Its July 3rd and you don’t have work in the morning, so make sure you don’t miss Combo Chimbita’s Valley debut in Easthampton. Now signed with the legendary ANTI- Records label for their second release Ahomale, this quartet of Colombian NYers is one of the hardest-hitting groups we’ve seen in years. Powerhouse vocalist Carolina Oliveros forges a path through thick jungles of psychadelic funk and trance; what the band calls Tropical Futurism or Cumbia-Not-Cumbia.

The band draws on “traditional music from everywhere: Panama, Caribbean, Colombia, tamboritos, ‘70s funaná from Cape Verde, kompa from Haiti, cumbia, dub and reggae from Jamaica. We try to incorporate it in a way that if feels ours, so you hear these influences there but they come from our background, and our background is heavy rock, psychedelic funk and soul,” says guitarist Niño Lento.

[VIDEO: Cachimba] [VIDEO: Pajarito]

Special guests Billy Wylder add their stirring synthesis of desert blues & spirited folk to this summer party.

Tickets are $12 adv, $15 at the door. Children 12 and under free. Thanks to our series sponsors Dean’s Beans, there will be $10 student tickets available at the door with ID.

Our Dean’s Bean’s Planetary Party cycle is made possible in part by our series sponsors and go-to coffee roasters Dean’s Bean’s!

 

Brazilian singer-songwriter Sessa is already a fixture in the New York and São Paolo music scenes -- as collaborator with guitar legend Yonatan Gat and co-founder of psych-rockers Garotas Suecas -- but he joins us this July in downtown Northampton with a different proposition: his stunning debut project Grandeza.

His songs are sung in Portuguese, with visceral, sensual lyrics in the vein of Caetano Veloso, and the melodic flourishes of Jobim. However, the music gets a deliberate minimalist treatment rarely found in contemporary Brazilian music, more reminiscent of the bareness of Leonard Cohen, with touches of tropicalia and free jazz.

Historic Northampton opens its summer season of free concerts to the public with this very special guest from Brazil, accompanied by three vocalists and a percussionist. Join us downtown for a sultry summer experience and a new subtle direction for Brazilian pop -- retracing a spaciousness in its own music that seems to have been there all along.

FREE TO THE PUBLIC. Gates open at 6pm for picnicking. Show starts at 7PM @ Historic Northampton in Downtown NOHO.

Co-produced with Historic Northampton and in partnership with ChoroCamp and the International Language Institute of Massachusetts (ILI).

BKO Quintet is a journey into the heart of contemporary Malian music. Their key innovation is the fusion of two well-known West African traditions, that of the Mandinka griots (jelis) and the Bambara hunters (donso). And it is a completely new sound. This pairing brings master drummer Ibrahima Sarr (who toured globally with Oumou Sangare) together with the formidable Adama Coulibaly who sings and plays the donsongoni (hunter’s harp), with Mamoutou Diabate on the smaller djelingoni. Griot singer Fassara Sacko and French percussionist Aymeric Krol round out the group, creating a potent mix of sound that has both a rawness and a dense, propulsive groove (think Congotronics), yet retains the airy, incantational spirit of traditional Malian music (Ali Farka Toure, Rokia Traore).

WATCH BKO Quintet, “Tangwanana”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-ElgTAo3J0

BKO is Bamako’s airport code. And this new super-quintet from Mali, emerging in a tumultuous era of civil war and jihadist violence, makes it very clear they are shaking up their country’s musical traditions with a sound that fuses, explodes, and transcends into a global ruckus. This is electrified, highly danceable music representing the urban sounds of Bamako today, pierced through with its rural ancestry.

World Music Collider is delighted to be teaming up with Hawks & Reed in Greenfield for the first time to bring you another explosive Valley debut. Get ready for mid-Summer Malian dance party with one of West Africa’s finest and brazen new voices.

Advance tickets $15 / $20 at the door. Laudable Production's ticketing gateway does not charge any fees, so make sure to get them in advance.

The Nigerien band Tal National represents one of the most important cultural crossroads of modern Africa. The band’s members comprise Songhai, Fulani, Hausa, and Tuareg communities: different tribes co-inhabiting the former French colony and each with their own songs, traditions and languages. In the music we hear the rolling 12/8 rhythms in the Hausa's Fuji percussion, the pensive aridity of the Tuareg's assouf or "blues,” and the exquisite "griot guitar" of Mali's Songhai, all delivered with virtuoso precision and unrelenting energy.

But fundamentally, they’re a rock n’ roll band.  Here’s Rolling Stone: “Tal National play rollicking, dizzying, high-octane grooves with the joie de vivre of afrobeat and highlife, but have a hard-rocking polyrhythmic tumble reminiscent of experimental rock bands like Battles, Horse Lords and Tortoise.”

Its a thrill and an honor to host them in the Valley as they swing through the US for another blistering run in 2019.

If you like: Desert blues; Bombino; West African guitar; ecstatic, high-energy sets; bands that can play for hours.

Tickets: $12 adv, $15 at the door. Children 12 and under free. Thanks to our series sponsors Dean’s Beans, there will be $10 student tickets available at the door with ID.

Our Dean’s Bean’s Planetary Party cycle is made possible in part by our series sponsors and go-to coffee roasters Dean’s Bean’s!

Take a privately chartered bus with other festival-goers. Our busses are super-comfortable, airconditioned, wi-fi equipped, with power outlets for each seat.  The bus will pick you up at the corner of Barbès and drop you off at the festival gates in Montague, MA. Round-trip service returning to Park Slope departs from the festival at 11:30 PM and arrives back in Park Slope around 3 AM. Plugin your phone and sleep all the way home if you like.

Barbès is the little bar that could in Brooklyn. Over the past two decades, it has incubated and gestated some of New York's most creative music projects. The tiny venue only seats 60 and hosts more than 700 performances a year.

This Summer, we're celebrating the iconic bar in our own neck of the woods. It's going to be the quintessential backyard festival — the sort of thing you’ve always wanted in the middle of your summer — on a pristine tract of historic farmland in Western Massachusetts. Learn more at www.BarbesInTheWoods.com