Translated material
Moskvich Banananov
Richard Bona closed the Island of Light festival
“The Island” is an impressive performance. It is impressive mainly because of its scope and diversity. In July and August, Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), the British rock singer Skin, and the rising jazz lady Nino Katamadze performed at the festival.At the closing, it turned out to be a real “world village”: Kazakhs “Ulytau”, Tuvans “Huun-Khur-Tu” and African Richard Bona. It’s hard to imagine a more varied selection in the diverse genre of world music. And although no powerful aesthetic discoveries happened, it was fun, pleasant and sunny. “I used African voodoo magic to drive away the rain,” Bona boasted. “Tomorrow I’ll leave, and the rain will return!” The African was mistaken: it was not the rain that returned, but a thunderstorm.
At the beginning of the show, the inspirer of the festival, Dmitry Dibrov, spoke colorfully about nothing, and then suddenly doused the audience like a tub of ice water, telling that at Huun-Hur-Tu “you will feel like at a Led Zeppelin concert.” Someone probably felt this way - indeed, you never know how many hallucinogens there are in the capital...
"Khur-Tu" meanwhile are wonderful. They have a new member named Radik Tyulush, a vocalist and flutist who previously worked in the Yat-kha group. (To completely confuse everything, I’ll say that Yat-Ha was once organized by Albert Kuvezin, a native of Khur-Tu.) The quartet gave out all its tricks: throat singing, amazing timbres of instruments, and puzzling rhythms, and funny ancient arrangements in which the drum imitates the clatter of hooves, and the strings imitate the neighing of a horse. Finally, they even released a tear-jerking ballad, which the group leader Sayan Bapa called “the song of immigrants... many of our compatriots who live in Mongolia and China.” Ah, here it is, hello Led Zeppelin, - there was a strange rhyme to the Immigrant Song of the great Englishmen! And who else dares to doubt the wisdom, insight and comprehensive taste of the great TV presenters!
The Tuvans played first, which does not correspond to their long-established high status; the group are real world ethno-stars. But the point is some unsolvable technical difficulties, such as the fact that the acoustic “Huun” is easier to rebuild than the electric “Ulytau”.
The Alma-Ata “Ulytau” surfaced in Moscow sometime in the spring and immediately created a minor sensation in the musical circle. People who are far from ethno-music, but close to Russian rock and pop, liked these guys unconditionally. It seems that the team has already become fashionable and will definitely pave the way into our show business. Reviewers note the freshness of the album, good sound, high level of playing, drive, melodic variety and so on. You see - not an instrumental group, but some kind of Leonardo da Vinci...
Alas, friends. Most of all, this, oddly enough, is reminiscent of the prog rock of the 70s - so with melodies, sound, presentation... A drop of ethnic music (the only folk instrument is the domra) drowns in the impenetrable sound of stadium rock. Nothing specific: pop melodies, sentimental, easy on the ears. That is, it is good and correct, but in the genre of, let’s say, “instrumental pop music.”
The highlight of the program also comes from the 70s. True, others are jazz-rock. Bona and his band live are extremely soft, extremely positive jazz-rock, which, in general, is not surprising for protégé Joe Zawinul, who first introduced the talented African to the world on his album My People. The bottling is seventies, and the African notes are a light make-up. Nevertheless, the public happily bathed in these waves of positivity.
Positivity set in immediately as soon as Richard Bona appeared on stage, dressed in spacious white robes, black as blackax, with pigtails, playing a strangely designed five-string bass guitar. The band has a universal lineup - keyboard player, drummer, percussionist, saxophonist and guitarist. And all from different countries: the Netherlands, Cuba, the USA... The bassist listed everyone by name, and then introduced himself in a strange way: “I’m from Moscow... my last name is Bananov!”