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Members of JSan and the Analogue Sons and the Big Mean Sound Machine, together in finely-tuned soul-funk-dub-Afrobeat-rootsclash mayhem. If this doesn’t make you shake it, we don’t know what will.
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At the Fifth Annual GrassRoots Festival, Ms. Ziegler took the stage and announced, "Well, the depressing contingent has arrived." One of the most respected singer-songwriters ever to emerge from Ithaca’s music scene, Kathy will probably not compel you to dance. Instead, her haunting melodies and starkly truthful lyrics will bring you deep inside her soul and inspire you to take a closer look into your own. Is that depressing? Depends on your perspective, bud.
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We’re not just making this up: Keith Frank IS the reigning king of zydeco in Southwest Louisiana. He’s a household name in the Creole community, and his brand of progressive soul zydeco is a force to be reckoned with, filling every dance club he plays, every time he plays them. A GrassRoots staple, we know that when Keith starts rocking the dance, we’re officially at home.
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One late GrassRoots evening, Native Americana pioneer Keith Secola told me about a shared belief among almost every earth-based religion: there are “thin spots” in this world, places where the membrane between the physical world and the spiritual one are so thin that you can hear and feel the pulses from the other side. He said that GrassRoots was a thin spot, and he could feel the spirits playing along on stage. We’ve seen it, and we believe it, and we’re always ready to feel the magic.
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With purposeful rhymes and one-drop rhythms, Kevin Kinsella fights oppression and begets love, every note, every song. Much beloved in the Ithaca roots reggae scene, Kinsella takes his cues from the Caribbean and Africa, combining these sounds into something new and vivid, with a positive deference to those greats who came before him. This year, his set will be something of a reunion, with original members of John Brown’s Body coming together to perform some of Kinsella’s greatest songs.
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Mali’s "Nightingale of the North," Khaïra Arby is one of the reigning grandes dames of African music. She combines the music of her father’s Berber heritage and her mother’s Songhai heritage with other traditions as well as the modern sounds of Malian pop and desert rock. Backed by her sizzling band, she’s an artist not to be missed.
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Horn-driven Latin rock with a sleek and sly Miami sound, Locos Por Juana are one of those bands that makes you scream "Are you hearing this!?" to people standing right next to you in the crowd and who are, clearly, also hearing this. The next big thing? Wouldn’t surprise us at all.
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Mac is a beloved friend and one of our all-time favorite musicians. Pretty much anyone who is playing old-time music in the United States today has been influenced by Uncle Mac in one way or another, and we’re so lucky to have him as part of our community and our festival. When we say it’s always a pleasure to hear Mac pick, we really mean it.
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The Makepeace Brothers are progenitors of roots-based power-pop, saturating their listeners with feel-good vibes and delightfully sing-along-friendly hooks. Growing up in the GrassRoots scene, they’ve been bathed in just about every genre of music we can think of, and they bring these wildly diverse influences together for a sound all their own.
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A vintage pop-noir songstress who skirts the melodramatic and the tragic, eventually landing somewhere a bit dreamier, Mary Brett Lorson knows how to keep us all listening. Backed by her own lush piano or sultry guitar and rich female vocal harmonies, it’s a dream to behold.
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“Matuto” is Brazilian slang for “country bumpkin,” and indeed, bandleader Clay Ross is kind of one of those. Blending the music of the Brazilian countryside near Recife with good ol’ American twang, accordions and guitars and ample percussion makes Matuto oh-so-danceable.
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Sweet sun-splashed reggae grooves from this legendary Jamaican-born band - it’s dreams like these that get us through chilly upstate winters. The Meditations are among the best of the best, and we are overjoyed to have them back at GrassRoots.
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Real rock from right here in our backyard, Mike Brindisi and his group are poised to take on the world, using Ithaca as their jumping-off point. We’re proud to have them play on our GrassRoots stages, and we’re looking forward to, a few years down the road, saying we know them way back when.
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Moontee Sinquah is more than just a drum master; he’s a rock-and-roller, a bluesman, a faithful interpreter of old traditions and a sage innovator of more modern ones. He’s also a teacher, evidenced by the brilliant hoopdancing and drumming of his teenaged sons, Scott and Samson. We can all learn something from Moontee.
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A master of the drums, Nery finds the beat not only in music, but in life. Sometimes he plays the rhythm of butterfly wings, other times the almost-silent rhythm that Earth makes as it turns... there’s more to drums than sticks and skins. Let Nery show you.
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For those of you who attend GrassRoots from out of town and wonder what we Trumansburgers do on the other 51 weekends of the year, we mostly drink beers and watch these guys play. Their old-time/bluegrass/string-folk is a staple on our local scene, and if we’re not careful, the cat’s gonna get out of the bag and we’re gonna lose them to the big time.
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Warm bluesy folk, pulled forward by lilting melodies and sweet harmonies... Exotic yet familiar, warm and bittersweet, Paso Fino’s music finds that open spot in your heart and plays right to it.
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It’s swampacana… blues, rock, country, folk…. It’s prodigiously groovy, with warm echoes of reason and heartache, love and thought. Plastic Nebraska’s music lends itself comfortably to hyphens (neo-folk, avant-groove), but even more comfortably to dancing and thinking and all those other wonderful things that great music makes you wanna do.
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Preston Frank is a standing bastion of a time when zydeco included fiddles in the band, before rap and hip-hop and funk became the main informers of the genre. Preston plays old songs, many in the almost-forgotten Black Creole dialect of French that only exists in a few small enclaves in Louisiana. They’re old songs with a new freshness, though, brought to life by a man who clearly takes the accordion quite seriously, but also has more fun playing than just about anyone we’ve ever seen.
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The first time I met Randy Dean Whitt was on the first day of the first Shakori Hills festival ever. It was pouring rain (of course) and I didn’t bring any mud boots, so there I was, stringy-haired and wet-footed, pretty much wishing that everyone would just leave me the heck alone, and Randy singlehandedly kept me from absconding to a warmer place with just his voice. He sang Hank Williams songs and his own compositions, and I hung around, freezing cold, just to listen. Since then, we’ve come to know his music well, and discover that he’s more than just a great voice, but he’s a smart, perceptive songwriter as well, in the country vein but hardly committed to just one genre.
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The Rebirth Brass Band is the hardest working and most-loved brass band in New Orleans. As comfortable busking in the French Quarter, leading a jazz funeral, or breaking it down in a Second Line Parade as they are on festival and concert hall stages all over the world, these fellas’ sound is truly the funkiest, dirtiest, and most low-down -- that is to say, the very best.
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This Miami-based Haitian group is the leading musical voice of South Florida’s Haitian community, and with their lush harmonies and pulsing Caribbean rhythms, they tackle the issues that matter most to their people: family, faith, and the struggle to make a good life in an impossibly hard situation.
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Songwriter Tenzin Chopak leads this Ithaca-based group with roots in old-time and traditional folk with a twist of acoustic progressive rock, sometimes both at the same time. To say that we’re enamored would be an understatement, surely.
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In the nighttime kitchen of this duo, after the kids have gone to bed, punk rock mayhem breaks out. Stripped-down instrumentation and uproarious lyrics (except when they’re not), Sharkpony will bite you and then kick you in the head. Not literally.
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Brother and sister Jeneda and Clayson Benally, originally from Black Mesa on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, were born into the heart of a political land dispute separating them by a fence from traditional homeland and family. They grew up protesting the environmental degradation and inhumane acts of cultural genocide against their traditional way of life. "Sihasin" means "hope and assurance" in the Navajo language, and it’s this powerful concept that roots their sound and their message.
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Rock music is the gorgeous result of many centuries of musical evolution, and the Sim Redmond Band is not afraid to breach the surface and dig up the roots. Drawing traditional African and Caribbean sounds back into the forefront, SRB rocks in a new way, with a freshness that you just don’t get to hear very often, and a musicality that is nothing short of addictive.
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Led by Sam, the son of Malian music powerhouses Amadou & Mariam, SMOD blends West African guitar-based folk with pan-African rhythmic influences and American hip-hop. With their latest album produced by Manu Chao, SMOD is one of the world music scene’s fastest-rising stars and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to present them to you.
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Quietly powerful guitar-driven semi-acoustic pop is The Sound Awake’s palette, from which they paint dreamlike sonic compositions and lyrical masterpieces that promise to thrill even the most staid indie-rock fans.
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GrassRoots loves fiddles, and we love ‘em extra when they’re in the hands of the Speckers, two generations of ferocious fiddlers who never cease to amaze us with their fingers and their feet and the fact that somehow their fiddles never seem to catch on fire when they’re doing that thing they do. How does that happen, anyway?
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There's very little that can't be cured with a little bit of sunshine and some accordion-flavored Americana, as far as we can tell.
If
you have grey skies that need clearing up, Sunny Weather has you covered.
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Sutra, in Sanskrit, means a rope or thread that holds things together, either in the literal or figurative sense. Sutra, in Ithacan, means a dude with a really nice tie who plays extra-groovy and edgy rock music. Put four Sanskrit Sutras together, and you get a wicked knot. Put four Ithacan Sutras together and you get one of the coolest bands we know.
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A great song is a building block. Sure, it can sound like magic when sung with nothing else surrounding it, but there’s something special about a group of fine musicians each stacking their own block on top. At some point, it becomes a full-on structure, with just the right amount of holes and movement to keep it upright, no matter how hard it may rock (and roll) in the wind. It’s from the top of this kind of edifice -- built on songs -- that the Talktomes are telling you something... are you listening? |
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Thomas Mapfumo was born in Zimbabwe back when it was still called Rhodesia and it was ruled by a small, cruel white minority. He grew up singing American R&B, but in his late teens, he decided to explore his musical heritage as well, blending the two into a new style he called Chimurenga. Because his music was overtly critical of the white government, Mapfumo was thrown in jail, leading to major protests which, in turn, led to an overthrow of the Rhodesian government and the birth of a new nation, Zimbabwe. Mapfumo never lost his political edge, though, and his songs now mainly deal with the issue of poverty and the scourge of AIDS. In Zimbabwe, he is better-known than the president, despite the fact that he’s been living in exile for many years, and we hope many Americans will learn his name as well. We are truly honored to have him back at the GrassRoots Festival. |
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Community-based, politically driven, but still funky as all get-out, Thousands of One is a force to be reckoned with. Their lyrics are spiritual and positive, and their Afropop-hip-hop-funk-soul-groove is highly addictive and inarguably danceable.
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Wild and fantastical, Tornado Rider’s cello-punk truly seems to come from another planet. A weirder, cooler planet where funny hats are all the rage. They call their sound "sneth rock," and while we’re not entirely sure what that means, we know it’s absurdly fun to listen to and dance along with.
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Traonach: a bird which modern agriculture and machine harvesters have rendered rare. Traonach: an Irish band out of Ithaca, NY who chose this symbol in support of the traditional ways, in farming and music.
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Uniit is one of those rare and sizzling hot treasures that keeps you marveling at the capabilities of the human voice and the creativity of the human spirit, and the way those things can combine in a gorgeous person who just seems to bring the joy everywhere she goes. With a Latin spin and a country twist, her music always leaves us wanting more.
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Cajun country likes to consider Walter Mouton to be one of their best-kept secrets, but a long time ago, someone let the cat out of the bag, and we were lucky enough to find out about him for ourselves. Mr. Walter retired from his standing Saturday night gig at La Poussière, a traditional Cajun dancehall, a couple of years back after playing for over 40 years, so they don’t see much of him down there any longer, either. We feel pretty darn lucky that he’s still willing to make the pilgrimage here to share his classic Cajun sound with us each year, though. Save me a dance... |
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Willie Watson has been unofficially taking the stage at GrassRoots for a few years now (and he’s officially taken the stage in years past, as well, as a member of the Old Crow Medicine Show and The Funnest Game). Lately, he’s been showing up and sitting in with one old friend or another, to the profound delight of everyone involved (especially those of us in the audience). We decided that it was time he get back on our stages for a full set under his own name, though, so here he is, in his full glory. He’ll sing some of the songs he’s written (you’ll recognize many) and some obscure old tunes that he loves (you’ll recognize some of those, too), and we lucky audience folk will be all the richer for it.
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