Watch out for these

[grumpy]

Another Saturday night, another visit to the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds to see an act out of Africa. This time it was some new kids on the block from Agadez in Niger called Group Inerane. If I say ‘Tuareg guitar band’, you can probably begin to triangulate their sound by taking a line through the output of Tinariwen and Tamikrest, though Inerane have stripped it right back: beautifully timed call and response vocals over thunderous desert blues rhythms pounded out by the four-piece band of drums, bass, and two guitars. Their lack of anything beyond rudimentary English made communicating with the audience tricky but nonetheless they came across as thoroughly engaging young men, a fact confirmed by The Rootsman, whom it was good to run into amongst the audience. He had been with the group earlier, taking photos, and mentioned that they were a great bunch of chaps. He also said that his pictures of the band should be appearing on his blog in the next few days. Inerane are clearly not amongst the continent’s wealthiest musicians – and given the generously cheap cost of the tickets – are unlikely to become so; a fact further illustrated when one of the strings on the bass guitar came asunder during the first song, not because the string had snapped but because one of the toggles or pegs of the guitar had come loose. It was clear there was no replacement instrument or road crew to deal with it – you sensed that what you saw was all they possessed. “Does anyone have a solution for this?” the bass player asked with a smile in his broken English after the song. The drummer from the support band (of whom more later) jumped up on stage and wrapped the offending string around the head of the guitar and the rest of the concert carried on with a three-stringed bass and with great aplomb. It has to be said that most of the songs seemed to plough a similar groove, but it was a highly infectious groove. Whether it would survive so well if listened to in cold blood over the duration of a 60 or 70 minute CD is another matter. But live on stage, they kick! And here is where I have my only beef with the HAR as a venue. It’s run by the Grand Theatre opera house and I fear this colours the approach to an audience. For goodness sake, when you put on a high-energy African band, rip out the seats (they can be dismantled if necessary – I asked). Great acoustics and an attractive hall but blighted by seating which makes economy class on a budget airline look like the last word in leg-room. Tap your feet here and you’ll end up rapping the heels of the person in front of you or knocking their drink over (or, worse still, your own). One sensed that the band was thinking why weren’t we all up dancing; answer – it’s difficult to dance on a sixpence.

The warm-up act (and, to be fair, hot rather than warm) was the Flower-Corsano Duo consisting of drummer Chris Corsano who was new to me and Mike Flower who wasn’t although the latter’s instrument du jour, the shaahi baaja, had previously escaped my attention. The programme notes describe the shaahi baaja as a Japanese banjo though I suspect the emphasis here is more on the adjective than the noun as it certainly didn’t resemble those things you see homesteaders picking in Appalachian hoe downs. Anyway, here’s a picture of one being played politely:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJNrfIopyqc

Mike gets rather more range out of his, at times making it sound almost like Hendrix is in the house. But the revelation was Corsano who started by playing his kit with a fiddle bow, actually bowing the drums and cymbals to get some quite trippy, unearthly sounds out of them before taking drumming to places I’ve never seen it visit before, for example spinning tin plates on top of the skins and getting strange whining sounds with his brushes. It sounds gimmicky but was actually entirely appropriate to the piece. They played only one number which lasted 40 minutes and I hope it is not straining the bounds of pretentiousness to suggest it was symphonic.