with the band Fatala from Guinea in middle school, to Justin’s participation in drum circles, to Teal’s broad background in both West African and Western drumming techniques, this trio mercurially swirled its various talents and interests into a percussion and dance ensemble, Common Ground.  Enter Luke Quaranta: classic rock and hip-hop fan from outside of New York City, whose interest in drumming was piqued by doing some drum circles out west.  He hooked up with Common Ground in Asheville after meeting Teal at college, and the foursome embarked on a voyage to Conakry, Guinea that confirmed both their chemistry and their future.    

            During this visit, Justin set down his drums and became obsessed with the 21-stringed kora, which is an integral musical element on many of Toubab Krewe’s pieces.  He also plays the 6-stringed kamelengoni, the harp used in Wassoulou music.  Meanwhile, Drew was discovering a meaningful partnership between the unfamiliar sounds of West African guitar playing and the familiar instrument itself that he had been playing since childhood.  The man he titles his “main teacher,” Lamine Soumano, a mentor from the Ivory Coast, advised him to think “Do what I [Drew] would do, play what I would play.”  Drew says Soumano’s mantra has changed the way he now approaches learning West African music: he learns from his teachers, but does what he feels with the music.  It is this elegant balance between sharing in traditional Malian songs and West African drumming arrangements and creating original compositions and sounds that makes Toubab Krewe stand out as a fusion band.

            David Pransky, the newest member of Toubab Krewe, adds his own tastes and talents to Toubab Krewe.  He has extensive experience as a self-taught mandolinist, playing sold-out shows in Irving Plaza with the well-known band Dispatch, but his sister’s role as a dancer in Common Ground brought him home by introducing him to the sounds of West African music.  When I asked Dave about his transition from mandolin to the bass he now soulfully plays with Toubab Krewe, he reminisced: “The bass felt like a long-lost friend, like ‘Oh, where have you been all my life?’”  Dave’s long-term love for reggae bass made it a cinch for him to start getting involved with the bass, completing the quintet that is Toubab Krewe.

When I asked them to describe their very colorful style of music, Toubab Krewe made one thing completely clear: “We more or less don’t know how to describe exactly what genre we fit into and what we’re doing, but we’re allowing all our influences to come out, not holding anything back, playing just from our hearts.  It ends up rockin’ out, but it also ends up twangy sometimes, and sometimes it ends up kind of more down-tempo and slow…it can go so many different ways.”  From the surf melody of “Hang Tan” to the bold percussion of “Asheville to Abidjan” to the reverb and wah-wah of “Bamana Niya” that people “can connect to emotionally,” Toubab Krewe’s music creates an incredibly magical zone where expectations are few and liberal and each song “forms and goes where it’s gonna go.” 

The Krewe’s show at Tribeca Rock Club only served to reinforce the themes that run through their group’s history, their musical influences and heroes, and their songs’ culturally speckled colors and textures: Diversity.  Originality.  Creativity.  Dedication.  Innovation.  By the time Teal’s slow and steady drumming introduced the audience to “Mali Sadjo,” everyone was sweating.  This song, with its strolling pace, consistent melody, and kora jams, incited shouts of support from the band’s fan club in the corner of the club; a group of guys following Toubab Krewe all the way from one of the largest musical festivals in the country, Bonnaroo, pointed their fingers at Justin, bobbing up and down off-beat, trying to keep time with his variations on Mali Sadjo’s main theme.

Luke inspired even more support and involvement when he appeared from behind his assembly of percussion instruments—including calabsh, djembe, and scraper—to pronounce: “Music has no boundaries, there is no pain.”  As he later explained to me in a discussion about Toubab Krewe’s percussive cocktail “Asheville to Abdijan,” this song is a fully physical exertion of Guinea rhythms, danza from the Ivory Coast, and an original break of the band’s own.  This performance piece was a nod to everything the band learned in the percussion aspect of West African music before exploring the melodic aspect, according to Drew, and the audience that night knew it and loved it.  As noted by Luke, we, here in the States, tend to enjoy listening to music in a personal and intimate way, plugging ourselves into our Ipods and headphones.  In West Africa, though, music is fundamentally communal, and with the performance of “Asheville to Abidjan” at Tribeca Rock Club, everyone in the audience had a chance to experience the feeling of “walking around the corner and there’s a huge gathering of people” whose music permeates an entire village’s—or club’s—mood and state of being. 

As this fleeting performance neared its end, “Bamana Niya,” the parting track on Toubab Krewe’s self-titled album, saturated the crowd with gritty, metallic rock and roll.  Drew opened up the song, “creating a whole canvass, a whole palette for [the band] to fill inside,” and the Bonnaroo boys played air kora.  With an ambience that Luke proclaimed to be that of U2 or Sting, yet again confirming the broad range of style in Toubab Krewe’s music, “Bamana Niya” encouraged the audience to rock out Mali-style.  As one fan screams out towards the end of the song, “Let’s go to Africa!” I realize that I, too, have been mentally wandering somewhere between Mali and Asheville, NC, satisfying Toubab Krewe’s desire, as Dave put it, to makes the audience feel Toubab Krewe’s contentment of being here and excitement about what is to come.

By now, I had lost myself in the music.  Although I was furiously taking notes throughout, and I was familiar enough with Toubab Krewe’s album to concentrate on the details of each song, I had relinquished my mind’s control.  No longer focused on note-taking and attentiveness to specifics of the music, I was truly feeling content to be in a quasi-genuine West African paradise for a couple of hours.  I left with a sense of excitement about the future gifts that Toubab Krewe has to share.

Check out some of Toubab Krewe’s favorites: Jimi Hendrix, Toumani Diabate, John Bonham, Leon Parker, Dionne Hopkins, Billy Martin, Oumou Sangare, Salif Keita, Baba Maal, Youssou N’Dour, Bob Marley, Midnight, Yelemba d’ Abidjan, Herbie Hancock.