Brooklyn Bowl London Opening: RECAP

If you haven't yet gone to Brooklyn Bowl (in NYC, London, or Vegas (coming soon)), it is a must.

We're just back from a three-night run in London for the grand opening weekend of the Brooklyn Bowl, performing under the moniker "Brooklyn Bowl All Star Players" feat. Antibalas and Friends. It definitely turned out to be that way: Guesting on guitar was Scott Metzger and on bass Dave Dreiwitz. Holding down the drums was longtime Antibalas associate Geoff Mann. We were also joined by London-based trumpets Nick Etwell (Dirty Six) and Robin Hopcraft (Soothsayers, FELA! Musical-London). On Friday and Saturday night we were joined by wordsmiths Musa Okwonga and Joshua Idehen (Benin City), to perform their song "This is London," a song that they wrote nearly 10 years ago using samples of Antibalas's "Pay Back Africa."

Each night the band performed 3-4.5 hours of music with an Antibalas backbone, but taking much more experimental and sometimes rocked-out approach to the songs like we've never done before. To keep things fresh, we debuted covers of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs", "The Taking of the Pelham 1,2,3," Little Beaver's "I Can Dig it Baby," Aaron Neville's "Hercules," as well as some Antibalas numbers that haven't seen the light of day in years.We recorded audio from Friday and Saturday night: stay tuned to our SoundCloud page for updates in the near future.

Congratulations to Brooklyn Bowl on a stellar opening weekend and thanks for taking good care of us. 

Quito, Ecuador in March 2014!

It's official! Antibalas has been confirmed to play the International Jazz Festival in Quito, Ecuador on March 13, 2014.

It will be our first time in Ecuador, and our second time performing in South America. More details to come...

INFO:

Tickets / BOLETOS: http://www.teatrosucre.com

Festival Internacional de Jazz Quito Teatro Nacional Sucre Manabí No 8 - 131 entre Guayaquil y Flores Quito, Ecuador TLF: (593) 2572-823, or (593) 2280-982, or (593) 2570-299 Email: informesventas@teatrosucre.com

Lagos Trip Cancelled

We will unfortunately not be going to the Lagos Jazz Series this year. In the early hours of the morning Thanksgiving day, we mobilized the entire band and a three-person film crew and went to JFK International Airport several hours before our flight was schedule to depart, with flight itineraries for us provided by the festival. We had all of our visas and passports together weeks in advance for all travel arrangements to be made, and arrived at the airport the day of the departure to find that the tickets were never paid for by the festival (as they should have been according to our contract). We spent the better part of Thanksgiving day at the airport with a back-and-forth with the festival personnel, and after several hours, they were unable to secure any flights for us so we had no choice but to turn around and get back to work.

This was a enormous disappointment. Performing in Nigeria has been a dream since before the band was even together. It has been an even bigger disappointment for our singer Amayo, who went to Lagos a few days in advance of the band to set up a show in his neighborhood in Ikeja as well as a show at the Afrika Shrine.

Despite this letdown, we remain hopeful that we will be able to get to Nigeria in the future under more stable circumstances and we send our deep regrets to all of our friends, family and fans who were looking forward to attending our performances in Lagos this weekend. We are  deeply grateful to everyone in New York and Lagos for their tireless efforts in trying to make this happen.

It is an great setback for us, but in the grand scheme of things, and the history of Afrobeat music and the persistent and brutal adversity faced by Fela, his family, his band and his staff, this is but a minor bump in the road. We emerged from this trip without any loss of blood, no unfair jail sentences, no beatings, no confiscations or destruction of any of our equipment. We are privileged and lucky to be in this position. We send our love and solidarity to all the musicians in Nigeria and elsewhere for whom this type of chaos and disorganization is part of everyday life and who manage to persist in making a life in music despite all of this.

In honoring the legacy of the music and our commitment to the music and to each other, we will continue to move forward, with our sights set on returning to Lagos as soon as it is realistic.

This month we look forward to upcoming shows in Japan and NYC (12/30 & New Year's Eve) where we will channel our creative energies and give you the best we have.

With love,

Antibalas