by Jake Gold
Photographs by Sean Barlow


Afropop Worldwide travels the globe to bring the best of global music to your ear, and with our latest visit to Detroit for the 15^th Annual Concert of Colors Diversity Festival was no exception. This year, the internationally heralded music festival hosted at Max Fisher Music Center, provided by the esteemed Detroit Symphony Orchestra, treated festival goers with a spacious location to sample 3 stages (both indoor and outdoor) worth of music, activities, food and fellowship.



FRIDAY HEADLINERS

Tish Hinojosa
http://www.mundotish.com/
Born in Texas, Mexican-American Tish Hinojosa sings folk songs in both English and Spanish. Equally comfortable performing folk and pop songs as she is with tejano and other latin styles, Hinojosa, who, at the Concert of Colors performed with a bassist and lead guitarist, sang beautifully and put on a song-based, introspective set to kick off the festival’s first day.

Hugh Masekela
http://www.ritmoartists.com/Hugh/Masekela.htm
Hugh Masekela put on a rousing set to headline the first night at the Concert of Colors. Between blasting flugelhorn solos over South African jazz and yelling politically-charged statements at the crowd, his band held things together and wowed a music-hungry audience at the main stage. He performed with such classics as “Grazin’ in the Grass,” “Stimela,” “Mandela,” and others.  Hugh’s vocal range and expressive quality seem to be opening up with time.

SATURDAY HEADLINERS

SambaSunda
http://www.sambasunda.com
SambaSunda is a 17-piece gamelan-based ensemble from Indonesia, on a mission to bring this rare, unique music to the world. Featuring an amazing vocalist, a driving percussion section, and the gongs and xylophones more common to gamelan music, this band was one of the more astounding to watch.

Fiamma Fumana with Mondine di Novi Italian Women’s Choir
http://www.fiamma.org/
Fiamma Fumana is an Italian dance-music quartet, featuring a mix of instruments as diverse as accordion and turntables. Combine them with the Mondine di Novi Italian Women’s Choir (about whom they were filming a movie during the concert), a choir of about 30 Italian women who resisted Nazi occupation during World War II who are now in their seventies and eighties, and you get a mixture of young and old. These groups bridged a generational gap, but sang songs about freedom and peace which are as relevant today as they were more than sixty years ago. Their set was truly moving.

Eddie Palmieri
http://www.eddiepalmierimusic.com/
Eddie Palmieri has been playing Latin jazz and salsa for over fifty years. He brought his band to Detroit for a night of virtuosic music. The winner of the first ever Grammy for Best Latin Album, Palmieri and band did not disappoint. With a vibrant rhythm section and Palmieri on keys, they could do no wrong.

Neville Brothers
http://www.nevilles.com
The Neville Brothers—that is, Charles, Aaron, Art, and Cyril—did exactly what everyone expected them to do: burn the house down with their New Orleans funk. The soul of their music shone through Detroit as they headlined at the main stage, rocking all of their big hits. They had the crowd up and dancing like maniacs for the first time all weekend.

Black Bottom Collective
http://www.blackbottomcollective.com/
One of the biggest surprises of the festival, though it came to no surprise to native Detroiters, was the Black Bottom Collective, a local live hip-hop band. Featuring drums, bass, DJ, and keyboards (far more sonically and visually exciting than the standard rapper-with-a-DJ setup), BBC turned the Diversity Stage upside-down with their songs, ranging from party-atmosphere to politically-charged. Khary Kimani Turner, the rapper, founder, and frontman let loose a phenomenal flow over his tight jazz-funk-rock band, and the backup singers added a whole other level to their sound. To me, this band was the highlight of the festival, and although they’re nowhere near as well-known as the Neville Brothers or Steel Pulse, they brought the music to the elated hometown crowd and they got down. It was impossible to walk away from that show in a bad mood.

SUNDAY HEADLINERS

Nawal
http://www.nawali.com/
From the Comoros Islands on the Indian Ocean, Nawal blends African sounds with more Southern-Middle-Eastern sounds, evoking Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Indonesian imagery. Playing the gambusi spike lute made of wood and goat hide, and singing about peace and Muslim traditions, Nawal’s band is rounded out by an upright bassist and a percussionist, who perform her haunting, beautiful melodies.

Hassan Hakmoun with Special Guests Wendell Harrison and Rayse Biggs
http://www.hassanhakmoun.com/
Coming to America from Marrakech, Morocco, Hassan Hakmoun was joined at the Concert of Colors by two native Detroit jazz musicians, Wendell Harrison and Rayse Biggs for a one-off gig. The improvisational nature of Gnawa music and American jazz combined for a free-jam session full of rhythmic and melodic interplay between the musicians. The only band to take an encore, Hakmoun and his band were jumping around the stage the whole set, using their feet as percussion and rousing the audience with their acrobatics, which only added to the sensational set.

Steel Pulse
http://www.steel-pulse.com/
Steel Pulse, a well-known roots-reggae band originally from England, was the last headliner at the Concert of Colors, as well as the festival’s loudest band. These guys have been playing this music for so long, they have their stuff down cold. The energy with which they played brought the crowd to their feet for one last time at the main stage.

DJ Dolores
http://djdolores.com/
The final band at the concert of colors, DJ Dolores, hit the diversity (side) stage at around 10 P.M. on Sunday night. Hailing from Recife, in northeastern Brazil, DJ Dolores played dance tunes all night to a party-hungry crowd. Featuring a trumpeter, guitarist, and vocalist, DJ Dolores covered the bass and drum parts with ease, mixing in references from pop culture into his lively music. His declared goal at the concert was to turn it into a carnival, just like in Brazil, and for those who stuck around until the end, there was no doubt that the atmosphere was that of a raging carnival. The set was a perfect way to round out the festival: high in energy, leaving you wanting more (which is difficult to do after three days of music – one should be exhausted at that point, not asking for more!)

The Concert of Colors 2007 was produced by ACCESS (Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services), New Detroit, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The producers wish to thank the lead corporate sponsor of the festival—DaimlerChrysler

Special thanks to Ismael Ahmed, Steve Heath, Ralph Valdez and Dave Shelley

Afropop Worldwide’s radio partner in Detroit is WDET 101.9 - FM, Sundays at 7 pm
www.wdetfm.org

First published: www.afropop.org