Time flies when you're having fun. We have our final Brooklyn Bowl Residency show coming up this Wednesday, November 18.
We'll be joined by special guests Lee Fields, Quantic, Sahr Ngaujah (lead in the FELA! musical) and some other musical friends. Raja Kassis's HUMANBEING will open.
The shows have been amazing so far, each one sold out to capacity. Brooklyn Bowl has been taking good care of us and we've enjoyed working with our own sound engineers Drew Thornton and David Liles, who you can hear mixing Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, among others. We'll be posting highlights from each show to our Soundcloud Live Archives page soon.
In the first week, we invited Lorenzo Cherubini aka Jovanotti and performed two songs "Libera" and Melagioco from his latest album 2015cc featuring Antibalas.
Beginning 10/28, we'll be doing four consecutive Wednesdays at Brooklyn Bowl. Each show will be entirely different: we'll be dipping into our back catalogue, playing classic and updated versions of our favorites from each of one of our four albums as well as new unrecorded pieces. We also have a very special guest collaborator for each week as well as a blazing band to open up. Each show is going to be unique and we hope you can join us for all of them. Here's the info:
Since the late 1980s, Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini has been a household name across Italy. A pioneer of Italian rap music, world music fusion, and pop, he has released over ten platinum selling albums and is among the most widely known musicians in Italy and across Europe.
Antibalas met Lorenzo in 2012 when we performed at the Austin City Limits Festival and both did a benefit outside of the festival. Through mutual friends, we found out he was a fan and we got to talk for a quick minute before the show. We stayed in touch over the years playing email tag and finally the stars aligned for us to go into the studio with him at Electric Lady last October. We'll be performing "Libera" and "Melagioco," the two songs we recorded with him for his recent platinum-selling album 2015cc. We welcome him to Brooklyn to rock with us.
The Funk Ark, a DC based virtuoso funk ensemble led by Antibalas keyboardist Will Rast, will lead off the night. Check out their latest album "Man Is a Monster" on Ropeadope Records.
Many of became fans of Saul Williams through his powerful, incisive and visionary spoken word pieces in the mid-1990s and have watched him evolve into a powerful force in music, theater, and text. Back in 2013 at the TV on the Radio-curated "All Tomorrow's Parties," he did a spontaneous 45 minute duo with our baritone saxophonist Martín Perna, which set the stage for our collaboration with Saul and the full Antibalas band at the Brooklyn Bowl.
EMEFE, are an exciting NYC-based afro/pop/funk fusion band led by Antibalas drummer Miles Arntzen and featuring many younger members of the Antibalas family. They've been on tour for much of 2015 and have a new self titled album.
We crossed paths many times with singer Santigold, the first time at Roots Picnic back in 2009. We got to work with her for the first time this past March at Carnegie Hall doing "Burning Down the House" as part of the tribute to David Byrne and Talking Heads. Santi and her dancers were amazing and it was one of the best performances of the night. A few months later, she invited Antibalas saxophonist/flutist Martín Perna and trumpeter Jordan McLean to the studio to lay down horns on a few songs on her new album. When we got the residency, we immediately thought of Santi, and we're thrilled that she'll be joining us.
Superhuman Happiness is the creation of longtime Antibalas saxophonist (and contributor to TVOTR, Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine...the list goes on) Stuart Bogie, and features longtime Antibalas trumpeter Eric Biondo and many members of our musical family over the years. The group is fun, quirky, and dynamic and they synthesizes so many of the musical elements of funk, afrobeat, new wave and good old-fashioned songwriting. They made a brand new record last month called "Escape Velocity" out on Royal Potato Family.
Some of us go back nearly 20 years with Lee Fields to the early days of the Soul Providers (to later become the Dap-Kings). Sometime around 1996, Gabe Roth somehow found out that Lee, the singer of classic 70s hits like "She's a Lovemaker," lived right across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Gabe gave him a call, invited him into the studio, and went on to record several 45s and the LP "Let's Get a Groove On," on the Desco Records label and did some touring in the UK in the late 90s/early 00s. Lee went on to work with the affiliated labels Soul Fire and Truth and Soul to make several great albums and continues to tour with members of Antibalas and our beloved New York funk family. Back in 2012, Antibalas and Lee Fields and the Expressions put together a blazing double bill at the Majestic Theater in Detroit. Lee is a consummate showman and true soul singer and we can't wait to see what we can conjure up together.
Quantic is Will Holland, a DJ, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and global citizen of Brooklyn by way of Colombia and before that, the UK. Quantic is known for electronic, Latin funk, soul music, his collaborations with Alice Russell and DJ Nickodemus ("Mi Swing Es Tropical") and recently his work resurrecting classic golden era Colombian sounds with his Combo Bárbaro. We met many years ago at our first appearance at Glastonbury. It was very dark and muddy. He handed me a CD and we've been mutual fans since, but this is the first musical meeting of Quantic and Antibalas, and hopefully not the last. His recent work "Western Transient: A New Constellation" is out on TruThoughts.
The Frightnrs are a Queens, NY-based reggae-rocksteady group. Their latest EP "Inna Lovers Quarrel," on Mad Decent Records, was produced by former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod aka Ticklah, and they also put out a 7" on Daptone this past summer.
Trumpeter Jordan McLean's label System Dialing just released "New Vocabulary", a new album with saxophonist Ornette Coleman with McLean, drummer Amir Ziv and keyboardist Adam Holzman.
Drummer Miles Arntzen is out on the road with Will Butler of Arcade Fire playing songs off the new album "Policy" on Merge Records. His band EMEFE just released a new video (WATCH) and released a new album on May 3.
The full Antibalas band is featured on two songs co-written by Martín Perna: "Melagioco" and "Libera" on the new release "2015cc" by Lorenzo Cherubini aka Jovanotti. The horns are featured on a third tune, "Ragazza Magica."
Ray Mason, Reinaldo de Jesus, and Martín Perna recorded on the Mark Ronson-produced soundtrack to the film "Mortdecai" starring Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Antibalas founder / baritone saxophonist Martín Perna has entered the world of standup comedy. He has performed at the Comedy Cellar Village Underground, Eastville, and StandUp New York.
Antibalas tenor sax emeritus Stuart Bogie is leading his band Superhuman Happiness (feat. longtime Antibalas trumpeter Eric Biondo) on a tour of the west coast with Marco Benevento.
Nikhil Yerawadekar (bass) and Timothy Allen (guitar) are in California for two record release shows with the Sway Machinery. Nikhil and his group "Low Mentality have a new 45 rpm out called "Reel It In" on 3rd Generation Recordings. Here's the VIDEO.
Trumpeter emeritus Todd Simon just won a Grammy in the category of Best Reggae Album for his performance and horn arranging work on Ziggy Marley's "Fly Rasta." His LA-based ensemble Ethio Cali has a new residency in LA at Acabar.
Antibalas horns 
Antibalas founder / baritone saxophonist 
Trumpeter emeritus