Ska Against Racism 5/1, Riviera Theatre One of my biggest frustrations with the so-called third wave of ska (besides the fact that whoever’s counting missed a couple waves) is that the music’s deeply political roots got left behind somewhere, if not in Kingston then in Brixton. But at least these guys are trying. This nine-band skankfest, headlined by Less Than Jake and the Toasters, is a stop on the Ska Against Racism tour, organized by Michael Park of San Francisco’s Asian Man Records–and as if to show that it ain’t just 2-Tone anymore, the bill features the Christian ska band Five Iron Frenzy and Japan’s Kemuri, who give the sound a weird heavy-metal crunch.
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SEKOU SUNDIATA 5/2, CHICAGO CULTURAL CENTER A friend once remarked that “poets are to the 90s what mimes were to the 70s,” and there’s a painful truth to that. What’s called poetry today is far too often just lip from slacker hams who never found the discipline to learn how to play three-chord punk. But real poetry–the passionately crafted, obsessively worked and reworked stuff that’s performed with heat, beat, and style, that pushes the interpretive possibilities of language and blurs the line between literature and music–is golden when you find it, and New Yorker Sekou Sundiata, who delivers his shattering requiems for the lost heyday of Harlem, chilling ghost stories of black violence, and steamy, spiritual love songs in a rich, clear voice, is the real thing. Though he’s been a well-known poet and playwright in New York for 20 years, The Blue Oneness of Dreams, on Mercury’s new spoken-word imprint Mouth Almighty, is his first album. Sundiata appears to see barriers between music and poetry as purely arbitrary, and he flows between chanting and singing and scatting with scandalous ease, over Afro-Caribbean rhythms, sparse jazz, and hints of gospel. He’ll be joined at this performance by a couple fellow Mouth Almighty recording artists: Nuyorican Poets Cafe host and United States of Poetry producer Bob Holman, shrill MTV poet Maggie Estep, and the Last Poets–who played two astonishing sold-out nights at the MCA a couple of months ago–with guest percussionist Hamid Drake. Rounding out the bill are Loofah Method veteran Cin Salach and Ojibwa chanter Mark Turcotte, two of the best of our homegrown.
INDOOR BOY 5/5, METRO I can see why Q101 is pushing this local trio: its three tracks on a local Spectra Records sampler, jangling feel-alright pop with bright guitar and sad-boy vocals, even worked for me for a while, since I might well have been a Smiths fan back in the day if I hadn’t found Morrissey so annoying. Clever and pleasant but not terribly engaging, they’re just the thing to talk over in the car.
